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YouTube | Favourites 2022 SunNeversetsOnMusic

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Annual Favourites|2022

The Smile - A Light For Attracting Attention

A Light For Attracting Attention

by The Smile

Released 13 May 2022

XL Recordings

*****

Upon first listen, one might mistake the Smile's debut, A Light for Attracting Attention, for a Radiohead album. Considering that band's Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood (as well as longtime producer Nigel Godrich) are two of the three core members of this side project, it's not a surprise. Conceived during the COVID-19 lockdown as a way for Yorke and Greenwood to jam, the Smile also features drummer Tom Skinner of modern jazz group Sons of Kemet, who invigorates the album with his lively backing and dizzying time signatures. With the help of Greenwood's friends in the London Contemporary Orchestra and various jazz artists from Skinner's orbit, the trio lean into their progressive and psychedelic tendencies here, sounding like an expansive, mind-bending version of Yorke and Greenwood's main band. Many of Radiohead's typical hallmarks -- anxiety, dread, angst, and tension -- are present, with Yorke delivering reliably passionate performances and heady lyrics across all tracks.

The frantic, horn-backed storm "You Will Never Work in Television Again" and the driving, synth-hazed "We Don't Know What Tomorrow Brings" channel the anger and frustration heard on Hail to the Thief, winding up as the most aggressive Yorke has sounded in years.

Meanwhile, the elastic groover "The Opposite" and the jittering "Thin Thing" find the trio locked-in as a formidable unit, with Skinner's drumming building to head-rattling levels as Greenwood's guitar noodling and Yorke's detached falsetto push the songs to bewitching heights.

On the opposite end of the energy scale, the atmospheric "The Same" envelops like a dense fog and the hypnotic "Pana-vision" weaves haunted piano and drums with Amnesiac strings, as the ethereal "Speech Bubbles" and the sci-fi sweep of "Waving a White Flag" create widescreen cinematic moments of orchestral beauty.

There's something here for fans of any era, but as a reference for longtime devotees, A Light for Attracting Attention bests The Eraser as Yorke's finest non-Radiohead effort and falls somewhere amongst A Moon Shaped Pool and King of Limbs in terms of scope and daring. As such, diehards should be quite pleased with this release: an utterly satisfying set of songs that stands tall on its own, yet could easily climb the ranks against any of Radiohead's late-era efforts.

Source: AllMusic

Alabaster DePlume - Gold

GOLD

by Alabaster DePlume

Released 1 April 2022

International Anthem

*****

Mancunian musician and poet Gus Fairbairn - the multi-instrumentalist who records and performs under the name Alabaster DePlume - reacts to the contemporary moment with his double album, GOLD. A mix of jazz and spoken word, the sounds are intended to keep the listener on their toes. On each of the tracks he worked with different producers, and in each session a different band was used - though, apparently, this is not unusual for DePlume. The end result is unpredictable and eerie and just plain weird. But good weird.

With 19 songs ranging in duration from one and a half to seven minutes, there’s a lot of variety to be heard. On “I’m Gonna Say Seven,” DePlume sounds very much like Simon and Garfunkel, soft and sincere. Though perhaps the echoing backup vocals are more DePlume’s own sonic terrain than that of the famous folk duo, there is a certain calm to the track that brings “The Sound of Silence” to mind. At other times, he sounds more like the jazz-fusion group, The Comet is Coming—as with the eighth track, “Jerusalem, Palestine.” Saxophone and spacey backing vocals create an unsettling and anxious atmosphere. There is something coming, there is a disturbance, and we don’t know how to fix it yet. That is the interesting unpredictability of DePlume.

With all the chopping up done by the different producers and the veritable legion of musicians (over 20!) on this album, you’d think the sound and vibe would be all over the place. It is and it isn’t. Guitar, saxophone, and those echoey backing vocals cement Gold together. However, when DePlume starts “Fucking Let Them” with a live monologue and then comes in with the band, I am hesitant to continue listening. Many contemporary jazz musicians—like Benjamin Boone, Joy Harjo, etc.—play around with spoken word. But the effect can sometimes have mixed results. Spoken word relies on emotion communicated through how the lyrics are said, but that very emotion—overly emphatic usually—loses its very power by pushing too hard. DePlume does better than most with skirting the edge of becoming saccharine or affected. And still, it’s the musical aspects of “I Will Not Be Safe” and “Don’t Forget You’re Precious” that I’m ultimately drawn to.

That being said, the tracks are well arranged and have a natural, energizing momentum. The guitar notably ties each composition to the next, minimal and often a refrain, repeated and working with DePlume’s chant-like lines superbly. This is when he is at his most convincing and emotional, such as on “Broken Like,” which is meditational, trance-like. It is moving and reminds us to take a look at ourselves and our surroundings. Likewise, GOLD is a reaction to the world. It is a journey through soundscapes made from the emotional and societal environments around us. It is a connecting force that tells its listeners that we are broken by this external disturbance, but we are fixable, able to become better again, internally.

Source: Treble

Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn - Pigments

Pigments

by Dawn Richard & Spencer Zahn

Released 21 October 2020

Merge Records

*****

A foreshadowing of Pigments took place in 2018 when Spencer Zahn released an abridged version of "Cyanotype" -- a tranquil, floating piece from his instrumental album People of the Dawn -- with sorrowful words and vocals added by art-pop whiz Dawn Richard. The lengthier and from-scratch collaboration here is a progression for both artists. Zahn is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, and arranger who often cites the ECM label and Mark Hollis' self-titled solo album, inspirations that are as evident as ever on Pigments, particularly with its foundation in near-minimalist chamber jazz, and a sense that Zahn relates to Hollis' philosophy of "Don't play one note unless you've got a reason." To paraphrase another sage, Too $hort, Richard gets in where she fits in, vocalizing on just over half of the sections within the 37-minute composition. She appears sometimes sylph-like, pushed aloft by gentle coaxing from Zahn's upright bass and piano. During other moments, Richard is wholly human, basking in physical intimacy atop lapping drums, entreating through whirls of saxophone and strings, and on the finale, gathering strength over a partly mechanized pulse amplifying her ceaseless determination. Those most drawn to Richard when she's in high-BPM prancing mode might find it challenging to acclimate to the slow pacing and open spaces (with drums frequently absent). Moreover, Richard is not so much the primary voice as she is part of an ensemble, sharing the lead role with many of the eight players, such as saxophonist Jas Walton, whose fluttering tenor on highlight "Vantablack," undergirded by bass clarinet and dressed with acoustic guitar, resembles that of Waterfalls-era John Klemmer. Only on "Cerulean" does the singer let loose, and it's to confront and grieve ("Are you hurting like you're hurting me?!") with support from needling electric guitar, blasting reeds, and intense swells of electronics and strings. Still, each appearance she makes is halting and deeply felt. Everything provided and guided by her partner coalesces into a quietly powerful flowing sequence. Pigments is not necessarily built for movement, but it's as moving as any of Richard's previous output. No other album is quite like it.

Source: AllMusic

Sudan Archives - Natural Brown Prom Queen

Natural Brown Prom Queen

by Sudan Archives

Released 9 September 2022

Stones Throw TRecords

*****

Natural Brown Prom Queen is without doubt the work of an introverted extrovert putting her extroversion on full display. Funkier and friskier than Athena, Brittney Parks' first album as Sudan Archives, this follow-up resulted from a unique recording process with phases of isolation and collaboration. Demos made by Parks were sent by manager Ben Dickey to a host of producers for their individual takes. From those submissions (one track in particular yielded six possibilities), Parks chose what to keep, sometimes selecting elements from multiple versions (while opting to remain oblivious to the producers' identities), and then made more alterations and additions with assistance from Dickey and other associates. Parks' debut LP was too impressive and distinctive to be considered merely developmental. Natural Brown Prom Queen, featuring refined, uninhibited lyricism and diversified vocals -- supplied over much more low end and higher BPMs with unpredictable rhythmic twists -- nonetheless represents a kind of blossoming. Rollicking lead single and first song "Home Maker" gets the point across in more than one way. A hospitable Parks greets with "I just got a wall mount for my plants," declares "Only bad bitches in my trellis," and a couple lines later, one can sense her smiling as she loses herself in her domestic reverie. Freedom and self-confidence are common themes. The biographical "NBPQ (Topless)" practically barrels with bounding drums, rapid bouzouki and handclaps, and an inexorable Parks targeting colorism and superficiality before she taunts former lovers "who missed out on all my magic." On "Chevy S10," she leaves the house for a woozy escapist fantasy in which the bassline switches from a G-funk groove to an acoustic one seemingly plucked from a jazz date. "Freakalizer" is seductive, blissed-out electro with none other than Egyptian Lover working the 808 drum machine. The presence of Parks' violin isn't as obvious as it was on her earlier work, though she plays the instrument on more than half of the songs, treating it at times with effects pedals to make it resemble bass and guitar, juggling actual drums, percussion, synthesizers, and other keyboards all the while. As a vocalist, Parks shows even greater versatility, matching modes ranging from breathy siren to tough MC with productions that dish out flickering electronics, atmospheric breaks, blown-out trap, and knocking hip-hop soul. Resilience, joy, and power emanate from all of it.

Source: AllMusic

Immanuel Wilkins - The 7th Hand

The 7th Hand

by Immanuel Williams

Released 28 January 2022

Blue Note

*****

Brooklyn-based alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins mightily impressed critics with 2020's Omega. His wispy yet resonant tone revealed a wildly inventive soloist with an advanced compositional facility executed with authority by his quartet -- pianist Micah Thomas, bassist Daryl Johns, and drummer/percussionist Kweku Sumbry. That group returns on The 7th Hand to ask an audacious question across seven tunes: What would happen if God joined the band? This hour-long suite of seven stand-alone movements investigates the space between two existential poles: the abundance of sacred presence and the nihilistic poverty of nothingness. The music on the provocative The 7th Hand moves through evolutionary stages. As it plays, elegantly rendered post-bop embraces harmonic modalism, then develops outward in the echolalia of free improvisation. In considering his existential question, Wilkins pondered the biblical significance of the number six, which represents the maximum potential of human possibility. He wondered that if the band actively sought divine intervention as an intended part of their creative process, would God's spirit, the heavenly seventh element, possess and guide them?

Opener "Emanation" balances release and tension with harmonic inquiry through modernist post-bop. Played with intricate melodic invention and barely restrained energy, Wilkins' horn offers a plethora of harmonic ideas. Thomas' piano employs expansive chord voicings as the rhythm section swings hard underneath. "Don't Break" features the Farafina Kan Percussion Ensemble. The djembe drums employ chantlike rhythmic motifs, directly reflecting the evolution of the African diaspora as Wilkins and Thomas answer with the blues. "Fugitive Ritual, Selah" is a gorgeous ballad derived from prewar Black gospel. It's introduced by a lyric statement from Johns before a recurrent riff claims the center. Sumbry's delicate brushwork gives way to a relaxed beat caressed by syncopation from piano and alto. "Shadow" sways alongside the blues with a minimal riff-laden theme in a deceptively easy groove until it drifts naturally into restrained abstraction. Both "Witness" and "Lighthouse" feature flutist Elena Pinderhughes. Her graceful approach adds a spectral dimension to the former, while on the latter, her cerebral lyric invention provides both contrast and depth to Wilkins' skillful, intuitively tempered improvisation amid forceful drumming and frenetic bass runs. The sprawling, 26-minute closer, "Lift," is a furious labyrinthine group improvisation that recalls John Coltrane's Ascension. Wilkins' knotty blowing acknowledges the modal intention in Thomas' spiky, harmonic piano stabs. Propulsive intervallic bass lines accentuate crashing cymbals and clattering tom-toms as snare and kick drum drive the molten flow of energy.

The 7th Hand is a major work. It travels dazzlingly from tranquility and comfort to ambivalence, restlessness, and impatience before it engages re-entry, rebirth, and transcendence. This band understands that Wilkins' bold question may be unanswerable, but they play as if they know. They commit to asking it with music-making as compelling and inspired as it is exploratory and dazzling.

Source: AllMusic (Thom Jurek)

Gabriels - Angels & Queens-Part I_edited.jpg

Angels & Queens - Part I

by Gabriels

Released 30 September 2022

Gabriels / Atlas Artists

*****

Frontman Jacob Lusk is nothing short of incredible on the trio’s debut album, a powerful half-hour of top-tier songwriting that proves Gabriels are far more than soul revivalists

Gabriels seemed to appear out of nowhere. They were hoisted into the public eye a couple of years ago, thanks to an extraordinary self-released five-track EP and an equally extraordinary video accompanying its lead track, Love and Hate in a Different Time. A perfectly synchronised selection of clips of people dancing (African tribes, saucer-eyed habituees of Wigan Casino, Theresa May at the Conservative party conference), the video suddenly stops dead, the final two minutes given over to what looks like cameraphone footage of a singer at a street demonstration, performing Lewis Allan’s Strange Fruit through a megaphone. The singer was Gabriels’ frontman, Jacob Lusk, at a Black Lives Matter protest.
The more you find out about them, the more curious Gabriels sound: Lusk was a choir director and a runner-up on the 2011 series of American Idol. His bandmates are a classically trained California composer called Ari Balouzian and a Sunderland-born video director, Ryan Hope, who named the band after the street in Bishopwearmouth where he grew up. They first collaborated on an advert for Prada in 2018, from which the EP’s opening track, Loyalty, had sprung: outside Love and Hate in a Different Time, Balouzian and Hope’s other 2020 release was the soundtrack to a documentary about Pepe the Frog.

However odd their background, Gabriels quickly gained momentum: critical acclaim; a major label deal; a showstopping appearance on Later With Jools Holland. It would be easy to suggest that their rise is down to Lusk, who has vast charisma and an entirely astonishing voice: he has a startling ability to sound intimate and warm one second, then unleash an agonised, shiver-inducing falsetto the next.

Angels and Queens Part One album cover
Angels and Queens Part One album cover
But an astonishing voice isn’t necessarily enough on its own, as evidenced by Lusk’s pleasant but inconsequential 2018 EP My Love Story, which framed him with too-slick production, equal parts early 90s slow jam and Mellow Magic-friendly 80s AOR. Without wishing to take away from the power of his vocals, it’s hard not to feel that Love and Hate in a Different Time derived its head-turning power from the fact that it was a fantastic song and from an overall sound that smartly keyed into soul music’s past without feeling like a painstakingly researched historical reenactment. It was obviously cut from a very different, more traditional cloth to most contemporary R&B, but it was cheeringly hard to put your finger on exactly what aspects of the past it was evoking.

That’s even more true of Angels and Queens Part One. Lusk is, plainly, incredible throughout – the sound of his voice multitracked to infinity on If You Only Knew is quite something – and the standard of songwriting set by Love and Hate in a Different Time never dips, as evidenced by the dense funk of the title track and piano ballad If You Only Knew, written from the perspective of Lusk’s late godsister, which shifts from wrenching misery to euphoria.

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This album highlights that Gabriels, having drafted Kendrick Lamar collaborator Sounwave as producer, are far more than revivalists. He helps craft a sound that feels entirely of the moment, and not merely because there’s a constant, nagging sense of tumult and foreboding lurking behind even its prettiest songs.
If it seems counterintuitive to split your debut album in two – Part Two is due in March – a song like Taboo makes it feel like common sense: like a lot of Angels and Queens Part One, it’s intense listening. The seven songs here last barely 30 minutes, but a powerful, concentrated half hour dose is all you need. Certainly – it’s all you need to stake a strong claim to the title of album of the year.

Source: The Guardian (Alex Petridis)

Father John Misty - Chloe and the Next 20th Century

Chloe and the Next 20th Century

by Father John Misty

Released 27 May 2022

Sub Pop

*****

Father John Misty's combination of caustic wit and staggering talent as both a vocalist and songwriter has resulted in a catalog of varied, consistently strong albums, but he reaches new levels of refinement and grandeur on fifth album Chloë and the Next 20th Century.

With earlier output, Misty (aka Josh Tillman) put his bile-dripping storytelling and darkly comical character sketches at the forefront of his songs, using instrumentation as an accessory for his scathing commentary and depraved character sketches. This took the form of epic, sometimes overblown production on 2017's Pure Comedy and stripped-down, vocals-forward rock on 2018's God's Favorite Customer.

Chloë and the Next 20th Century, however, is a softer, more thoughtful reading on FJM's sound, toning down his often ugly observations by letting gorgeous orchestral arrangements and gently beautiful songwriting occupy equal space with his persona.

The Tin Pan Alley instrumentation that starts the album on jaunty opener "Chloë" sets a tone of timelessness, as it draws on the carefree, strolling energy of '70s songwriters like Randy Newman and Harry Nilsson, softening the snark and vitriol of Tillman's typically sharp lyrical content.

"Goodbye Mr. Blue" goes so far as to rework Nilsson's 1968 hit "Everybody's Talkin'," sounding dangerously close to the original, but with lyrics about a couple uncomfortably coming back together over the death of their cat.

"Funny Girl" is similarly ornate, with cinematic touches supporting a lounge-y lope. Tillman explores torch song territory on the sweetly sad "Buddy's Rendezvous" and a bossanova sway on "Olvidado (Otro Momento)." While the arrangements on 2015's I Love You, Honeybear could be similarly grand at times, Father John Misty has never turned in anything as ambitious as the impeccable sonic tailoring of Chloë and the Next 20th Century.

Fans who fell in love with Tillman's sharp social commentary will find plenty to hone in on, but the lush sounds take some of the bite out of his clever barbs and cynical perspectives on love and connection.

Even with the strong, considered design of his previous albums, Father John Misty has never sounded so pleasant.

Source: AllMusic

Perfume Genius - Ugly Season

Ugly Season

by Perfume Genius

Released 17 June 2022

Matador Records

*****

When Perfume Genius' Mike Hadreas worked with choreographer Kate Wallich on the dance piece The Sun Still Burns Here, it revolutionized his relationship with his body and his music. Listeners got the first indication of how powerful these changes were with 2020's brilliant Set My Heart on Fire Immediately; with Ugly Season, they get even closer to the source of this transformation.

Hadreas' sixth album is largely based on his music for The Sun Still Burns Here, and like all of his work, offers a fascinating dance of vulnerability, strength, and how they intersect.

He's well-equipped to explore the musical and emotional complexities on pieces like "Teeth," which uses cut crystal chromatic percussion, pizzicato strings, soprano saxophone, and his highest falsetto vocals to blur pain and beauty together until they're unrecognizable from each other.

Ugly Season's detailed instrumentation evokes the choreography at the heart of The Sun Still Burns Here: "Herem," which moves from fluttering woodwinds and sinewy upright bass to sacred blasts of organ to an elastic electronic beat and tabla, suggests all the different shapes a mass of bodies can take over its seven-minute sweep, as do the jabbing piano and scrabbling strings of "Scherzo," which reflects Ugly Season at its most challenging. While the album is rooted in the artiest realms of Perfume Genius' music, it's still connected to the subversive pop that made No Shape and Set My Heart on Fire Immediately so compellingly catchy. As its name implies, "Pop Song" boils down that sound to its broadest strokes, yet there's still plenty of power and mystery in its swooning melody and jungly beat. "Eye in the Wall," another of Ugly Season's most immediate tracks, is a taut nighttime seduction with an extended percussive passage that reminds listeners this is dance music in its most literal sense, while "Photograph"'s smoldering pop encompasses the extremes of beauty and rawness that coexist in Perfume Genius' music. Hadreas dives into the deep end of that rawness with "Hellbent," a cathartic blast of synths, guitars, and mechanical beats that rivals Suicide in its electro-punk fury. It's in this discomfort zone that his art thrives: Ugly Season is a powerful statement as both an album and a score for a dance piece, and its intertwining of self-expression and healing is peak Perfume Genius.

Source: AllMusic

Sampa The Great - As Above, So Below

As Above, So Below

by Sampa The Great

Released 9 September 2022

Sampa The Great / Loma Vista

*****

Bold production, rich harmonies and equable beats; Sampa the Great curates a more intimate-feeling sonic experience on new album ‘As Above, So Below’.

The follow up to 2019’s ‘The Return’, Sampa’s new project builds on everything that made her last record so good, and simply does it better.

‘As Above, So Below’ opens with ‘Shadows’, a menacing cut centred around a sinister bells loop, bolstered by stacks of lavish harmonies and a healthy dose of beefy 808s. The beat, while punching through the mix, still retains a reserved feel. The addition of African wind instruments and spoken-word passage toward the back end of the track is the nod we need to know this record is going to be quintessentially Sampa the Great. ‘Shadows’ leads into the synth-heavy ‘Lane’ (also the first single from the record), which kicks off with layers of ambient and granular texture and effected vocal chops. Sampa’s flow is subdued yet passionate, and once again we are continually treated to large harmonic moments throughout the track. It also gives us the first feature of the record, with an impeccable verse from Florida rapper Denzel Curry. His energy as an artist is often unrivalled, and his verse here helps the case. 
Other singles ‘Never Forget’ and ‘Bona’ slot nicely into the feel of the record, with the former boasting a delectable marriage of borderline trip-hop beats and African music. ‘Bona’ ups the energy during the near-half point of the album. The pulsating sub basses and frantic flows from Sampa make an intoxicating experience, with the delicacy of the piano and backing vocals working hard as a stark contrast to the verses. Sampa the Great’s flow, throughout ‘As Above, So Below’, remains cool, calm and collected, but she is never afraid to cross into more frenetic energies. 

Album closer ‘Let Me Be Great’ works perfectly as the final chapter of the record. It encapsulates everything that makes Sampa Sampa; the neo-soul inflections paired with grand choral passages are simply quintessentially here. ‘Let Me Be Great’ is also rich with positive feelings, again a clever contrast to some of the darker instrumental moments on the album.

