It’s so hot at the moment, it feels like we’re all living inside a gigantic air fryer. Do human beings really need all of this skin? It does tend to trap in a lot of heat.
The one ray of sunshine (not more sunshine) amidst what has felt like apocalyptic levels of heat and drought has been the fact that it’s too hot to go outside and pretend to be productive. Staying indoors is a far safer bet, and what better way to cool off than to slump down onto your couch, fire up your hi-fi and let those breezy tunes wash over you?
So many cooling artists to stick on as you lie back and imagine that you’re anywhere other than the blisteringly hot sweat box that has become your home. Ice Cube. Ice-T. Snow Patrol. Coldplay. Arctic Monkeys. Oasis.
None of whom feature below.
Gom Jabbar by Hans Zimmer
Movie soundtracks are my go-to for testing, and one of the standout scores comes from the Dune franchise. Not the bizarre release from 1984, but rather Denis Villeneuve’s version starring Timothée Chalamet.
There are almost too many tracks to choose from in both films, as maestro Hans Zimmer delivers an otherworldly score filled with choral chants and brooding strings.
When the cloaked Bene Geserit order Chalamet’s Paul Atreides to do the deadly gom jabbar test in the first movie, the soundtrack begins with an ethereal high-pitched note akin to sand falling. This builds gradually as poor Paul is subject to a painful challenge, letting you test a product’s handling of dynamics.
That grows to a jaw-dropping crescendo as a soaring vocal solo pierces the score, and a guitar adds an energetic zing. Whether you are watching it as part of the film or listening to the track on its own, this is a great test of your audio system.
Words by Robyn Quick
Catapult by Counting Crows
As it starts, with mellotron flutes, you get little sense of the song’s direction in the first 20 seconds. Once the intro gives way to gritty, driven guitars, however, you get a clearer sense of things to come.
Catapult is the debut track on Counting Crows’ second album, Recovering The Satellites, which saw the band reach number one on the Billboard 200 album chart for the first time.
Cheesy? Perhaps just a touch, but it’s hard to find fault with a track that draws from the very best of classic rock and country guitar arrangements while balancing them with lyrics that are at once sincere, cathartic, and frankly, fairly bleak. The vocal melody, which jumps up abruptly, allows singer Adam Duritz to really let rip, making the lyrics’ emotion almost entirely unavoidable.
Catapult’s foremost strength, though, lies in the subtleties of the song’s arrangement, which builds almost imperceptibly toward a final verse in which every band member is going hell for leather. Between Duritz’s impressive vocals, guitars smashed through wah-pedals, and drums with a percussive force to rival Dave Grohl in Nirvana’s heyday, this song reaches an impressive emotive height.
It is a great test of any system’s ability to convey dynamics during dense, bright arrangements.
Words by Ioan Hazell
Higher Ground by Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder seems like a lovely fella. He’s always smiling, has a keen social conscience, and his music tends to be so upbeat and optimistic that it often feels as though it could lift you up into the clouds themselves.
Isn’t She Lovely, You Are the Sunshine of My Life, Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours); the man’s basically a walking, singing anti-depressant. God bless ya, Stevie.
Lovely chap he might be, but a slice of Mr Wonder can be sadistic torture for your hi-fi system. Stevie’s songs are never overly complex or experimental in the way that, say, a Brahms orchestral suite might be, but they contain so much verve and panache that lesser setups can simply fail to capture the magic of the man’s irrepressible talent.
Higher Ground is case in point. With its bouncy, almost squelchy bassline boinging away underneath, it’s one of Wonder’s most effusive tunes, ripping forward with a relentless momentum that – if reproduced correctly – should never let up for a second.
Higher Ground is all about progress, of working tirelessly to reach a better place – if your hi-fi isn’t communicating that feeling of striving to reach that titular ‘Higher Ground’, then something’s gone amiss.
Words by Harry McKerrell
Silvera by Gojira
![Gojira - Silvera [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/iVvXB-Vwnco/maxresdefault.jpg)
Bands like Gojira don’t really work through poor systems. For the uninitiated, the French heavy metallers have slowly but surely been creeping their into the collective cultural consciousness since their formation in the late 1990s, with more recent releases, including 2016’s Magma and 2021’s Fortitude, seeing the group really begin to captain mainstream attention.
There’s a wealth of enjoyable riffage to choose from across Gojira’s healthy back catalogue, especially if you’re into relentlessly thudding riffs and the sort of wall-of-sound heaviness that often sounds as though the band are trying to dislodge most of your internal organs.
