Marina Allen Superreality (Fire)
I loved Allen’s ‘Candlepower’ from 2021 - she’s a songwriter clearly influenced by Karen Dalton/Joni Mitchell but her writing has its own curious logic and she’s gratifyingly willing to double-track her voice away from ‘sincerity’ and more towards a faint creepiness, the feel that her consciousness is the staging ground for her songs and her voice surrounds you in 360degree wraparound, even if her music always faintly hints at the Pacific coast and the big big sky. This new single suggests her next full-length will be even more intriguing - I love singles that just decide they’re singles even though they bear no resemblance to anything chart-crashing, and Allen’s melodies unfold through passages with barely enough time to repeat, so you’re absorbed throughout until with a minute to go the title becomes the hook. Big ‘Court & Spark’ vibes, highly recommended.
Avalanche Kaito Avalanche Kaito (Glitterbeat)
What happens when a Burkinabe urban griot (Kaito Winse) meets a Brussels-based post-punk noise duo (Benjamin Chaval - drums, electronics and Arnaud Paquotte on bass)? This, and it’s fab - think This Heat, Faust, Material, Sloy and Tinariwen at their hottest. It’s THIS kinda music - music by travellers between worlds finding likeminds - that’s the most interesting music at the moment and this self-titled full-length captures a perfect balance between live improv heat and rock-solid studio-borne derangement. Peel yr cap back.
Coast Contra Never Freestyle (Area 51)
First heard this just as a track - I’m actually LESS happy with watching them do it but the rhymes here are compelling throughout. Guy on the far-right in particular has some nutty ODB/Das Efx style free-wheeling madness to his rhymes that really seals the deal, the storytelling, punchlines and flows here are incredible. A full-length soon-drops and this points towards it being essential.
Del Cinque Sonatas For Three Cellos (Outhere Music France)
A priest, nobleman, poet, and painter from Rome, Ermenegildo del Cinque (1700–73) wrote over 100 sonatas for two cellos and eighteen pieces for three cellos, making him pretty much the most prolific composer of cello music of all time. This recording, made in the theatre of the Palazzo Altemps in Rome rescues some of his compositions from oblivion. They’re beautiful and sad, containing hints of both the past (Monteverdi, Bach’s fugues), the present (Mozart’s later symphonies) and the future (you can almost hear presentiments of Beethoven’s darker quartets). Ludovico Minasi rediscovered the work and plays principal cello here along with the lutenist Simone Vallerotonda and the cellist Cristina Vidoni. A gorgeous long suicide note of fan-gestures.
BKO Toumaro (Les Disques Bongo Joe )
The Malian quintet BKO make an explosive, searingly electric version of Mandingo music and their new album ‘Djine Bora’, from which this compelling single has been lifted, is an ear-razing doozie . It’s abrasive in the best way, the lithe grooves always slathered in heavily psyche guitar-flames, sung in Mandingo by the charismatic Fassara Sacko.
Embrujo Huasteco Sihuakuicatl (Husteco)
Fab Huasteco female four-piece. Clear harmonies, ace singing, amazing fiddle playing and the best three-strong guitar attack this side of Maiden. Liberate your inner Vaqueros.
Ferkat Al Ard Oghneya [Habibi Funk 019] (Habibi Funk)
Good lord what a remarkable album from 1978, from Issam Hajali’s group Ferkat Al Ard, a trio from Lebanon playing music from somewhere just behind the temple and under the ribs - a great almost-lost gem of Arab pop that marks the interstices of traditional Arab music, tropicalia, baroque pop, psyche folk, jazz and the stunning lush arrangements of Ziad Rahbani. It’s the Brazilian connection that really lights this up (Lebanon and Brazil have had a strong connection for nearly a century due to the continuous flow of immigrants from one country to the other, Brazil has the largest Lebanese diaspora in the world, the “Brasilibanês) and the fluidity of the meld of Arab pop and bossa/tropicalia is a delight.