Sampa the Great’s latest release cements her as someone who ignores any traditional restraints within hip hop. The beautiful blends of genres and crisp production make ‘As Above, So Below’ an enthralling listen, and has Sampa raising the bar for herself once again. 

Source: ClashMusic

SAULT - Air

AIR

by SAULT

Released 13 April 2022

Forever Living Originals

*****

If you love Little Simz’s coronation album Sometimes I Might Be Introvert or Adele’s 30 from last year, you’ll know one of their defining qualities is the orchestration that, in each case, became a character in its own right. Both records presented a regal congress of choral vocals and classical instrumentation, padded with a cold echo as though recorded in the stately home featured in the video for Simz’s ‘Woman’. The linking node between those albums is newly-lauded producer Inflo, and his band SAULT has a new surprise release. AIR gives those illustrious symphonies the full stage.

This may be a shock if you’re not clued in on this mysterious group’s connections, as their last five records have all been firmly soul-funk affairs. But on their sixth album, they create a near-wordless collection of scores with enough scale to match – or even tower over – their diptych of 'Untitled' records from 2020. These compositions deserve Fantasia-style visuals.

Air can be a wandering record that doesn’t give its big crescendos away easily. The group is often finding, mining at and striking moments that earn that Disney soundtrack comparison. Foremost is ‘Heart’, a veritable hero’s theme that grows botanically from a plucky, out-of-tune guitar to a triumphant marriage of the album’s most dynamic elements. ‘Time Is Precious’ begins as an edifice of horns, strings and choir being pulled along by a fleet of woodwinds, all before settling down for the first and only vocals with lyrics, sung like a hymn under silent candlelight.

Other parts reinstate a dash of Sault’s usual soul accents, highlighting the influence of Stevie Wonder’s adventurous Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants. Title track ‘Air’ shows delicate pacing as wondrous horns swoop off and strings flourish like a rococo ornament, but it stems from a terra firma of warm, bounding keys and vocals that could have fit snuggly amongst Wonder’s eclectic synth-soul. Again it appears in the last few minutes of ‘Solar’, grounding a 12-minute John Williams homage with a seamless transition. It would have been nice to see this experiment stretched further into the track rather than keeping it hidden until the end. Then again, it could be a passing glance at what’s to come in the future.
Themes of survival have crept into Sault’s work since the Untitled records, but Air seems to zoom out to the survival of the Earth itself. The alternate artwork of a boy looking down at the globe matches the band’s conceptual perspective, and each song could be a film score’s finale. With this, the lyrics to ‘Time Is Precious’ are all the more poignant: “Don’t waste time ‘cause time is precious” / “Use it wise and keep those treasures”. Air feels like a swan song for a gorgeous world in peril.

Source: The Quietus

Rosalia - Motomami

Motomami

by Rosalia

Released 18 March 2022

Columbia

*****

Her first record – Los Angeles – is a haunting and poignant collection of Spanish folk songs, with bare instrumentals and an obsession with mortality. It was a skeletal record which seemed to exist to showcase her rich and masculine voice, but everything which came after it might as well have been the work of another artist entirely. One year later she turned to making brash, aggressive pop music with a weirdo edge, dabbling in trap, reggaeton and collaborating with Bad Bunny, The Weeknd and Travis Scott.

Early singles "Soako" and "Chicken Teriyaki" seemed to signpost that mainstream success was firmly in her sights, but her long awaited third album actually transpired to be a bridge between the two. Although those songs were all bombast, it's a record which captures both sides of her art; the romantic and the poignant, alongside a youthful hunger for wealth and fame.

Sonically, these worlds crash together in a resolute way. Motomami is a distinctly hispanic record, coloured with the dembow bounce of reggaeton and lashings of flamenco guitar. It’s also distinctly accessible, with glistening production aided by Pharrell, and choruses which stick like honey. But even if it won’t fulfil some fans hopes of pure eccentricity, a great deal of Rosalía’s appeal has also been the heart of the outsider. Her second album, El Mal Querer, was recorded as her University dissertation project, and a charming pluckiness still remains, from the exuberance of her rapping to the choruses of children she surrounds herself with on "Buleria".

Her varied production tastes are just one example of the duality which is a central theme of the whole album. “I’m very much me” she raps on the opener, ”like a butterly, I transform”. On the closer "Sakura" she even goes so far as to dismiss the fame she’s spent so much of the other songs showing off about, singing that “you can’t be a star and shine forever / I’m gonna laugh when I’m 80 and look back”, like all that flexing was just for fun. It’s hard to choose between the "Saoko"’s and the "Genis"’s – the former being a delicious piece of nasty braggadocio, and the latter being a tender, aching ballad; two extremes that are rarely reconciled on the same record as frequently as they are here.

Some critical honesty: I don’t speak Spanish. Apparently 560 million people do, and they’re about to have an entirely different relationship with this music than me. I even have it on the authority of several Spanish-speaking friends that the lyrics to "Chicken Teriyaki", for example, are borderline-gibberish. But lyricism is just one facet of music though, and Rosalía’s energy and the quirks of her production transcend vocabulary. Maybe that song is her sellout, Tik-Tok anthem but, for me, she can ride that grimy dembow all the way to the bank. The Weeknd sounds even more immaculate than usual singing in Spanish on the fame-fixated "La Fama", and on "Sakura" Rosalía might as well be an angel, the undulating tone of her voice silencing even her own song’s accompaniment.

Motomami is the sound of an incredible voice indulging in her pop fantasy and excelling at it, but she makes sure to remind us as often as she can that really, she can do it all.

Source: The Line Of Best Fit

Gui Duvignau - Baden

Baden

by Gui Duvignau

Released 13 May 2022

Interscope/pgLang

*****

Gui Duvignau is a French-Brazilian bass player and composer. His multi-cultural background has led to a life of traveling and musical exploration.
A jazz musician in essence, he also draws inspiration from his experiences performing Rock, Brazilian, and ‘World’ music, as well as his studies in classical contemporary music. His ability to combine elements of jazz, classical, and Brazilian folkloric music into his own singular genre that was spoken only on his nylon string, acoustic guitar has maintained his quiet legend status throughout the world.

Born in France, but raised in Brazil, Duvignau was drawn to the music of Baden Powell through his Brazilian guitarist friends, who all considered Powell a fundamental figure in the worlds of Brazilian music and acoustic guitar. During his own guitar study, Duvignau asked friends for pointers and they continually referred him to Powell’s techniques. Further exploration of Powell’s repertoire led the bassist to the revelations provided by the fantastic music of the guitarist.

Baden, uses Powell’s beloved songs as a foundation for explorative interpretations and improvisations from Duvignau’s fantastic ensemble, along with two highly esteemed guests, Ron Carter and Bill Frisell.

As a well-studied musician, Duvignau was astounded by Powell’s classical-honed technique and ability to communicate across genres. The guitarist’s music was a breath of fresh air and there was a sense of the spiritual in everything that Powell played, including the many interpretations he made of religious music of Brazil’s African-derived religions, like Candomblé and Umbanda. The guitarist was unique as he looked more toward the influences of samba rather than the bossa nova style that was popular at the time.

Duvignau felt that the best way to pay tribute to Powell was to play his music as openly as possible; not try to make a recording that was a Brazilian jazz record. Thus, Duvignau pointed this out to the musicians that he wanted to play with as he knew they could take the music anywhere. He welcomed back two mentors and friends who had appeared on his previous recording, 3, 5, 8, woodwind master Billy Drewes and drummer Jeff Hirshfield. Duvignau also recruited fellow Berklee alum, pianist Lawrence Fields, a great bandmate and consummate professional.

To make the project even more special, Duvignau invited his mentor Ron Carter to participate on a track. The bassist also recruited the great guitarist Bill Frisell to add his brilliant tones to a number of the pieces.

Source: Bandcamp

Gharlotte Adigery, Bolis Pupul - Topical Dancer

Topical Dancer

by Gharlotte Adigery, Bolis Pupul

Released 4 March 2022

Bounty & Banana / DEEWEE & Because

*****

Belgian duo Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul are acutely aware of how difficult it can be to navigate your way through a world that seems determined to drag you down. Between the corrosive effects of everyday racism and misogyny, to the breakdown of our social discourse, they could have been forgiven if the negativity of it all had dragged them under. Rejoice, then, that their debut album has arrived bursting with positive energy; ‘Topical Dancer’ is a triumphant middle finger to the people that need to see it the most.

The pair met in 2016 when they were invited by Belgian musical royalty Soulwax to take part in a soundtrack project. They immediately hit it off, and within a week they had written ‘La Falaise’, their first EP together. That 2017 release and its 2019 follow-up, the ‘Zandoli’ EP, were released under Adigéry’s name exclusively, but now, after a period of soul-searching, the Ghent-based musicians decided that this first full-length should be credited to them as equals.

‘Topical Dancer’ is defined by its caustic sense of humour. On ‘Esperanto’, Adigéry sings, “Don’t say, ‘Nice pair’ / Say, ‘I love the symmetry of you’”. It’s just one of the album’s many one-liners that are laugh-out-loud funny, while smartly describing the toxicity of social media. The music itself matches the humour of the lyrics, with bouncy synth lines and skittering beats that seem to tee up the jokes before Adigéry delivers the punchline. The song decries the absence of nuance in the way that we communicate, acknowledging the absurdity of the topic while not pretending to be a quick fix.

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‘Blenda’ deals with post-colonial racism in Belgium with the same lightness of touch. “Go back to your country where you belong / Siri, can you tell me where I belong?”, Adigéry sings, before mocking the achingly obvious shortfall in the logic behind such bigotry: “I am here because you were there.” Adigéry and Pupul tackle the bleakest of subject matter with defiance, while conjuring astral disco arrangements that recall the likes of LoneLady or Jane Weaver.

 

This playfulness also stretches to ‘Ceci N’Est Pas un Cliché’, which began as a list of every cringeworthy song lyric the duo had ever heard (“I was walking down the street / When I woke up early this morning…”). On album closer ‘Thank You’, Adigéry throws every condescending piece of ‘advice’ she’s ever received back in the faces of the men that have sought to take credit for her success.

 

Adigéry and Pupul don’t need any help with their success, thank you. With ‘Topical Dancer’, they have created an album that works just as well as the soundtrack to a killer house party as it does a necessary act of rebellion against the negative forces in our society

Source: NME

Ruben James - Tunnel Vision

Tunnel Vision

by Ruben James

Released 29 April 2022

Rufio Records

*****

This much-anticipated release from Birmingham-born keyboardist, vocalist and producer Reuben James is a treat, filled with warm vibes and top instrumental talent exploring a jazzy nu-soul R&B style with skill and panache.
Reuben James came to prominence in his work with chart-topping singer Sam Smith, joining the arena tours, Grammy awards and international acclaim of the pop world while quietly nurturing his jazz chops. He is interested in a wide range of music and has made a particularly bold move in being ready and willing to collaborate with other musicians ranging from global superstars like Joni Mitchell, Herbie Hancock and Stormzy to jazz drummer Chris Dave, rapper Jay Prince, and fellow Midlands alumni Tom Ford and Soweto Kinch.

It’s at least a year since James was talking about this work, and he has rightly held off until summer and barbecues are once again an option.  He calls this set a ‘mixtape’, a nice informal way to present a seamless well-mixed hour-long collection of work with many co-performers, some new material alongside some choice previous releases.  The opening Vegan Butter sees American saxophonist Tivon Pennicott adding his smooth colour to a bass-filtered groove, which swoops into Closer, James’ 2021 single with Sophie Faith’s gorgeous vocals interspersing James’ own laid-back voice and Jay Prince’s rap. It’s quite a seven minute journey, which moves into the swaying U Got Me with South Londoner Jaz Karis providing the chorus vocals.

The emphasis switches to softly strummed acoustic guitar on Searching with Vula Malinga joining Jay Prince and multi-instrumentalist Conor Albert. The beat gets a notch firmer for Ruby Smiles, a James keyboard solo leading into some alto sax from Soweto Kinch.  BBQ Energy, another James song from a year or two ago, is brought in with Adam Flowers sharing vocals and in-demand trumpeter Keyon Harrold adding brassy flair into the mix.  

Flute master Gareth Lockrane is featured on the new single What U Need with Chicago rapper Ric Wilson. All I Wanna Do is totally chilled, strings, piano and acres of space, while Wings Of A Butterfly sees Vula return along with Vanessa Butler on vocals. The title track Tunnel Vision sees Frida Touray and Daley sharing vocals with James, maintaining the cool yet rich pulse of the whole set with Tom Misch’s guitar coasting along to the close. 

There is so much to enjoy in this hour-long drifting dream of an album – many performers, great arrangements and production, and Reuben James at the heart of it with his vocal style and sensitivity for a hook.  No, it’s not jazz but… I am wondering whether Reuben James is becoming a kind of Steely Dan for the R&B generation, producing engaging and enjoyable material which is both accessible to a wide audience and yet packs a musical punch that belies its clear charms.   

Source: London Jazz News

Ndudozo Makhathni - In The Spirit Of Ntu

In The Spirit Of Ntu

by Ndudozo Makhathni

Released 27 May 2022

Blue Note

*****

South Africa's jazz scene may not get nearly as attention as London's, but it is every bit as varied, innovative and creative. Pianist and composer Nduduzo Makhathini is a leading light in South African jazz, a musician at the forefront of its scene. In the Spirit of NTU is his tenth album and second for Blue Note, and the inaugural recording for Blue Note Africa.

The pianist surrounds himself with South Africa's top musicians including saxophonist Linda Sikhakhane, trumpeter Robin Fassie Kock, vibraphonist Dylan Tabisher, bassist Stephen de Souza, percussionist Gontse Makhene, and drummer Dane Paris. His guests include American alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw, and vocalists Anna Widauer, and Omagugu Makhathini.

Across this new work, Makhathini condenses conceptual, often esoteric philosophical and spiritual themes explored in his catalogue down to 10 tracks. He draws on Zulu and precolonial traditions and wide-ranging cosmological and intellectual curiosities -- the NTU itself is an ancient concept about interdependence and collectivity.
Opener "Unonkanyamba" is introduced by rumbling piano, and layered hand percussion. The horns offer a sweet, township-inspired theme that Makhathini punctuates with bridged harmonies. Sikhakhane's powerful solo explores amid intensely hypnotic rhythms. The pianist's gospel-tinged melody lines accent his solo. "Mama" is a lullaby. It offers resonant interplay between Omagugu's vocals and Fassie Kock's trumpet. Makhathini's downmixed, chanted backing vocals (on all but two tracks) underscore tenderly articulated lyricism above a poignant bassline and rippling percussion. "Amathongo"'s postbop uses shuffling swing from Paris's kit as a catalyst. Flugelhorn and vibes exchange lines with each another and Makhathini's vamp. His solo threads angular arpeggios through dissonant harmonic invention as vibes, flugelhorn and percussion frame his attack. The set's hinge track, "Emlilweni" in inspired by Old Testament Book of Daniel tale of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Sentenced to die by Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar for refusing to worship his image, they emerge unscathed followed by a fourth man, "…like a Son of God." The expansive modal opening features Sikhakhane in concert with the pianist appended by dramatic hand percussion and drums. The pianist's solo is rife with athletic, high register arpeggios. Shaw delivers an incendiary alto solo representing the fire. Widauer appears on "Re-Amathambo," reworked from 2018's, Ikhambi. Her smoky alto offers lustrous, syncopated phrasing amid the bluesy, shuffling architetcure. The pianist's fills and phrasing frame her singing as vibes poignantly and authoritatively underscore her lines. "Omnyama" employs haunting repetition in modal chord voicings and pronounced circular rhythms that morph into vocal chanting. Sikhakhane's soprano shouts and whispers before Makhathini inserts jagged single lines amid swelling, poignant horns. "Senze'Nina" juxtaposes stately chordal piano statements with rumbling glissandos, a vocal chant, and Sikhakhane's mournful tenor solo.

The title track closer is a solo, hymn-like, meditative piece wedding gospel and township folk before evolving toward vanguard improvisation. In the Spirit of NTU is an introduction to and summation of Makhathini's musical universe to date. Contrasting inquiry and statement, exploration and discovery, it's the work of an artist possessed of startling vision and dazzling creativity.

Source: AllMusic

Areni Agbabian - Bloom

Bloom

by Areni Agbabian

Released 26 April 2022

ECM

*****

Improvising vocalist, folk singer, storyteller, pianist: on her ECM debut Areni Agbabian focuses the range of her skills in music that casts a quiet spell. A sparse music in which voice, piano and the subtle percussion of Nicolas Stocker (last heard on ECM with Nik Bärtsch’s Mobile ensemble), continually shade into silence.  The California-born Agbabian, who came to international attention with the groups of Tigran Hamasyan, draws deeply upon her Armenian heritage, reinterpreting sacred hymns, a traditional tale, a folk melody transcribed by Komitas and more, and interspersing  these elements among her own evocative compositions. 

Areni Agbabian casts a quiet spell with her art, as an improvising vocalist, folk singer, storyteller and pianist. Her voice has been described as “bell-toned” by The Guardian and “lush” by the Los Angeles Times, the music she creates with it “intensely focused, moving toward some kind of hidden truth,” according to The New York Times. Agbabian’s ECM debut, Bloom, has a richness that belies its spare ingredients: just her evocative voice and piano, along with the subtly ingenious percussion of Nicolas Stocker (who was last heard on ECM with Nik Bärtsch’s Mobile ensemble). Born and raised in Los Angeles into an Armenian family, Agbabian came to international attention via performances and recordings with groups led by Armenian jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan.

Bloom draws deeply on the singer’s Armenian heritage, as she reinterprets sacred hymns, a traditional spoken-word tale and a dark folk melody transcribed by the great Armenian composer and ethnomusicologist Komitas. She intersperses these among her own vocal and instrumental compositions, which channel a wide world of influences, from Komitas to Tigran Mansurian, from Morton Feldman to George Crumb, from Patty Waters to Kate Bush. The melody that recurs through the highlights “Petal One,” “Petal Two” and “Full Bloom” glows with an aural and emotional purity that’s characteristic of Agbabian’s music.

Bloom was recorded in Lugano in October 2016 and produced by Manfred Eicher.

Source: ECM

Jon Balke, Siwan -  Hafla

Hafla

by Jon Balke, Siwan

Released 22 April 2022

ECM

*****

Hafla is the third album from Norwegian keyboardist-composer-arranger Jon Balke’s Siwan, the ensemble launched in 2007 as a meeting point for musicians of strikingly different backgrounds and experiences.  Siwan celebrates the concept of coexistence and cooperation, making the case for the positive attributes of cultural diversity, as it looks back into history and forwards towards new models for shared work.  The legends and the poetry of al-Andalus continue to inspire Balke and company, but this is contemporary music shaped by players who choose to listen, respond and adapt.
Jon Balke brings many musical aspects together in his writing for a unique ensemble that includes an Algerian lead singer, a kemençe player from Turkey, an Iranian master of the tombak, an innovative Norwegian drummer and an energetic string section of baroque specialists. The interweaving of their creative contributions - in a delicate play of textures, melodies and rhythms - underlines and envelops verses penned many centuries ago.
Repertoire on Hafla begins with Balke’s setting of lyrics by Wallada bint al-Mustakfi, the free-thinking 11th century Ummayad princess of Cordoba and the lover of Ibn Zaydun, the great poet of al-Andalus.
“The story of their relationship is legendary”, Balke notes. “And Wallada also wrote some great, short and precise poems. This time, we were looking for poetry descriptive of life as it was lived in that period. Somebody made the observation that the phenomenon of co-existence begins in the neighbourhood when someone needs help. It begins in the queue to buy bread. On that kind of basic level.  It’s a good perspective, I think.”
Composing for Siwan frequently begins with the selection of words to be sung, he explains, as he exchanges ideas with Mona Boutchebak.  “Often it’s many processes taking place. I might suggest some poems – perhaps starting from Spanish translations of the words - and then, while walking in Nature, sing or whistle a melody into a recording device.  In my home studio I’ll develop that a bit and send it to Mona who’ll look into the translations and send me back a version sung in Arabic. Checking formal Arabic against dialect versions, and other details. Meanwhile I’ll start arranging for strings and imagining how the percussion players might work with material.”

 

Source: ECM Records

Raffy Bushman - E Minor String Quintet + Rhythm (EP)

E Minor String Quintet + Rhythm (EP)

by Raffy Bushman

Released 29 July 2022

Bridge The Gap x New Soil

*****

Raffy Bushman's "E Minor String Quintet + Rhythm" is a fresh new selection of original contemporary classical compositions that update the very idea of classical music to encompass contemporary music.

Speaking in a YouTube documentary for the piece, the artist says: "I think this piece is as much contemporary classical music as anything else out there. I’m using classical music competition structures. I use counterpoint and functional harmony along with jazz stuff and yeah, I'm using a rhythm section. But all my favourite composers - and I'm not just talking, like, Stravinsky, but talking Bach, Beethoven, Mozart - they were in touch with the dance rhythms of their time because they knew that all the best music is first a visceral experience (meaning that you like it instinctively when you hear it) and then an intellectual experience (meaning that when you look more closely and analyse it, it makes sense).

A lot of contemporary classical music I'm hearing nowadays is a thinking exercise. And if I have to think about whether I like something, I'm pretty sure I don't like it."

Bushman's autobiographical candor and his views on classical music and it's accessibility, are as interesting and enlightening as his music.

