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| Roz and the Rice Cakes |
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Roz and the Rice Cakes
Slow Motion 2:22
Open Eyes 3:02
from Devotion
Led by Roz Raskin, a nimble vocalist who counts Gwen Stefani among her biggest influences (and she sounds a little like her, too), Rhode Island's Roz and the Rice Cakes released a debut in 2014 that introduced an intricate yet catchy experimental indie pop. Three years later, they strengthen those same qualities on their more vivid follow-up, Devotion. A track like "Open Eyes" starts with a muscular vocal melody over an exposed rhythm section that quickly establishes irregular time signatures before adding melodic, syncopated guitar. Despite lengthy instrumental passages, amorphous forms, and shifting rhythms, it lands like an uptempo dance-pop tune due to the band's ability to keep the big picture simple and accommodate tapping feet... Roz and the Rice Cakes apart from many pop, electronic, and indie rock acts -- as they juggle elements of all three.
Maya Jane Coles
Don't Leave 5:17
Waves & Whirlwinds 3:33
from Waves & Whirlwinds
Waves & Whirlwinds is a brief, EP-length follow-up to Maya Jane Coles' expansive double-album Take Flight, offering a similar blend of tech-house rhythms and pop instincts. Coles excels at producing sensuous dance tracks which float and bubble yet have a steady drive to them. "Don't Leave" has cloudy, pitch-shifted vocal fragments and loose guitars which levitate over a chunky breakbeat, punctuated by samples commanding the listener to "get yo hands up!"... Her vocals, again, are looped murmurings and intonations rather than coherent thoughts, expressing dark, vulnerable feelings rather than spelling them out.
Dr. Dog
Golden Hind 3:12
Swampedelic Pop 3:42
from The Psychedelic Swamp
Back in 2001, The Psychedelic Swamp seemed an appropriate name for the debut cassette from psychedelic pranksters Dr. Dog, but some 15 years later the title seems even more fitting given that the band decided to revisit, rework, and re-jigger the entirety of the album to create a brand-new album for 2016. It's not quite right to say Dr. Dog cover themselves here. Rather, they reconnect with the ideas originally essayed in 2001 and approach those ideas with the skill and panache they've developed in the ensuing 15 years. Because Dr. Dog rely on texture and feel as much as they do songs, this isn't a bad idea at all: they're able to execute ideas they were only able to hint at when they were a young band...
Ibeyi
Deathless feat. Kamasi Washington (Lisa Kainde Diaz) 3:11
Transmission/Michaelion feat. Meshell Ndegeocello, (Maya Dagnino / Lisa Kainde Diaz / Claudia Rankine / Richard Russell) 6:30
from Ash
Ibeyi's stellar self-titled debut album was a flashpoint that steeped itself in brittle electro-drenched R&B and roots Yoruban percussion and openly engaged the saints of Santeria: its introduction was an invocation to Elegua (the gatekeeper between worlds) and the goddess of wind and storms in "Oya." On the French/Cuban sibling duo's sophomore effort, Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Diaz address matters more corporeal and rooted in lived experience. The spiritual here is an inspirational tool for understanding and confronting suffering and injustice. Ash is an album directly affected by the tension of the times. Its songs address female empowerment, racial injustice, loneliness, and love in a brittle yet warm mix less frenetic than its predecessor. Singing again in mixed French, English, and Yoruba...
Founded as a side project by Meneguar's Jeremy Earl, Woods started as a solitary recording project in 2005, but soon grew into a band that melded together influences as disparate as avant-garde noise, psychedelic pop, folk-rock, Ethiopian jazz, and African pop; combined them with thoughtful songs; and became influential themselves.