Moktar Gania & Gnawa Soul Gnawa Soul (Planet Essaouira)
The Gnawa culture stems from descendants of slaves bought to Maghreb during the Arab trade in sub-Saharan Africa between the 8th and 19th centuries, with cults linked to Sahelian animist rituals. Ritualistic sound is what you hear on this head-wrecking LP - Moktar Gania is heir to a long line of Gnawa musicians and an amazing guembri player (the traditional Gnawa guitar) - this LP comes from his meeting with composer and guitarist Anoir Ben Brahim and percussionist and arranger Yacine Ben Ali. The Gnawa groove is hit up with the oriental melodies of the Maghreb and saxophonist Géraldine Laurent, guitarist Jean-Marie Ecay, and Israeli singer of Moroccan origin Neta El Kayam seal the whole thing together with sensational playing. Fiery, hypnotic music that puts a 50-degree heat in any room or car or head it hits. Handle carefully, play LOUD.
Irreversible Entanglements Down To Earth (Sub Pop)
Properly scarifying from the ever-unmissable Irreversible Entanglements, closest I’ve heard music come for a while to the dread space and suggestiveness of ‘Bitches Brew’. Starting on a spiral of infernally dubbed-out trumpet before settling into a rippling series of semi-detonations., Moor Mother intoning the title with nonchalent doom and the music approaching the siren-feel of a drawn out four-minute warning, burrowing beneath the mantle, shaking the earth to its core. Possibly the best entrant to the Sub Pop singles club yet.
K.A.A.N Room At The Table (K.A.A.N Life)
Weirdest trap/drill of the month - I was reeled in by the King Iso cameo but I’m so glad I found so much more. Nicely understated beats with a lunging addictive bass and every little bubbly vocal texture dubbed out to the limits of space. Tense as fuck lyrically as well - that perfect blend of a low-end that spaces you out and all the treble focussed on making you paranoid and jittery. Love it. u
K.O.G (Kweku of Ghana) Zone 6, Agege (Heavenly Sweetness/Pure Vida Sounds)
In so many ways the African diaspora is accounting for so much fascinating music right now - I absolutely love this supremely danceable album from Sheffield-based K.O.G. English lyrics, Ghanaian grooves but a real sense of dark industrial Sheffield there as well in the granular grainy synth-laden feel of these utterly body-rocking tracks. Fanfreakintastic’.
Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckert, Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ My Lai (Smithsonian Folkways)
I know that ‘you ain’t heard NUTHIN’ like this’ is kind of an expression that’s increasingly impossible to use: only 12 notes a human can play, only so many variations BUT I genuinely don’t think you’ll have heard anything like this before. Hugh Thompson was a helicopter pilot who witnessed the US govt killing over 500 unarmed civilians in the hamlet of Mỹ Lai, Vietnam in March 1968, and he intervened to save Vietnamese lives. Jonathan Berger’s opera Mỹ Lai is based on Thompson’s story with a libretto by Harriet Scott Chessman, here played by the matchless Kronos Quartet, Vietnamese multi-instrumentalist Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ, and vocalist Rinde Eckert. As you can imagine given the subject matter, this is a visceral, haunted piece filled with horror and grief and guilt, vocals alternating between blues and Vietnamese song, your tension growing as you realise - or rather are tutored in the fact - that there is no way of predicting where this will go. The tracks are presented alongside recollections by Vietnamese survivor Trần Văn Đức, to form a stunning memorial to all the Mỹ Lai villagers killed and a package that damn well punches the breath out of you. A difficult thing but one you should experience.
Laddio Bolocko ‘97-’99 (Castle Face)
OI STOP SNIGGERING AT THE BACK okay okay okay I get it I sniggered at the name too but please try and overlook that and give this reissue of the entire recorded work of this miraculous, unique band a deep deep listen. They’re amazing, frenzied, coruscating, shocking, heavy, funky, mad, razor-sharp - if I can draw comparisons perhaps God(flesh), Six Finger Satellite, This Heat but fuck, I’m not really getting close, only indicating that no this isn’t happy music but it is utterly thrilling. Laddio Bolocko (I mean seriously, couldn’t someone anglophile/English in their acquaintance tip em the wink about the Spanglish Macc Ladds vibe?) crucially have FEEL in abundance so this isn’t in any way a ‘challenging’ listen, it’s just a gloriously galvanised racket that’s kind of mindblowing and that goes in multi-directional beams out your speakers past your dropped jaw and straight into your cortex - once you hear em you won’t forget.