Source: raffybushman.com

Beyonce - Renaissance

Renaissance

by Beyonce

Released 29 July 2022

Columbia Records

*****

"Break My Soul" offered much to dissect as the preliminary single off Renaissance, Beyoncé's first solo studio album since Lemonade and part one of a promised three-act project.

Integrating a flashback to early-'90s crossover house hit "Show Me Love," the resilience anthem -- reinforced with an echoing gospel choir and sampled Big Freedia exhortations -- came across like a nostalgic dance remix preceding the original version.

Instead, it slid neatly into place on the parent LP not only as an accurate representation but also as a foreshock to an hour-long housequake filled with irrepressible exuberance in celebration of self and sisterhood.

Among those to whom Beyoncé dedicates Renaissance is her late gay cousin and godmother, Uncle Jonny, credited for introducing her "to a lot of the music and culture that serve as inspiration for this album." The multitude of dancefloor sounds cultivated and celebrated since the late '60s in underground clubs by liberation-seeking gay, Black, and Latino dancers has been a natural ingredient in Beyoncé's recordings since the birth of Destiny's Child (take the use of the Love Unlimited Orchestra's proto-disco exemplar "Strange Games & Things" in "No, No, No, Pt. 2"), but it is the basis of Renaissance.

The LP is top-to-bottom danceable and sequenced with each track setting up the next, through the ecstatic finale, where Beyoncé most potently mixes sensuality and aggression, claiming her man with nods to Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder, Patrick Cowley, and Larry Heard.

"Cuff It" is a disco-funk burner with Nile Rodgers' inimitable rhythm guitar and a slick quote from Teena Marie's biggest ballad, though it has all the vigor of Lady T's uptempo classics.

The more relaxed "Virgo's Groove" is designed for circling the rink with its delectably plump bassline and handclaps, and moves to a private room where Beyoncé commands, in one of the set's many memorable turns of phrase, "Motorboat, baby, spin around."

Renaissance pulls from the more recent and present sonic developments with equal guile. Dancehall-derived dembow is stretched out for the strutting opener "I'm That Girl." "Heated" works a chugging Afrobeats rhythm, and is keenly trailed by the swollen dubstep pulsations of "Thique." The most exciting moments fearlessly blend and switch eras. "Pure/Honey" alternates between a duly vulgar ballroom brush-off and pop-funk rapture, and "Church Girl," a rousing gospel-bounce marvel, weaves the Clark Sisters with the decidedly less-reverent DJ Jimi and the Showboys.

Beyoncé is vocally up to the challenge of juggling the almost-innumerable quantity of styles and references, sighing, purring, beaming, belting, and spitting fire with all the required conviction and attitude. Her congregation of fellow writers, producers, and vocalists is a formidable assembly of close collaborators (the-Dream, Tricky Stewart, Mike Dean, NOVA Wav), younger trailblazers (Honey Dijon, Kelman Duran, Tems), and legends (Grace Jones, Raphael Saadiq).

Act II will presumably have at least one ballad. They're not missed here.

Source: AllMusic

Kendrick Lamar - Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers

Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers

by Kendrick Lamar

Released 13 May 2022

Interscope/pgLang

*****

As early as his first official studio release, 2011’s Section.80, Kendrick Lamar’s albums have been intricate and conceptual, constructed more like ambitious theatrical narratives than mere collections of songs. Fifth album Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers follows this trajectory as a double-album’s worth of interconnecting statements that are relentlessly complex, emotionally dense, and sometimes uncomfortably raw.

Unlike the lush, spacious sonics of DAMN. or the life-affirming funk of To Pimp a Butterfly, Mr. Morale is scattered both in terms of musical approaches and lyrical perspectives.

The album’s first half is particularly messy, with themes of trauma, grief, society, and Kendrick’s own uneasy relationship with fame all overlapping. His technical abilities are stunning and versatile as ever, but the frantic flows and jarring beat switches of “United in Grief” begin an angsty catharsis that runs throughout many of the tracks.

“N95” is a seething cultural critique where Lamar spits bile in multiple directions over a bleakly catchy, bass-driven instrumental. Issues with lust addiction and infidelity are put under a microscope on the tense and minimal “Worldwide Steppers,” and Lamar depicts his troubled relationship with his father in painful detail on “Father Time,” which features a gorgeous vocal performance by Sampha on the hook. There’s further exploration of deeply personal family history on “Auntie Diaries,” which chronicles Lamar coming to understand the experiences two of his relatives had with transitioning gender identities. Throughout the album he funnels all of these experiences inward, seeking to grow through his own changes and the changes he sees around him. This shows up as a dismissal of celebrity on “Rich Spirit” or as striving for self-acceptance on “Count Me Out.”

The album’s quick musical and thematic shifts can make for an uneven flow. The floating R&B instrumental and tender introspection of “Die Hard” come just a few tracks before cacophonous swirls of piano on “Rich - Interlude” and the jagged cosmic hip-hop of Ghostface Killah and Summer Walker collaboration “Purple Hearts.” The album’s intensity reaches a full boil on “We Cry Together,” a song that sounds like live audio footage of the most vicious couple’s argument imaginable, and reaches the same levels of ugliness as Eminem’s “Kim,” a clear reference point.

As always, the production is immaculate and Lamar is joined by a host of industry giants, with contributions coming from Baby Keem, Thundercat, and even a vocal cameo from Portishead’s Beth Gibbons on the stunning sadness of “Mother I Sober.”

While not as immediately accessible as some of the work that came before it, there’s value in both the harrowing and enlightening moments here.

Lamar puts everything on the table with Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, trying to get closer to his unfiltered personal truth, and creating some of his most challenging, expectation-defying work in the process. While not always an easy listen, the album shows more of its intention as it goes, and ultimately makes sense as the next logical step forward in Lamar’s increasingly multi-dimensional artistic evolution.

Source: AllMusic

Szun Waves - Earth Patterns

Earth Patterns

by Szun Waves

Released 19 August 2022

The Leaf Label

*****

Earth Patterns is an overwhelmingly calm and mellow listen. Even when the album gets a touch moody, an inherent feeling of lush sleepiness remains predominant. The record meanders in an enticing middle ground between strands of jazz, ambient, drone, and synth-driven electronic. All told, it’s a relatively trim work which sucks the listener in and doesn’t let go.

There’s a lot of stunning beauty to be found on this album. Szun Waves (a London-based trio) consists of a percussionist, a saxophonist, and a pianist/synth wrangler. Together, they have an organic sense of chemistry, managing time after time to engulf the listener into a dreamy music-crafted world. Opener “Exploding Upwards” sets the stage with its rather upbeat, if reserved, leading melody. “Garden”, meanwhile, feels slightly ominous while moving along in a ponderous fashion. “Willow Leaf Pear” excels with a melancholy yet soothing horn performance taking center stage. It all culminates with the wonderful closer “Atomkerne”, which proves both highly spaced-out and intensely here on Earth (the latter perhaps due to a recurring motif which recalls birdsong). It’s simultaneously one with the cosmos and the woods right next to your neighborhood.

Earth Patterns approaches “atmospheric masterpiece” status. It’s full of colorful and refreshing music which captures the essence of beautiful outdoor spaces in the summer or fall (with this sense perhaps encouraged by the gorgeous album artwork). The album is generally light and airy, full of space to allow the listener’s mind to wander. Don’t expect the most vigorous of records, but as a companion to reverie and contemplation, it doesn’t get much better than this.

 

Source: Sputnikmusic

Bjork - Fossora

Fossora

by Bjork

Released 30 September 2022

One Little Independant Records

*****

Though the search for connection has been the crux of Björk's music since the beginning, she was resolutely alone on Vulnicura (2015) and Utopia (2017).

After the traumatic isolation of the former album and the healing solitude of the latter, on Fossora she's ready to reach out again. Named for a Latin word meaning "digger," Björk's tenth album is one of her best blends of the conceptual and the personal.

Initially inspired by clarinets, gabba techno (her favorite to play at home during the COVID-19 global pandemic lockdown), and the communal nature of fungal networks, it grew to embrace her new love, her children leaving home, and her mother's 2018 death. Björk weaves these huge emotional milestones together into earthy, organic illustrations of the many kinds of love and how they're expressed. On Fossora, love isn't always soft: the album opener "Atopos" shows Björk has come down from Utopia's clouds with an impatient thud. "Our differences are irrelevant," she insists over jabbing beats, prodding clarinets, and an army of backing vocals before concluding, "Hope is a muscle/that allows us to connect." There's a maternal quality to her no-nonsense tone that ties in perfectly with Fossora's later expressions of being a daughter saying goodbye to her mother and a mother saying goodbye to her daughter. "Sorrowful Soil," the somber choral piece that serves as a eulogy for Björk’s mother, environmental activist Hildur Rúna, is striking, but still doesn't fully prepare listeners for "Ancestress." The equivalent of Vulnicura's centerpiece "Black Lake," it captures Rúna's legacy and passing in beautifully wrenching detail, from the traits she shared with Björk ("she invents words and adds syllables") to the form left behind ("let go of a cold palm"). Just as stunning is the misty-eyed finale "Her Mother's House," where Björk sends her daughter Isadora out into the world with the benediction "The more I love you/The better you will survive/The more freedom I give you." Romantic love inspires several of Fossora's other highlights, whether it's the Homogenic-like fusion of digital, emotional, and physical intimacy of "Ovule," the verdant sensuality of the serpentwithfeet collaboration "Fungal City," or "Freefall," a celebration of "the shape of the love we created" dotted with pizzicato strings that light up the track like tiny bioluminescent mushrooms. Like Vulnicura, the album has its challenging moments -- particularly "Victimhood," a subterranean crawl through the muck of self-pity -- but they make the transition from loss and grieving to love and hope on "Allow" and the title track all the sweeter. Whether Björk presents a magical world on Fossora or just reminds listeners of the magic within everyday life and relationships, it's more proof that she can still forge a remarkable connection with her audience.

On this soul-nourishing tour de force, her one-of-a-kind mix of innovation and emotion is as inspiring as it's ever been over her decades-long career.

Source: AllMusic

Mwanje - Seasons (EP)

Seasons

by Mwanjé

Released 22 April 2022

Mwanjé

*****

Mwanje Tembo is a Melbourne based singer/ songwriter originally from Zambia but born and raised in Botswana. With influences such as Solange and FKA Twigs, Mwanje expresses herself through music, art and dance. Her use of melisma and stacked harmonies creates a psychedelic trance that captivates her listeners. With lyrics based off of real life experiences, Mwanje hopes to grow with her listeners. 

One of RnB’s most exciting new contemporary artists, Mwanjé's debut EP “Seasons” is a transcendent coming-of-age record that includes the arresting single ‘Wildones’ featuring her sister, Sampa The Great, and ‘Call 2 the Diaspora’.
Mwanjé is creating a limitless space of her own connecting Black feminism and Afrofuturism with new wave RnB.
With “Seasons”, the 23-year old artist presents a journey of self-love, self-discovery and transition into adulthood through a fluid soundscape that spans alternative R&B, neo-soul, jazz and spoken word poetry.

Mwanjé said: “Seasons’ is a journey of self-discovery. There is a lot of room for individual interpretation for the listener but for myself, my first body of work is about a journey of self-love and discovery while maintaining adult life. It is an introduction to the world of Mwanjé. Where cycles, flows and evolutions are constantly at work. The tracklist is a reel of experiences that resulted in this version of me.”

Source: Bandcamp

Kokoroko - Could We Be More

Could We Be More

by Kokoroko

Released 5 August 2022

Brownswood Recordings

*****

One of the features of the 2022 alternative London jazz scene is the incorporation of musical styles originating in Africa and the Caribbean, from whence a high proportion of prominent musicians on that scene trace their heritage. Not every band shares this African and/or Caribbean dimension but the majority do and it is one of the factors behind the broadening of the audience base for jazz in Britain that has developed since around 2016. 

For the musicians, this move towards demographic and cultural inclusivity is attended by a binary choice. Is the adoption and fusion of African and Caribbean styles "mission accomplished" in itself, the focus of their music, or is it to be used as a stepping stone toward extending the historical jazz vocabulary? The dividing line is blurred but the distinction is clear. Those musicians who some observers contend are creating what may prove to be the most enduring music have chosen the second path, with tenor saxophonists Nubya Garcia and Shabaka Hutchings and alto saxophonists Cassie Kinoshi and Camilla George leading the charge. Others, such as Kokoroko and Ezra Collective, take more of a mission accomplished point of view. Ezra's upcoming 2022 album May The Funk Be With You (Enter The Jungle) doubles down on that direction, as does Kokoroko's first full-length album, Could We Be More. 

Cassie Kinoshi is a member of Kokoroko, but the band's direction of travel is primarily set by its founder and leader, trumpeter Sheila Maurice-Grey. In interviews during the early days of Kokoroko, Maurice-Grey expressed impatience with the fact that much of the band's following was drawn from the existing audience for jazz in London, albeit the more adventurous and outward-facing section of that audience, and she was keen to broaden the band's appeal. So it is no surprise that the Kokoroko's fusion of African (mainly Nigerian and Ghanaian) styles defines and dominates Could We Be More, some will say to the diminution of "jazz" content. 

The debate will continue, and whether We Could Be More has staying power only time can tell. Meanwhile, the album's Afrobeat-highlife-soul-funk romp is a terrific summer soundtrack and will go down a storm at festivals and on dancefloors alike.

Personnel:

Sheila Maurice-Grey: trumpet; Cassie Kinoshi: saxophone; Richie Seivwright: trombone; Onome Edgeworth: percussion; Ayo Salawu: drums; Tobi Adenaike-Johnson: guitar; Yohan Kebede: keyboards; Duane Atherley: bass.

Additional Instrumentation:

Sheila Maurice-Grey: trumpet, vocals; Cassie Kinoshi: alto saxophone, vocals; Richie Seivwright: trombone, vocals; Onome Edgeworth: percussion; Ayo Salawu: drums; Tobi Adenaike-Johnson: guitar; Yohan Kebede: synthesisers, keyboards; Duane Atherley: bass, synthesisers, keyboards.

Source: All About Jazz

Ego Ella May - Fieldnotes

Fieldnotes | Fieldnotes II

by Ego Ella May

Released 15 October 2021 | 8 March 2022

Ego Ella May

*****

We are all moving in slow motion still, after well, you know. Ego Ella May (pronounced “Eh-go”), the British-Nigerian mood enhancer-by way of voice, pen, and whatever else resides in that Jazz FM Vocalist of the Year tool bag she uses.

That raspy vox humana never gets raised past 6. It compels listenership, believers in love, and classic/modern soul philosophers, to get real close and cozy. Hanging on to those vibes, feeling, chi, energy—she uses it all in the slowest of spurts to generate this endearing hopefulness. And that’s really cool. I like my good vibes to last; more bang for your better day, you know? It’s a get-down I can function with these days.

Fieldnotes, Pt II, the second part to this peerless hangout, could really give a damn about a pandemic. May is in her element, fashioning that jazz and contemporary R&B pastiche into full-on Soulquarian territory. Nothing but neo-soul patina backing up whimsical, breathless articulation. Living in that easy pace tempo for the wondrous enunciation dorks who want to know exactly what this wordsmith is putting in the air. Let me condense the succinct: She’s been through it. And still chooses up over down. As admirable as that may be, on Fieldnotes II, Ego Ella May—while deeply personable about her rendezvouses with tenderness and connection—operates from her own rule book. Win or lose.

“Introvert Hotline” deals out the Badu meets Yazmin Lacey attitude so desperately needed in order to control a situation. May is in for a new change, a positive one, but it’s on her terms. “The introvert hotline, nobody’s answered in a while, the only rule, don’t call me, I’ll text you” is voiced with a smirk, but it’s real as supply chain shortages. Don’t test it. “Centered” takes all the likes and retweets without troll number one. Built off this swoony R&B audio verse, May talks about her partner being all she could want. The girl can’t help but brag cause the catch seems to complete her. Sorry, Jerry Maguire, it fit.

Who knew such a cliched plight had the stuff of posey mysticism. Ego knows her influences cold and pays proper respect to them while making a great song extend deep into vaulted earworm districts. It’s a masterstroke of appreciation by way of musicianship. In referencing Joni Mitchell’s “Centerpiece”, from the immortal 1975 Hissing of Summer Lawns, the song infuses new interpretations by way of millennial inventiveness to transpose Joni’s chorus into the stuff of elysian rapture. Way beyond a mood, it’s a slo-mo head nod sesh anybody could rock with.

Fieldnotes ll comprises five tracks. In some others handling it might seem truncated, like a quick-holdover until some full album appears. We all know it was pandemic created. But if you’re familiar with the resume, remember the Honey For Wounds debut, netting the “Best Jazz Act” award at the 2020 MOBO Awards, May creates languid projects that you can’t help but return to incessantly. This second edition, a densely packed EP, operates like your fave weighted blanket, you just can’t get enough of due to its ability to cover you up, from nose to foot.

Source: Treblezine

Ben Marc - Glass Effect

Glass Effect

by Ben Marc

Released 22 April 2022

Innovative Leisure

*****

It’s a rare talent that can link Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, Ethio-jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke, Afrofuturists Sun Ra Arkestra, and grime legend Dizzee Rascal, but Marc has long blurred musical worlds and criss-crossed boundaries.

One of the reasons that he started writing Glass Effect, says Marc, was going to nightclubs in Ibiza and experiencing the heady sun-dappled euphoria of a summery dancefloor, as well as the beat-driven production of artists like Four Tet, Bonobo, Machinedrum, DJ Shadow, and Madlib.

Producer and multi-instrumentalist Ben Marc, who’s emerged as a key figure of London’s cutting edge jazz scene, has just announced his debut full length, a follow up to last September’s widely acclaimed Breathe Suite EP (heralded by NPR, Pitchfork, The Wire, The Guardian, and more).

Glass Effect is an assured and accomplished 13-track realization of a singular vision that unifies a multitudinous profusion of influences (free-jazz, broken beat, hip-hop, electronica and beyond) into a sublime whole, underscoring the evolution of his quest for a distinctive sound: lambent, low-key, and yet dizzyingly intricate.

Source: Bandcamp


‘Glass Effect’ opens with ‘Way We Are.’ The opening riff is reminiscent to the opening theme to Flight Of The Conchords. It’s catchy and jovial, but here it is underpinned by a whirling loop. This is what propels the song forward. It’s slightly moody, but with shards of hope (this is something that Marc will return to throughout). The beat stutters underneath. It’s a fun way of opening the album. It says: “This is going to be a fun ride, but you might feel giddy when you get off.” After two instrumental tracks ‘Dark Clouds’ features Joshua Idehen on vocals. Out of the gates Idehen’s vocals are gruff but welcoming. He lets us know how things are. Some things are OK. Some things aren’t, but Idehen is always honest. The main vocal hook feels more like a mantra than a chorus: “Tomorrow is gonna be better” – it’s a simple message, but it’s effective.

And this is the secret to ‘Glass Effect.’ When Marc keeps things simple, they work incredibly well. When he starts to over complicate things the album starts to sway under its own weighty ideas. ‘Give Me Time’ is an example of this. The backing track feels a bit buys in places. This is remarkable as the instrumentation is sparse, but around the halfway mark there appears to be two rhythms fighting for out attention. A stuttering drumbeat, a hypnotic guitar, and some strings. Over this Judi Jackson sings the chorus “We just need a little more space and time.” It’s a shame Marc didn’t heed his own advice here.
The title track is one of the standout moments on the album. This is another semi-instrumental. The melodies are captivating. The beats whip up a frenzy and the bassline are deep. It reminds me of going to hip-hop nights when there was a live backing band. At some point the MCs would leave the stage and the band would play something instrumental. Then hook would be the beat that the other musicians would riff around, over the through. It didn’t matter what they played, as you were locked into the spectacle of listening to live hip-hop. The same is true here. The music is slightly immaterial. It's all about the musicianship on display. ‘First Batch’ slows things down about. Ceasar C delivers some great bars, but all your attention is on the string section. It’s moody, but all you can concentrate on.

‘Glass Effect’ works best when the music is instrumental and uncomplicated. ‘Jaw Bone’ does this incredibly well. Cascading guitars and scatter shot drumming are the order of the day. Over this some horns solo. Its simple but very clever. When Marc over complicates things, and the album slightly looses its way. Also, the album feels one, or two, songs too long. This might seem like harsh criticism, which is probably is, but trim it down to around 10, or 11, tracks you’d have a much tighter affair. Saying that ‘Glass Effect’ is very playable and benefits from repeat listens. There are layers upon layers of glorious melodies and hooks here; you just need to spend the time to find the ones that work for you.

Source: The Wire

Makaya McCraven - In These Times

In These Times

by Makaya McCraven

Released 23 September 2022

International Anthem

*****

In These Times is the new album by Chicago-based percussionist, composer, producer, and pillar of our label family, Makaya McCraven.

Although this album is “new," the truth it’s something that's been in process for a very long time, since shortly after he released his International Anthem debut In The Moment in 2015. Dedicated followers may note he’s had 6 other releases in the meantime (including 2018’s widely-popular Universal Beings and 2020’s We’re New Again, his rework of Gil Scott-Heron’s final album for XL Recordings); but none of which have been as definitive an expression of his artistic ethos as In These Times.

This is the album McCraven’s been trying to make since he started making records. And his patience, ambition, and persistence have yielded an appropriately career-defining body of work.

As epic and expansive as it is impressively potent and concise, the 11 song suite was created over 7+ years, as McCraven strived to design a highly personal but broadly communicable fusion of odd-meter original compositions from his working songbook with orchestral, large ensemble arrangements and the edit-heavy “organic beat music” that he’s honed over a growing body of production-craft.

