Singles & Downloads 9

This month we have some unjustly hyped rubbish electro-pop, some unjustly ignored brilliant eletcro-pop, some postmodern retro-disco, some dubstep, some grime, some sampledelic New York punk, and, at the top of the pile, one of Britain's brightest young actors proves he's equally adept on the microphone. Thomas H Green and Joe Muggs plough loudly through the lot with glee and the odd barbed word.

Riz MC All in the Ghetto (Confirm/Ignore)

So actors shouldn't try to become hip-hop MCs, right? Remember Warren Beatty in Bulworth? Riz Ahmed, however, was an MC long before he made his name with a string of quality performances in films ranging from The Road to Guantanamo through London drug-dealer drama Shifty to Chris Morris's suicide bomber comedy Four Lions. Happily, his music is of a quality to match his films - which is no mean feat - as Ahmed's passion for underground bass sounds - ie dubstep - collides with a desire to find his own take on a unique British hip-hop voice. The result is something that sounds spikily contemporary, laced with pop and lyrically full of pith, a riveting satire about trendies taking over downtown parts of cities, looking for the ever-elusive "real". "Somebody got shot for 99 pence outside the vegan spot I frequent", Ahmed mock-complains at one point, later adding, "It's fashionable to look trampy but is that an art installation or a homeless man?" Spot on. (THG)

• Download "All in the Ghetto" on Amazon

Fenech Soler Demons (B-Unique)

The 1980s had its good bits. Sadly it also had rabid Tory governments, mass unemployment and terrible, terrible poseur pop stars who sang in a pained fashion - all of which seem to be making a comeback. I didn't like Fenech Soler when I saw them live, and I don't like them on record; this is a huge, cold gust of nothing, figuratively flopping its hairdo around with all the affected archness of a T4 presenter who has somehow found a way of crystallising and snorting their own concentrated ego. None of the 10 mixes on the CD single make it any more inviting. Grotty. (JM)

• Find "Demons" on Amazon

Chromeo Hot Mess (Back Yard)

This, on the other hand, is like everything joyful about the 1980s condensed into four minutes. The Jewish/Arab-Canadian duo Chromeo can themselves be overly arch, as you might guess from the rather wacky video that accompanies this song (see below) - but the sheer joy that oozes out of every groove hits you like a happy memory: say, the memory that Eddie Murphy used to be funny. It's the theme from the greatest wisecracking Eighties comedy that never was given a 21st-century dance turbo-charge, with the added bonus of Elly Jackson from La Roux sounding like she's wearing shoulderpads the width of New York City. (JM)

• Find "Hot Mess" on Amazon

Watch the video for “Hot Mess”

Ladytron Ace of Hz (Nettwerk)

Ah, Ladytron, the great should've-beens, fortunately still extant because commercially successful in other parts of the world, notably Spain. At home, however, the Liverpudlian synth-pop quartet are brutally under-appreciated. For the record, their 2005 album Witching Hour is among the Top 10 most delicious albums released since the millennium, but they've been studiously ignored by not one but two electro-pop explosions - they preceded the brief influential electro-clash boom of a decade ago and are not Xenomania enough to be welcome in the current revival. They now have a Best of imminent with, as is so often the case, a couple of new tracks. One of them, "Ace of Hz", is the sort of melancholic girl-robot loveliness they can probably knock out in their sleep by now but since no one else can, they still lead the pack by a distance. (THG)

• Download "Ace of Hz" on Amazon

Wretch 32 Traktor (Ministry of Sound)

The grime assault on the pop charts continues apace, ably assisted here by Ministry of Sound who have backed this, at the point of writing, to Number Five in the charts. Hark, though, such cynicism is unnecessary, for "Traktor" is no auto-tuned Tinchy ballad; in fact, it has little in common with the recent wave of grime vocals attached to radio-friendly electro-pop. Instead, Tottenham MC Jermaine Sinclair takes what appears to be a snippet of Dick Dale's surf-rock classic "Misirlou" (made famous by Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction), and adds percussive drive and rave noises. I've no idea how much kudos Wretch 32 has in the grime community, or what his moniker means, but he had my vote from the moment he intoned the very English couplet, "My life sounds terribly wild but you don't catch me on The Jeremy Kyle Show". (THG)

• Find "Traktor" on Amazon

Watch the video for "Traktor"

J Rocc Play This Too (Stones Throw)

Veteran DJ J Rocc and the Stones Throw label are both favourites of hip-hop nerds with backpacks, beards and very rare trainers - but those kind of nerds do tend to have rather good taste. The lead track on this EP is a gloriously rough-edged collage of clattering samba drums, wah-wah guitars, trombone melodies and easy listening atmospheres all refracted through thick clouds of extremely high-grade marijuana smoke. The rest of the EP is just as genially party-starting, but it's "Play This Too" that you'll keep coming back to - y'dig? (JM)

• Find "Play This Too" on Amazon

Sepalcure Fleur EP (Hot Flush)

Dubstep's flexibility and resilience continues to make it wonderfully resistant to being set in stone, and constantly capable of throwing up unique variants. The Brooklyn duo of Travis Stewart and Praveen Sharma's skipping rhythms and disembodied soul vocals bear a superficial resemblance to London's shadowy producer Burial - but theirs is an altogether more voluptuous sound, with waves of seductive, enveloping sound in place of the strung-out and lonely atmospheres of Burial's work. There's a sense of loosened gravity in the three rolling dance tracks here, and in the finale of the intense, beat-free "Inside" it cuts free completely and floats off into the ether. Small-hours magic. (JM)

• Pre-order Fleur EP on iTunes

Watch the video for “Inside”

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The Deathset Slap Slap Slap Pound Up Down Slap (Counter)

Noisy bunch of noisy noiseniks, The Deathset, refreshingly unconcerned with conventional production techniques. Their music is a fine example of computer-age punk, short sharp bursts of screech, scratch and caterwauling guitar laced with samples and tinged with a New York art sensibility. The second song on this EP, "Been Too Long", is actually string-laced and a bit epic - rather luscious - but primarily they're a band to turn to when you want a racket to shake the middle-aged spread out of your rock music. Extra points for the ridiculous song title "Yo David Chase! Your POV Shot Me in the Head". Tragically Beau Velasco, half of the core duo who originally came from Sydney to New York to form The Deathset, died at the end of 2009 but his band continue to fly the same raucous colours high. (THG)

• Pre-order the next Deathset album Michel Piccard on Amazon

Oberhofer Away Frm U/Dead Girls Dance (Inflated)

Gleefully vaulting over the deathly tedious "Is rock dead?" debate of the last couple of weeks, Brad Oberhofer from Tacoma, Washington, is a 19-year-old who likes to play the guitar really loud and, like, write pretty cool songs. It sounds a bit like hipsters' favourites Animal Collective, and - on "Away Frm U" - quite a lot like venerable slacker rockers Dinosaur Jr. But mainly it sounds like a 19-year-old playing the guitar really loud and, like, writing pretty cool songs. That is to say, it's unaffected, buzzing with the joy of harnessing electricity for your own purposes, and conducive to jumping up and down and singing along. What more do you want? (JM)

• Find Oberhofer on Puregroove