Air Waves The Dance (Fire)
Wanged on at you enough to get Air Waves 2018 LP ‘Warrior’ but was delighted to hear a new album ‘The Dance’ is about to drop, and even got the chance to chat with the brilliant Nicole Schneit for the album biog. She was great, and this lead single crystallises everything I love about Air Waves. Songs with a simplicity that means you can sing them like they’ve been lifelong friends virtually halfway through hearing them for the first time. I really like the additional details behind the radiant simple guitar and suggestively open lyrics, the blended-in synth and arpeggios and the subtle backbeat keeping things both stealthy but also comforting. Delightful.
AJ Tracey Reasonable (Revenge)
Great to have AJ back and a reminder that he can do DARK just as well as he can do pop - the beat and low-end here are pure drill but I love the blending in of these gorgeous peals of acoustic mornfulness and the way that gentleness and grace sits alongside his typically irrefutable bars and that lunging, lethal low-end. The kids’d be alright if it weren’t for us.
Boldy James x Real Bad Man All The Way Out (Real Bad Man Records)
One of Griselda’s most intriguing affiliates Boldy James teams up with RBM for this first single of their brand new collaboration ‘Killing Nothing’. Bodes well for Boldy - this track is loose, weird, subtly detailed and gratifyingly avoids the dwindling Derringer-returns of other Griselda MCs. Here half as a memo to check out the album when it drops late May.
Laura Cannell Unlocking Rituals (Brawl)
Keeping myself locked in on whatever Cannell brings out because there’s just something so special and suggestive about her work - in a time when the interstices between avant-rock, classical, experimental music seem half the time to be opening up a space of laziness and indulgence Cannell is always always forebodingly on her shit, and pushing her composition - and herself - into properly arresting new places. Here she steps away from her signature overbow violin & recorders set up and crafts a 4-tracker from a full church pipe organ, recorded live in one take in a 14th Century East Anglian village church. What’s recorded here is partly Cannell’s improvisations and ideas but also the SPACE of that church - you can hear it, the air the organ is breathing, the motes dancing through the refracted stained-glass rays. Cannell was allowed by the church warden to create this to keep the organ played and in working order. She’s gone way beyond that. This is photons and foot-pedals and breath and magic.
Castalian String Quartet Between Two Worlds (Delphian)
The worlds hinted at in the title here could be any - time and timelessness, death and life, night and day - but the suggestiveness of that title isn’t just a tack on or an add-on, this is a really carefully thought-about recital/album that takes in the renaissance likes of Orlande de Lassus and John Dowdland, through Beethoven’s ever-startling 15th string quartet and Thomas Ades’ remarkable Four Quarters. The mix between the post-medieval, late romantic and modern might seem jarring on the page but it works beautifully as a sustained meditation on immortality and universal entropy. Nicely recorded and played and forging connections between soundworlds and times that make total sense once you’re immersed. Recommended.
Chuck Enzo Why Wait (Group Bracil)
Oh my days - the return of King Kashmere is devoutly to be wished by anyone who’s experienced any of his solo work (or his mind-melting work in the titanic Strange U). He LOVES characters and personas always so this Chuck Enzo pseudonym seems to be a way for him to cast off the accrued cultural capital of the KK name and start afresh. The results are surprisingly unfussy and un-chaotic - he seems to be stepping into a more conscious and direct style no longer fighting to be heard amidst musical madness, this track is subtle and measured and a great mix of analogue-funk, library-strings and funky propulsion. Welcome back nutter.