Lupe Fiasco Drill Music In Zion (1st & 15th Too)
Introspective, tuneful yet still resistant dissident music from one of hip hop’s longest-serving maverick genii. Unlike alot of long-awaited returns in rap this year this doesn’t come roaring out of the traps like it has a point to prove, rather it’s an unfolding suite of afro-futurist trap and wordplay where Fiasco seems to have loosened his weight-of-the-world narratives a little, and got back into music as fun and a chance for melodic exploration. NOT gonna save the world and that’s perhaps why it feels like Fiasco’s best in a while. Love the spectral minimal jazzy backdrops throughout.
The Natural Yoghurt Band Dance The Devil Away (BMM)
Miles Newbold aka TNYG hasn’t released anything I’ve been aware of for 3 years and his nutty mix of ‘pagan jazz and library music’ from deepest Derbyshire has been missed: love this new set, bolstered by Tom Dempsey’s fantastic drums, heavy synth/organ-swirled psyche-soundtrack work sounding like offcuts from the Psychomania and Horror Hospital soundtracks, part Goblin, part Bosworth Sound Archive, all just the right side of noxiously gamey. Gonna let this fill the gaps while holding tight for a new Heliocentrics record which should tell you what high standards this hits. Definitively and unironically GROOVY.
Orchestre Massako Limited Dance Edition Nr.14 (Analog Africa)
A fab record from the recently passed Don Dada of Gabonese music. Mack-Joss’s career as a musician began when he was 17 of age as a staple of Libreville’s nightlife scene, singing in various local bands. By 1966 he had released “Le Boucher”, his first hit which swept the African airwaves and earned him the respect of Franco, the legendary master of Congolese Rumba. Franco´s encouragement helped transform him from a Gabonese singer into an ascendent figure of pan-African culture.
The singles he recorded between 68 and 70 were recorded in makeshift open-air recording studios but what you hear here is music recorded after the Gabon Armed Forces decided to form their own band in 71 - funds were made available to bring recording equipment over from France, Mack-Joss was recruited to become the band leader and Orchestre Massako was born. That itinerant recording scenario (the records were pressed in France and then shipped back to Africa) is part of the pleasure here because the band sound so fluid, so intimate with each other it takes the breath away - above and beyond all though is the singing from Amara Toure, a vocalist from Guinée Conakry who had joined Orchestre Massako as a singer in 1980 and it’s his vox that really pushes this to the stratosphere. Hypnotic miraculous music.
Primitive Man Insurmountable (Closed Casket Activities)
The absolute deciding factor for me at the moment as to what extremo/doom/metal to let through the door is ‘do they sound happy making this?’ I don’t want heavy music from people who in any sense I feel are ‘winning’. Which is why I have loved Primitive Man since they first infected me with the utterly stunning ‘Scorn’ in 2013. They always sound unhealthily FUCKED in head, spirit and soul- this latest EP sounds like it was tapped and scraped from the abyssal depths, ultra-slo-mo carnage that avoids all Sabbathisms and puts the atonal and jarring (the guitars often sound more like something Keith Levene or JKBroadrick would dream up) into the dynamics of 16rpm doom. Utterly bleak, hostile, pitiless music to use as a collosal fuck you to the world, the universe and the horrific joke that is existence. An addictive complete DESPAIR of sound.
Reason x Jay Rock Is What It Is (Top Dawg Entertainment)
TDE coming more than correct at the moment - love the lightness in the production touches here, there’s a gurning undertow of bass that sounds part like a motorbike revving, part like an accident they’ve decided to leave in, Reason and Jay Rock’s rhymes compelling throughout. Great single.
