Select Frequency: Collaborate & Listen

The one where we all chuck coal into the furnace

Hello once again, and welcome to the most presumptuous playlist experience since Apple insisted everyone really does like U2, they just didn’t know it yet. It’s the series where we share what we’ve been listening to, where the possibilities are endless and our private listening habits becomes public knowledge.

Because we didn’t feel our solo instalments of Select Frequency were quite unhinged enough, we’re blessing you with a collaborative playlist to round off this season of SF, containing some of the most eclectic picks ever to leap clean over the gk! concept of propriety.

Yes indeed, Hugh, Nex, Kerry and Boff (that’s me! Talking about myself in third person! Damn, I love unpaid journalism) have put their musical differences aside and settled for sharing editorial space. It’s a game of nanometers (editorial detente at its finest), but this effort has moved us a smidgen closer toward seeing eye to glaring eye.

It’s been said by the wise and cliched alike that all good things must come to an end, so unfortunately this storied series will be taking a break for a little while. But fear not, we’ll return at a later date to shake up your playlist in true gk! fashion once again. Expect us.

Fear further not; we’ve chucked everything at the wall for you here; we’ve got eleven — count ’em — eleven entries for you, and even got an out of hours plumber to come around and disconnect the kitchen sink which is now lying in pieces at our collective feet (click the subscribe button at the bottom of the page, I beg). It’s a bit screamy, a bit peppy, a bit depressive, a bit completely all over the place. It’s the trve Select Frequency experience.

1. Small Faces - “Afterglow”

2. Fireworks - “I Want To Start A Religion With You”

3. Erina Uozumi - “足音” (Ashioto (Footsteps))

4. $uicideboy$ - “BLOODSWEAT”

5. Enuff Z’Nuff - “New Thing”

6. Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore - “Haze with no Haze”

7. Mallrat - “For Real”

8. Ridiculon - “Crystalline Dreams”

9. Iglooghost - “Spawn01 [feat. Cyst]”

10. Ramson Badbonez - “Home Town”

11. Origin - “The Burner”

Small Faces - “Afterglow”

from Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake // 1968 // psychedelic rock

In the spirit of Saint Valentine, I asked my girlfriend to pick a romantic song to cover for SF, and because my girlfriend is amazing, she picked this semi-forgotten flower-power classic, which capped off the iconic London mod band’s original 60s run with an infamously botched and unauthorized single release in 1969. “Afterglow” (NOT “Afterglow of Your Love”, listen for that acoustic intro unforgivably omitted from the single), Steve Marriott’s radiant ode to post-coital bliss, brings all the sweaty, sexed-up vocal passion of the next decade-plus of hard rock, but there’s a real vulnerability there too, a tenderness and innocence all-too-often forgotten by your Aerosmiths and your Bad Companys and suchlike. It’s keyboardist Ian McLagan, though, that brings the song’s psychedelic label to bear, his rippling, decadent organ melting over the whole track like hot caramel, while Kenney Jones’ bustling drum fills predict his stint a decade later as Keith Moon’s replacement in The Who. If you’re looking for some peace, love, and rock ‘n’ roll in equal measure, this one gets my highest recommendation— and I can even vouch for its efficacy as a point of real-life romantic bonding. Thanks a million, sweetheart!!!

- Kerry Renshaw

Fireworks - “I Want To Start A Religion With You”

from Higher Lonely Power // 2023 // pop punk

A wild slice of mouth-twitching nostalgia has appeared! I’m going to level with you: I think Fireworks are… fine. Their pop punk brightness and occasionally twee optimism (sorry, not sorry) don’t sit particularly well with me generally, but, ‘‘I Want To Start A Religion With You’’ is very much the exception that proves the rule. It feels like being catapulted back into my teenage years, which is no mean feat considering I was turning 30 when it dropped. Beautifully layered, stirringly melodic and catchy to a fault, it has this cloudy, almost dreamlike texture that feels as though the vocal is being gently ferried around on the pillowy reverb waves. Yearning and heartfelt with a slightly darkened undercurrent, its core conceit of starting a religion with someone, which could be read both metaphorically and literally, encapsulates that specific strain of romantic intensity where infatuation curdles into something beyond devotion and becomes something unhinged. Faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains… and also damage you. Even destroy you. I’m probably deeping this one too much, but this is a magical song and if you don’t like it we probably can’t be friends.