Dungen / Woods
Loop (Jeremy Earl / Gustav Ejstes / Reine Fiske / Jarvis Taveniere) 2:56
Marfa Sunset (Jeremy Earl / Gustav Ejstes / Reine Fiske / Jarvis Taveniere) 3:09
Just for the Taste (Jeremy Earl / Gustav Ejstes / Reine Fiske / Jarvis Taveniere) 3:49
from Myths 003 2018
Every year the Marfa Myths festival, a celebration of music, movies, and the arts held in the desert landscape of West Texas, gives two performers the chance to collaborate in a setting removed from the distractions of a usual studio, giving the artists a chance to commune with nature and each other. In 2017, the festival offered that chance to Woods and Dungen. The Swedish psychedelic dreamers sent multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Gustav Ejstes and guitarist Reine Fiske, while the Cali folk weirdoes sent vocalist/guitarist Jeremy Earl and bassist Jarvis Taveniere. The results were issued just ahead of the 2018 festival by Mexican Summer as Myths 003. The record is a collection of trippy, free jazz instrumentals that sound like the guys were really letting the atmosphere flow through them...
Lorelle Meets the Obsolete
Acción – Vaciar 3:30
Resistir 3:29
Unificado 9:11
from De Facto 2019
After recording three murkily psychedelic albums heavily influenced by living in the swirl of Mexico City, Lorelle Meets the Obsolete's sound changed when the duo moved out of the bustling metropolis to the more relaxed locale of Ensenada in Baja, California. Their music became more expansive on 2016's Balance, and shifted again when they built their own studio and had more time to experiment. When recording 2018's De Facto, they were joined by members of their live band -- synthesizer wiz José Orozco, drummer Andrea Davi, and bassist Fernando Nuti -- and the five musicians recorded much of the album together in one room, constructing songs from loops and fragments before masterfully patching them together. In a break from their usual method, the guitars were added later, though they sound fully integrated and as brilliantly psychedelic as ever. It's also the first time that Lorelle sings all the lyrics in Spanish -- as though seeking the solace and depth of feeling only her native tongue could provide.
Rejoicer
Noted 2:31
Shibuya Zen 3:09
from Heavy Smoke 2019
Directly following his first album for Stones Throw, the wonderfully warped Energy Dreams, Israeli left-fielder Rejoicer (Yuvi Havkin) released a shorter batch of beats titled Heavy Smoke. With only six brief tracks, the artist repeatedly establishes a mood for a few precious minutes before shutting the off switch and starting up another one. It all goes by in a flash, and for most of the tracks, it seems like the ideal way to listen is to just put it on repeat and go about your daily tasks, absorbing the music as it permeates your consciousness...
Porter Ray
Be Not Afraid feat. Aslan T. Rife 4:23
The Diamond that Cuts Thru Illusion 4:21
from Eye of the Beholder 2018
Seattle rapper Porter Ray's 2017 debut studio album Watercolor was aptly titled, its production composed of smeary atmospheric textures and Ray's dexterous flows always steeped in a rainy melancholy. Just a year later, Eye of the Beholder continues the sad daydreaming that began on Watercolor. Not quite a second album, it feels strange to think of the 11 songs with multiple guest verses that make up Eye of the Beholder as an EP. Instead of the focused statements on loss and grief that made up much of Watercolor, this new set of songs offers Ray a chance to float through a wide array of thoughts and verbal acrobatics as he rhymes about life on tour, daily struggles, motivation, and other ponderances. The juxtaposition of drifting, laid-back beats and Ray's neatly designed rhymes becomes the focal point of his sound. Electric piano loops and soft synth patches wash by on relaxed beats as Ray delivers turbulent rhyme schemes...
The Duke Spirit
Magenta 3:17
See Power 4:48
from Sky Is Mine 2017
Most of the Duke Spirit's albums are graced by only one or two of their stately ballads, but on Sky Is Mine, they're in the majority... Indeed, the somber restraint they show on Sky Is Mine ends up feeling and sounding liberating, and the result is the band's most beautiful album yet.