Şatellites Şatellites (Batov Records)
Total travel in time and place - moment the needle drops you’re in 70s Istanbul, you’re listening to this odd mix of Turkish/Anatolian folk melodies and thumping psyche-funk, you’re in a Tel Aviv disco, you’re at an LSD experiment/happening in Jaffa, you’re with Sattelites’ who are a six-piece from Haifa in Israel. Ariel Harrosh is laying down a low-end that’s funky and fearless, Lotan Yaish is knocking out breakbeats so ripe for sampling you can’t wait for Alchemist to find this (very big echoes of his own ‘Israeli Salad’), and you can hear keys and synths and percussion and instruments you don’t have mental pictures for (Diwan saz, electric Baglama, double-string bazouki) all plunged into this moreish swirl. You need to get yourself into this right now.
Schoolboy Q Soccer Dad (Interscope)
Somewhat unheralded and I worry if folk have forgotten how awesome SQ is but he will be an endless inspiration for any rapper wanting to achieve mainstream success while maintaining something unique and unironed-out about their flow and sound. ‘Soccer Dad’ hinges on a rotational afro-step loop you don’t wanna escape from and he’s smart enough to not fuck with it - he just lets it simmer on while all the drama comes from his changing intonation and increased frenzy. Cannot fucking WAIT for the album, welcome back Q.
Vic Spencer x Small Professor Mudslide (Coalmine)
Chicago-meets-Philly on this doozie, Small Pro following up collaborative albums with Guilty Simpson and the late Sean Price with perhaps his best production work yet. SP says his Coalmine projects ‘have their own neo/prog-boom-bap vibe’ and that’s pretty much spot on - this is dirty-arsed, thunking old-school hip hop straying beautifully close to straight-out horrorcore, perfectly matched by Vic’s gruff, hysterical delivery accompanied by minimal cameos and a fantastic bit of scratching from the legendary DJ Revolution. The young and hip would doubtless roll their eyes at this. More fool them, it’s filthy GOLD.
Charles Stepney Look B4U Leap (International Anthem)
You might know Stepney (1931-1976) from his production work on records by the Dells, Ramsey Lewis, Earth Wind & Fire and Rotary Connection. I had no idea he’d done solo albums and this single bought out by the lovely people at International Anthem is a preview of their soon-dropping reish of his ‘Certified Gold’ set. It’s a dream, jazz-funk with beats tilting between funk and disco, from the same heady soupy soundworld that inhabits mid 70s Herbie Hancock and Eddie Henderson albums. Dreamy, propulsive, danceable and for DJs a dream drop. Get it in yr bags.
Various Artists Wantok Musik Vol.3 (Wantok Music)
I am so glad Wantok music exist - a not-for-profit organisation and record label that exists to help Pacific First Nations musicians share their unique music and cultural perspectives, bringing out music revealing Oceania’s ancient, diverse, and astonishing breadth of music. Some of the sounds here are truly other-worldly, some of them are pure pop, some of them are weird hybrids of hip hop and Polynesian riddims, some of them are compellingly unplaceable in terms of instrumentation or ceremonial purpose, and all of them feel like your imagination of those places - nothing south but the Antarctic, nothing east or west but more deep blue. Sonic travel with no need for a stopover in LA or Singapore. You’ll find wonder here.
Ray Vaughn Mannequin (Top Dawg Entertainment)
Oh my fucking god WHAT a record. Brutal lines about entryism, white flight and fear, the brute formulations that arise from memories of pain and a backing that’s damn near radiophonic. Keep em peeled on Vaughn, I have the feeling he’s about to drop a total masterpiece of an album.
Yuksek, Jupiter & Okwess . . . Kwatamaja (Partyfine)
Fab conjunction of techno, dubhousedisco (remember that?) and afrostep - Jupiter & Okwess have been making amazing music together ever since 2017’s ‘Kin Sonic’ (also check out 2021’s ‘Na Kazonga') and it’s incredibly smart of Yuksek to marry his propulsive 4-to-the-floor glide to their vocals and i(nter)ruptions. Hope a 12” 20 minute oddyssey on this is forthcoming. One to play to clear your house, not cos it’s hostile, but because it will DANCE everyone OUT.