Brandt Brauer Frick release their third studio album and its exactly what you expected and hoped it to be. At least when you expected it to move a little bit away from the minimality and straightness of the first two albums and to become a more versatile version of what Brandt Brauer Frick do. The rhythms are twisted in any direction from time to time, while the structures move from dance-tracks to songs and beyond. If the older albums showed the fans of digital music that you can dance to analogue music, too, than this album shows these people what analogue instruments are able to achieve.

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Usually gracing the world’s clubs as a Deep House DJ with the name Red Rack’em, Scottish producer Danny Berman decided to change his name to Hot Coins for his first studio album. But since for that release he moved from House to No-Wave infused Funk and Disco, its only logical to change the name, too. And so “The Damage Is Done” became a debut album proving a man’s year long dedication to and knowledge of dance music: a somehow nerdy affair sparking geek emotions.

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While their neighbours, the Swedes, look back at a long history of internationally successful pop music, the Finns only recently realized that songs in English might get by far more attention than songs in Finnish. Enter Sin Cos Tan with their self-titled debut album, a new band formed by two of Finland’s most successful electronic artists, Juho Paalosmaa and Jori Hulkkonen. Their Synth-Pop is a dark, emotionally evocative mixture of Pet Shop Boys and New Order and the album a perfectly crafted cinematic journey. To get a better impression of what this means we provide you with a full stream of the album and 200 free downloads of “In Binary” for you.

Hugo Manuel’s debut album as Chad Valley is often being criticized for its schmaltzy and cheesy sound, wading deep in late 80s and early 90s synth-pop and R’n’B. Well, that might be true for anyone not caring for some drama and nostalgia in their pop albums. But these people probably have not even liked “Relayted” and thus shouldn’t bother us. In my opinion “Young Hunger” is a perfectly crafted pop album, graced by some magnificent artist like Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Glasser and Twin Shadow. These names alone are proof that this album is a prime example of contemporary pop.

Copenhagen’s Efterklang are a marvelous live band you shouldn’t miss on their upcoming tour. While a trio in the studio the number of band members increases to seven people on stage. And that’s definitely what they need for the complex sound-scapes  their melancholic pop songs are built from. The latest album “Piramida” is a little less quirky than its predecessor “Magic Chairs” and instead banks on reduced coolness. From time to time you even think, that this is the album that “Coexist” should have been.

Eugene McGuinnes might seem to be a reborn mod, but on his second solo album he’s trying to walk in the shoes of such diverse artists as Morrissey and Robbie Williams. On his last album Eugene looked like a Pete Townshend double and perfectly emulated the Blues-Rock sound of The Who. But on “The Invitation to A Voyage” the guitars are spiced up with Synths (and sometimes even drum machines): the result is an irresistible pop-gem, still influenced by Blues-Rock.

Four their fourth album “Bloom” Beach House made the right decision to change their sound as little as possible. Maybe the new tracks sound a little bit wider, more full and less dreamy than on “Teen Dream” but in general they are unquestionably Beach House. And just like for “Norway” from the last album there is also just a fan made music video for the first single “Myth” (edited from Grey Gardens, by the way).

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“Stay hungry, stay foolish” is the advice Steve Jobs gave the Stanford graduates in 2005. And although Kasper Bjorke is none of them he takes Jobs’ advice very seriously: He divided his album “Fool” into a “Hungry Side” and a “Foolish Side” – even on CD. The four tracks on the first side are Electro-Pop groovers, graced by Jacob Bellens’ smooth voice, while the six tracks on the other side are epic Club-Anthems. “Stay hungry, stay foolish and get this album” is our advice!

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Seems like Miniature Tigers are sick of being an underground-pop oddity with freakish 1980s sounds. They clearly decided to win some new fans with their highly accessible and catchy third album – you know how they say, the third album is the one that shows you how a band will develop in the future? Well, from my point of view the development is clear: These Tigers are growing up to be huge!

Three years after her debut album “Lovetune for Vacuum” Austrian artist Soap & Skin finally releases a mini album with eight new tracks. It presents as always a melodramatic, nearly tragic mix of classical instrumentation, noise and vocals on the verge of nervous breakdown. As you would expect, “Narrow” is definitely not everybody’s cup of tea, but if you can deal with emotional outbursts and thick layers of sadness you will enjoy the work of the exceptional artist Soap & Skin is.

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