The Sound Sniffers Half Year Top 10

Another six months has passed and it’s been jam packed with great new music. It is always hard doing lists like this but everyone always has those stand out tunes! With over a thousand artist submissions sent my way and millions of hours of searching- this is the list of ten that makes The Sound Sniffers final selection.

10 Darcie – How Was She

With superb mellow tracks like ‘How Was She?’, this young musician from Manchester will be rising to higher places soon. A voice smooth as silk, coupled with non intrusive bedroom beats, I can’t see anything wrong with this!

09: XOA – Way West

I’m so glad I stopped on this one! This is a uniquely smooth piece of art here from XOA and I’m in love with it! Get on this one fellas! An absolute peach! With affiliations to renowned musical company such as Ninja Tunes, Dan Shake and the Brilliant vocalist Dele Sosimi, it’s safe to say that XOA is a force on the local London scene. Lovely!

08 Nilüfer Yanya – Heart Rises

Heart Rises‘ is a track off her brand new album Miss Universe and I’m liking the sound of it. For me, the track is not too dissimilar to Kelis‘s 2003 hit Millionaire.The drum pattern and sound on a whole just brings me back to that tune. I’m not normally floating around these pop artists much with my reviews, but this is an undoubtedly good song. Good on ya Nilüfer!

07 Ginevra – Lips

Her debut EP Ruins, which features Lipswas released not long ago so if you like her style, do check out the other 4 songs she has out there. I love finding music like this. The depth, the smoothness, the talent – Ginevra is an artist not to be ignored.

06 Helado Negro – Fantasma Vaga

This fella has such a lazy, languid yet fluid style and ultimately feels fresh in it’s construction. I’m really impressed with ‘Fantasma Vaga’ actually and had to toss up on which of the tracks I preferred from his album. Lovely vocals, mellow beats, wonderful synth sounds. Low BPM train gaze tune. Really nice work Helado! You have bagged a new fan.

05 Little Comets – The Sneeze

I had the privilege of seeing them in all their glory a couple of years ago in the O2 Academy in Oxford. ‘The Sneeze’ is the new one from them released earlier this year and it’s worth a listen – feel good music. I love Little Comet’s style, very unique, with great harmonies and an infectious catchy lyric pattern. ‘The Sneeze’ is short, sweet and not to be overlooked. Check it out below!

04 Khushi – From Me

From Me’ is a real stand-alone piece of art and I’ve no doubt that many would totally agree. On first listen, I got the same feeling midway through that I got upon my first hearing of Worry by Jack Garrett– that is high high praise indeed.

03 Sparrows – Do You Wanna Dance

In my humble opinion, this weird stand-alone pop composition is infectious – with baffling horse noises etc in the background compounding the rather different sound she has. This is Sylvan Esso and AE Mak-esque, with a slight bit more madness. Some very interesting electronic stuff, it’s unusual and well worth an eye-opened listen.

02 Nick Mulvey – Moment Of Surrender

Following on from the highly impressive ‘Dancing for the Answers’ EP, released the back end of 2018, Mulvey returns for his first foray for 2019. ‘Moment of Surrender’ is the tune and it is a good one at that. His voice is always fairly on point throughout his work and this is no exception. The mellow acoustic percussion coupled with the dreamy highly pitched almost angelic chords, this tune tickles the ear. A brilliant songwriter, the man can do near nothing wrong in my book. Top Lad.

01 Augustine – Luzon

As first releases go, this is fairly damn solid! What is going on here? This tune from Augustine is an instant earworm – it is very very unique from the offset. This is possibly one of the best songs I’ve stumbled across by chance in 2019, no doubt. It gets rhe nod here in this list anyway. The production here is second to none and this lad clearly has the balls to perform his exuberant vocals with gusto. This 22 year old Swede is going places, I’m completely certain about that. Luzonreally threw me as I haven’t really heard anything like it before which is fantastic.

He created the majority of the tune himself in his Stockholm flat using his undoubted multi-instrumental ability to great effect. I wish I could just belt out a song like this in my spare time! This is one hell of an opening release!! “A scent of Lily’ isn’t bad either.