- Benjamin Jack

Erina Uozumi - “足音” (Ashioto (Footsteps))

from ISO1600 no Hanayome // 2021 // folk

Bogged down by a frankly godawful week of house moving, A&E queues and what experts are tripping themselves to agree has been absolute peak British weather, I’ve been staving off the gloom by compiling a seamlessly-sequenced, 150+ song playlist of every song I could think of that makes me want to break down in floods but then feel good enough to not. Yep — how was your Valentine’s Day? This process has been obsessive and unending, and it has had the positive(?) side effects that I have paid next to zero attention to any other music or to the majority of my own emotions that aren’t simmering nostalgia or jaded resilience (is that an emotion?).

Now, Erina Uozumi’s “足音” is not the greatest or the most representative of the tunes I’ve been juggling, but it was most certainly the one that was playing when I started writing this thing — and I’m glad of it! Firstly because Erina Uozumi is the kind of underground heroine who is absolutely too cool for international exposure but deserves her fair share of it regardless (something we will further address when her new record Eien nante drops on the 25th March). But mainly because she’s onto something genuinely special. Something I would personally, literally kill for were I one of the innumerable singer-songwriters on the stationary bandwagon where you sit around hoping that having the same sertraline dosage as Gracie Abrams will one day entitle you to the same fame or loving audience that the powers that be afforded her shortly after we all gave up pretending the pandemic was an adequate excuse for all the accolades we were trying to foist on Phoebe Bridgers. Uhh, yep, so Erina Uozumi: something special! This girl is a definition of self-consciously lo-fi in a way that runs from her regency of Koenji’s famously down-to-earth alternative circuit to the deadpan intimacy of her visual style to the– I mean, just listen to this track’s production.

Speaking now, finally, specifically of this track, it’s one of the best examples of the vast amount of warmth she brings to the frostiness, the anxious temperament, the fragile aesthetics of her alternative singer-songwriter pedigree — half of the music played by half the artists within a stone’s throw of her are hell-bent on conveying the gritty ins and outs of exactly how much you or they need a damn hug for a change, but Uozumi goes so far as to oblige us: “足音”’s doozy of a bridge is just wonderful, a moment of cathartic solace that goes against every expectation the rest of the track sets up, a climax so full of life I’ve had to remind myself on multiple occasions that it’s literally just Uozumi and guitar holding the fort. Zamn. It feels like coming home and getting lost right at the same time, and if there’s one thing I can relate to at present…

- Hugh Puddle

$uicideboy$ - “BLOODSWEAT”

from THY WILL BE DONE // 2025 // cloud rap - trap

$uicideboy$’ latest album’s streaming metrics (that is, most played of 2025 despite dropping a mere six days before the end of the year) finally bullied me into listening to the unholy duo properly. I’ve been mainlining their discography ever since, but this cut from their latest is the one that made me realise I’d been royally mugging myself. Straddling cloud rap haziness and trappy blunt force trauma, their style is persistently oppressive yet extremely replayable, not to mention surprisingly catchy. ‘‘BLOODSWEAT’’ is undoubtedly one of the cleanest distillations of that mood. Carried by its menacing, devilishly infectious bassline, it balances urgency and blasé offhandedness fantastically well — minimal in its execution but always aggressively brazen. The bass as centrepiece within the mix, backended by a skittering rhythm base, feels serious and wholly appropriate for the particular brand of nihilism that $uicideboy$ traffic in. The underpass-confessional vibes are completely filthy but bizarrely infectious, and I want that bass IV’d directly into my veins at the earliest scientific convenience pls. It may be one of their most recent, but it’s hands down one of my favourites from the boy$.

