House Playlist: Sky Ferreira, Gold Panda, and Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie xx

Well, Ferreira is finally making her proper stateside debut this month with a five-track digital EP.

House Playlist: Sky Ferreira, Gold Panda, and Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie xx

Sky Ferreira, “Haters Anonymous.” You probably already know that I’m slightly obsessed with Sky Ferreira’s 2010 single “One.” Well, she’s finally making her proper stateside debut this month with a five-track digital EP, stupidly titled As If! None of the tracks quite match the glitchy, Euro-pop splendor of “One,” though “108,” a silly song in which the 18-year-old sings about dating a centenarian, sports similar glittery synths and King’s Speech-style vocal tics. The standout track, however, is “Haters Anonymous,” in which Sky laments, with copious amounts of sing-talking and pitched-up-and-down vocals, about bloggers and comment trolls gossiping about her “brassiere.” Sal Cinquemani

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Gold Panda, “Marriage.” With “Marriage,” Gold Panda achieves a true arc. The song’s repetitive cadence cedes to prickly twitches of percussion and converging synth effects. With the arrival of a pulse and syncopated bass groove, that cadence comes back into focus with fluctuating embellishments. The song glides over its subdued techno thump until that beat is stripped for two contrasting sections—the second of which warps a descending instrumental melody into an almost-human wail, echoing against splices of car horns and departing jetliners. Then “Marriage” makes a surge in its final 30 seconds, electro-cymbals crashing, synths at full tilt. Sean Ryan
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Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie xx, “My Cloud.” Richard Russell mentioned that the after-hours style of the xx informed his production for Gil Scott-Heron’s I’m New Here. What comes, then, when the xx’s Jamie Smith tinkers with the source material? You get his remix of the bonus track “My Cloud.” Smith retains the song’s gentle vocals and electric piano, but massages more life into the track via percussion and a lilting vocal sample that’s forever chasing its last syllable. The biggest addition is a massive change in key at the track’s midpoint: “How you must wonder in the evening,” sings Scott-Heron after Smith punctuates a sudden silence by dropping a line of brightly pitched piano drone into the mix. The static-y percussion rises and falls around Scott-Heron’s straining voice as Smith elevates what was once just a bonus track into something utterly essential. Ross Scarano
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