20. You Should Have Heard This By Now: Raleigh Ritchie

About a year ago, I signed up to a mailing list in return for a three track ep. I was on a free music binge so in the end I didn’t even end up unzipping the downloaded file. As part of the binge I downloaded one tracks separately and gave it the five stars on the iPod so I remembered it. I didn’t for long time.

This summer, I’ve been listening to a lot of music in work. I don’t have the chance to keep putting on albums so I need playlists that’ll last for a few hours at a time. One of my fallback playlists is my top rated playlist which just has every song that I’ve given five stars. So I heard this song a couple of days in a row and it really stuck. And I’m still getting these emails every two months but I still haven’t opened them or tried to see who the artist was, band or just a dude, I knew nothing. Until about two weeks ago. I was flicking through music channels on tv, something I haven’t done in years, and a song was just starting so the title and artist came up and there it was, Raleigh Ritchie. And the video, it had the guy who plays Grey Worm in “Game of Thrones”. I was pretty impressed. Fair play chung fella, you’ve a real actor man in the video.

Turns out he’s the fucking guy. Raleigh Ritchie, emailing me for a year, is actually a super duper multi talented blud.

I thought that was interesting… whatever like…

Anyway, the original track is worth checking out. It’s really atmospheric and has some cool lyrics. The video is also pretty trippy. Have a look and a listen. Look at me being fun and trendy and giving people little GoT factoids and calling it GoT. Am I cool? I think so. Sweet.

Shmownload it here (only for shmad lads)

 

20. You Should Have Heard This By Now: Raleigh Ritchie

18. You Should Have Heard This By Now: Amanda Blank- “I Love You”

Iggy Azalea is the 2014 equivalent of Ja Rule. I like “Fancy” and I’m sure she has some other decent songs but I think she’s a pretty crappy rapper. She spells her own name. Multiple times. I hate to say it, but I think female rappers are kinda in fashion. Or maybe just aggressive women in hip hop.

Anyway, I think somebody who is worth checking out, and was around before this popularity surge and hasn’t really blown up, is Amanda Blank. I dunno what she’s doing right now but in 2009 she released one of my favourite albums, “I Love You”.

 

 

It’s fun and guilty sexy. Not the kind of sexy you want to admit to finding sexy but still sexy. It’s produced by Diplo and features all kinda people like Santigold and Lykke Li.   When I was studying for my Leaving Cert, I had some sort of a mental episode and my brother and I danced to the entire album straight through. That’s probably an awful advertisement for anything… Still, it’s got that Diplo, dance-y vibe to it which I love. The highlight for me is probably either the opening track, “Make It Take It” or track ten, “Big Heavy”. The first is a super high energy/electro belter, while “Big Heavy” almost has a kind of disco element.

It’s one of my favourite albums and I’ve been drawn to it again recently because I’ve been listening to the radio a lot and hearing the big Iggy Azalea, Nicki Minaj tracks and then I was thinking back to the Azalea Banks album from like last year. I think Amanda Blank was ahead of the curve. I think that if this album had dropped right now it would be huge and that seems kinda sad to me. So give it a listen. All five of you.

 

18. You Should Have Heard This By Now: Amanda Blank- “I Love You”