- Benjamin Jack

Enuff Z’Nuff - “New Thing”

From Enuff Z’Nuff // 1989 // Power pop

In power pop, melody trumps all. Sure, Enuff Z’Nuff frontman Donald “Donnie Vie” Vandevelde sings like Vince Neil doing a middling Robin Zander impression. Sure, the production on their self-titled debut album is a heinous late-80s reverb-slathered glop. Sure, they literally called their band “Enuff Z’Nuff” (their bassist even goes by “Chip Z’Nuff”— cool, man!). The cold, hard truth is that none of those things actually matter in the slightest (beyond making a deep discog dive of these guys decisively unrewarding), because the chorus melody of “New Thing” is simply more pleasurable to sing along to than 99.99% of rock choruses, and by this virtue they will forever have a small place in the power pop canon, and my heart by extension. That up-down-up-down melisma on HIIIIIIGH, then the jaunty little walk-down on the next pass, that chord change— it’s a rare treat to hear so much capital-S Songwriting lavished upon one singular lyric. The fact of the matter is that nothing about “New Thing” is new. It’s glam metal with a little bit of Beatlesque sprinkled on top. From 1989. But that damn melody has the power to make it feel like the first time every time, and the pop to ensure you can’t bring yourself to resent it as such. How’s that for a cheap trick?

- Kerry Renshaw

Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore - “Haze with no Haze”

from Tragic Magic // 2026 // ambient

Extract from Loving Your Pleasure: The Middle Class Path to New Age Resplendence, as Attainable by YOU Today, Still, Even in This Year Twenty Twenty Six:

Why burn the candle at both ends when you, dear reader, could do the same with incense for double fragrance? Try this at bathing hour with your most minimal candle configuration, and be amazed at how far little impatience can cleanse you. If you are worried that the stick will burn too quickly to suffuse your full dip, consider bringing a spare or, ideally, extinguishing one end in the tub to add a hint of ashen herb to your water’s mineral composition (this may boost fertility). Your focus here should be haptic and olfactory, with as little visual emphasis as possible to guide your sensory curiosity into fresh realms.

Many of our readers have found that an auditory element works wonders here too; those eager to try this should consider that shit the bed has anything sounded as shitting gorgeous this year as the $#23ig% vocal harmonies on “Haze with no Haze” by Julianna Barwick and Mary fucking Lattimore? The latter’s harp arrangement is lighter than air, and yet as the former exhales all over the song’s central swoon, so too shall you – yes, indeed – swoon. Manifest, queens.

- Hugh Puddle

Mallrat - “For Real”

from Uninvited // 2017 // indie pop

A good few years ago, back when my sweet, optimistic arse trusted Spotify’s algorithm somewhat, I found a Mallrat song on my Discover Weekly. It was titled ‘‘UFO’’, and I loved it. Naturally, I did absolutely nothing about it and went about my pathetic existence. Fast forward to a few days ago: I was watching Shannon Murphy’s Babyteeth for the first time, and this absolute gem started playing. I knew who it was immediately, even all these years later, and the smug validation when my assumption proven correct rivalled championing a band before the blow-up. Australian artist Mallrat’s thing is space — not emptiness, but wavy, breathable space, aerated with a gentle, but always super purposeful level of precision in both hooks and vocals. The instrumentals that dance and glide on the synth bed hold Grace Shaw’s half-whispered, unwavering vocal aloft, while tiny melodic details flicker and wilt around the margins, tender without feeling fragile. Like the rest of Mallrat’s work, ‘‘For Real’’ floats with the grace of a ballerina but lands with the confidence of an elite-level gymnast. Oh, and Babyteeth was a good film too, with a lot of other prize jams on the soundtrack.