The Bad Plus
Maps (Brian Chase / Karen Lee Orzolek / Nick Zinner) 4:21
The Robots ((Karl Bartos / Ralf Hütter / Florian Schneider) 3:30
from It's Hard 2016
For longtime fans of genre-bending jazz piano trio the Bad Plus, 2016's It's Hard will feel pleasantly familiar. Once again showcasing the talents of pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson, and drummer David King, It's Hard finds the Bad Plus reworking a set of well-curated pop covers. In that sense, the album fits nicely next to the group's previous covers albums, all of which helped build their reputation as a maverick, forward-thinking outfit unafraid to recontextualize both modern pop songs and traditional acoustic jazz... dive headlong into Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Maps," transforming the indie rock anthem into a tumbling avant-garde... or Kraftwerk's "The Robots," all of which are elegantly tackled here. Ultimately with It's Hard, the Bad Plus continue to make the process of transforming modern pop songs into jazz standards sound both deceptively easy and endlessly enjoyable.
Charlie Hunter
Everybody Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Mouth 5:01
No Money, No Honey 3:52
from Everybody Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Mouth 2016
Charlie Hunter's Everybody Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Mouth is not only his first recording for a major label in nine years, but his first with a larger-than-trio-sized band since 2003. His personnel include drummer Bobby Previte, trombonist Curtis Fowlkes (who both played on 2015's Let the Bells Ring On and 2003's Right Now Move), and cornetist Kirk Knuffke. The album's title paraphrases a quote by former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson. It's a metaphorical reference to the contrast between an envisioned plan for living and the reality that transpires later.
Hunter saturates his approach in blues and vintage R&B here. To get the vibe right, the band recorded live in a Hudson, New York studio; there are no overdubs -- everybody walked the tightrope. First single "No Money, No Honey" opens with a guitar hammer on, but the band quickly establishes a funky Meters-esque vamp that gets inverted by knotty jazz syncopation...
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| Charlie Hunter - 7-string guitar, Curtis Fowlkes - trombone, Kirk Knuffke - cornet, Bobby Previte - drums |
Jackson MacIntosh
Can It Be Love 2:40
My Dark Side 3:07
Quotation 1:55
from My Dark Side 2018
... He decided to turn them into an album, and 2018's My Dark Side is the result. Digging into subdued '70s ballads like one might hear on a Todd Rundgren or Harry Nilsson record, dishing out heartbroken lyrics that were the result of two breakups in the span of three years, and keeping things sparse and simple, MacIntosh reveals himself as a very credible singer/songwriter in the classic sense. The record begins with a suite of slow, sad songs that showcase his aching, melancholy vocals and create a late-night, crying-in-a-drink mood that's hard to shake. Built around clunky drum machines, electric pianos, occasional guitars, and a thick coat of reverb, the songs come off like bedroom Memphis soul at times, only MacIntosh seems far too bummed to break a soulful sweat...
Jack White
Connected by Love 4:37
Corporation 5:39
Respect Commander 4:33
from Boarding House Reach 2018
Due to his affection for prewar music and myths, Jack White often gets pigeonholed as a blues-rock revivalist -- an assessment that isn't so much wrong as it is incomplete. Even in the earliest days of the White Stripes, White limited his aural palette with deliberate zeal, a practice he sustained through the Stripes as well as his first two solo albums. Boarding House Reach is where he expands his horizons and that discipline begins to fracture, and quite intentionally so...
The Yawpers
Child of Mercy 3:04
Human Question 4:49
Earn Your Heaven 3:30
from Human Question 2019
Human Question isn’t meant for the meek or casual listener. It will make you dance, mosh, sing along, and dig deep into your soul. Some people lament that rock-n-roll is dead. They just haven’t heard the Yawpers yet.
Their most complete-sounding record yet. Incorporating country, punk, rock n roll, gospel, indie, blues, and pretty much anything that sounds good alongside excellent songwriting, they have created an extremely special body of work." (Americana UK)
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