Grammy-nominated British multi-instrumentalist and producer A.G. Cook announced his third solo album Britpop this week - following the dissolution of his legendary label PC Music on its 10th birthday - alongside the release of a title track featuring longtime collaborator, and pop sensation, Charli XCX.
Britpop is a three-minute prance through a synthy English meadow, a driving, bubbly beat that eventually gives way to the much more club-focused side of A.G’s signature style of electronic music - dry, metallic and squeaky clean. Charli’s accompanying football chant...
Brit, Brit, Brit, Brit, Brit like Britpop
...is an interpolation of her 2017 track Lipgloss (produced by Cook alongside the late SOPHIE, whose lasting impact on the PC Music sphere, and pop music as a whole, is still being felt). The rabbit hole goes much deeper, and the connections go even further back, as Britpop now becomes the 10th song to sample I.D.L. by Life Sim, which itself is just one of 14 different aliases and projects Cook is behind. These elusive pseudonyms include Dux Content, created alongside PC Music co-founder Danny L Harle (the mastermind behind Caroline Polachek and Dua Lipa’s recent work) and Thy Slaughter, Cook’s rock band with Easyfun - who encountered legal trouble with easyJet at the tail-end of 2023.
Fig.1 Britpop Single Cover
Britpop is a patchwork of Cook’s diverse production past, a stretching tapestry that now includes Beyoncé, and is a fitting inclusion at the head of his upcoming three-act album, due to release May 10th this year. At eight tracks a piece, each disc sets out to cover British Pop's past, present, and future, according to Cook via a press release. The first of these eras has already been teased with the album's opening track Silver Thread Golden Needle, a surprise drop on New Year's Day spanning 10 minutes. The track is a multifaceted expansion of a song he made for NYC-based fashion brand Ekhaus Latta’s S/S 2022 runway presentation. For the initiated, the epic dips its toes into themes explored in Cook’s first solo album 7G back in 2020; stuttering vocals sound like Cecile Believe on Show Me What and the essence of Idyll, and its extended family, feel rooted throughout - it is a gripping TL;DR for the uninitiated who don’t have a spare two and a half hours to trawl through his 49 track debut record. It’s not an easy task.
Even more enticing news is the mention of Cook’s newest label, the ironically titled New Alias, a name that fans grew suspicious of when screenshots from the Company House website started circulating of a newly registered company under the same name - the devil works hard, but PC Music fans have been known to work harder.
Through its 10 years of operation, the label has made a semi-fictional energy drink (with the mysterious involvement of Red Bull), toured the world, and massively influenced pop music. What this new label means for the scene is yet to be determined, now that Cook has sent off his baby, with the promise of a shift to archival releases only following a swan song of label shows, final releases and mixes. Some speculate that the catalyst for PC Music’s demise was the aforementioned, absolutely unaffordable, easyJet litigation threats and that New Alias will just be PC Music…but again; some think it may just be a label to self-release, much like Caroline Polachek’s Perpetual Novice.
No matter what story you go with, Cook is not showing any signs of slowing down soon and with a miniature nine-date roadshow of LA, London and New York just announced on Monday, the future looks bright for Britpop. Tickets go on sale via Dice on Friday 1st March at 5 PM at The Underworld, Camden.
Credit:
Images:
Cover- Big Ben photo by Henry Redcliffe (available at
https://www.instagram.com/p/C3tUlfCSNGw/?hl=en ) [accessed
26-2-24]
Fig.1- Britpop Single cover by Timothy Luke
Sources:
- Instagram album announcement
- Press release of album
- Eckhaus Latta rework
- QT Energy drink x RedBull
https://thequietus.com/articles/19268-qt-sophie-pc-music-live-review-cl ub-to-club-festival
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