With contributions from over a dozen musicians and creative partners from his tight-knit circle of collaborators – including Jeff Parker, Junius Paul, Brandee Younger, Joel Ross, and Marquis Hill – the music was recorded in 5 different studios and 4 live performance spaces while McCraven engaged in extensive post-production work from home. The pure fact that he was able to so eloquently condense and articulate the immense human scale of the work into 41 fleeting minutes of emotive and engaging sound is a monumental achievement. It’s an evolution and a milestone for McCraven, the producer; but moreover it’s the strongest and clearest statement we’ve yet to hear from McCraven, the composer.

In These Times is an almost unfathomable new peak for an already-soaring innovator who has been called "one of the best arguments for jazz's vitality" by The New York Times, as well as recently, and perhaps more aptly, a "cultural synthesizer." While challenging and pushing himself into uncharted territories, McCraven quintessentially expresses his unique gifts for collapsing space and transcending borders – blending past, present, and future into elegant, poly-textural arrangements of jazz-rooted, post-genre 21st century folk music. 


Credits
Makaya McCraven - drums, sampler, percussion, tambourine, baby sitar, synths, kalimba, handclaps, vibraphone, wurlitzer, organ
Junius Paul - double bass, percussion, electric bass guitar, small instruments
Jeff Parker - guitar
Brandee Younger - harp
Joel Ross - vibraphone, marimba
Marta Sofia Honer - viola
Lia Kohl - cello
Macie Stewart - violin
Zara Zaharieva - violin
Greg Ward - alto sax
Irvin Pierce - tenor sax
Marquis Hill - trumpet, flugelhorn
Greg Spero - piano
Rob Clearfield - piano
Matt Gold - guitar, percussion, baby sitar
De’Sean Jones - flute

Source: Bandcamp

Elijah McLaughlin Ensemble - II.jpg

II

by Elijah McLaughlin Ensemble

Released 30 September 2022

Tomkins Square

*****

In 2020, the acoustic Chicago-based Elijah McLaughlin Ensemble quietly released their debut album independently. It dazzled due to its mysterious open-ended gentleness created by melding American Primitive guitar styles, Western folk and vanguard traditions, Indian drones, and modal overtones to make music that seems to be on a journey. Signed by Josh Rosenthal to his ever-reliable Tompkins Square label, the trio deliver its sequel. This set is brighter, offering a seemingly directed, more complexly ordered ensemble narrative that simultaneously allows for deft individual interplay. Elijah McLaughlin composes and plays six- and twelve-string acoustic guitars. He is joined by Joel Styzens on hammered dulcimer and Jason Toth on upright bass. There is little in the modern vernacular that the ensemble's music compares to.

Opener "Zodiac Rabbit" commences with droning arco bass and shimmering dulcimer notes. McLaughlin alternately strums and fingerpicks through extended chordal drone. The bass drones get deeper and more frenetic as dulcimer and guitar frame it in an airy two-chord vamp. "Wheel" is introduced with kinetic fingerpicking joined by arco bass, while the hammered dulcimer creates a fluid, breathing backdrop as the other instruments lock then separate, cutting across tempos, modes, textures, and cadences. By contrast, "Arc" is spectral, contemplative tune. Introduced by a low-end bass drone, McLaughlin adds jazzy 12-string chords that flirt with syncopated modal blues and flamenco picking. His progression is resonant and brooding. The hammered dulcimer becomes more insistent before creating an overtone drift that winds around the other instruments. "Spring" is the album's hinge piece. As Styzens and McLaughlin engage a driving progression, Toth lags behind, filling the space with alternate harmonies, prompting the guitarist to investigate the tonal terrain in a killer solo. The bassist briefly drops the bow and responds with a flurry of pizzicato notes before reclaiming it on the outro. "Viroqua" directly draws on John Fahey's expansive approach to Americana as the guitarist both fingerpicks and strums through a jaunty pastoral, supported in expansive, drifting rounds by the other instruments. Set-closer "Confluence" also draws deeply on Fahey and Ali Akbar Khan. It weds East and West in revealing the trio's tonal intersectionality as a remarkable conversational discovery. The ascending and descending bassline in "Effigy" becomes the axis the tune turns on. A bluesy, strummed guitar trades in octave drones as the dulcimer works in the upper and middle registers to create a melodic undertow; the bassist and guitarist expand it with intensity and forceful dynamics. The nearly processional "Blind Valley" follows as the dulcimer offers an expressionistic melody line atop hyperkinetic 12-string and crescendo-like basslines.

On II, even more so than on their debut, the Elijah McLaughlin Ensemble showcase a holistic approach to music making that balances deep focus, startling originality, and sophisticated group interplay.

Source: AllMusic

The Comet Is Coming - Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam

Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam

by The Comet Is Coming

Released 23 September 2022

Verve

*****

With the dissolution of Sons of Kemet and all-too-infrequent recordings by Shabaka and the Ancestors, there is an argument for the Comet Is Coming as Shabaka Hutchings' (aka King Shabaka here) primary project. This longstanding futurist electro-jazz project with synthesist and electronicist Dan Leavers (Danalogue) and drummer Maxwell Hallett (Betamax) has been collaborating since they were students together at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Their collective aesthetic looks at humanity's future through dark, apocalyptic lenses offering cultural and technological critique through sound.

After emerging from the pandemic's lockdown in early 2021, the trio and longtime sound engineer Kristian Craig Robinson, made a beeline for Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios. They spent four days recording improvisations guided by collective grit and instinct. They left with incomplete files. Leavers and Hallett then painstakingly sampled and reworked them over many months. After a thorough once over by Hutchings and implementation of his input, they assembled this offering.

Most of these 11 jams are in the three- and four-minute range. They mostly juxtapose brute force -- a mid-noughties EDM sensibility that isn't surprising after considering how many house records relied on the jazz harmony and scale books. Opener "Code" comes at the listener with swelling synths and effects that introduce a pulse from a Tangerine Dream-esque sequencer. The beat is dynamically relentless, recalling Omar Souleyman's Dabke wedding music. Hutchings blows aggressively repetitive patterns over cascading rhythms and a wordless vocal chorus. "Technicolour" offers an intro chordal pattern derived from Detroit techno before Hutchings articulates a knotty melody that exchanges phrases with interlocking rhythm tracks and wonky, zig-zagging synths. "Pyramids" pops and pulses before synth washes and angular bass pulses meet syncopated snares and a high, honking tenor squall that recalls Hermeto Pascoal at his most expressive. You can't help but move to it. "Frequency of Feeling Expansion" commences with a droning organ sound as Hallett moves into swinging post-bop on the kit. Amid flowing, endlessly blossoming synth vamps, Hutchings develops an incremental melody and begins to solo around it as the rhythm section (very) gradually ratchets the tension. At just under seven minutes, "Angel of Darkness" is the set's longest and most sinister cut. Its indefinite keyboard and percussion washes create a tense, atmospheric backdrop that Hutchings confronts with wailing intensity. He is moving against it with his expression and passion. At the halfway mark, a doom-jazz cadence begins swirling as the tenor sax moves in tandem with rockist drumming, and a foreboding caution from the synths. Closer "Mystik" finds Hallett melding hard bop with drum'n'bass on snare and hi-hat. Leavers lays in eerie, unspecific bleeps, bloops, and washes before Hutchings' tenor bleats then roars, driving the dark, dubby groove into the stratosphere. Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam is unlikely to appeal to conservative jazz heads. It will please fans of the hybrid jazz scene in England and draw in many new listeners internationally who will be deeply attracted to its apocalyptic energy, innovative beats, and rowdy abundance.

Source: AllMusic

Ezra Collective - Where I'm Meant To Be

Where I'm Meant To Be

by Ezra Collective

Released 4 November 2021

Partisan Records

*****

Widely hailed as one of the groups pioneering the new-wave of UK jazz, Ezra Collective are the perfect insignia for the love of all things music. Earning their stripes via Tomorrow's Warriors originally as a youth band, they have since sprawled into the go-to architects during a new phase for London's next musical journey. Interloping their adoration for UK Grime from the "blueprints" of Boy Better Know, the "Everything London" collective weave and splash a multitude of jazz sub-genres, grime and funky afro-beat digs into a cocktail of blitzing tricks and dizzying instrumentation. All paired with slick confidence, mind. 

Staking a claim as rightful protagonists to the country's burgeoning jazz resurgence, the collective's new album, Where I'm Meant To Be follows on from the trailed footsteps of 2019's You Can't Steal My Joy. When all hives of musical activity were abruptly stopped due to the pandemic, the collective really had to pause and think about their next course of action, resulting them into a real creative transition. Championed with refined character and a new sense of time on their hands, the new era for the group see them venturing down the path with raised stakes, as call-and-response improvisation ebb and flow between a 14-track ensemble of fluidity, funky hybridisation, all building up to true artistic creativity.

Featuring special guests including Sampa The Great, Kojey Radical, Emile Sande and Nao; the 14 tracks that form the collective's upcoming record are intended to be the ultimate celebration of life. A beckoning of new horizons post-pandemic is certainly on the cards, as Emile Sande swoons on booming Siesta, "Yes you've got one life to give / So give it all you can give / Don't let the pressure crush you / Don't ever let them rush you." While poet Sampa The Great enchants the help and love of music in Life Goes On, "From the street to the city to the ghetto / Shout it from the roof when they hear the instrumental."

The first taste of Ezra Collective's new venture, Life Goes On is a thumping tune led by trumpeter Ife Ogunjobi, tenor saxophonist James Mollison. It manages to twist and shake into the rush of Victory Dance, a truly addictive anthem emanating a span of multi-genre sounds. From the two-step funky works, the body-shifting scales of samba, landing on the lush undertones of dub reggae and finally to the kindred of jazz bops - it is an aggressive smash-up set to "go off" live. A true narrative led by heard and devotion for the love of music, it is a tantalising 5-minute energiser, as the magic of improvisation allows all members to have their moment in the spotlight. Trailblazing No Confusion is up next, a superior narrative into understanding exactly who you are and why you do what you do, I don't want no confusion / Been me still me been proven, led by "renaissance man" from East London, Kojey Radical. 

While Welcome to my World has a runtime of 7 minutes, it feels no way congested. All about beckoning the new people through, it is the perfect introduction to Ezra Collective's new explosive era, as they chart through unknown terrain. Another worthy highlight has to be Ego Killah. Armon-Jones's salsa piano stabbings and Koleoso's funky bass-line are textbook-Ezra. Meanwhile, bandleader and drummer Femi Koleoso leads the quintet with a funky afro-beat as the cross stick whips through the horns playing a wildly enchanting strain throughout the seemingly haunting tune. An instrumental that can also be worth a slot on the swampy back-end of Melancholy Beach - a funny-you-should-say moment as Femi also plays the drums for the Gorillaz - Ego Killah is all about that humility that happens to you when you're meant to be there, but you're not quite there yet. 

Our UK Jazz scene has never been as strong as it has over the past few years, and it's safe to say that Ezra Collective are the leaders of the pack. Where I'm Meant To Be is a journey - not just a destination. A journey that you may very well get lost in. Feeling brand new, Ezra Collective are back and bigger than before. 

Source: When The Horn Blows

KIng GIzzard and the Lizard Wizard - Changes

Changes

by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

Released 28 October 2022

KGLW

****-

Can I level with you? When King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard lay out the music theory concept behind a new album, I often have to take the Aussie kitchen-sink psych-rockers at their word. I can grok the unique character of their microtonal explorations, sure, but when it comes to polyrhythmic prog or jams on the Greek modes, the finer points are lost on me (give me a few years; I’m still getting my minor pentatonic scale positions down). None of that makes it hard to be a Gizz-head, though, and neither does Changes, their 23rd album in 10 years. It’s their jazziest, potentially their most ambitious in theory, and in spite of that, the one I’m most likely to recommend to anybody not yet in the know about the band’s sprawling catalog of the five LPs they’ve released this year.

Changes’ 13-minute title track builds a dynamic overture on electric keys, hi-hat taps, and rushes of guitar, by turns thoughtful and thrilling as it spins out motifs and lyrical concepts through verses sung, half-rapped, and scatted. Then it splinters into a six-song cycle in which, with every chord change, the band bounces between notes from two different scales—D major and F sharp major, per their website—that coil like a harmonic double helix. The full record took five years to finish, essentially a lifetime in Gizz-years; think of it as a more robust take on the jazz fusion of Sketches of Brunswick East, though it also benefits from their more recent experiments, too (as on the driving standout “Gondii,” powered by Butterfly 3000 synths).

Chord changes parallel personal and social changes in the lyrics; change is elusive through cycles of life on the title track (“Is this what we consider changing for the better?”). It’s a source of uninhibited joy on the playful (if insubstantial) “Hate Dancin’.” It’s a destructive force against nature on the fluttery flute-and-keyboard jam “Astroturf,” and on “Exploding Suns,” a cosmic acoustic vision of nuclear armageddon. The abstract idea of change feels a little too slippery and all-encompassing to hang an album on, but the songs mostly stand up on their own, even as recurring melodies and teases string them together in classic Gizzard fashion.

Even I can feel the changes driving the kaleidoscopic scale runs of closer “Short Change,” but aside from the strong songwriting and tireless grooves, I appreciate the spirit of Changes most of all. As clearly and concisely as anything the band has ever put out, it makes expanding your creative horizons sound like a genuine pleasure in a way plenty of stuffier prog- and art-rock releases don’t. For King Gizzard, changing and pushing their artistic limits always seems to mean coming up with new frameworks to iterate fun tunes on top of, and even with this much work under their belts, they still sound like they’re having an absolute blast—still running up the “woo” counter, whatever keys they play in.

Source: Flood Magazine

King Stingray - King Stingray

King Stingray

by King Stingray

Released 5 August 2022

King Stingray / Cooking Vinyl Australia

*****

The seeds of King Stingray were sown long before either of the group’s core songwriters – singer Yirrŋa Yunupiŋu and guitarist Roy Kellaway – were born. With records like 1991’s ‘Tribal Voice’ and 1993’s ‘Freedom’, Yothu Yindi pioneered the mainstream collision of traditional Yolŋu artistry and contemporary rock and pop. Yirrŋa is the nephew of Yothu Yindi’s late, great frontman Dr. M., and Roy is son of founding bassist Stuart Kellaway.

Both spent their formative years wreaking havoc backstage at their shows, and were bashing away on instruments even before they could even stand.

It wasn’t until the week of Bluesfest 2019 that King Stingray came together – camped out at Kellaway’s family farm in Tintenbar, the duo demoed debut single ‘Hey Wanhaka’ on a whim – but Yunupiŋu and Kellaway had spent the bulk of their lives jamming and writing songs together.

One of the standouts from their youth is ‘Raypirri’, a rip-roaring proto-punk belter about the importance of keeping sensible, which Yunupiŋu and Kellaway spent countless lunchtimes playing for their schoolmates. Both songs appear on King Stingray’s eponymous debut album, which across all 10 of its coltish and colourful tunes, paints a vivid picture of the band’s youthful origins.

The album’s sonic palette is diverse, anchored in soaring and soulful surf rock with fiery hooks and ultra-catchy choruses. The contrasting flavours mixed into it make for a kaleidoscopic listen.

And although it truly is an ensemble affair, where every member of King Stingray has their time in the spotlight, Yunupiŋu’s vocals are easily the star of the record. Singing occasionally in Yolŋu Matha (entirely so on the two aforementioned punk cuts and the explosive opener ‘Lupa’), Yunupiŋu – a Gumatj clan songman – injects every performance with character and intent.

Equally compelling is how the band interpolate elements of traditional Yolŋu musicality. The yidaki and bilma feature prominently across the record, adding colour to the more contemporary rock riffs – take album highlight ‘Let’s Go’, where the sharp clack of the bilma and low rumbling of the yidaki make the twangy, wah-flourished bridge feel 10 times as intoxicating.

On the vocal side, the interpolation of Gumatj Manikay on the climactic refrain of ‘Get Me Out’ deepens its themes of homesickness, while the sampling of a timeless Bawaka songline on ‘Malk Mirri Wayin’ (introduced by guitarist Dimathaya Burarrwaŋa, a Bawaka man who sought permission from Elders to include it) makes it notably personal.

Home lies at the core of ‘King Stingray’, both musically and thematically. ‘Sweet Arnhem Land’ is a heartfelt ode to the Country where most of the band was born and raised, and the spiritual connection they share with its land. 

Cut live to tape, (the album is) driven by the band’s DIY spirit and youthful energy, with tight performances and sharp songwriting. It destroys the idea that a fun album can’t also feel powerful, and we can’t wait to see how King Stingray continue to build on what they establish with it in the years to come.

Source: NME

Alexander Flood - The Space Between

The Space Between

by Alexander Flood

Released 28 January 2022

Stretchmusic / Ropeadope

*****

Alexander Flood is one of Australia’s most creative and versatile young drummers and percussionists, presenting a strong and progressive voice on his instrument. Developing and refining his own unique sound and style on the kit has been an important focus throughout his 17 years performing and studying music.
Alex has honed his unique sound, and passion for world music and creative improvisation to blend influences and sonic palettes from diverse cultures around the globe. Combined with his strong compositional style and interest in production, this experience has allowed him to deliver a unique, creative, and rich tapestry of sound and improvisation.
Holding a Bachelor's degree in Music Performance and graduating top of his year in 2017, he has been the recipient of many prestigious awards including Australia's Best Up And Coming Drummer in both 2012 and 2016, The John ‘Slick’ Osborne Scholarship in 2017 and the Helpmann Academy Jazz Award for Top Overall Graduate in 2018, among many others. 
Flood has performed with renowned artists including Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Marquis Hill, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, West Australian Symphony Orchestra, amongst many others. In 2019, Alexander joined the Australian performance company Gravity & Others Myths on a 12-month global tour, which saw him perform in 20+ countries. 
In 2019 Flood signed with 6x GRAMMY® nominee Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah’s record label Stretch Music (via Ropeadope Records), to release his debut album “HEARTBEAT” in June 2020. The album was greatly received by both critics and the public, landing the front page of iTunes USA under New and Noteworthy in June 2019. 
Flood’s sophomore album “The Space Between”, (is) a hard-hitting, genre-defying conglomerate of creative composition and collaboration. The music aims to expand and diversify our listening experiences, opening our ears to an immersive ecosystem of rhythms, instruments, and sounds spanning many different cultures across the globe, from North and West Africa to India, The Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

Leaning on dance music, tranced rhythms, improvisation, urban textures, contemporary production and collaboration, The Space Between features an all-star lineup of international artists including 6x GRAMMY nominee Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Vivian Sessoms, Nelson Dialect, and Zayn Mohammed amongst others.
 

Source: Alexander Flood Music

Jake Blount - The New Faith

The New Faith

by Jake Blount

Released 23 September 2022

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings

*****

The New Faith, a follow-up to the musician, scholar and activist Jake Blount’s 2020’s breakthrough debut, Spider Tales, is an impressive and timely recording – effortlessly and evocatively, re-interpreting traditional songs with a keen ear for more contemporary voices and sounds. At its heart is a consideration of the impact of climate change, spirituality and race. In many ways, The New Faith is a concept album set in a post-climate catastrophic world, focusing on an island in Maine and the experiences of an imagined religious ceremony by Black refugees.

The New Faith is released as part of Smithsonian Folkways’ African American Legacy series – co-conceived with and supported by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. It’s a sublime collaboration. Originally founded in 1948 by Moses Ashes and acquired by the Smithsonian in 1987, the non-profit record label of the Smithsonian Institution’s mission is to “document music, spoken word, instruction and sounds from around the world”. The label’s concentration, and support, of traditional artists, alongside a commitment to cultural diversity and education, ensure a freedom that sets them apart from many other labels. In this respect, as Blount notes, The New Faith:

“… envisions Black American religious music in a future devastated by warfare and anthropogenic climate change. The record is based on field recordings of Black religious services from the early-to-mid 20th century, but it is composed entirely of new arrangements and subtle rewrites of traditional Black folk songs. To make an informed prediction, I referenced a more diverse cross-section of the African Diaspora’s music than I ever have before. This album incorporates sounds from Belize, Georgia, Jamaica, Texas, Mississippi, New York and beyond.”

Produced by Blount and collaborator Brian Slattery, The New Faith was recorded mainly in Blount’s home in Providence, RI. with Blount taking the lead on vocals, fiddle, banjo, bass, percussion and strings and Slattery on percussion, guitar and strings. Blount also enlisted an impressive guest list with a wide range of artists from the worlds of rap and country, including the aforementioned Demeanor, country stars D’orjay: The Singing Shaman and Rissi Palmer, roots artist Samuel James, Kaïa Kater on vocals, harpist Lizzie No, bassist Mali Obomsawin, multi-instrumentalist Brandi Pace, and the banjo/uke of Lillian Werbin. It’s an intoxicating blend of influences.

Whilst the album naturally has anger, grief and trauma at its root (the history of slavery, Jim Crow, police brutality, and the impact of Covid-19 on the Black community are all subtly touched upon), it is also a hopeful, spiritual recording, with Blount’s reverence for old time songs clear:

“I have long felt a powerful draw to the old spirituals passed down in my community. I am an unlikely devotee; I only rarely attended church as a child, declared myself an atheist at the tender age of eight and developed a strong antipathy toward Christianity when I began to understand my queerness. Nonetheless, spirituals are the songs I bring to communal singing events. They are the songs I teach. In moments of homesickness, sorrow and fear, they are the songs I turn to for solace.”