- Benjamin Jack

Ridiculon - “Crystalline Dreams”
from Mewgenics - OST // 2026 // various

Funny how the 2026 GOTY debate has been settled this early in the year. Seriously, nothing’s going to touch this one. Shut the lid on the tuna tin, roll up the yarn, call it a catnap, send the abject humans home! And what would an Ed McMillen game be without a hissterical score by furmidable earworm smiths Ridiculon? Best known for their iconic BoI soundtrack, the Orleansian duo returns to offer a rich pâté with notes of vocal jazz, swing, blues rock, indie, and even Japonica flourishes.

Mirroring the game’s imagery and humor, the individual tracks will either rip right through your upholstery or clumsily slip off your windowsill. But just like the game, they’re littered with moments of artistic ingenuity, the layers stacking like a well-claimed cardboard throne. Speaking of layers: in-game, you’ll only ever hear the full songs during boss fights, so good on the artists for making both the instrumental and vocalized versions available digitally (best get this on Bandcamp). And speaking of digital availability: originally, I was going to go with “Feline Invader”, but the full OST wasn’t available on Spotify at the time of writing. Figures they’d rectify that the very next day…

“Crystalline Dreams” is one of the album’s many decidedly un-game-y numbers, carried by Kristin Slipp’s mesmerizing vocals and underpinned by a faintly unsettling atmosphere that curls up in your lap one moment, then surprises you with a whisker-twitch of tension the next. We’ve long since binned the Isaac-/Bum-Bo-bound expectations at this point, but to me this track – despite all the apparent compositional ̶m̶a̶t̶u̶r̶i̶t̶y̶ mutation – epitomizes Ridiculon’s impawccable sense of cattivating arrangements. It’s impossible to convey with words just how brilliantly the instrumental layer works on its own in the context of the game and how much the kick-in of the vocals during the boss fight adds to the experience. Such is the level of craftsmanship on display. These musicians have, in (catnip) essence, ascended, the product of their work toying with you like a laser pointer you can’t quite catch, with its interplay of highly customized background instrumentation, pitch-shifted meow-alongs, and actual vocals from a carefully curated cast of guest singers.

A purrfectly pawlished score that prowls, pounces, and sinks its claws deep into your memory. The bass stalks, the yowls shimmer, and every motif eventually lands on its feet. If you’ve found the cheese, it’s probably a trap.

Dedicated to Ryan.

- Nex

Iglooghost - “Spawn01 [feat. Cyst]”

From Tidal Memory Exo // 2024 // Trip-hop

Like a lot of older zoomers, I found a pretty intuitive appeal in Iglooghost’s breakout 2017 debut Neō Wax Bloom. Seamus Malliagh had a way of presenting the project that I instantly got: bright, plasticky PC music-inspired beats, press releases and song descriptions that read more like a young boy’s dream journal than a polished advertisement, goofy little 3D-rendered whatsits positively begging to be made into collectible vending-machine toys. I may have understood it, but I didn’t exactly, uh, love it? A lot of tracks were scattershot, coasting by on a scrap of particularly-abrasive sound design, and for as much mileage as the album got out of being unmistakably one guy’s idiosyncratic take on IDM, the whole vibe also felt a little too safe or cutesy to consistently hold up against Malliagh’s burgeoning ambition as a DJ and producer. Nobody else I knew seemed nearly as interested in XYZ or Lei Line Eon, and by the time Tidal Memory Exo rolled around, I had all but written Iglooghost off as a late-2010s flash in the pan. Oh, how wrong I was.

Neō Wax Bloom was the flash in the pan. Tidal Memory Exo is that same pan stewing in a landfill until the teflon all flakes off and some undiscovered species of bioluminescent microorganism uses it for armor. The Bandcamp description for this album should be taught in universities, genuinely: I have no clue how much if any actual truth there is to Igloo’s tall tales of “oceanic scum, illegal teletext transmissions, & the prehistoric trilobite angels lurking in the sewers”, but they certainly conjure up a vivid mental image to match his revamped style, more layered and textured than ever, full of hissing static and clanking metal. Because I’m a digital native with ADHD, I of course adore the album’s more frenetic excursions into drill & bass, but because I love a good hook above all, my very favorite moment is the hauntingly groovy “Spawn01”. Regular collaborator BABii turns in a vocal performance that floats across the track like some kind of pollution-warped jellyfish, and the sparse, mechanical beat locks into a laid-back, oily groove that lands all the harder for the abundant jank and junk that it shares a tracklist with. I’ve gotten used to living decades in the past as far as my music consumption goes; lately, whenever I need a good dose of 2020s genre-blending ecological collapse, this is the first thing I reach for. Breakin’ up the poison, CHLOriiine…

