There’s a new Hercules and Love Affair album out now. It’s called Danseur and it’s fantastic. If you were upstairs at Underground last night, you might have heard “Heaven,” which features Faris Badwan of The Horrors on vocals and is my favorite song on the album. (Read the review here) Other new releases in the set include the title track from Soft Cell’s final album, Danceteria (review) and “Exploded View” from Actors latest, Our Love Will Live Forever (review).
It was The Cure Nite, but, I was playing in the not-The Cure room upstairs. Got a few Fontaines D.C. songs in for those of you who came to the club after the show, and those of us who didn’t get tickets. As usual, releases from the past two years are highlighted and link back to other mentions on the blog. Thanks for dancing.
There’s this cover of The Waterboys’ song “The Whole of the Moon” that I’ve been playing throughout the summer (if you see a “secret track IYIYK” on some set lists, that’s what it is) and a bunch of you have asked about it, so here are the details. (You can also hear the song on this month’s Beatique mix.) It’s a one-off project called The Watergirls featuring a bunch of different artists who came together to pay tribute to Keith McIvor, aka JD Twitch of Optimo, who died last year. The Watergirls was spearheaded by DJ/producer Teamy. Lead vocals are from Mhairi McClymont. James Murphy sings in his David Bowie voice on the bridge. DFA is releasing the single, the digital version of which is available now. You can pre-order the vinyl, like I did, which is out in October. All the links are here. Proceeds benefit Beatson Cancer Charity and Scottish Brain Tumor Research Centre of Excellence.
Set list from last night at Club Underground is below. New-ish stuff (released in the past two years) links back to previous mentions here. That’s all. See you back at Underground soon.
You might not expect to read this, but I’m way into Nature Is Healing, the new album from horsegiirL. If we’re IRL friends, though, you might think, yeah, Liz would totally be into something that sounds like the rave at an anime convention. And that’s true. But, there’s also a lot more to horsegiirL than DDR beats and pitched up vocals.
Just to back up a second for anyone who is like, wtf are you talking about? HorsegiirL is a DJ/producer/singer known for wearing a horse mask, or horse prosthetic face makeup, who had a viral hit some time back called “My Barn My Rules.” She’s known for playing hard, fast dance music- roughly equivalent to what ‘90s ravers would know as hardcore or happy hardcore- and has been buzzy for a good while. She played Coachella in 2025, made guest appearances during Wet Leg and PinkPanthress’ sets at this year’s Coachella and will be opening for Robyn at the Forum in September.
Nature Is Healing is horsegiirL’s debut album. It dropped yesterday and it’s a genuinely strange and subversive album. Musically, it’s not really something you can categorize. You’ll have something like the single “That’s My Beach!” that brings together a summer party sound with a play on words to talk about respect for the beach or “Only the Best,” which satirizes materialism. Then there’s “An Apple a Day,” with its relentless kick drum and campy, Europop-style lyrics and vocals, and “Fun Guy Fungi,” an avant-garde, new age interlude. Last night, I tried out “Hands Hands Hands,” a synthpop tune with bit of a Kylie Minogue vibe and a touch of house percolating underneath. Hopefully, sometime soon, I’ll have the chance to play “Music Goes On” because I love how it morphs from euphoric rave track to Pure Moods jam. The sounds are all over the place on Nature Is Healing, but it makes sense as an album because the songs all seem to tied to this very My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic-meets-Nausicaä Valley of the Wind message about taking care of the planet and each other. Right now, it’s not too often that we see people making art that’s both light-hearted and serious, so, if you’re looking for something that hits those notes, I recommend checking out Nature Is Healing.
Last night’s set list from Club Underground is below. As always, the new-ish stuff links back to previous mentions on this blog. In addition to horsegiirL, the other brand new song from last night is “Every Single Weekend” from The Avalanches and Jamie XX.
The April 2026 edition of Beatique is now live on Mixcloud. This month’s installment features new music from Slayyyter and Kneecap, throwbacks from Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Armand Van Helden, plus lots more. If you want the whole tracklisting, you have to listen, but there are links to posts related to the songs and/or artists at the bottom of this post.
“The Happy Dictator” is the first single from The Mountain, by Gorillaz, out on February 27, 2026
“The Happy Dictator” is an earworm. On the few occasions that I’ve been able to play the Gorillaz song at a club, I’ve woken up the following day with it stuck in my head. This morning is no different. I played it early at Underground last night and now it’s lodged in my brain, with Damon Albarn and Russell Mael trading off vocals on a loop.
I don’t plan sets at all. I just drop 24+ hours of music on my laptop, sort it by BPM and then figure it all out as the night goes on. So, it’s only in hindsight that I can say that last night’s set at Underground was probably influenced by being at the anti-ICE protest/march in downtown Los Angeles earlier in the day. “The Happy Dictator,” “Police on My Back,” (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang,” “Shout to the Top,” “Tubthumping,” blah blah blah. Whatever is stuck in my head makes it into the set and then the set gets stuck in my head. That’s a DJ brain for you.
Anyhow, thanks to those of you who made it out to Underground last night. It was a blast as always. See you next Friday for Gorillaz x Daft Punk night! Set list is below. New-ish songs link back to previous mentions here.
One of the first things I learned as a baby DJ was that genres aren’t all that useful. On a very basic level, they can refer to stylistic conventions (dub) or specific movements (punk) or both (hip-hop), but then the terms get overused (post-punk) and are totally watered down (psychedelic) until they become a meme (goth) and, ultimately, meaningless (indie).
Genres define music for marketing or search engine purposes, but they don’t mean much for human ears. Whether or not songs fit together has less to do with metadata and more to do with qualities that are objective, subjective and pretty hard to describe. That’s all just a long way of saying that I really like when there’s no genre tagged to a gig, which is the case for Splash at The Mermaid, where I played last night. Here’s the set list, which includes new music from Wet Leg, Marie Davidson, Model/Actriz and clipping., classics from Max Romeo (RIP), The Smiths and The Delfonics, a holiday tune from I-F and more.
Vinyl copies of Up and Away, The Runner, A Bit of Previous and Wet Leg
There was a lot of great music that came out this past year, so much that making a list of the best 2022 albums is a near-impossible task. Fortunately, last year, a good friend gave me a notebook designed for keeping track of music, so I was able to keep decent notes on most of the albums I heard in 2022. I followed the format of that notebook in putting together this list of albums I love and think you should hear. It’s not short— there are 23 full-length albums listed below— nor is it confined to any single genre. These albums aren’t ranked either. Each listing is followed by a link where you can buy the album.