The past, present, and future are intricately linked in The New Faith; Blount selects songs that have associations to the past, lined to such figures as blues stalwarts Skip James (‘They Are Waiting For Me’) and Blind Willie McTell (‘Just as Well to Get Ready, You Got to Die’), civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer (‘City Called Heaven’), and trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe (‘Didn’t It Rain’), ensures familiarity for listeners interested in historic song but with a dynamic and thorough knowledge of modern sounds – hip-hop, for example, is regularly included in the mix.

Despite the seriousness of the subject matter and the potential hopelessness of the narrative, The New Faith is an album rich with themes of hope, resilience and salvation. With a keen sense of tradition, Blount has cleverly delivered a bold, thought-provoking and judicious album, but one which is also a thoroughly, staggeringly thrilling listen. Glorious.

Source: Folk Rsdio (UK)

Miiesha - Smoke & Mirrors

Smoke & Mirrors

by Miiesha

Released 3 June 2022

Miiesha Young

*****

'Smoke & Mirrors', the second album from rising artist Miiesha, from the Aboriginal community of Woorabinda, Queensland, follows her award-winning debut 'Nyaaringu' released in 2020.

The new album includes songs from her 5-track November 2021 EP 'Smoke',  which included the Nima-winning single 'Damaged', the funky Queensland Music award-winning 'Made for Silence' and the sublime 'Price I Paid' - songs that wrestle with love and forgiveness amid a “broken” mother-daughter relationship.

“Smoke & Mirrors' represents two chapters of my life and the growth between those chapters,” Miiesha explains. “I don’t feel so much hate or resentment because I understand where my pain is coming from.

The 'Mirrors’ half of the album opens with 'Everything', which Miiesha describes as a “fight song” with a singular message: “Just don’t give up.” In Everything, she sings: “My mind floods like / I’ve been drowning this whole time / Too late to learn to swim.” Miiesha hopes to use her platform to “open doors” for other young artists in Woorabinda, a community she says is brimming with creativity.

“I never wanted the spotlight because I didn’t want to have to be brave; I didn’t want to have to be strong,” she says. “I thought I was the worst person to be a role model. And now I’ve come to accept that this is who I am, this is what I’ve been given, and I have to bring these people up because I think it’s so important. I saw the bigger picture, you know?”

Source: The Guardian

Emma Volard - Deity

Deity

by Emma Volard

Released 8 July 2022

The Operatives Records

*****

Emma Volard is one of Narrm’s (Melbourne's) most enigmatic and staunchly authentic acts. Her music is entrenched in lavish harmonies, broken-beats and gut-wrenching lyricism, and has garnered attention from national and international tastemakers alike.

Volard's debut album, Deity is a record of tensions: caught in the push-pull between light and shade, joy and sorrow, chaos and order, it’s an album that draws power from the divine messiness of the human experience. Synthesising acid jazz with modern R&B, dub with pop, and future soul with old-fashioned grooves, it’s a statement of profound artistic intent for Emma: a 12-part journey of self-expression and hard-won self-determination that combines the classic and the cutting edge to build something sleek and scintillatingly new. “This album is a revolt against oppressors, particularly those in the music industry — an f-you to anyone who tries to tear us down,” she says. Cathartic, vulnerable, and deeply, defiantly empowered, it’s a definitive document of feminist soul: a call for listeners to “discard the judgement of others, and embrace their bodies, their minds, and their souls.”

This record was created on the stolen land of the Bunorong people of the Kulin Nation. We'd like to pay our respects to elders both past, present and emerging, and to acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded. It's a privilege to be able to live, create and flourish on this country. Always was, always will be, aboriginal land.
 

Source: Bandcamp

Surprise Chef - Education & Recreation

Education & Recreation

by Surprise Chef

Released 14 October 2022

Big Crown Records

*****

Surprise Chef’s music is based on evoking mood; their vivid arrangements utilize time and space to build soundscapes that invite the listener into their world. The quintet’s distinct sound pulls from 70s film scores, the funkier side of jazz, and the samples that form the foundation of hip hop. They push the boundaries of instrumental soul and funk with their own approach honed by countless hours in the studio, studying the masters, and perhaps most importantly, the “tyranny of distance” that dictates a unique perspective to their music.

Hailing from just outside of Melbourne, Australia their first two albums, All News Is Good News and Daylight Savings amassed a die-hard fanbase and brought their sound from their home studio to every corner of the globe.

The band is now signed to Big Crown Records, joining a lineage of contemporary and classic sounds that have influenced Surprise Chef’s music since their formation in 2017.

Surprise Chef is Lachlan Stuckey on guitar, Jethro Curtin on keys, Carl Lindeberg on bass, Andrew Congues on drums, and Hudson Whitlock—the latest member who does it all from percussion to composing to producing. Their self proclaimed "moody shades of instrumental jazz-funk" have a bit of everything: punchy drums, infectious keys, rhythm guitar you might hear on a Studio One record, and flute lines that could be from a Blue Note session. But when you step back and take in the entirety of their sound and approach, you'll hear and see a group greater than the sum of its parts.

In many ways Surprise Chef embodies the idiom "the benefits of limits." They were limited in that there weren't many people making or talking about instrumental jazz/soul/funk in Southeast Australia, let alone putting out records. This left them to develop their sound and approach in a kind of creative isolation where a small circle of friends and like-minded musicians fed off each other. "Being in Australia, being so far away, we only get glimpses and glances of this music’s origins," Stuckey says. "But hearing a label like Big Crown was one of the first times we realized you could make fresh, new soul music that wasn't super retro or just nostalgic."

This approach is on full display throughout their new album Education & Recreation. Tracks like “Velodrome” pair chunky drums with an earworm synth line that has all the making of something you would find on an Ultimate Breaks & Beats compilation while numbers like “Iconoclasts” show their knack for tasteful use of space. From the crushing intro of “Suburban Breeze” to the floaty mellow bop of “Spring’s Theme” Surprise Chef has weaved together an album that takes you through peaks and valleys of emotion and provides a vivid soundtrack that will pull you deeper into your imagination. There is a beauty in the vast space for interpretation of instrumental music and they are adding a modern classic to the canon with this new album. Turn on the record and enjoy the ride, wherever it may take you. 
credits
 

Source: Bandcamp

Harvey Sutherland - Boy

Boy

by Harvey Sutherland

Released 29 April 2022

Clarity Recordings

****-

Take the vinyl of Boy, the debut album by Harvey Sutherland, flip it over, and on the back sleeve, you’ll find a diagram – an elaborate collection of graphs, vectors and philosophical theory that dissects the very nature of what it means to be funky. “It’s not that the player plays funk; it’s that the player is played by funk,” reads one cryptic line. “Even the most unfunky moment can be funky,” goes another. Trace the line of obsession through the unfunky valley and eventually, you end up at a place: ‘neurotic funk’
“I wanted it to come across kind of pseudo-academic – you know, psychobabble,” grins Mike Katz. A producer and bandleader from Melbourne, Australia, Katz has been releasing music under the name Harvey Sutherland since 2013. The concept of neurotic funk came out of a chat he had with his friend Sam, a Lacanian scholar and meme lord. Yes, it’s meant tongue-in-cheek. But there’s the germ of something serious in there too, something Katz addresses further in Boy’s naggingly groovy lead single "Jouissance”. “I learned the word from my therapist – there’s no easy English translation, but it’s the itch that demands scratching, a masochistic desire.” The term seemed to speak to Katz’s musical process – a congenital perfectionist and overthinker doing his utmost to get louche and loose. For me it represents an obsessional energy, a frustration in finding the funk,” he laughs. “It’s about acknowledging my shortcomings along the way.”
Shortcomings? Don’t worry, that’s just the neurosis talking. Drop the needle on Boy and find yourself transported to a hypermodern take on funk music. Recorded between London, Los Angeles and Katz’s own Swimming Pool studios with a host of hotshot Melbourne session musicians and a string of guests, tracks like “Age Of Acceleration” and “Michael Was Right About You” take the base elements of funk and fire them through a prism of influences – the hyper-produced studio pop of Todd Rundgren, the lush synth groove of New York boogie and the harsh snap of coldwave. 

Source: Bandcamp

Marlon Williams - My Boy.jpg

My Boy

by Marlon Williams

Released 9 September 2022

Virgin Music

****-

On My Boy, Marlon Williams has a little more pep in his step than on previous outings. It may not be the equivalent of an ANOHNI going disco revelation, but to his credit, he got the voice right. Those two albums are still very different, but what Williams does manage to capture, more than on any other album he’s released, is jubilance. As a New Zealander, Williams has always had more than a surprisingly adept knack for country music, and when flexing his baritone in his cavernous and minimalist production, he was able to elicit his own brand of isolated mysticism. That croon is still evident on his newest album, but what’s new is his seemingly ineffable swagger.

Even on a track like “Princes Walk”, which attempts to extricate his retro sheen in favor of something more melancholic, Williams can’t help from injecting it with a celestial atmosphere that brings it closer to someone like Dent May than to any of his previous work. Even the similarly mellow “Trips” has a reverence that feels both regal and biting in a way he rarely divulges. Williams expertly marries the disparate styles with an overarching, rich production, and that binds the light, effortless pop tracks to the headier numbers while remaining true to himself as the mouthpiece. The only real misstep comes on “Morning Crystals”, where Williams, in his quest for to provide himself with more “fun” songs to play on stage, kneecaps some stellar instrumentation and inspired verses, with a chorus so inane and silly it threatens to torpedo the rest of the album.

Instead, Williams smartly bookends the track with a couple more cerebral cuts and focuses the audience’s attention on the album as a whole. In that respect, My Boy is a success, an album that rebrands its creator in a genuinely bold new way, something that is attempted often but is rarely this effective. It may not be his strongest outing, but it’s easily his most rousing.

Source: Glide Magazine

Lance Ferguson - Love Groove Spectrum, Vol. 2

Rare Groove Spectrum, Vol. 2

by Lance Ferguson

Released 28 January 2022

Freestyle Records

****-

Covering pieces by artists ranging from Carly Simon through to Mongo Santamaria via Marcos Valle and Pat Metheny - and following the championing of Rare Groove Spectrum Vol. 1​ by the likes of Gilles Peterson, Craig Charles, Jazz FM and more - this second volume of Lance Ferguson's Rare Groove Spectrum is sure to hit the sweet spot.

Rare Groove Spectrum Vol. 2 is another solid collection of re-works and re-imaginings taking in a broad range of classic tracks, traversing jazz funk rarities, balearic digs, latin groovers and more. Backed by a stellar group of Melbourne musicians including members of The Bamboos & Menagerie, Lance continues the tradition of creating "live re-edits" demonstrated on the initial volume - all pulled off with an inimitable style and playfulness, though always with an obvious love for the foundations.
As Lance says: "Some of these versions can almost be looked at as DJ re-edits, sometimes we're extending what may be a really short track into something longer, or teasing out the elements in a song that really make it work on a dance-floor. It's essentially what someone does with a club re-edit, except we went the extra step and re-recorded the whole thing with a live band"

Source: Bandcamp

Catrin Finch, Seckou Keitz - Echo

Echo

by Catrin Finch, Seckou Keitz

Released 27 May 2022

bendigedig

*****

As with Welsh-Senegalese harp and kora duo Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita‘s previous albums, (2013's Claychau Dibon and  2018's Soar), a strong positive message runs through Echo, the third part of their trilogy.

The Osprey and its reintroduction to Wales and migration to West Africa (symbolising the relationship between the two musicians) was the star of Soar, whereas the underlying theme running through Echo takes this sense of connection and relationship and evolves it into one seamless creative whole.

Echo is another significant leap forward for these two spellbinding musicians, and it’s an appropriate finale to a remarkable trilogy. In a way, Jula Kuta is a musical demonstration of how far both musicians have come, it being a piece Seckou has been sitting on for some time, with the intention of it showcasing the range of a double-necked kora he created in 2007. Centred around the ludicrously rich sound and the huge challenge of playing a chromatic scale from D-flat to A on both harp and kora, the song is actually quite a modest piece, displaying quiet virtuosity. It’s probably the most spacious and deliberately paced track on here, also occupying the most time, at well over eight minutes. Both musicians have fun at points by producing delightfully sharp arpeggios, but for the most part, Catrin and Seckou are careful to allow the music to breathe. It works perfectly with songs like Dual Rising, which more dramatically demonstrates the range and ability of both players. Here, subtlety is as key a skill as speed, and the music achieves a sense of quiet satisfaction as the two instruments fade out. It brings to a close another masterpiece; a beautiful album from two artists operating at the height of their powers

Source: Folk Radio UK

Mildlife - Live From South Channel Island

Live From South Channel Island

by Mildlife

Released 29 April 2022

Mildlife / [PIAS] Australia

*****

South Channel Island, also known as South Channel Fort, is a 0.7 ha artificial island in southern Port Phillip, Victoria, Australia, 6 km north-east of the town of Sorrento. It was part of a network of fortifications protecting the narrow entrance to Port Phillip.

It is 122 m long, 76 m wide, and is 6.4 m above sea-level, and was built on a shoal, close to the main shipping channel of the bay, with 14,000 tonnes of bluestone boulders, concrete and sand. It was constructed during the 1880s as part of a defensive strategy to protect and control access by sea to Port Phillip and the cities of Melbourne and Geelong. Its principal purpose was to illuminate the main shipping channel at night, and to explode mines under attacking ships which had breached the defences at Port Phillip Heads. The fort still contains remnants of its original military equipment, including disappearing guns

On March 10th, 2021, Mildlife travelled by boat to South Channel Island to perform a live concert. This was filmed and recorded resulting in the motion picture Mildlife Live at South Channel Island and the 2 disc set you see here.

The artificial Island hosts a long abandoned 19th century fort, a labyrinth of underground concrete tunnels and an important breeding ground for the white-faced storm-petrel. Along with Mildlife, other visitors to the island include Abalone poachers, fairy penguins, black-faced cormorants and fur seals.

Before the island existed, the Boonwurrung people of the Greater Kulin Nation have lived on the land and waterways this performance was held on. Mildlife pays respect to their elders past, present and emerging and recognise that sovereignty has never been ceded.
credits
Mildlife are Adam Halliwell, Kevin McDowell, Jim Rindfleish & Tom Shanahan
Percussion by Craig Shanahan
 

Source: Bandcamp and Wikipedia

Cumbiamuffin - Cumbiamuffin

Cumbiamuffin

by Cumbiamuffin

Released 12 July 2022

Peace & Rhythm

*****

Sydney-siders and Australians at large are vastly embracing Latino culture whether it’s opening up shops and cafes with South American food or live music venues embracing the rich musical heritage of Latin America. Colombian culture in particular has a rich history of music and dance; it is a culture that has incorporated music from all around the world, from contemporary Caribbean rhythms like Ragga and Reggae to indigenous music, hip-hop and jazz -  mixing all these genres with its own traditional styles into a colorful creation of beats and influences that highly simulates the senses.

Colombia’s most renowned style of music is Cumbia which is rooted in the indigenous music of the country but easily adaptable as other musical formats, something one of Jazz’s greatest composers Charles Mingus recognized when he visited Colombia and was captivated by the music’s raw energy and its roots in the African diaspora.

Cumbia has no borders, it is universally social and embraces all walks of life.

Sydney band Cumbiamuffin is a very creative14-piece band of talented Australian and Colombian musicians fronted by Colombian singer Angela Rosero and like Mingus’ 1977 album, but in much more contemporary style, their aim is to give Australian audiences a luscious taste of Cumbia and Jazz fusion.
Cumbiamuffin are a musical force bringing Colombian folk and authentically singing only in Spanish but for an English speaking audience.  The stories of their music lie within the compositions themselves as they reveal the history of a rich music that has travelled not only across Latin America but also all over the world including Australia where a proud Latino colony resides.

 “This is music to move your hips to” said Rosero and it certainly did get the audience up of their chairs and onto the dance floor shaking their hips without hesitation. The crowd was a mix of young and old, proving it’s music that people of all ages and nationalities can enjoy.

Much like Jazz, Cumbia music can also lend itself to improvisation and the musicians on stage were able to maintain the rhythm whilst jamming with their song structures, stretching the time out and improvising fast rhythms and funky grooves. By this stage the dancefloor was packed, couples and friends were partnering up to dance and it became more of a carnival atmosphere than a sitting down on a confortable couch and drinking a fancy cocktail type event. Of course there was a big call out for an encore and 

Source: Jazz Australia

Cecile McLorin Salvant - Ghost Song

Ghost Song

by Cecile McLorin Salvant

Released 4 March 2022

Nonesuch Records

****-

On her first album for Nonesuch Records, vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant continues to push her sound beyond the straight-ahead jazz that has earned her accolades. Though known for her Ella Fitzgerald-esque skill at interpreting songbook standards and French chanson, Salvant has proven herself a literate and nuanced songwriter in her own right. She brings all of these aspects together yet again on Ghost Song, this time adding in more contemporary cover tunes and other folk traditions she hadn't yet explored. As with some of her past work, there is also a deeply personal feeling to the album, as it arrives in the wake of the death of both her grandmother and longtime drummer Lawrence Leathers, the latter of whom was tragically killed during a 2019 domestic dispute. A sense of loss permeates Ghost Song, even as Salvant finds more unexpected and transcendent avenues to express her feelings. Bookending the album are two songs sung in the Irish unaccompanied vocal style sean-nós, the first of which leads into a sublime interpretation of Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights." It's a bold choice, evoking the iconic genre-crossing work of Joni Mitchell while remaining purely Salvant.

From there, she leaps into a wildly effusive take on the Wizard of Oz song "Optimistic Voices," contrasting a swinging banjo groove with an impressionistic flute and piano accents — ultimately transmogrifying the song into a dreamy, slow-jam version of Gregory Porter's "No Love Dying."

Equally potent covers follow, including a deeply romantic take on Sting's "Until" replete with a vibrant Brazilian-influenced instrumental section featuring a flowing solo's from flutist Alexa Tarantino and pianist Sullivan Fortner. There's also an ambitious arrangement of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's ThreePenny Opera song "The World Is Mean" that showcases Salvant's Olympian knack for singing with a hushed intimacy one second and widescreen theatricality the next.

As impressive as Salvant's finely curated cover songs are, perhaps more remarkable are her original compositions, which move from the rootsy, sun-dappled folk of "Thunderclouds" to the poetic ballad "Moon Song," the latter of which evokes the dusky warmth of Sarah Vaughan's classic work.

Yet more archly experimental is "I Lost My Mind," which starts as a piano duo before Salvant and Sullivan leap into a circular Steve Reich-ian pipe organ soundscape.

That Salvant (who also paints) transforms a deeply yearning letter from photographer Alfred Stieglitz to his then paramour and muse, painter Georgia O’Keeffe, into the poignant "Dead Poplar" speaks to the broad scope of her influences.

Source: AllMusic (Matt Collar)

Beth Orton - Weather Alive

Weather Alive

by Beth Orton

Released 23 September 2022

Partisan Records

*****

Beth Orton has led a singular career. An artist who has skirted on the fringes of the mainstream – let’s not forget how big 1996’s ‘Trailer Park’ and 1999’s ‘Central Reservation’ truly were – she’s also been unafraid to take life at her own pace. ‘Weather Alive’ is the songwriter’s first LP in six years, only her second since 2012, and it’s the work of a glorious talent allowed to move unfettered, unimpeded by obstruction or obstacle; refulgent, beatific, and inspired, it’s a record that ranks among her best, both in intent and execution.
Self-produced, ‘Weather Alive’ is a gorgeous song cycle, a record that feels thoroughly confident in its own skin. Opening with the title track, there’s the sense of a spirit feeling its way through the arrangement, gradually asserting itself.

Then comes the heavenly ‘Friday Night’, all opulent sound and Beth Orton’s instinctive, soulful, lived-in vocal.

In turn ‘Fractals’ feels more pensive, yet nonetheless ornate, before the songwriter allows her excellent group of musicians to stretch their legs a little on the jazz-tinged ‘Haunted Satellite’, a performance that recalls those mid 70s Joni Mitchell LPs.
‘Forever Young’ allows the barriers of verse and chorus to deserve, a free-flowing exhibition of poise and atmosphere.

‘Lonely’ is more structured, its ebb and flow held together by that bruisingly pretty piano line, the breathy saxophone supplying the perfect counterpoint.

‘Arms Around A Memory’ is rooted in the itchy percussive appeal, recalling Tom Waits with its streak of inventiveness.

Closing with ‘Unwritten’, the album’s tightly wound structure practically begs to be replayed – succinct yet endlessly suggestive, its evocative soundscapes seem to linger on the verge of definition, shape-shifting melodies that rise like wisps of smoke before suddenly disappearing, only to dissipate into the sub-conscious mind. Beautifully accomplished, ‘Weather Alive’ stands as an imposing career-high by a fine, fine songwriter.

Source: ClashMusic

Youn Sun Nuh - Waking World

Waking World

by Youn Sun Nah

Released 21 January 2022

Nplug Inc.

*****

Youn Sun Nah is a Korean jazz vocalist with a large following in France. Born in Seoul, she was raised by musical parents and began her career as a member of the Korean Symphony Orchestra. Nah eventually left home in 1995 and moved to Paris, where she studied jazz and French chanson at the CIM Jazz School, one of the oldest jazz institutions in Europe. Although relatively new to the genre, Nah excelled at jazz, which she mixed with a healthy dose of Asian folk and avant-garde pop. Backed by her own band, she began climbing the French jazz charts with a series of quirky, elegant albums, including her 2009 debut for Act, Voyage. Her success was initially limited to France and Korea, where Nah concentrated the bulk of her touring, but 2010's Same Girl helped spread her music to the rest of Europe, with some publications heralding her as the next Melody Gardot. Voyage followed a year later on Vitamin Entertainment, but she returned to Act for 2013's Lento; accompanied by guitarist Ulf Wakenius, bassist Lars Danielsson, and percussionist Xavier Desandre Navarre. Both Same Girl and Lento went Gold in Germany and France, thanks in no small part to her near-constant touring. The latter album won the Korean Music Award in her home country and she appeared at the closing ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics. The following year,

She Moves On
The National Theatre of Korea appointed her artistic director of the 2015 edition of the Korean traditional Music Festival Yeowoorak. In its aftermath she undertook a brief tour before heading back into the studio.

