093 ALTER.NATION.MiX weekly favtraX 28-06-2020

ALTER.NATION #93

Jessie Ware, Gordi, Céu, Bananagun, Pottery, Khruangbin, Sports Team, The Rentals, Haim, Nadine Shah, Derrick Hodge, Art Feynman

weekly favtraX 
2 8 - 0 6 - 2 0 2 0

"O o h  L a  L a"

ALTER.NATION #93 on DEEZER

Mature pop artist whose soul-steeped voice has guided a handful of LPs to the Top Ten in her native U.K. An assortment of guest appearances and solo singles in the early 2010s situated Jessie Ware in a line of sophisticated U.K. soul and left-field luminaries ranging from Sade Adu, Lisa Stansfield, and Caron Wheeler to Tracey Thorn and Róisín Murphy. 
Jessie Ware - What's Your Pleasure? / Ooh La La
Rhapsodic dancefloor intimacy became a new specialization for Jessie Ware with "Overtime," the first in a wave of tracks the singer released from 2018 up to the June 2020 arrival of What's Your Pleasure?, her fourth album  ...recontextualize underground club music with as much might and finesse as anything by Róisín Murphy.

Lush, pastoral electro-acoustic pop from Australian singer/songwriter Sophie Payten. Melding lush electronics with moody acoustic songwriting, Gordi emerged from Australia with a series of original songs and covers in the mid-2010s.
Gordi - Our Two Skins / Sandwiches [Alfalfa Mix]
Three years after Gordi's full-length debut, Reservoir, landed in the Top 20 in her native Australia, songwriter Sophie Payten returns with a more personal follow-up, Our Two Skins. It was informed by a series of major life events that included coming to terms with her sexual identity, ending a relationship, and even finishing her years-long studies to become a doctor. Some of the related feelings of isolation -- especially regarding identity -- led her to track the album in a cabin with no phone reception, Wi-Fi, or modern plumbing at her parents' farm in her remote hometown. Not entirely self-recorded, however, she did collaborate with co-producers Chris Messina (Bon Iver, Big Red Machine) and Zach Hanson (Bon Iver, Hand Habits)...

São Paulo-born chanteuse with an alluring and organic fusion of bossa nova, R&B, and Brazilian pop. Céu proved to one of the more internationally appealing singers to break out of Brazil around the time of her 2005 debut, ultimately winning both Latin Grammy and Grammy nominations for Best New Artist and garnering interest across Europe, North America, and finally Asia.
Céu - APKÁ! / Forçar o Verão
APKA!'s title translates as a metalinguistic cry of unrestrained joy by Céu's youngest son. Though a more minimally produced effort than Tropix, the euphoric effect remains, given Céu's treatment of the material. She employs the same crew as last time -- guitarist Pedro Sa, co-producer keyboardist Hervé Salters, bassist Lucas Martins, and drummer/co-producer Pupilo...  "Forçar O Verão" emerges as a shock, with synths and vamping guitars (courtesy of guest Marc Ribot alongside Sa) weaves a new wave aesthetic (a la Ze Records) and also references Fear of Music-era Talking Heads with the lithe salaciousness in Céu's vocal.

Members of Parsnip and Frowning Clouds merge the vintage sounds of psychedelia, Afro-beat, and Tropicalia. Drawing heavily from vintage psychedelia including Tropicalia, '70s Afro-beat, and summery retro-pop, Bananagun emerged out of Melbourne, Australia, in the late 2010s.
Bananagun - The True Story of Bananagun / Bang Go The Bongos
Representing yet another vibrant hue of Melbourne's thriving psychedelic scene are Bananagun, a lively five-piece combo whose arrangements are woven with the sounds of vintage Tropicalia, Afrobeat, garage rock, and sunshine pop... Citing a disparate array of influences from tonsured garage maniacs the Monks and Brazilian pysch-pop pioneers Os Mutantes to '90s hip-hop, Van Bakel and his crew manage a remarkably cohesive, if somewhat busy collection that ultimately pleases. Given their inspirations, it's no surprise that Bananagun place a major emphasis on rhythm and percussion. Opener "Bang Go the Bongos" speaks for itself...

Freewheeling Montreal indie rockers who borrow from post-punk, psych-rock, country, and more. Montreal's Pottery take a freewheeling approach to indie rock that borrows from cult heroes like Devo, Orange Juice, and Josef K and mixes in bits of garage rock, psych-rock, country, and whatever else they see fit with abandon
Pottery - Welcome to Bobby's Motel / Under the Wires
...Musically, the Montreal quintet's first full-length is surprisingly cohesive, coalescing around sweaty punk-funk that owes a heavy debt to LCD Soundsystem, Gang of Four, and especially Talking Heads... Motel lacks in stylistic wandering, however, it more than makes up for in restless energy and tricky structures; songs such as "Under the Wires" are packed with sudden tempo shifts and busy breakdowns and fills... The way Pottery throw themselves completely into their music often has more in common with King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard than most of their more detached post-punk-inspired peers...

