Pier Pressure
After finding their feet with a couple of remixes for Before I Die, Talking Drums ditch their sea legs and swap the pirate booty of their cult edit series for a five-track EP of original productions, each swimming in LinnDrums, digital chimes and synth-vox sunshine. Summer sounds abound as the crew refract house, disco, ambient and dub through shimmering sea glass, bringing the beach to the bar, club, garden or grotto.
Inspired equally by tropical Sceneries (but Not Songs), Ecco the Dolphin and Echoes of Wally, as well as a few tall tales about trendy whales, this 16-bit caper makes a splash from wave top to bikini bottom. Written and produced as a cohesive EP over three sun-baked weeks in 2025, and stitched together with field recordings and found sounds from Sicily, rural France, Japan and Singapore, Pier Pressure sees each track flow into the next: distinct seas that make up one larger ocean.
Opener ‘Fashionable Whale’ surfaces with mystic motifs and dreamy pads arcing above the spray before a purring low end and drum-box shuffle plunge us into Balearic house depths. A rippling breakdown, bookended by insistent arps, provides respite from the rhythm before the low-tempo pulse returns to take us home. Sticking with Zone 2 cardio, ‘Salmon Hats’ serves wonky disco at Valium pace, its beatific vox and glittering sequences underpinned by a hip-swivelling bassline and topped with a future-primitive melody. After drifting into dream house for a sunset lull, it’s back to the beat and the enduring question of how best to dance on a lilo.
‘Mangrove’ offers an intertidal intermission as tuned percussion finds a place among the cicadas and lapping waves, gently unfolding into an RPG-ambient ode to humid languor. Refreshed, albeit ailed by a sunstroke haze, we’re back on the dance floor with the optimistic motifs and jolly polyrhythms of ‘Flutti Di Mare’, an uptempo, Afro-adjacent house workout designed to inspire mile-wide smiles. Then the EP sails off into the sunset with the fathoms-deep delight of ‘Squid Dub’, a Cousteau-coded cod-reggae stepper with digi-dub bass, pound-shop marimba and all manner of THC-tinged FX. Don’t be deceived by the loose and limber opening: a solid sequencer emerging at the midpoint sees the Squid squeeze every bit of bump out of the finale.
Forget ATOL protection - Talking Drums deliver your summer holiday directly to your stereo.
Library Card
We dug this from the pound bins on one of our semi-regular visits to a musty record basement with our boy Bobby Snacks. While he was surfacing in a sea of top yachters, we found a stash of Library rejects hidden amongst the hard house. This was the pick, but of course, was way too short. So we sliced it real nice and applied a lysergic lather, turning out a hyper boogie winner with a hint of Italo drama for your peak time needs.
Happy Bandcamp Friday folks.
Narcissique
Say la whaaat? Dig a little deeper and you'll see that France's first lady of Balearic cooked up some seriously freaky mutant disco before her Club Med megahit. Here's the disco-mix that never was - an extended punk funk oddity with angular guitar, wonky bass, hot horns and lyrical sass. Happy Bandcamp Friday folks - tip jar is above ;)
Society! Remix
You scream! I scream! We all scream - everything's awful!
Everything, that is, apart from this, the second 'Society!' remix from mighty yapping percussionists Talking Drums. It's tight discotheque tackle built on a bedrock of sprechgesang vocal samples, music-box melodies, and more cowbell than you can shake a drumstick at. Throw in some oldskool e-piano and post-production trickery, and there you have it: 'Society!', TD-style.
Safari Suit
We swung the scalpel through this Italo-esque oddity half a decade ago, then kept it to ourselves until Loose FM wanted something spicy for their Loose Change fundraiser. Since we've had a few folks asking for it, we thought we could drop it on here as a 'name your price' Bandcamp Friday treat.
Cruiser
Here's a little space heater we dug and diced a few months ago before realising we already had it on a Light Sounds Dark. Rather than bootleg the bootleg we figured this might fly as a freebie / pay what you want. There's enough crackle and hiss to keep John Peel happy while the headnod bass and cosmic keys remind me a little of the Dirty Edits from way back when. Happy Bandcamp Friday folks!