In May of 2017, She Moves On was issued by Act. Produced by Jamie Saft (he also played keyboards), the set included tunes written specifically for her by Jamie and Vanessa Saft, an original, and covers of traditional folk and pop songs songs by Fairport Convention, Lou Reed, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Noel Paul Stookey, and Johnny Mercer. Sun Nah was accompanied not only by Saft, but guitarist Marc Ribot, bassist Dan Rieser, and a string quartet. Sun Nah followed the recording with a two-year tour.

Her 2019 album "Immersion" followed a similar template, with a six originals and seven covers of songs by George Harrison, Dozier/Holland/Holland, Michel Legrand, Marvin Gaye, Johnny Cash, Isaac Albeniz and Leonard Cohen.

And so, her new album Waking World is her first to feature a full list of original songs. For Youn Sun Nah writing was a way to find light in dark times, a way to continue her growth as an artist, and the result is 11 haunting compositions that make up her eleventh studio album. Sometimes introspective, sometimes feverish, sometimes quite sparse, Waking World is a complex, long-exposure self-portrait - with a lot of light and a lot of shadow. Her original compositions alternate between levity and painful insight, bearing her signature mix of pop sensibility, folk intimacy, and innovative jazz instrumentation. "This album is both an incredible pleasure and a tremendous challenge," concludes Youn Sun Nah, who continues to push herself creatively and sonically more than 25 years into her esteemed career. Waking World is the closest she has ever come to her true self on record.

Source: AllMusic and Amazon

Yana - Solace

Solace

by Yana

Released 1 April 2022

YANA

****-

YANA is a violinist and composer based in Gdansk, Poland.
As a classicaly trained violinist, during the studies, YANA has started to write songs, but especially instrumental pieces.
Her music is a merger of melancholy, space and simplicity which appears in the sounds of piano, strings and subtle electronics.

Source: Bandcamp

Melody Gardot, Philippe Powell - Entre eux deux

Entre eux deux

by Melody Gardot, Philippe Powell

Released 20 May 2022

Decca

*****

Vocalist Melody Gardot is joined by French-Brazilian composer and pianist Philippe Powell for her sixth studio album Entre eux deux.

This is Gardot’s first duo album, and the first time she has invited someone else to take her usual place on the piano.

Entre eux deux takes a minimalist approach to its 10-song track listing, utilizing a sparse sonic palette comprising only Gardot’s vocals and Powell’s piano. It’s described as a meticulously crafted, minimalistic album showcasing Gardot’s vocal ability and Powell’s emotive piano style, coming together like a deep conversation between two longtime friends.

“If I had to sum up the record in a few words, I’d say this record is a dance between two people who love and value the same things: deep poetry and solid melodies,” explains Gardot. “The title Entre eux deux (loosely translated as “between us two”) stands true — it is a peek into the world of two artists who just really dig each other … we hope you dig it, too.”

The pair have already shared a music video for the intimate, sensual single This Foolish Heart Could Love You, directed by Beki Mari and curated in partnership with the Musée Rodin in Paris. You can watch it below.

The conception of Entre eux deux was quite brief as the pair challenged themselves to create on a very tight schedule. As they came together for only two weeks, Gardot and Powell spent all hours of the day writing, sharing and developing melodies, motifs and lyrics.

Although all of the songs on the album are original compositions, the duo makes sure to pay homage to the past. Both artists carry forward the Franco-Brazilian torch that was lit long ago by celebrated artists such as Pierre Barouh, Vinicius de Moraes and Philippe Powell’s father, the guitarist and composer Baden Powell.

“This record is the most wonderful gift a pianist-composer could ever dream of,” Powell adds. “To write and perform in duo with one of the great artists of our time is the greatest musical experience I have ever had. I am profoundly grateful to Melody, for her love, her trust, her guidance, for bringing out the best within me, and for tireless efforts, and countless hours of hard work to produce this beautiful record.”

Source: JazzFM

Florist - Florist

Florist

by Florist

Released 29 July 2022

Double Double Whammy

****-

In 2018, Emily Sprague was newly based in Los Angeles, far from bandmates, when she recorded Florist's third album, the grieving Emily Alone. By the time it was eventually released in the middle of 2019, Sprague had moved back to New York, reunited with bandmates Jonnie Baker, Rick Spataro, and Felix Walworth, and rented a house in the Hudson Valley to record Florist's next endeavor. Tracked mostly on the property's screened-in front porch, the resulting Florist LP is an intimate, communal, often improvisatory, borderline environmental album that, with its ten songs and nine instrumentals, transcends form, notions of authenticity, and expectation.

Sparse and quiet throughout its nearly hour-long playing time ... with all the bandmembers credited on synths and three on guitars, it's never really obvious who is playing what here. But it doesn't seem to matter on an album so moving, immersive and mysterious, organic and otherworldly. Sprague and her bandmates hanging out on a porch upstate managed to make a record that delivers simple songs, artful sound exploration, deep emotions, and comfort all at once.

Source: AllMusic

Bria Skonberg - Nothing Never Happens

Nothing Never Happens

by Bria Skonberg

Released 1 November 2019

Bria Skonberg

*****

In what can only be considered a wide, darker turn from her five previous recordings which swayed and swung in more traditional, pre-bop, jazz settings, award-winning trumpeter-vocalist-composer Bria Skonberg takes us through the dark night of her heart and the national soul on the fraught, yet impossible-not-to-listen-to Nothing Never Happens.

Swamped as we all are by the twenty-four-hour news cycle which brings the apocalypse to our very doorsteps, and the myriad emotions that all too often empower us or paralyze us, Skonberg urges—grittily, soulfully, with a shadowy, mid-career-Lucinda-Williams swagger and growling horn—to "get off the grid" in the insistent opening track, "Blackout." Pulled and pulsed by bassist Devin Starks and drummer Darrian Douglas, the track opens into light and plunges again into the shadows, with Skonberg's warm, edgy vocal leading the way. Now on the verge of utter frustration, Skonberg revisits the lighter tinged "So Is The Day," the title track from her 2012 release on Random Act Records, with a slow-burning, shattering vocal vengeance which rips your heart out while pianist Mathis Picard and guests Jon Cowherd on Hammond B3 and Doug Wamble on guitar clear the field with a rock and roll force for the lady to take one last plunging solo.

The utterly unique and unexpected "Blackbird Fantasy" crash melds Duke Ellington and his long time trumpeter Bubber Miley (whose influence is heard all over Skonberg's own distinctive instrumental voicing) 1927 composition "Black and Tan Fantasy" with Paul McCartney's perennial "Blackbird" for a performance which would be a highlight on any other recording, if not for the two tracks that preceded it. Just as Duke brought his many players to the fore, Skonberg does the same, taking the tune into bandstand territory with Picard, Cowherd and Douglas swinging away while she solos à la Miley. The wishful and ruminative "Square One" breaks the tension with dreamy guitar, and a lyric which includes "Day is over/Work is done/Hear the echoed praises sung/Still hanging on that bottom rung/Here I am at square one."

But wait, there is more. Fully aware she has your attention and is in full control, the jazz-rocking instrumental "Villain Vanguard" features alto saxophonist Patrick Bartley Jr blowing in breakneck tandem with Skonberg. In her current frame of mind, "Bang Bang"—originally a breezy, Sonny Bono-written solo hit single for Cher in 1966—becomes a tangle of male/female relationships and the dire violence which all too often results in bloodshed and politicians offering thoughts and prayers. The concluding track, Queen's playful "I Want to Break Free" from 1984, (known far and wide for its then genre/gender-smashing cross-dressing music video) offers up a full gleam of hope as the band power grooves throughout the track's exuberant seven minutes. Skonberg has been on track to break through in a big way for over a decade now and Nothing Never Happens is deservedly her moment.

Source: All About Jazz

Jimella Rose - The Gift: Around the Way Queen

The Gift: Around the Way Queen

by Jimetta Rose

Released 28 February 2022

Low Key Resources / Street Corner Music

*****

Jimetta Rose is an artist from Los Angeles who has been putting out music for fifteen years. Her last album, The Light Bearer, came out in 2016. She is now back with a project that began in 2014, The Gift – Around The Way Queen.

The roots of the project technically go back even further than 2014, because Jimetta Rose and DJ House Shoes actually first met when they teamed up to make the track “Castles” on House Shoes’ 2012 album, Let It Go. House Shoes then sought to launch his own label, Street Corner Music, with a series of ten beat tapes from lesser known producers, which was titled The Gift. Having really liked working with Rose, House Shoes then came up with the idea that she could pick a beat from each volume and write and record to it. They soon got to work, with Rose selecting the beats that spoke to her, and she began recording her vocals in Tenacity’s apartment in Glendale. Everything was going great until it came time to mix and master the album, when they realized that a lot of these beats were dusty, lo-fi beats made by up-and-coming producers who recorded to two-track WAVs or directly to mp3 and didn’t have stems. This sent the project into limbo for some time as it got passed around from engineer to engineer, who all shrugged and said they couldn’t get it where it needed to be. Finally, House Shoes reached out to a friend back in Detroit – Mags, the in-house engineer for The Disc in Eastpointe. He had dealt with similar projects before, and before they knew it, the project had finally been resuscitated and is now out for the world to hear.

For this project, Jimetta Rose is working with beats from Nameless, Dert Beats, Ext Tuamie, T-White, Cream Of Beats, Shoes, Raj Mahal, Denmark Vessey, Drugs Beats, Joseph Leimberg and I-Ced. Yes, the beats might have been a little dusty, but because these beats are also clever, inventive, and soulful, that becomes part of their charm.

At times, she brings out a bad bitch like Betty Davis, with a nice growl to her voice, and other times she can get more avantgarde and reach back to Minnie Riperton or Roberta Flack with her arrangements. There are also a few key moments when she can let it all hang out and belt some soul, such as on “Splatter.” Whatever it is, you can be sure that Rose is keeping it interesting, soulful, and giving a hundred percent of herself to the music.

It might have taken a long time to get here, but The Gift – Around The Way Queen was well worth the wait.

Jimetta Rose is a unique talent, and she takes each of these beats to new and interesting places that will move your soul.

Source: ScratchedVinyl

Shemekia Copeland - Done Come Too Far

Done Come Too Far

by Shemekia Copeland

Released 19 August 2022

Alligator Records

*****

Since 1998, Texas blues singer Shemekia Copeland has sought to present blues as an ever-present, breathing tradition, simultaneously historic and contemporary. In addition to her compelling work as a recording and performing artist, she furthers the blues gospel each weekday as a program host on Sirius XM. Done Come Too Far is her third consecutive release to be recorded in Nashville with producer/guitarist Will Kimbrough. Each set reflects on her experiences as a Black woman, mother, wife, artist, and American citizen. Copeland doesn't consider herself to be political, but subjectively journalistic about what's happening in her country. 2018's America's Child wove blues and Americana in celebrating the contradictory nature of her country's people, along with poignant asides about racism and economic inequality. 2020's Uncivil War doubled down, using urban blues and hard rock to reflect on our obsession with firearms, conspiracy theories, and ideological conflicts. Done Come Too Far seizes the musical reins from those records, combines them with powerful contemporary blues, R&B, and Americana, with lyrics from the depths of individual and collective experience.

Opener "Too Far to Be Gone" features guest slide guitar god Sonny Landreth. Overdriven and noisy, Copeland's transcendent, muscular alto soars above this choogling tale relating the inspirations of Rosa Parks ("A small thing like a seat on the bus/Changed life for the rest of us") and Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. ("You can kill a man but not a dream"). Landreth lays down a chunky groove, adding drama and pathos in his fills and accents. The swampy "Pink Turns to Red" weds blues and rockabilly in depicting the horror of increasingly recurring mass shootings. She underscores her worry in "The Talk." A sinewy, slow, dramatic electric blues, Copeland's protagonist is, like her, a mother to a son. She is heartsick having to warn her child about threats and dangers he faces from law enforcement simply for being a Black male. "Gullah Geechee" is a banjo-driven, moaning folk-blues relating the tale of a couple torn apart by the scourge of slavery. Susan Werner's "Why Why Why" is a heart-wrenching country ballad about the end of a romantic relationship with a glorious Wurlitzer piano and slide guitar framing Copeland's vocal. She follows with the Cajun party anthem "Fried Catfish and Bibles," a zydeco stomper complete with bumping accordion. The title track features a guest duet vocal from Cedric Burnside. A harrowing slow Delta blues (a defiant companion to "Too Far to Be Gone"), it offers a strident answer to "Gullah Geechee." Ray Wylie Hubbard's "Barefoot in Heaven" is a swampy, bumping blues-rocker that unapologetically channels the righteous, social soul gospel of Mavis Staples. "The Dolls Are Sleeping" is sparse, dramatic acoustic blues about the sexual abuse of a child in first person. Copeland closes the set with her father's mean, wooly Texas-cum-Chicago blues "Nobody But You." Done Come Too Far cements the achievement of her previous two outings with steely determination, courage, and commanding, almost limitless musicality.

Source: AllMusic

Wallis Bird - Hands

Hands

by Wallis Bird

Released 27 May 2022

Mount Silver Recordings

*****

Wallis Bird’s music has been a staple in the Irish music scene since her first release Spoons in  2007. Her spirited releases have followed those who have been growing in an environment where genres have been mixing and matching such as Saint Sister and Ailbhe Reddy.

Now with Hands, Bird faces into her personal history with empathy and the energy that pushes her into legendary status. 

Bird captures how exciting trusting yourself can be and Hands is all about taking that leap. Her openhearted lyrics and earthy vocals instil a sense of pride, not only of yourself and the tribulations you’ve been through, but as an Irish person, of how far Ireland has come. On ‘What’s Wrong With Changing?’, tribal drums accompany an empowered Bird who looks back on the progressive actions of her home country. 

‘Aquarius’ and ‘Dreamwriting’ float along on childhood memories and fantastical imaginings. The warped echoing guitar and shimmering synths surround the more gentle moments in an ’80s haze. These moments bookend the uplifting chaos as if Róisín Murphy and Kate Bush were playing back to back. 

Ultimately, Hands blends fun with reflection; bombastic melodies with passionate confessions. The closing tracks ‘The Dive’ and ‘Pretty Lies’ lead into a wondrous ending that has birdsong and an electric guitar solo working hand in hand. Pushing you to groove one minute and breathe the next, Wallis Bird has crafted a multifaceted record; one that honours her roots. 

Source: Loud and Quiet

Tomberlin - i don't know who needs to hear this...

i don't know who needs to hear this...

by Tomberlin

Released 29 April 2022

Saddle Creek

*****

When songwriter Sarah Beth Tomberlin made her full-length debut as Tomberlin with the strikingly intimate and plaintive At Weddings in 2017, she did so with a minimalist color scheme consisting only of acoustic guitar, keyboards, light strings, and the liberal use of haunting echo.

Producer Owen Pallett was her sole collaborator on the album.

Arriving five years later, i don't know who needs to hear this... is somehow - with a couple notable exceptions - more elemental and spacious despite employing a far broader selection of instruments and over a half-dozen contributors, among them producer/engineer Phil Weinrobe (Adrianne Lenker, Kings of Convenience), Cass McCombs, Stuart Bogie, and Múm's Gyða Valtýsdóttir.

Here, every sound makes an impression. The album's orchestral timbral palette is introduced in the opening seconds of "easy," which begins with muted bass drum and hi-hat alongside sustained, straight-toned low notes from what sounds like double bass and bass clarinet in unison. A single reverberating piano note joins in before the singer enters with half-sung, half-spoken lines that alternate with measures of silence over the basal drum rhythm. As the song progresses, it adds quiet, atmospheric electronics, full piano chords, and artful, dissonant piano runs that contribute to the record's occasional classical reference points. "Born Again Runner" and "Tap" consist of more-structured folksong, although "Tap" in particular has ghostly layered vocals, electric guitar, shaker-type percussion, and horns that, in turn, seem to appear out of nowhere and just as quickly dissipate. Elsewhere, saxophone is a recurring presence, winding between piano and strummed acoustic guitar on "collect caller" and providing counterpoint to vocals on the title track. This type of attentive listening is demanded throughout the first two-thirds of idkwntht, before the songwriter delivers two fuzzy rockers, "stoned" and "happy accident," that nonetheless continue to play with texture, including the crashing, metallic drum tones and brassy guitar effects on "stoned." Tomberlin abruptly quiets things down again with the bird-chirping intro to penultimate track "possessed," which sets the stage for a profound, self-referential title track that leaves listeners with advice including "I don't know who needs to hear this/Sometimes it's good to sing your feelings/Especially when you don't know the next line or how it goes." She's joined on that song by Told Slant's Felix Walworth, who echoes her sentiments over gently rocking, campfire-style guitar and spontaneous-sounding one-or-two-finger piano (and saxophone).

Older, wiser, and more ambitious than on her collegiate debut, Tomberlin finds a musical artistry on i don't know who needs to hear this... that rises to the level of her lyrical perceptiveness.

Source: AllMusic

Jessie Buckley & Bernard Butler - For All Our Days that Tear the Heart

For All Our Days that Tear the Heart

by Jessie Buckley & Bernard Butler

Released 17 June 2022

Universal Music

*****

Is pain the most valuable of all feelings? This is a question that underpins Jessie Buckley and Bernard Butler’s collaboration. Both artists have come to this record with singular histories - Buckley as an Oscar-nominated actor, and Butler, formerly of Suede, then a solo star - yet there is a cogent sensibility.

Part of this collaboration is down to Butler’s manager, who introduced the pair, feeling that there might be a sympathy. It is perhaps to be found in the Irish connection, but also a shared love of artists from Nina Simone to Pentangle to Talk Talk.

They have previously spoken of wanting people to discover the record “as if they have tripped across a box of photographs in the back of their closet”, and there is certainly something mysterious and fundamental at work.

The Eagle and the Dove opens with fierce intention, a work that seems to dance on a kind of musical tension, with Buckley’s impressive vocal sweeping and soaring, interrogating darkly lit corners, and Butler’s playing at once complex and understated. The album folds in so many elements — elevated folk, classical, blues and rock — and there are lovely moments everywhere. From the lonely-sounding trumpet and piano melody in For All Our Days That Tear the Heart that frames Buckley’s assertion that “we want to be things we’re not”, it is all orchestral intimacy.

The sea-shanty folk of 20 Years A-Growing (inspired by Maurice O’Sullivan’s 1933 memoir) mirrors the elegant sadness of Shallow the Water, and The beautiful Seven Red Rose Tattoos is built upon a sense of contradiction, where “sunbathing in the rain” is posited as a natural state of affairs.

Contradiction is everywhere, going back to that central question about the value of pain. How do we know if it has been worth it? Babylon Days tries to answer, as Buckley’s supple voice flies optimistically around Butler’s evocative guitar, and the softness of the reedy fiddle on Footnotes on the Map complements its strident male choir.

A bluesy sway adorns We’ve Run the Distance and I Cried Your Tears, and Beautiful Regret shows the range of Buckley’s voice, where she is reminiscent of Karen Carpenter, or on We Haven’t Spoken About the Weather, where perhaps Feist fronts Kings of Convenience.

But the doleful vocal intelligence is all her own.

Catch the Dust is an affectingly wheezing prayer to “catch the dust of a memory from a photograph”, that dust evocative of a time once-lived, that life is a precious, fleeting gift, and even amid pain, still remains compelling.

Source: Irish Times

Regina Spektor - Home, Before and After

Home, Before and After

by Regina Spektor

Released 24 June  2022

Sire Records

*****

On her previous album, 2016's Remember Us to Life, Regina Spektor and her piano basked in arrangements with a full orchestra on select tracks. For her eighth studio album, Home, before and after, she animates ten unpredictable tracks with a combination of elegant piano accompaniment, overtly playful pop, and a return to dramatic symphonic fare, often within the same song. The set list is tied together by equally audacious lyrics that incorporate mysticism, rhetorical devices, and allegory to convey frustration with men, continual heartache, and the state of the world, but especially with being left behind. She sets the stages stylistically and thematically with "Becoming All Alone," which recounts an encounter with God near the corner Denny's restaurant. After He suggests they grab a beer (on Him), she has the opportunity to ask, "Why doesn't it get better with time?" over wistful piano and strings. An off-center drums-and-bass groove joins in as she lists further grievances leading into a Walter Murphy-type orchestral dance break. She ultimately doesn't get any answers, ending the song on a repeated "I'm becoming all alone again/Stay, stay, stay." Elsewhere, she bravely takes on men -- or at least one man -- with the sardonic "One Man's Prayer." Over a modest, skittering pop, Spektor portrays a straight man who is simply looking for love and companionship. In the process, however, his monologue shifts from "I just want some girl to love me back" to "I just want some girl beneath my feet/To tell me I'm her king/And to beg me for a ring" -- and that's just for starters. Also lyrically biting, "What Might Have Been" takes the form of a lyrical comedic theater piece with driving piano and pulsing bass drum spurring Spektor's extensive list of things that go together (sickness and flowers, bombing and shelters, loving and hurting, lies and believing, and the hilarious "business and crying"). Parts retro-rock and earnest orchestral ballad, "Loveology" also addresses love with cynicism, ending with "Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me-ology." Along the way are such offerings as "Up the Mountain" -- improbably parts dramatic reading, hip-hop, dance track, and film score -- the graceful "Raindrops," the poignant and mystical "Coin" ("I gave a coin to a shaman....I gave a coin to a president"), and the epic, nearly nine-minute "Spacetime Fairytale" ("I know there's no such thing as time/I know there's no such thing as mine"). Odd, fun, smart, and fearless throughout, Home, before and after closes on the tender "Through a Door," which explains the concept of home as a place "where the light's on no matter how long you've been gone," after everything.