Congotronics International Where’s The One (Crammed Discs)
Congotronics International are a supergroup of sorts comprising Konono No.1, Kasai Allstars, Deerhoof, Juana Molina, Wildbirds & Peacedrums, and Skeletons’ Matthew Mehlan. Gathering 19 musicians from across 4 continents to combine traditional Congolese music with the rockier experimentation of their Western-Hemisphere fans the 21 tracks here are collated from live and studio tracks produced in the years before, during and after their Congotronics vs. Rockers tour in 2011. The noise is epic - as you might expect from ten lead vocalists, five guitarists, three likembe players, five percussionists, two bass players, and three drummers— but crucially beyond the worthiness of it all it WORKS, both for the singers who can’t believe what an astonishing band they’re backed by but also for Konono themselves who play and fuck around with the traditional dynamics of Western rock until you’re kept in a permanent state of dazzlement. Best not to question WHY, just crank it and glory in it.
Sharon Van Etten We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong (Jagjaguwar)
‘Epic’ is a word I resist in describing music, in fact a word so unmoored now from any special significance I err on the side of swerving it entirely but Van Etten’s new LP is properly epic, a widescreen wonder of panoramic yearning and architectural longing. My faves tracks here are BIG, eighties-infused synth-wise (but also bang up to date in terms of the low-end and beats), and they’re epic because they find their hooks quickly and rinse them completely - there’s no slow-build to hooky choruses here, Van Etten gives you the melodic thing that is going to absorb you quickly, then spends the duration of the songs amplifying the size to . . . yeah EPIC is the word, but epic constructed from a deeply human, intimate basis. When things drop down - as in the gorgeous ‘Darkish’ - Etten’s voice has never sounded so close, so able to soar, so engulfing and wrapped around you.
Fatlip x Blu Live From The End Of The World Vol 1. Demos (Guilty By Association)
9 tracks, just under 30 minutes and the presence of Ras Kass, Knxwledge, MC Eiht, Chali 2na, Bilal, Sa-Ra, Alchemist, Del The Funky Homosapien, J Ro, Akil, Opio and Money B makes this something of a star-studded panoply of West Coast old-skool brilliance. With such a weight of talent involved it’s a smart move adding ‘Demos’ to the title - takes the pressure off and just lets these engaging tracks grab you as the kinda raw, kinda unfinessed slabs of West Coast ruffneckness they are.
Future I Never Liked You (Epic)
This is WELL getting it in the neck for being unexperimental, samey, formulaic. It’s PRECISELY that which I love about it, his own addiction to his own formulas and his strictured focus on it, and even if it’s laziness/lassitude that accounts for the lyrical repetition and sonic unadventurousness I PREFER Future like this, much more redolent of those early Trap mixtapes than the official albums which got the critics to take notice. Which then of course sets in this entirely erroneous idea that all artists need to ‘progress’. Sometimes when someone comes up with an addictive sound (ACDC, Dillinja) I just want them to stay STILL.
Sara Hebe x Ana Tijoux Almacen De Datos (Sara Hebe)
Omg, what a meeting of minds, and what a fucking tune- two AMAZING Latin artists casually spitting out a total party-starter - love the ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’ minimalism of this, very little bar a snappy beat, a velcro-adherent loop-lick, crucially that sparseness foregrounds the two amazing voices. Sara Hebe is an Argentinian genius who has been making fab records since 2008’s “La hija del loco” (“The Mad- man’s Daughter” - also check 2012’s ‘Puentera’, 2015’s ‘Colectivo Vacio’ and 2019’s ‘Politicalpari’) and here with the similarly awesome Ana Tijoux (check her astounding ‘1977’ album) this is just a straight up monster tune and amazing vid. Add it to every social occassion and mixtape this summer.
Aldous Harding Tick Tock (4AD)
For fans of Luscious Jackson and Stereolab and Francoise Hardy and the thing about the album is that it does that brave thing of staying within one sound and letting the songs do the work, or do their magic unfettered by anything bar melody and rhythm and warmth - BUT that is an incredibly difficult and painstaking trick to pull off, which is what makes the album so special. The song I really want to talk to you about off ‘Warm Chris’ is ‘Passion Babe‘ and but can we save that? For me it’s a dead heat tween this and Sasami for album of the year thus far.
