It's Friday again, and we have a #newtunes collage of sounds from different styles to mark the weekend and beyond. In this post,
I'm focusing on lesser-known and unknown artists trying to take over our ears with their new creations.
But don't be afraid. You'll find something for you in the many different genres presented here. If not, you can skip it.
Again, we have voting at the end of this post (Ecency and Peakd web app; the mobile version is not working (yet)). Everyone who votes for the best will get 50 
Last week, we had nine votes, and The Libertines' Merry Old England got the most, with three votes (including mine).
The winners are 
Music4life!
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Billions of Comrades, a Belgian alternative rock band, emerged from the bustling Brussels punk and DIY electronic scene in 2012. Since then, they've been on a musical journey, releasing three albums that showcase their evolution. Their latest album, Trotop, from which the track Unita is taken, was unveiled in February. They describe their music as "a playful flirtation between organic and synthetically produced sounds, resulting in music with asymmetrical structures and pounding rhythms."
Unita, a track from their latest album, is a testament to their musical prowess. It's a captivating fusion of art rock, post-punk, and electronic pop, punctuated by dynamic and arrhythmic changes that are bound to keep you on the edge of your seat. This track will resonate with fans of these unique sounds, leaving them eager for more.
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Caroline Davis & Wendy Eisenberg are both Americans, New Yorkers to be precise, the former a saxophonist and the latter a guitarist and, of course, both composers and vocalists. New names caught my attention because I had seen that they had collaborated (not together) with John Zorn. Accept When is their first album, released this March, and after listening to it, it's clear that it belongs to the so-called New York downtown scene, characterized by free jazz improvisation, which is also intertwined with rock genres.
I took the track Sequins. It's an instrumental, but it's a repetitive boogie of guitar and saxophone. It's not the hit of the decade, but it's a sovereign and authentic piece of original music that, as far as I'm concerned, deserves a mention.
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Benighted is a French technical death metal band that has been around for twenty-five years. Its tenth album, Ekbom, was released a month ago. As I read it, the album's title is not very nice. The word "ekbom" means a syndrome in which the sufferer believes his or her skin is home to innumerable insects, bugs, worms, etc. The syndrome is named after the Swedish doctor who discovered it.
Scars is the album's lead single, and it's about exactly that. It is brutal death metal with an inhumanly fast rhythm section and sharp guitar lines. Fans of the genre will be thrilled.
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Tomato Flower is a band from Baltimore, Maryland, USA. It's a new name for me. In March this year, they released their debut album, No.
Dreaming, almost pop psychedelia with distorted guitars and unusual vocals, slightly jazzy and artistic. Interesting. We'll see where it takes them.
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ScHoolboy Q is a Los Angeles rapper, formerly a member of the Crisp gang, who reappeared on the music scene after five years with his sixth album, Blue Lips, released this March.
Blue Lips is a testament to Schoolboy Q's technical mastery. With constant beat changes, often crafted by multiple producers within a single track, he effortlessly transitions between styles, structures, flows, and themes. His word-weaving and wordplay are nothing short of exquisite, delivering a mix of street, gangster, and severe themes while grappling with demons, trauma, paranoia, and pain.
I have chosen the track Pop featuring Rico Nasty.
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Alameda is a Polish band from Warsaw, which has grown from a solo project of krautrock, avant-garde, mostly guitar multi-instrumentalist Jakub "Kuba" ZioΕek into a full-blooded five-piece in the space of a decade and this week, released its seventh album, Spectra Volume 2, and transformed itself into an electronic monster.
They build their wall of sound on powerful percussion and draw influences from Africa, kudu, and Cuomo styles, as well as Afro-Caribbean batida.
Their high-octane, deconstructed club dance music is recommended for a dance release.
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Brittany Howard is an American musician who released her second solo album, What Now, in February. She has been active musically since 1995 but is better known to a broader audience as the former frontwoman of the blues rock band Alabama Shakes and as the bassist of the band Thunderbitch.
As a solo artist, she has unlimited artistic freedom and complete control over the final product's sound. On "What Now," she is the composer, instrumentalist, sole vocalist, producer, and mixer. The result is a sonic fullness with layered vocals (she has an extraordinary vocal range) ranging from funky atmospheres to soul and gospel sensibilities, jazzy, dreamy melodies, and electronic danceability.
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Bob Vylan is (more) a grime than a punk duo, and they're from London, UK. It's a new name for me. It consists of two musicians, you won't believe it, Bobby and Bobbie :)
They released their third album, Humble As The Sun, a month ago. The flow of the vocalist's words has a typical mix of punk, hip hop, and even a dance beat as a backing. The awareness and engagement in the lyrics continue, and the harsh criticism directed against the persons and mechanisms that stand in the way of personal happiness and individual freedom is highlighted, knowing that both Bobbys are still part of the music machine and victims of the capitalist principles that govern the industry. They even remind me a little of the Prodigy in the song Reign.
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πΆThat's all for today, and enjoy your weekend and holidays with new songs!
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newtunes2024 3.5.2024, 26.4.2024, 19.4.2024, 12.4.2024, 5.4.2024, 29.3.2024, 22.3.2024, 15.3.2024, 8.3.2024, 1.3.2024, 23.2.2024, 16.2.2024, 9.2.2024, 2.2.2024, 19.1.2024, 12.1.2024, 5.1.2024
If you're interested in #newtunes suggestions from the past five years, you can listen to them at these links - there are Spotify playlists for each year:
newtunes2019 | newtunes2020 | newtunes2021 | newtunes2022 | newtunes2023
If you like rare and alternative live performances, take a look at my recordings - 3speak video channel, or Seckorama Music Podcast - audio.
If you like jazz, I recommend Jazz-Matinee regular Sunday blog by 
And here's something else:
There has been a lot of development in Hive core, but documentation is outdated, and updates are needed. So I invite you to support and vote for Hive devportal updates proposal by 
Support and vote for those exceptional witnesses:
@good-karma, @liotes, @fbslo and @detlev.witness.
Music4life!
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As mentioned, this is the second time you can vote for the song you like the most.