Source: AllMusic

Ibibio Sound Machine - Electricity

Electricity

by Ibibio Sound Machine

Released 25 March 2022

Merge Records

*****

Fronted by Nigerian singer Eno Williams, London-based Ibibio Sound Machine is a clash of African and electronic elements inspired in equal measure by the golden era of West-African funk & disco and modern post-punk & electro.

The band’s self-titled debut album was released in 2014 on Soundway Records. The follow-up, ‘Uyai’, was released in 2017 and 'Doko Mien' in 2019, on Merge Records.

Ibibio Sound Machine is Eno Williams (vocals), Alfred Kari Bannerman (guitar), Anselmo Netto (percussion), Jose Joyette (drums), Derrick McIntyre (bass), Tony Hayden (trombone, synth), Scott Baylis (trumpet, synth), and Max Grunhard (saxophone, synth).

Their fourth album, Electricity, as you would expect, marvellously fuses Afro with soul, funk, disco and electro-pop in a collection that never stands still.

There can be few bands who can flit so seamlessly and naturally between genres as Ibibio Sound Machine. Fusing Afro with soul, funk, disco and electro-pop, they make each album sounds like a compendium of work from at least half a dozen other artists. And yet, they don’t; somehow a distinctive smack of Ibibio Sound Machine is retained. Like a stick of seaside rock, their mark runs throughout. It’s a pretty neat trick.

Electricity, the London-based band’s fourth album to date, follows the trend set by its predecessors; continuing to enthral with its sheer energetic diversity. So, in some respects, more of the same. Yet, bigger; bolder; more accomplished. This is indubitably the work of a band on an upward trajectory.

Of course, sheer experience will account for that progression, but another factor must be the recruitment of those wizards of synth-pop, Hot Chip, on production duties. Having shared many festival bills down the years, the two bands had developed something of a mutual admiration for each other, so much so that Ibibio Sound Machine took the leap of appointing an ‘outsider’ to man the desk for the first time. Boy, has it paid off.

The world has become a more sinister place in the past two years and it is inevitable that macro-economic events will influence the output of artists. Notwithstanding that, Electricity does not feel like a dark album. Certainly, not musically. Rather, it feels uplifting and energising, as though it is drawing on a reservoir of positivity and optimism. It certainly made me feel good.

Source: AllMusic

Sharon Van Etten - We've Been Going About This All Wrong

We've Been Going About This All Wrong

by Sharon Van Etten

Released 6 May 2022

Jagjaguwar

*****

The album title We've Been Going About This All Wrong channels all of the uncertainty floating in the air in 2022, an era distinguished by a pandemic and political tumult.

During this period, Sharon Van Etten moved across the country, got married, and started raising a family in an unfamiliar city during the pandemic lockdown.

Van Etten is hardly the only person to experience personal upheaval as the world roiled, but the strength of We've Been Going About This All Wrong is how her specific stories have a wider resonance.

Some of that power lies in her evocative lyrical sketches, where images of yearning, parenthood, isolation, and love create the impression of difficult but necessary emotional growth; it's the shedding of the skin in preparation for a new stage of life.

Appropriately, Van Etten creates a vivid, intense soundscape for this evolution, using the retro-new wave flourishes of 2019's Remind Me Tomorrow as a foundation for a dynamic, dramatic interior epic.

Van Etten played nearly every instrument on We've Been Going About This All Wrong on her own in her home studio, and the album, appropriately, has a bit of an insular feel, as if it depicts the tension within her own psyche.

This doesn't mean the record is delivered on a miniature scale.

Although there are moments, such as "Darkish," where she's accompanying herself with no more than an acoustic guitar, there are also steely rhythms, washes of synths, and squalls of distorted guitar, all elements that give We've Been Going About This All Wrong painterly details along with a sense of momentum.

Van Etten isn't wallowing in melancholy, she's accepting the sadness along with the joy, using both emotions to push into a new stage of life. That sense of optimism, no matter how muted it may sometimes be, gives We've Been Going About This All Wrong an air of unguarded hope.

Source: AllMusic

Nilufer Yanya - Painless

Painless

by Nilufer Yanya

Released 4 March 2022

ATO / Fontana

****-

When London singer/songwriter Nilüfer Yanya made her full-length debut following a string of well-received singles and EPs, it was with Miss Universe, an eclectic concept album painted with bold, high-contrast strokes and a few passing moments of intimate impressionism.

Three years later, the follow-up, PAINLESS, is a more soft-spoken outing lost in rumination and more-candid emotion. It was recorded with Miss Universe producer Wlima Archer (aka Slime), Andrew Sarlo (Big Thief, Nick Hakim), indie electronic/art-pop artist Bullion, and musician Jazzi Bobbi, all of whom had a hand in producing.

Yanya opens the nonetheless even-keeled album with a rhythmically propulsive meditation on how the linear nature of life and death intertwines with the cyclical passing of seasons ("the dealer"). Its wispy, multi-tracked vocals are set against thumping drums and deep, grooving bass, while harmonized guitar riffs provide the track's meaty center. The song's relatively straightforward arrangement and mix is later contrasted by songs like "L/R" and "the mystic" that play with stereo effects, and "trouble," which ends in layers of melodic distortion over thumping beats, one of several brief excursions into noise here.

The midtempo, rhythmically loping "midnight sun" is a standout for its slowly developing guitar patterns, which provide more of a backbone for the song than its rhythmic section.

There is little quality distinction, however, between tracks on an album that remains thoughtful, sonically overcast, and quietly trippy throughout, even on the galloping "stabilize," in which a spookily multi-tracked Yanya repeatedly insists "I'm going nowhere" ("until it bleeds").

If PAINLESS is less ambitious and attention-grabbing than her debut, it sees Yanya makes strides in being more affecting.

Source: AllMusic

Reality - Disco Party

Disco Party

by Reality

Released 13 May 2022

Jazzman Records

*****

At Jazzman have already given legitimate release to albums that fell foul of the notorious '70s 'tax scam' practice, namely those by Sounds of the City Experience and Ricardo Marrero. It now gives us great satisfaction to present Reality's 'Disco Party' album, for the very first time in agreement with the surviving members of the band. Possibly the most obscure of all the obscurities in the TSG catalogue, 'Disco Party' isn't actually 'disco' at all, moreover it's a fully rounded excursion into mid-70s dancefloor funk and proto-disco-jazz, performed by a group of expert musicians at the height of their powers.

Recorded in one long session in NYC, until now, bandleader Dr. Otto Gomez and the rest of his crew had never even heard the recordings they'd made almost 50 years ago. Indeed, none of the band even knew that their album had been released!

At Jazzman, we consider it our mission to shine new light on music that went under-appreciated at the time of its original release. There are many varied circumstances which can cause an otherwise great record to not do so well - for instance, poor budget, marketing, promo and sometimes just plain old bad luck. Perhaps the most unjust circumstance involves the tax loss releases of the mid-70s - records made purely to cheat a few dollars out of the tax man.

Here, along with restoring the music, we have dug deep into the backstory of the group, interviewing Gomez and others to find out exactly who this unheralded NYC funk orchestra were and what happened to them before and after the monumental session laid out on this record. Our liner notes tell the story of the TSG label and the 'tax loss' phenomenon, and we delve into the history of the band from their humble beginnings as the Smokin' Shades of Black(!) to the present day.

We also find out exactly what it means to record some brilliant music - only to have it taken away - and discarded.
 

Source: Pitchfork

Back To The Future The Musical (Original Cast) - Back To The Future The Musical Original Cast Recording

Back To The Future The Musical Original Cast Recording

by Back To The Future The Musical (Original Cast)

Released 13 March 2022

Masterworks

*****

World wide, on stages, tours, films and on-line, the Broadway-West-End musical has been enjoying a resurgence in popularity that is unparalleled since the 1960's, or even earlier. A significant part of the scene involves the transposition of popular movies from screen to stage. Meanwhile, the creative team of the 'Back To The Future' movie franchise had long resisted the temptation to produce a fourth movie, rather than risk tarnishing the legacy of their iconic original trilogy. They  concluded that a musical  staging would allow them to pay homage to their creation and add new material to the roles - all in time to allow fans to celebrate the date October 21, 2015, the day Marty McFly travels back to the future.

It was announced publicly in 2012 that a musical was in development and workshops commenced in London and LA in mid-2014. However, "creative differences" between the UK director Jamie Lloyd and original writer Bob Gale derailed the process and the window for an October 2015 opening was closed. Eventually, American director John Rando (Urinetown) was brought on board, the cast was re-assembled. 

Finally, the show opened to enthusiastic fans and appreciative critics on 20 February 2020 at the Manchester Opera House. The show ran in previews for a few weeks, before the "Press Night" (formal opening) on 11 March 2020. The fans' response was ecstatic and reviews were mostly four and five stars. The show was a success however suddenly, the Covid-19 pandemic was in full force and after only one more performance the theatre announced that the show would close in light of official government advice. All remaining performances of Back to the Future in Manchester were cancelled and the show will not reopen until it transfers to the West End. The show remained "on ice" for a year and a half, but opened in the Adelphi Theatre in London's West End on 13 September 2021, where it is still running to packed houses.  

Source: SunNeverSetsOnMusic

Amancio D'Silva - Sapana

Sapana

by Amancio D'Silva

Released 22 April 2022 (1983 recording)

The Roundtable

*****

It is widely accepted that the recorded musical output of Indian-born British guitarist Amancio D’Silva came to a premature closure with the landmark 1972 albums, Cosmic Eye and the unreleased masterpiece Konkan Dance. The Roundtable are here to prove otherwise, announcing the discovery of an extraordinary lost recording. Forty years after it was recorded we proudly present Sapana, the forgotten piece of a remarkable musical legacy, the final recording from one the most singular artists to emerge from the British Jazz scene of the 1960s/70s.

Recorded in 1983 and released here for the first time, Sapana is thematically akin to Cosmic Eye, a further musical impressions of the subconscious (Dream Sequences), vividly imagined with traditional Hindustani and western improvisation. A spellbinding fusion of Indian raga and New-Age jazz.

Celebrated as a pioneer of the ‘Indo-Jazz’ movement of the 1960s, D’Silva’s adventurous synthesis of modal jazz and Indian classical music defined the seminal 1969 Lansdowne jazz recordings Hum Dono and Integration. Here we find D’Silva fifteen years later, removed from the jazz scene and musically in place of deep introspection and meditative tranquility. The recording features Sitarist Clem Alford, a collaborator from the Konkan Dance sessions plus renowned Tabla player, Jhalib Millar and Saxophonist/Flautist Lyn Dobson, a musician who had previously worked with Soft Machine, Third Ear Band, and Henry Lowther. Together the quartet construct a deeply evocative set transcending the realm of both jazz and Indian music.
 

Source: Bandcamp

Robert Glasper - Black Radio III

Black Radio III

by Robert Glasper

Released 25 February 2022

Loma Visa Recordings / Concord

*****

It is now precisely two decades ago that the first installment of Robert Glasper's Black Radio trilogy was released, and in almost equal measure, Black Radio III is both different from and similar to the previous two albums - both are natural syntheses of R&B, jazz, and hip-hop carried out with his fluctuating gang of singers, rappers, and instrumentalists.

However, it's just as much an extension of Glasper's activity since 2016's ArtScience -- what stands in 2022 as the last Robert Glasper Experiment session -- part of a sequence that follows August Greene: Collagically Speaking, Fuck Yo Feelings, Dinner Party, a bunch of soundtracks, and dozens of concomitant recordings the keyboardist augmented as a collaborator.

The change most evident from the outset is that Black Radio III is not credited to Robert Glasper Experiment. Derrick Hodge is the bassist on more than half of the cuts, and fellow band vet Chris Dave drums on two of them, but Glasper in the rhythm section is often flanked by other familiar associates such as Burniss Travis II and Justin Tyson.

The additional musicians enhancing the shared complex simplicity of the principal players are greater in number, ranging from turntablists Jahi Sundance and DJ Jazzy Jeff to guitarist Isaiah Sharkey.

Also unlike the first two volumes, this was over a year in the making and enabled by remote contributions, rather than knocked out within a week with everybody in a room. In one way or another, each selection is either a love song in the traditional sense or at least filled with love. Interpersonal ballads are most common. "Better Than I Imagined," a Grammy-winning 2020 single, is a meeting between a distressed H.E.R. and seductive Meshell Ndegeocello that smolders. Jennifer Hudson struts and shrugs through "Out of My Hands," a midtempo thumper (co-produced by Terrace Martin) that rates with her "Spotlight" and "Angel." Ledisi and Gregory Porter make the best match of all on the quiet fire of "It Don't Matter," harmonizing as Glasper takes a lilting rare solo. No more than a foot behind them are the vocal duo that bobs through "Why We Speak," a bolt of sunshine. Glasper's stink face-inducing electric lines set up luminous Esperanza Spalding, singing mostly in French with a dizzying mix of percussive and elongated notes -- reminding "not to sell our soul" -- and Q-Tip somehow finds a seam to further brighten the song without getting in the way. There are also some harder-hitting moments, such as a poignant opening with unwavering Amir Sulaiman poetry leading to a pro-Black summit with Killer Mike, BJ the Chicago Kid, and Big K.R.I.T. The unexpected touches, such as Glasper's own drunk-funk drums on "Shine" and the Theo Parrish-like beatdown house gait of "Everybody Love" (featuring Musiq Soulchild and Posdnous), are as welcome as the familiar ones. Speaking of which, the Lalah Hathaway-fronted cover here is a slow-swaying update of Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" that would have made for an apt finale. Instead, it's smack in the middle, and no less effective for it.

Source: AllMusic

JB Dunckel - Carbon

Carbon

by JB Dunckel

Released 24 June 2022

Prototyp Recording

*****

On Carbon, his first album in four years, JB Dunckel suggests that technology might save the world. Born out of the improvisational shows he performed in 2020 just before the COVID-19 global pandemic happened -- and the abundance of studio time he had during lockdowns -- Carbon pairs its heavy subject matter with zero-gravity sounds, resulting in contemplative, largely instrumental tracks with the intricacy of sound paintings. These pieces have more tension and release than 2018's comparatively idyllic H+. Alternating between pulsing electronics and soaring riffs, "Corporate Sunset" captures the volatility of late-stage capitalism. "Zombie Park," one of the few tracks with vocals, muses on a park near Dunckel's residence where the homeless congregate with a mournful beauty that recalls The Virgin Suicides. Not long before making Carbon, Dunckel reaffirmed his chops as a composer with his César Award-nominated score for the film Summer of 85, and pieces such as the stately finale "Natura Principia Musica" exemplify the blend of precision and emotion within all of his work with a filmic flair. As on H+, Carbon harks back to Air's work more frequently than the projects Dunckel pursued immediately after the iconic duo called it quits in 2012. Echoing Talkie Walkie's soothing blend of chromatic percussion and electronics, the Zen clarity of "Cristal Mind" provides a breather from the album's darker moments. Carbon's fusion of technology and sensuality also continues the legacy of Dunckel's work with Air, whether he ponders a sexual revolution sparked by an alien invasion on "Sex UFO" (perhaps the most apt description of what his music sounds like yet) or drafts Au Revoir Simone's Heather D'Angelo to imbue "Space"'s existential meditations with haunting grace. The closest Carbon comes to a call to action is "Dare," a piece of eerie sci-fi pop where robotic vocals enumerate humanity's failings, then implore listeners to "Dare to be more/hope for the better." More often, Dunckel reminds his audience of how beautiful progress and possibilities can be, as on the gleaming opening track "Spark." A timely reflection of its era that is also resolutely true to Dunckel's body of work, Carbon serves as a reminder that there's more to his music than aesthetics.

Source: AllMusic

Anteloper - Pink Dolphins

Pink Dolphins

by Interloper

Released 17 June 2022

International Anthem

*****

“We’re both coming out of punk!” says jaimie branch of herself and Jason Nazary, the duo known as Anteloper, in the album notes to Pink Dolphins. It’s not a statement that one generally associates with a free jazz trumpeter and a drummer/electronics wizard, but it’s impossible to miss the punk spirit on the duo’s third album. Even its most heavily produced moments capture a sense of rawness.

The energy is even more unexpected given the surface aspects of the album. The album’s title, its psychedelic-cartoon cover (by branch), and its track titles—all related to an alternate, aquatically based perspective of the world—suggest something precious.

The actual music couldn’t be further from that. Take, for example, its shortest track, the three-and-a-half minute “Baby Bota Halloceanation.” The horn, drums, and producer/guest musician Jeff Parker’s bass and keyboards all drip with weird reverb. Instead of softening the impact, however, the effects heighten the aggression. The result is something like a rock guitar on maximum volume and overdrive. branch’s trumpet is harder, denser, more directly in your face, Nazary’s angry cymbals seem to grow razor-sharp edges, while Parker’s contributions remain subtle and unobtrusive, and in the process create an underlying sense of menace. If there’s something psychedelic afoot (and there is), it’s not so much the candy-colored utopia of the Grateful Dead as the dark labyrinths of Miles Davis’s early fusion era.

That’s not an accidental comparison. Both branch and Nazary consider electric Miles to be a touchstone in their music, along with contemporary electronica and hip-hop. (The instrumental second half of “Earthlings” would work perfectly as the background of a rap track.) Nobody would have called Miles “punk” either, but his casual flipping of the bird to convention and his willingness to alienate his most devout disciples make the comparison hard to avoid. Anteloper channels his vibe in other respects, too—like his use of African music elements, which manifest here in percussionist Chad Taylor’s mbira playing on “Delfin Rosado.” Its wind-chime-like timbre has a softer feel than anything else on Pink Dolphins; still, something about its relentless repetitions in Taylor’s hands makes it feel as defiant and forthright as everything surrounding it.

It’d be a mistake, though, to pin Pink Dolphins too close to Miles’s fusion records. They’re a reference point; the trudging yet pulsating, ambient yet abrasive “One Living Genus” is a sound that no one but Anteloper could make. Nor is it correct that there’s no semblance of refinement in their playing. In particular, branch’s singing (which she introduced on her 2019 album Fly or Die II: Bird Dogs of Paradise) shows some new polish and control when she plies it on “Earthling.” Perhaps the takeaway is that growing as an artist need not mean mellowing.

 

Anteloper are:

Jaimie Branch - trumpet, electronics, percussion, vocals

Jason Nazary - drums, synths
Jeff Parker - guitar, bass guitar, percussion, Korg MS-20
Chad Taylor - mbira (track 2)
 

Source: Bandcamp Daily

Blue Lab Beats - Motherland Journey

Motherland Journey

by Blue Lab Beats

Released 25 February 2022

Blue Note

*****

"Motherland Journey", London-based GRAMMY and MOBO nominated Jazztronica duo Blue Lab Beats' sophomore offering, is an album that has quite literally been years in the making; the result of tireless days in the studio - a celebration of pushing boundaries, taking risks and overcoming adversity.

What started as over 70 demos has since been meticulously whittled down to the 17-track iteration that remains. It is still Blue Lab Beats’ largest project to date, and the fact it is delivered via the legendary Blue Note imprint reiterates its importance.

Kicking off proceedings is ‘Sky Reflections’, a stunning cinematic hip-hop joint that features strings from esteemed arranger Steve Hussey / Urban Soul Orchestra (Soul II Soul, 'Back to Life'). Setting the tone for the rest of the LP, it is followed by ‘Labels’, the first of four singles on the record and one of a handful of collaborative tracks. A similarly majestic sonic creation, it combines Kofi Stone’s slick bars and Tiana Major9’s head-turning vocals with the smoothest of production. Then there's ‘Gotta Go Fast’, the result of a handful of park jam sessions, featuring the soaring trumpet of Poppy Daniels, ‘I’ll Be Here For You’, featuring the soulful energy of Teni Tinks, and ‘Don’t Let It Go Away’ with Emmavie, who Blue Lab Beats have known from the “glory years” of Soundcloud.

Further singles come in the form of ‘Blow You Away (Delilah)’ and ‘Sensual Loving’, both featuring the unmistakable vocals of Afrobeats prince Ghetto Boy, and ‘Dat It’, an infectious combination of meandering piano chords and funk-drenched synths, with additional keys coming courtesy of renowned Stones Throw affiliate and Drake collaborator, Kiefer.

Meanwhile there are a host of additional star-studded collaborative tracks on Motherland Journey. Perhaps the most prominent is the title track, co-written in Accra, Ghana with Ghanaian production talent KillBeatz at 3am in the morning. It features the vocals of none other than that of the late Fela Kuti, with the estate of the Afrobeat pioneer giving BLB their blessing to release the song. Urban Soul Orchestra feature on ‘Reflections’, Ego Ella May on ‘Slow Down’, Jackson Mathod and Kaidi Akinnibi providing horns on ‘Warp’, ‘Home’ is punctuated by Pip Millet’s soulful vocals, whilst UK Soul talent Jerome Thomas features on ‘Real Good’, a track that came together in just four hours. Rounding off the album is the outro ‘Reflections’, with the emotive percussion and soft guitar licks ensuring the LP finishes on a suitably moving note.