- Kerry Renshaw

Ramson Badbonez - “Home Town”

from Bad 2 Da Bone Off Cuts // 2013 // UK hip hop

In the already criminally underappreciated realm of UK hip hop, Ramson Badbones still somehow manages to be overlooked. With a classic hip hop cadence and typified, bolshy UK grit, he’s an unusually accomplished storyteller; never wasting a bar, and always with an ear for beats both infectious and rousing. Lifted from his Off Cuts compilation, ‘‘Home Town’’ threads a well judged mix of pathos and flex, with a restrained, nostalgic pulse radiating through both the beat and lyrics. The chorus sample of Adele’s ‘‘Hometown Glory’’ is perfectly implemented and reflective of the emotionality within the lyrics, helping to amplify the heartfelt undertones without diluting the hardcoded toughness. The result is a track of surprising resonance: street-level anecdotes both personal and broad, refracted through the rose-coloured lens of that borrowed chorus. The sample doesn’t soften Ramson so much as frame him. I mean, I’m not even from London, but this cut makes me feel homesick every time I play it.

- Benjamin Jack

Origin - “The Burner”

from Echoes of Decimation // 2005 // technical death metal

One would think that with a language this unequivocal, the addressee would have to go to prodigious extremes in order to misunderstand the utterer. And yet, Origin has been inordinately underappreciated, unjustly branded as monofunctional, and often disregarded in discussions surrounding pivotal moments in the evolution of extreme metal.

Emerging at the ebb of death metal’s allure, at a time when the obstreperous youth had ditched the last remnants of the Satanic-Panic aesthetic in favor of baggy pants and ineffable amounts of hair gel, these absolute studs rose up against The Nookie to fathom the human limit of instrument abuse. It can’t be overstated how bad a shape the genre was in after the hard Y2K cut-off point, and while the band’s rather coarse self-titled 2000 debut in retrospect was neither particularly inspired nor inspirational to other votaries of decease, it assuredly instilled at least a globule of confidence in the then largely neglected flavor’s future.

It didn’t take long for Paul Ryan to reach his final form, two years to be precise, as evidenced by sophomore LP Informis Infinitas Inhumanitas, which a good percentage of the intimate yet passionate circle of diehards considers the outfit’s finest vintage to this day. The signature sweeps had reared their Janus head – and they were here to stay. For the next three albums, Paul was obsessively dialed in on smearing those arpeggios in your face, come hell or high water. Whilst this led to many memorable pieces and even straight-up brutech classics, such as “Portal”, “Staring From the Abyss”, or “Saligia” – basically the setlist you’d hear at a show if you were to attend one today – this obstinacy sorely added to the pervasive perception of one-dimensionality, of a highly circumscribed artistic vision. By the band’s own admission, their earlier years were characterized by a harder-faster-shredder spirit, and it seems like that was ultimately to their detriment. Popularity-wise, the two-punch run of Antithesis and Entity could easily be considered their golden era, but even at that ‘peak’, when they had refined their writing chops to a point where all that speed and technicality was finally compressed into songs with clearly delineated identities, their name seldom had enough pull to fill a venue to the brim. By the time they had started to branch out and veer away from that all-intense-all-the-time mindset, increasingly daring to go ‘softer’ from time to time, as far as that term is applicable here, interest had waned significantly, potential listeners now seemingly saturated – and overwhelmed by the inexhaustible well of similarly demented tunes delivered to them by way of the newly introduced algo-based streaming services.