Headie One Came In The Scene (Relentless)
Touching, from Headie, which I wasn’t expecting. There’s a delicacy here - in the tone, but also his flow is just getting better and better in terms of its pace and rhythm and syncopation and musicality - it’s an astonishing thing the way his rhymes punctuate the undertow and become their own melodic force in the soundscape, a tone of melancholy and wonder laced into the voice. His most mature and precarious work yet.
J.Rocc One/L.A Anthem (Stones Throw)
Probably the best of the original Beat Junkies scratchDJ/production crew, J.Rocc’s imminently dropping ‘A Wonderful Letter’ set is a delight that flits from heavy sample-laden hardcore to dancefloor-directed disco derangement and takes in a welter of wibblery in between. The whole album is a love letter to LA and this double-A side single is a good introduction to the album’s feel and finesse. Streetlevel and high as a news-copter.
Kwengface Ten Years (Kwengface Ltd/EMPIRE)
He’s bloody weird Kwengface, which is why I keep coming back to him. It was ‘Petrol Station’ that got me but all his stuff is just . . . weird, it’’s Drill but . . . it’s Kwengface. I don’t think he can be judged alongside anyone else. There’s this odd mix of total elegance and total menace in what he does. And - in the best way - he makes me laugh, you know those moments in records where you double take and chuckle at the sheer chutzpah? Kwengface does this.
Kendrick Lamarr The Heart Part 5 (Aftermath/Interscope)
As would inevitably happen on Kendrick’s return to the fray this is already getting hailed as ‘art’ - a deliberate intention to make this ‘high’ culture compared to trap/drill/street-rap’s low-minded populism. I get no such modernist snobbery from the track itself - it’s Kendrick doing what he does, letting his mind flow, this time over summery afro-touched gospel funk. Those saying this is bringing to hip hop something that’s missing clearly aren’t listening to the likes of Moor Mother or Billy Woods, plus are engaging in a kind of elitism I suspect Kendrick would reject entirely. Suffice to say - Kendrick’s always listenable and intriguing. Can’t wait for the album and shall disregard the 9.0 mark from Pitchfork and just listen. It’s tricky when an artist carries so much critical baggage with him but Kendrick deserves it.
Yungchen Lhamo Awakening (Tibet Arts Management)
Born and raised in Lhasa, Tibet, Yungchen Llamo (which translates to “Goddess of Melody and Song’ - she was given to her by a holy man at birth) has travelled across the Himalayas to Dharamsala, across the oceans to Australia, on to her current New York home and to Spain to record this, her 6th album. This new album combines the voice (just hear it) with delicate, almost-dreampop textures, native-American-like tritonic singing, Tibetan drone-singing and sounds from across the Asian subcontinent and beyond. Us cynical non-hippys might bristle at titles like ‘Compassion For All Beings’ but we’d be fools to let titles put us off the music here - it genuinely seems to resonate with an open-minded and crucially open-hearted sense of natural wonder and empathy. I was moved and I own no crystals.
Noori & His Dorpa Band Al Amal (Ostinato)
Having heard this, can’t wait for the full ‘Beja Power’ album from Noori and co, an attempt on his part to keep alive the oft-oppressed Beja (pronounced bee-jah) culture of East Sudan. 30 years ago Noori welded together a vintage tambour from the 70s with a guitar neck and the result is his electrified tambo-guitar, a unique hybrid which is just part of his band’s meld of music, the playing hypnotic, but also licked with flames and heat and simmering threat. Electrified Afro jazz-rock and WHAT a band playing it. Magnificent.
