House Playlist: James Blake, Gruff Rhys, & Ryat

“Love What Happened Here” proves that the 22-year-old likes making twitching club tracks just as much as headphone masterpieces.

House Playlist: James Blake, Gruff Rhys, & Ryat

James Blake, “Love What Happened Here.” James Blake’s well-received debut foregrounds silence and process, repetition and accumulation, but “Love What Happened Here,” a non-album cut that premiered on British radio last week, proves that the 22-year-old likes making twitching club tracks just as much as headphone masterpieces. After opening with stabs of brassy synths, “Love What Happened Here” brims over with fidgety, pitch-shifted vocal chirps that culminate in a ringing organ sample that Blake jubilantly cuts apart. The business here makes it a piece with his Bells Sketch EP, hinting that it may have been dusted off to satiate the growing demand for his music. Either way, it’s more evidence that everyone had best believe the hype.Ross Scarano

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Gruff Rhys, “Sensations in the Dark.” Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys goes solo with the recently released Hotel Shampoo. The album’s lead single, “Sensations in the Dark,” will certainly sound familiar to those who enjoy the musical capering of his Welsh fuzz-pop band. A bubbly three-minute single with a catchy piano hook, Mexican horns, and an easily remembered chorus that proves there’s not always something wrong with a paint-by-numbers song. Michael Kilpatrick
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Ryat, “The Gaze.” Full disclosure: My high school was a veritable Petri dish for talent (Academy Award nominee Vera Farmiga and a few of the boys from emo band Thursday are among its esteemed recent alumni), and I’ve known Christina McGeehan, the singer of this next duo, since we bonded over Portishead while our friends were getting high to jam bands. Ryat’s music is like a nexus of those two styles, where the spacey forward-thinking sound of trip-hop meets rhythm-based improv. I was lucky enough to catch Ryat’s set at beatboxer/producer Taylor McFerrin’s release party at Nublu in the East Village last weekend, and Christina practically devoured her mic during a performance of McFerrin’s single “Place in My Heart.” But it’s a track from Ryat’s album Avant Gold called “The Gaze”—all kickdrums, crisscrossing rhythms, buzzing analogue synths, and Mamas and the Papas-style harmonies—that truly lit up the room. Sal Cinquemani
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