Lots of treats from which to choose, then, but Silvera is a pretty safe bet for newbies dipping their toe in these stormy yet enticing waters. Again, the band’s signature machine-gun style of guitar riffage is front and centre, supported by equally thunderous drums beneath and lead singer Joe Duplantier’s raucous, call-to-arms roaring.
What an alarm clock the man would make. “Stop moaning about fate and change / stand up on your feet and rise,” he sings, followed by “A rain of shame that fills the mines / no other blood in me but mine”.
Whether interpreted as a charge to call on your inner strength or, as some have suggested, a polemic espousing Duplantier’s passionate veganism (that blood line would make sense), the effect is breathtaking if you have a system capable of handling it.
Words by Harry McKerrell
Love Bombs by Bloc Party
This track is described by Bloc Party’s frontman Kele Okereke as “the sound of a new love flowering, in beautiful romantic gestures”. It’s also more than a little creepy, as the lyrics switch from romantic cliches to deranged acts of obsession.
But there’s no doubting that it’s a banger, as you would expect from legendary producer Trevor Horn, whose work with The Pet Shop Boys and Grace Jones led him to be known as “the man who invented the eighties”.
The reverb that echoes most of the way through the track will test your system’s spatial abilities, while the grinding bassline that kicks in at the chorus will prove a suitable workout for your set-up’s low end.
Listen to the lyrics after the first chorus, and you’ll notice something: not only has the reverb that opened the track fallen away, but the vocals have gained a strange echo that sounds not unlike something slightly monstrous.
As we say, creepy. But then the path to true love etc.
Words by Joe Svetlik
Troy by Ludwig Goransson
I might be the only man left in the entire Western hemisphere who hasn't seen Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey yet.
I wrote last month that I was relishing the chance to see this latest take on Homer’s timeless epic, not only because it’s the cinematic event of the year, but because Nolan has enlisted the services of composer Ludwig Göransson to score his particular twist on the tale of Odysseus attempting to make his way home to craggy Ithaca and his wife, Anne Hathaway.
For now, immersing myself in Göransson’s score will have to do. Jonathan Ross perceptively put it to Christopher Nolan in a recent interview that Göransson’s work is “kinetic and emotionally immediate”. And that’s what you feel when listening to his accompanying Odyssey score – so much so that you can feel as though you have experienced so much of the movie’s emotional heft without stepping foot inside your local cinema.
Nowhere is that more apparent than the track Troy. Again, I haven’t yet watched the movie itself, but if you know the story of the fall of Troy (or indeed, anything at all), you’ll probably be aware that the Greeks weren’t there to bring the Trojans a new houseplant and their recipe for a nice Victoria sponge.
What has struck me so fiercely about Troy is how Göransson plays with space and dimensionality. Haunting voices seem to shout from the far recesses of the composition, perhaps imitating the coded signals of the Greek warriors as they attempt ingress into that shining city, echoing eerily like the cursed calls of the dead.
Metallic clanks flit and scatter. Ominous gongs are struck with menace. Drums sound in the darkness as those eerie voices echo and wail above, building from an atonal, arrhythmic melange to a pounding, anxiety-ridden cacophony.
For now, Troy sounds like an absolute nightmare in all the best ways. Whatever’s happening on screen, I doubt it’s much of a picnic… for the Trojans, at least.
Words by Harry McKerrell
As a collective, our review team listens to a lot of music. Sometimes we rely on old favourites with which we're familiar, but we are always discovering new tracks – be they fresh releases or just songs we haven't encountered before – that give us key insights into new products we are trying out.
We also know that plenty of our readers are on the lookout for new tunes, either to assess the capabilities of a new system or simply to show off the full talents of their established hi-fi set-up.
That's why we have come up with our monthly 'Now Playing' playlist, a rundown of everything we've been listening to and loving recently, whether at home with a set of headphones or at work in our fabulous test rooms.
Each instalment will bring you a handful of tracks chosen by our reviews team, detailing why we love them and what they bring out of certain products. So even if you're not looking for new tunes to play on your system, we hope you find something you'll love no matter how you choose to listen to it.
We're always on the lookout for new music, so drop a comment below to share what you have been listening to!
MORE:
Read last month’s edition: supercharge your summer listening with the 7 best tracks we have been using to test hi-fi
Yes, there is an ultimate prog rock album for testing hi-fi – at least according to What Hi-Fi? readers
Check out our ultimate test tracks collection