Source: Wordplay

Soccer96 - Inner Worlds

Inner Worlds

by Soccer96

Released 6 May 2022

Moshi Moshi Records

*****

We’ve been reflecting on the relationship between our innerworlds and outerworlds,” says Soccer96’s Danalogue. “How our minds shape our experience and our experience shapes our mind. How caring and nurturing our innerworlds can improve our relationship with our outer experiences. We see the creation of music as the bridge between these two worlds.”

Betamax, who makes up the duo along with fellow Comet is Coming member Danalogue, describes their latest album as “spiritual combat music to steady us through the stormy changes of the outer world.”

Part of the process of exploring these innerworlds is to better navigate the future. “Through journeying into the innerworld with courage, we hope to prepare ourselves for a safe journey into uncertain futures,” says Danalogue. “To move positively into the future we will need co-operation, so we also wanted to celebrate the connections to our wider community by collaborating with other artists.” For this album the pair co-wrote with The Colours That Rise, Tom Herbert, Salami Rose Joe Louis, Simbad and Rozi Plain.

The result is an album that contains the key foundational sounds the pair have worked up over the years but embellished and pushed into new terrain by the input of the collaborators. Danalogue describes the approach as “self-organised egalitarian collaboration. There’s a beauty in people working together towards a common goal, and in the trust that we give each other to serve the group as a whole.”

Source: Bandcamp

Tears For Fears - The Tipping Point

The Tipping Point

by Tears For Fears

Released 25 February 2022

TFF UK

*****

Seventeen years is a long time between albums. It's even longer when you consider the magnitude of how much life happens during that interval. Tears for Fears had experienced mega pop successes (and loads of industry pressure) with Songs from the Big Chair (1985) and The Seeds of Love (198(). Curt Smith, sick of paying fame's price, quit in 1991. Roland Orzabal carried on the name for two more lackluster albums. The lads reunited for 2004's Everybody Loves a Happy Ending, but it was short-lived. They planned to record again shortly thereafter, but Orzabal's wife Caroline became gravely ill. Further, their record company tried pairing them with contemporary hitmaking songwriters. They scuttled the sessions. Caroline died in 2017, and a bereft Orzabal turned to his old friend Smith for community and solace; the duo began touring and writing together again in a room with two acoustic guitars. The Tipping Point was eventually completed during the pandemic.


You can hear the intimacy between these songwriters in "No Small Thing." An acoustic guitar introduces Orzabal's vocal amid reverb, subtle yet glitchy electronics, and an organ. Smith's harmony enters atop a slide guitar and bass drums. The duo deliver an anthemic chorus that refuses to let go. The title track offers the same elegant pop swing and production polish that fueled Songs from the Big Chair. Its subject matter addresses living through the final stages of Caroline's illness. "Break the Man" is sung by Smith and offers a master class in Tears for Fears' glorious psych-pop sound; it may be the catchiest song ever written about smashing the patriarchy. "My Demons" is a rocking big beat Orzabal anthem with zigzagging synths and guitars. Set highlight "Rivers of Mercy" is a poignant, tender ballad juxtaposing emotional states of healing and letting go with living through COVID-19 and the racially charged upheaval that engulfed America during the summer of 2020. The grain in Smith's voice carries the listener through grief, confusion, and the desire for peace. "Please Be Happy," also sung by Smith, bravely bears witness to Caroline's suffering and depression as her illness accelerated. (He knew her from the time they were teens.) Strings frame a piano, majestic drums, and deeply stirring vocals. A muted trumpet meets the sweeping strings in a chorus that momentarily recalls the Beatles' "The Long and Winding Road." "Master Plan" offers melodrama in spades. It's a hooky, bombastic dig at former management and the music industry's ability to transform artists into commodities amid deliberately grandiose production. "End of Night" is transcendent neo-psychedelic pop layered in electronics, with lush vocal harmonies, massive basses and drums, and an earworm chorus.

Varied, poetic, and poignant, The Tipping Point is, after all this time, the very album the duo wanted to make. This set is a classic-sounding Tears for Fears record, one that makes the listener take emotional, spiritual, and mental inventory of their inner world even as the one outside roils with trouble, violence, and madness.

Welcome back gents, we've missed you.

Source: AllMusic

Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You

Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You

by Big Thief

Released 11 February 2022

4AD

****-

Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You is not really an indie-rock album, at least not in the way that 2019's Two Hands was. There is no successor to mega-hit “Not” here, nothing that belongs on a mid-2010s indie mood board. Instead, it revels in the earthy, joyously uncool tones of a ’70s hippie-folk record excavated from a garage sale. It is Big Thief’s loosest album and most ambitious album all at once.

There is a jubilance to these performances, even a joyousness. A wailing fiddle, played by guest member Mat Davidson (aka Twain), loosens up the country stomp of “Red Moon” and the gorgeous, blue-eyed harmonies of “Dried Roses.” “Spud Infinity” is the most striking departure, an unabashedly goofy singalong, with lyrics about elbows and potato knishes that (songwriter & Vocalist Adrienne) Lenker nearly rejected for their uncharacteristic irreverence, and the most conspicuous use of a Jew’s harp since Leonard Cohen jauntily deployed one in the middle of a song about 9/11. It is the kind of song that defies the band’s downbeat reputation, that stares at you with a wild glint, daring you to resist its giddy revelry.
The playfulness of these performances juxtaposes with the increasing abstraction of Lenker’s lyrics. Lenker is the kind of songwriter who exudes earnest curiosity about nature, who muses in interviews about the utter strangeness of being an organism hurling through space. She fills her songs with impressionistic images—a silver-tongued dragon (the title track), yellow stars glowing through white trees (“Blurred View”). Yet this time she also allows herself to indulge a wide-eyed simplicity. “In ‘Change,’ I felt it was just straight-up my seven-year-old self writing it,” Lenker recently told Pitchfork. The song is open-hearted and unpretentious, with spare reflections on butterflies and mortality (“Death / Like a door / To a place / We’ve never been before”) set to ambling major chords.

If there is a thread running through the songwriting, it’s a yearning for transcendence, for connection. 

Like many double albums, the indulgence and excess is part of the joy here. Of course this thing is a little too long, too unwieldy. But the album’s adventurous spirit feels intertwined with that unwieldiness. There are songs I didn’t connect with until my fourth or fifth listen, and others I haven’t connected with at all. Several songs open with snippets of studio chatter. Moments of unexpected joy abound—Lenker shouting out “That’s my grandma!” in the middle of “Red Moon,” the sound of icicles being shattered at the end of the lush, featherweight title track.
In classic-rock mythology, a double album often signifies the moment when a great band begins splintering apart, every member veering off in their own stylistic direction. The (Beatles')  White Album is the archetypal example of this tradition; its forebears include Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, which can feel like three solo albums mashed together, and Outkast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, which became the embodiment of André and Big Boi’s creative divorce.
Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You exists in stark opposition to this tradition. Maybe it’s because three of Big Thief’s members already released solo records in 2020, but this record sounds like four musicians coming together, telepathically attuned to each other’s ideas, reveling in the strange mystery that unfolds when they play together under the same roof—a fragile sanctuary from the collapsing world outside.

Source: Paste Magazine

Arctic Monkeys - The Car

The Car

by Arctic Monkeys

Released 21 October 2022

Domino

****-

The lead single from Arctic Monkeys’s seventh studio album, The Car, is uncharacteristically lush and melancholic, awash in strings, keyboards, and the gentle patter of Matt Helders’s drums. Sonically, “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball” evokes vintage film scores like those of Piero Piccioni and the lounge pop of Burt Bacharach or Richard Hawley, while frontman Alex Turner croons in the upper reaches of his vocal range. The track centers around a failing relationship, as Turner imagines his final moments with his beloved are accompanied by light reflecting off of a mirrorball.

Much of The Car is filled with similarly lush, downbeat tracks that evoke a bittersweet nostalgia. While 2018’s Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino also displays a yearning for the past, The Car diverges from its predecessor in both its earnestness and sonic grandeur. Many tracks here, such as “Body Paint” and “Perfect Sense,” are slow burners that luxuriate in their instrumentation.

Throughout the album, Turner sings in an upper register a fair amount, which, though effectively expressive and pained, can grow wearisome after a while. It doesn’t help that, despite creating a pleasant and enveloping atmosphere, some of these songs—the title track and “Big Ideas” in particular—suffer from a lack of dynamic momentum.

The psychedelic “Hello You,” on the other hand, buzzes along to a tropical rhythm and an infectious musical refrain that lodges itself into your psyche. The strings, synthesizers, and Turner’s vocals and keyboards swirl around each other as the song builds toward a swooning climax. Elsewhere, moodier tracks like “Jet Skis on the Moat” and “Sculptures of Anything Goes” are infused with traces of vintage soul, driven by slow, sinuous grooves.

Of all of the album’s tracks, the latter is most like Arctic Monkeys’s recent work, with its skeletal instrumentation, rumbling keys, and cryptic lyrics about drinking coffee with “not-long-since-retired spies.” But The Car barely acknowledges the garage-rock sound that made the band famous in the mid-2000s. The direction they’ve taken here finds them flexing their muscles in a way that sheds the cheeky irony of Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino in favor of a more plaintive earnestness, while at the same time building on that album’s sense of adventure.

Source: Slant

Black Country, New Road - Ants From Up There

Ants From Up Here

by Black Country, New Road

Released 4 February 2022

Ninja Tune

*****

“The next Arcade Fire – that’s our goal,” experimentalists Black Country, New Road joked at the start of 2020, riffing on the fact that the two bands have sprawling casts (the latter boasted seven at the time) while sounding almost nothing alike. Yet, surprisingly, with their second album, it seems they’ve delivered on that promise. Arriving just 364 days after the band’s debut – and mere days after lead vocalist Isaac Wood’s shock resignation from the group – this is a reinvention of striking proportions.

2021 debut ‘For The First Time’ introduced a virtuosic, London-formed band who traversed experimental rock, post-punk and more with a compellingly restless nature, but ‘Ants From Up There’ sees them settle into a completely different stride. An outlier on the debut, ‘Track X’, was a tender curveball that found Wood singing akin to Sufjan Stevens – rather than speaking – over soft indie, hinting at a very different future for the outfit, and this collection takes that sound to the next level.

On ‘Ants From Up There’, a truly remarkable collection, Black Country, New Road manage to pivot towards more familiar, accessible sounds and embrace traditional song structures – without sacrificing an ounce of their musical wizardry or inventiveness. The album’s ‘Intro’ begins with a whirlwind of sax and violin, but swaps the intensity of older tracks for a gorgeous warmth, before guitars and drums reminiscent of Los Campesinos! (yes, really) crash their way in.

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This leads straight into ‘Chaos Space Marine’, a three-and-a-half minute tune closer to a traditional indie single than it ever felt possible to hear from this band. When it careers into a simply joyous, thunderous chorus imbued with the communal power of, yes, Arcade Fire, it feels like the group are barging down the door and charging into a new era. Elsewhere, highlights ‘Concorde’ and ‘Good Will Hunting’ flow towards cathartic, cacophonous endings, while ‘Mark’s Theme’, written for saxophone player Lewis Evans’ uncle – a huge early supporter of the band who passed away from COVID in February last year, the day before they released their debut – is a blissful interlude suitably led by Evans’ sax.

As well as swapping talking for singing, Wood’s lyrics on ‘Ants From Up There’ are also deeply – and at points hopelessly – romantic. Where ‘For The First Time’ saw Wood strive to be Mark E. Smith or Slint’s Brian McMahan, here he’s Conor Oberst or Neutral Milk Hotel‘s Jeff Mangum. “It’s just been a weekend, but in my mind we summer in France with our genius daughters,” he sings on ‘Good Will Hunting’, later thinking of a girl with “Billie Eilish style.”

Despite the bombast, there’s a new intimacy here. On ‘Bread Song’, he laments being kicked out of bed by a partner for eating toast between the sheets; when he sings “I was made to love you / Can’t you tell?!” on ‘Concorde’, he sounds utterly incredulous, letting his endlessly literate and wordy musings from the debut album be replaced by pure feeling.

 

It’s strange to think that had Nervous Conditions – the experimental post-punk group from whose ashes Black Country formed – not imploded, we may never have seen Wood emerge from the shadows to take up the mic front and centre and become a generational storyteller. The record’s music and messages seem feel doubly vital in the wake of frontman’s announcement and immediate departure, meaning ‘Ants From Up There’ may be his footnote as well as the band’s masterpiece.

Through the anthemic ‘The Place Where He Inserted The Blade’ and slow-building ‘Snow Globe’, all roads here lead to mammoth closer ‘Basketball Shoes’, a track Black Country, New Road have had in their pockets since 2019. Across 12 astonishing minutes, it sweeps majestically through verse after verse, stopping for delicate instrumental breaks and incorporating a raging two-minute emo song halfway through, led by Luke Mark’s twangy, addictive guitar riff. An outro befitting of an album as grand in scale as this is then duly rolled out, with guitars, saxophones, violins and Wood’s voice rising like a hurricane.

“We’re all working on ourselves / And we’re praying that the rest don’t mind how much we’ve changed,” he sings halfway through the track, surely aware that this is precisely what makes the band such a fascinating, unknowable prospect. Of course, the DNA of Black Country, New Road means that ‘Ants From Up There’ is surely far from a final form for the group, especially as they have confirmed that they will continue as a six-piece in Wood’s absence.

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It’s futile, then, to debate over what album three and beyond might hold for the now-sextet, but wherever they do end up, this singular record will remain a stunning collection to be cherished for years to come, and a remarkable high on which to end Wood’s tenure at the front of the band. It’s a future cult classic.

Source: NME

Panda Bear, Sonic Boom - Reset

Reset

by Panda Bear, Sonic Boom

Released12 August 2022

Domino Recording

*****

Animal Collective member Panda Bear and the equally influential Sonic Boom (aka Peter Kember, who co-founded Spacemen 3 before taking his music even further out under various solo guises) began working together around the time of Panda Bear's 2011 outing Tomboy, and they've played significant roles in each other's music since then.

More than a decade after beginning their creative partnership, Reset is the first official joint effort from Panda Bear and Sonic Boom, and it returns to the strongest basic elements of each artist's talents while also pushing in new directions.

The initial inspirations for Reset came when Sonic Boom revisited some of his favorite albums and realized that so many great songs began with intros strong enough to serve as the foundation for songs of their own.

The nine tracks here essentially put this realization into motion, sampling miniature loops from other artists' songs and stretching them into new creations by adding electronics, original lyrics, and thick layers of melody and texture. In this way, Reset recalls some of both Panda Bear's and Sonic Boom's best work. The doo wop harmonies and handclaps suspended in place on "Edge of the Edge" serve as an anchor for Panda Bear's blissed-out, reverb-heavy vocals, following the same template of his 2007 high-water mark album Person Pitch. The tropical psychedelia of "Whirlpool" has a similar sunny delirium as Sonic Boom's songs on Spacemen 3's 1991 swan song Recurring. On their previous collaborative work, Panda Bear handled all of the vocals, but Sonic Boom steps up to the mic several times on Reset, even singing lead on the digital twee tune "Everyday." The fragmented oldies samples, druggy synth sequences, and beachy harmonies are all staple sounds for the duo, but Reset has a playful levity that's often missing from even the most lighthearted moments of their other albums. There's a sense that the heightened collaborative element takes the pressure off of both artists, and the songs sound like two old friends joyfully exchanging ideas and toying with the possibilities of their sound. Even when other records by Panda Bear or Sonic Boom have suggested positivity and low-stakes fun, none have quite delivered that feeling like Reset does. 

Source: AllMusic

Danger Mouse, Black Thought - Cheat Codes

Cheat Codes

by Danger Mouse, Black Thought

Released 12 August 2022

BMG

*****

Brian Burton was a teenage Roots fanatic -- so eager to own but too short on funds to buy his beloved band's Do You Want More?!!!??! that he paid an acquaintance to lift a copy for him.

A decade later, Burton had become Danger Mouse, an ascendant producer with enough clout and confidence to seek lead Roots MC Black Thought for a collaboration.

Mouse and Thought meshed and recorded demos for a potential LP. Other projects then took precedence. Thought reached out to Mouse after another 11 years passed, in 2017, and over the next year, the two laid down much of what materialized in 2022 as Cheat Codes.

Given the project's genesis before the rapping half's 2018-2020 solo trilogy, it stands to reason that Cheat Codes isn't billed as Streams of Thought, Vol. 4. It's also of an even higher concentration. Returning to sample-based production, Danger Mouse favors '60s and '70s psych, prog, and soul recordings that are moody, trippy, and sometimes eerie. The crisp if soot-coated drums, smeared strings, moaning organs, and gnarled guitars are all very compatible with Thought, who scythes through it all with unparalleled wordplay delivered with surgical precision.

The guest appearances are superfluous more often than they are truly complementary. Representing the latter, MF Doom (recorded post-Danger Doom) shuffles into place on "Belize" with such ease that he sounds like part of a longtime trio. Michael Kiwanuka sets up "Aquamarine" -- one of two tracks that also reconnects Mouse with fellow Kiwanuka producer Inflo -- by crooning a grave hook that leads to some of Thought's bleakest and most authoritative statements. They pivot from lines ending with "bullion," "Suleiman," a racist epithet, and "depression" to "I'm a king, I'm dipped in God's Black complexion."

Some stellar outside contributions notwithstanding, Cheat Codes stimulates most when Mouse and Thought are sequestered, allowing the latter to leave space only for the occasional instrumental break or rare prominent sampled vocal. The title track is an unremitting torrent of high-alert reality checks like "Shit, it's real when you done lost your last feeling/Jump then bounce back off the glass ceiling/Back to stealing, to Xanax and smack dealing." "Violas and Lupitas," which could triple in length without losing its transfixing power, ends the album with a grand flourish: "Go ask them about the gatekeeper, world leader/Kill shit quicker than Usain could run a hundred meter." Quotables such as that, over a production that skillfully combines opulence and grit, prove that the duo fulfilled their plan right on time. 

Source: AllMusic

Spiritualized - Everything Was Beautiful

Everything Was Beautiful

by Spiritualized

Released 22 April 2022

Bella Union

*****

By most rock & roll standards, Spiritualized's 2018 album And Nothing Hurt was a rush of fuzzy gospel and intergalactic blues, but compared to much of the band's 30-odd-year discography, it was subdued and even slight. Spiritualized founder and core member Jason Pierce had made a habit of crafting epic masterpieces that reshaped Phil Spector's jam-packed production into his own narcotic wall of sound, and though And Nothing Hurt filled up all available space with lush arrangements, the songs themselves were largely restrained and more distant than usual. Four years later, Everything Was Beautiful serves as both a counterpoint and a companion piece to its predecessor, with seven songs drawn from the same demo sessions that produced And Nothing Hurt delivering the full-boil performances and ecstatic power that seemed to be lying dormant in their sister songs. The difference is quickly apparent in exquisite opening track "Always Together with You," one of the most immediate and hypercharged songs Pierce has created in years. The song's devotional melody, soaring hooks, and mishmash of familiar rock idioms (doo wop backing vocals ping-ponging over stardusted percussion and Marc Bolan-styled guitar leads) all feel referential to the band's 1997 high-water-mark Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space. It's an undeniably beautiful album opener, and a reminder of just how specific of a musical language Pierce has built with Spiritualized as the project has gone on. A nervy bassline and trancey rhythms drive "Best Thing You Never Had," with a grungy horn section and full choir of backing vocalists bringing some Exile on Main St. energy to an otherwise motoric psychedelic rocker. More gospel vocals, burbling synths, and everything from bass harmonica to woodwinds congeal into radiant light on the joyous "The Mainline Song," and the nearly ten-minute closing track "I'm Coming Home Again" is a simmering dirge that builds in intensity until the tension finally breaks in the song's final 30 seconds. Only on the sighing country tune "Crazy" does the album briefly relax, with every other moment finding Pierce crowding his songs with overblown sonics and pushing the performances to their brink. It's one of the liveliest albums Spiritualized have made, and it's easy to imagine the passionate Everything Was Beautiful and the comparatively withdrawn And Nothing Hurt as two halves of a double-album statement. On its own, however, Everything Was Beautiful is delirious and exciting, a perfect distilment of the best parts of the band's various phases that feels reinvigorated and new

Source: AllMusic

Spoon - Lucifer On The Sofa

Lucifer On The Sofa

by Spoon

Released 11 February 2021

Matador Records

*****

It was a homecoming of sorts when Spoon released 2017's Hot Thoughts on Matador -- the label issued the group's debut album, Telephono -- but the one the band experienced while making Lucifer on the Sofa was much more literal. After years in L.A., frontman Britt Daniel returned to his hometown of Austin, Texas, setting the stage for one of the band's more dramatic musical pivots. Hot Thoughts' synthy atmospheres and beats bathed Spoon's music in glittering mirror ball light, but their tenth album is smoky and gritty, steeped in the ambience of Austin and crowded concert halls. Beginning with a stomping cover of Smog's "Held," a favorite from the group's early-2000s shows that echoes the simmering menace of their own "The Beast and Dragon, Adored," Lucifer on the Sofa has the satisfying impact, ebb, and flow of a great rock concert. It's a move that feels genuine; no matter how much they pare it down or polish it up, rock 'n' roll is at the heart of Spoon's music. For the first time in a while, the band's guitars are at the forefront, particularly on the chugging groove and dive-bombing solos of "The Ha