Otoboke Beaver Super Champon (Damnably)
Just as awesome as ‘Itekoma Hits’ but pushed into an even more laceratingly eye-popping technicolour - OB still play like absolute motherfuckers, you will not hear a tighter, more pulverising rock n roll band on the planet right now. They’ve toured, they’re tighter, it’s fucking awesome and the songs have got more dazzling to fit - more sections, more complexity, more togetherness and more strength when you really didn’t think that was possible. The shift into English on some of these songs gives this Westerner more insight into the lyrical focus, which is a fantastic slew of anti-male-dickhead brilliance - and the twists and torsions they so precisely detonate on tracks like ‘I Won’t Dish Out Salads’, ‘Naba Party With Pocket Brothers’ and the staggering ‘First Class Side Guy’ simply take your breath away. Play loud, play often, play AT non-believers. Their world would be a better world.
Patricia Petibon La traversée (Sony)
Animated on the Breton coast by Petibon’s thoughts about passion, time and death, this album is a dozen arias starting in the 17th century through Purcell, the remarkable ‘Passacalia della vita’ by Stefano Lando, Gluck, Rameau, Mozart and back to Purcell. Though a little unsure as to the narrative thread here, I found this entirely absorbing - love the wind-machine, the whistling, Petibon’s voice and the immensely dramatic playing of the baroque orchestra La Cetra from Basel.
Phase Shore To Shore (Metalheadz)
I put up with the moments here that are a little too liquid and lissom and fusion-like because Phase knows how to harden things down to concise simplicities as well, hard hitting beats, beautifully refracted bass, little details that get addictively unhinging. Calibre and Intalex exerting an influence here, especially on the frictive incisive likes of ‘Stress Out’ and ‘Something’s Missing’. I nitpick on the cleanliness but there are passages that I love throughout, and it’s fantastic driving music late at night, dramatises every neon-glistened moment.
Širom The Liquified Throne Of Simplicity (tak:til)
Fascinating Slovenian trio playing what they call ‘imaginary folk’ on handmade instrumentation from around the world. If you don’t want to dive in on the absorbing, wonderful 15minute+ tracks here take a taste via the last track here - ‘I Unveil A Peppercorn To See It Vanish’. Slovenia’s crossroads-status between central Europe the Balkans and the Adriatic, and its topography of mountains and forests and ‘karst’ landscapes are all key here, in pieces full of both energy and contemplation. They call this album ‘intuitive transcendence’ and dammit they’re right. This is their 4th album and they’ve fully slipped the restraints of a vinyl record to craft these long, hypnotic journeys in sound, like an unplugged Krautrock or Popol Vuh, mashing geography and sound inspired by pandemic wanderings around their local environment, and realised through an intriguing set of instrumentation: acoustic resonators (made out of a spring and frame drum). shortened Balkan region mandolin/guitar-like ‘tempura brač’, the Middle Eastern ‘daf’ frame drum, the ‘ocarina’ vessel fluted wind instrument, the ‘lute’ and the North African three-stringed, skin-covered, bass plucked ‘guembri’ (signature instrument of Morocco’s spiritual Gnawa music). You can hear hurdy-gurdy, lyres, violas, banjos, balafons, ribabs and mizmars as well but it’s never a mess, always with a keen sense of spiritual focus. In its cumulative force and length it actually reminds me of Pharoah Sanders ‘Black Unity’ but in avoiding anything like a groove you might be used to, it pushes your imagination as a listener beyond referents and towards something a little brand new.
Teofilovići Element (Croatia Records)
Twin brothers Ratko and Radiša Teofilović have been arranging and performing (with no formal musical training) traditional Balkan songs for years and their two-part singing feels ancient yet secular - this is their first LP for six years and contains 14 adaptations of traditional compositions from the Croat region, recorded in the amazing acoustic of the Roof Hall of the Kanjiža Regional Creative Studio. God how I wish I knew what the hell any of these songs are about but they drop that unique drone-ish Balkan feel into whatever time you let them in. As EVER with music from Eastern Europe I am constantly struck by just how many different traditions seem to intersect all the way to India and back - the microtonal divergences, the drones, the almost-Arabic scales, the Eastern Orthodox hints - it’s all here. That sensation that you’re not just hearing music, you’re hearing how history works, how people meet people. Wonderful.