Au Seve – Julio Bashmore
While the big festival track to come from Bristol-based Matt Walker last year was undoubtedly Battle For Middle You, this year Walker produced Au Seve, which has a similarly strong vocal hook as BFMY, and an even catchier riff. Bashmore ended his sets at A83 (Budapest), Incubate (Chicago) and Bestival (UK) with this track, which got the masses chanting its riff over and over as if it was Chelsea Dagger. Except it’s actually good music.
Bax- Mosca
While it’s over a year since Tom Reid released this track on his label Numbers, the likes of Oneman and Pearson Sound dropped this to the great pleasure of crowds around multiple festivals this summer. Mosca himself dropped an impressive seven-minute vocal refix of the track at Bestival to make a mockery of his mid-afternoon slot. Try to forget the hook after a listen – it’s pretty hard.
Eye Know – De La Soul
When the Long Island trio released their hiphop masterpiece 3 Feet High and Rising twenty-three years ago, Me, Myself and I and Magic Number would become the stand-out singles of the ‘Daisy Age’. But if there was a track to epitomise the De La Soul feel-good culture, it’s surely Eye Know, which masterfully samples the funk classic Peg by Steely Dan. The trio opened their set at Bestival with this despite the hiphop-unfriendly sound setup on the main stage. Have a listen and try not to smile.
Peso – A$AP Rocky
Hiphop’s new golden boy seems to be everywhere after the release of his 2011 mixtape LiveLoveA$AP, and this summer Harlem’s Rakim Mayers brought his A$AP Mob to Berlin, Paris, Chicago and Montreal. This track is his closing track to remind people not to overlook him in the same manner XXL magazine did for their Freshmen class of 2012, with standout lyric ‘I can show you my degrees / couple A, B, Cs / bad bitch double Ds / popping E, I don’t give a F /told you I’m a G’.
Burial + Four Tet – Nova
In the earlier part of this year, Putney’s Kieran Hebden, otherwise known as Four Tet, tweeted a link to this new collaboration with Burial and in a two hour back-to-back set with Caribou on the Sunday finale of Bestival, ended with the full version. The track’s hypnotizing build-up and subsequent keyboard chords entranced the thousands into a hushed appreciation after four days of heavy partying.
PHOTO / RosaMaria _Nika
