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Beauty in banality
B Magazine, Chanun Poomsawai, Published on 17/11/2019
» The year 2014 was quite an exciting one for music. On the Top 40 front, we had a handful of inescapable earworms, like Pharrell Williams' Happy, Iggy Azalea featuring Charli XCX's Fancy and Taylor Swift's Shake It Off. Elsewhere, new talents like FKA twigs and Arca came out with their cutting-edge debut albums (LP1 and Xen, respectively). Standing among those high profile releases was Total Strife Forever, the debut record by English musician William Doyle, who at the time went by the moniker East India Youth.
When good intentions backfire
B Magazine, Chanun Poomsawai, Published on 06/01/2019
» "Sometimes/ It falls upon a generation/ To be great/ I ask all humanity now/ To rise up/ Then we can all stand/ With our heads/ Held high," begins the Chris Martin-curated Global Citizen EP 1 with opener Rise Up featuring an excerpt from Nelson Mandela's now-iconic "Make Poverty History" speech. It's an apt start given the wholesome intentions of this EP, although it feels slightly jarring to hear one of the world's greatest speeches getting paired with the euphoric synths supplied here by the Norwegian production behemoth Stargate. The song is clearly engineered for a stadium/festival setting, so casual listening might not be the best way to approach what would otherwise be a stirring anthem.