Why tell you all this about a band whose music you, the reader of this grab-bag column supposedly about single songs, are likely to turn off after five seconds anyway? First off, I picked a track that doesn’t really start until you’re fourteen seconds in, so, uh, gotcha!? Secondly, most importantly, and without exaggerating, though, they’re truly one of a kind. Not because of their thematic shtick, aliens/cosmos/the death of the Earth and everything you hold dear, which in itself can only be taken seriously if you’re a firm believer of the ‘all art is art’ ethos, never at face value, but because, musically, there’s been maybe a handful of not-banished-to-unheard-of-levels-of-obscurity-in-the-internet-year-of-our-Lord-2026 bands that sound a good bit like them, maybe one that came pretty close to emulating their sound, and absolutely none that indwell their tiny aural niche other than themselves. The gap has certainly gotten narrower now that they’ve been doing more than just the one thing that made them so (in)’famous’ in the first place, but trust me when I say I’ve been looking for another band offering the quintessential sound of albums two through five for many years, and all the computing power in the world couldn’t find me that fabled artist. Not a single soul would fault you if you were to assume that this is at least in part dictated by logic; according to the naysayers, they’ve done the same song no less than thirty times or, alternatively, stretched out that sweeping section that should have been a twenty-second moment to a ninety-minute monstrosity, so why bother adding to the pile? But what if, hear me out here, this instead speaks to their aRtIStiC vIsIOn not being all that limited?

To summarize, their music used to be very one-note on a superficial level for a while and it never gave birth to imitators the same way many styles’ originators’ work did. Dig deep enough, and you’ll find that even the most specialized death metal artists, avant-garde and what have you, are not that singular when put under scrutiny. Apart from their own inspirations being easy to make out most of the time, you will, with laughably few exceptions, stumble upon bands that either directly followed in their footsteps or adopted specific elements you’ll recall having heard first from said ‘they started that’ acts. Origin’s influences are easy to identify by examining 90s brutal death titans and the speed freaks initiating the arms race to extremity during that decade’s final years. Their exact idea of blazing technical DM may not have caught on like, say, Necrophagist’s did for the non-brutal slice of the subgenre after Epitaph, but their clinical, dry, profusely sterile methodology sure did. And so it comes that, after all, they ended up being a driving force behind that 2000s sound. Granted, it’s a questionable achievement (and the term itself highly debatable, given that development’s polarizing nature), but once you realize its magnitude, maybe you can cherish it for what it is. From noughties contemporaries like Wormed and Decrepit Birth to later-era Deeds of Flesh to the modern outfits who have driven the concept to its drastic absolute, like Soreption or The Zenith Passage, whole generations of bands jumped on that bandwagon. I’m not saying Origin started all that, but that they were early linkmen who played no small role in spreading it.

I could go on, but alas, I was recently reminded that we’re supposed to talk about the music at hand here, so we’ll wrap this up with a few brief words about the song I’ve chosen. Considering the high probability that you’ve never heard this band, it might have been a smart idea to pick one of their most popular tracks for this segment. Then again, there’s an even higher probability that you’ll absolutely hate what they’re peddling anyway, so let’s make this quick by going with one of their shorter offerings. “The Burner” encapsulates all the hallmarks of their early-ish material within the framework of a brisk two minutes: sweeps, sweeps, sweeps, and sweeps. “Melting both your eyes away,“ Ryan and Flores bark and screech as they lead you into the galloping open-string avalanche kicking in around the 1:15 mark. This section is both a throwback to the band’s beginnings and typical for how they create spaces between the shredding and sweeping every now and then. Despite their comparably low level of technicality, I find that these ‘breakdowns’ tend to lend the songs they’re used in a great deal of memorability (the one in “Mithridatic” off Unparalleled Universe is another good example; makes up half the song, really). Those drums you hear? Actually not recorded by a human, but by James King. Song goes pretty hard live.
Bye now.

- Nex