Jet-setting Texas trio whose smooth, mainly instrumental music is heavily influenced by Thai rock and funk, among other styles. Khruangbin (Thai for airplane, or literally "engine fly") are a jet-setting trio from Texas whose smooth, groove-heavy music is heavily inspired by Thai rock and funk from the '60s and '70s, as well as a multitude of other influences ranging from surf rock to dub to Iranian pop.
Khruangbin - Mordechai / Time (You and I)
After Khruangbin released their second album, Con Todo el Mundo, in early 2018, the jet-setting Texan trio's music suddenly seemed to pop up everywhere, from play lists of many stripes to hip boutiques and eateries. Their uncategorizable but easily enjoyable blend of psych, funk, dub, and myriad other styles managed to find the right audience, and they sold out concerts left and right, while vinyl collectors fiended over limited pressings of their records... Mordechai contains vocals on nearly every song, and the group have much more to say this time around. "Time (You and I)," maybe their best song to date, reflects on a desire to build a future with someone, if only there was more time and the feeling was mutual. The sprawling disco beat and playful cadences make the song an easy party jam, but the lyrics' mixture of fantasy and invitation resonate harder than anything else they've written...

Founded at Cambridge, this indie rock band fuses energetic guitar rock with dry humor and playful arrogance. Playing energetic, guitar-based indie rock with a sharp but playful edge, Sports Team are a band from the North London community of Harlesden whose taut sound is matched to witty lyrics that celebrate flip phones, Ashton Kutcher, and tacky British seaside resorts.
Sports Team - Deep Down Happy / Stations Of The Cross
London-based six-piece Sports Team managed to generate excitement from their inception. Packing shows as students at Cambridge University, they quickly drew the interest of indie labels like Nice Swan with their muscular guitar hooks and point-blank, chant-along choruses about class division, demagogues, friends who change, friends who won't, and actor Ashton Kutcher... The album's length is just about right, going by in an efficient 36 minutes but feeling satisfying at the end, and while fans are bound to pick favorites, there's not a real dud in the bunch.

Initially a retro side-project from Matt Sharp's day job as bassist for Weezer, later one of the most enjoyable alternative bands of the late '90s.
The Rentals - Q36 / Forgotten Astronaut
...Sharp and friends have been exploring since the project began in the mid-'90s. With 16 songs and a lengthy running time, Q36 is epic in scale alone. With recurring themes of space travel and detours into science fiction territory, the album becomes even more fantastically epic... Q36 overflows with theatrical hooks, otherworldly concepts and the kind of brilliantly straightforward pop songwriting Sharp has perfected. It's a long album but stays on full power for its entirety, with the endlessly catchy songs of alien worlds standing as some of the brightest and strangest material the Rentals have ever delivered.

American sister act HAIM -- their name simply taken from the trio's surname -- formed in 2006 after spending their childhood as part of family cover band Rockinhaim. They grew up together in California's San Fernando Valley, where they were brought up listening to Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, Santana, and the sounds of Motown, to name a few of their diverse influences...
HAIM - Women In Music Pt. III / Up From A Dream
Dark events of the sisters’ recent past inform their revelatory third album on which garage and louche funk combine with west-coast rock... Haim’s third album retains some of their perpetual glide. But this is a set in which everyone is dancing with tears in their eyes, and one where Haim’s pat affiliation to 70s west coast truisms undergoes some interesting seepage. More so than ever before, Haim venture outside their musical Hotel California, with jazz saxophone and UK garage beats heading up a lively new intake of sounds. Intermittent blasts of lurid electric guitar – witness the chorusing riffola on All That Ever Mattered – are there to underline the trio’s allegiance to rock music... Stranger still, Up from a Dream galumphs like glam rock, but some hyper-processed machine variant, strafed by low-flying effects...

Born of Pakistani and Norwegian parentage, Whitburn, South Tyneside-based singer/songwriter Nadine Shah possesses a voice and more importantly, a mystique, that has often been described as a blend of PJ Harvey and Nick Cave.
Nadine Shah - Kitchen Sink / Ladies for Babies (Goats for Love)
The fourth long-player from the spell-casting English singer/songwriter, Kitchen Sink is aptly named, as Nadine Shah and longtime collaborator/producer Ben Hillier have crafted a wily and inventive collection of songs that pair astute social commentary with crisp, cosmopolitan arrangements drawing from a deep and intuitive arsenal of styles... Like its predecessor, the scathing "Ladies for Babies (Goats for Love)" is awash in wiggly beats, staccato horns, and flourishes of Tropicalia, with Shah's evocative lyrics and stately, confidant voice wryly and vividly parsing the relationship between sexism and fertility. Exploring the notion of what it means to be both a woman in your thirties and an outsider (Shah was born of Pakistani and Norwegian parentage), the sinewy title track's clanging guitars and strident piano mirror the narrator's insistence on combating cognitive bias with confidence -- it's a strut, not a sprint...

Philadelphia bassist who is equally adept on electric and upright instruments. He is a recording artist, film composer, and session musician.
Derrick Hodge - Color of Noize / The Cost
Color of Noize is at once the title of his third album and the name of his band, comprised of pianist/organist Jahari Stampley, keyboardist and synth player Michael Aaberg, drummers Mike Michell and Justin Tyson, and DJ Jahi Sundance on turntables. Hodge plays bass, guitar, keys, and sings. He co-produced the set with Don Was... Color of Noize is the first time Hodge has worked with an outside producer. Cut live in studio, his musicians encountered the music only when they were about to record it; improvised moments are abundant here. Hodge doesn't meld genres, he blurs them in an exotic, resonant, uplifting music of his own. Groove and flow become multivalent expressions of a single creative voice through instrumental hip-hop, contemporary jazz, indie rock, and soul; they emerge to offer emotional depth and spiritual heft.
"The Cost" opens with sampled, fragmented voices hovering above fretless bass, turntables, reverb, wafting organ, and lithe piano, grooving through the studio haze in a thunderous crescendo with lightning-fast breaks and vamps that bind them...

Animist musician and alter ego of indie singer/songwriter Luke Temple (Here We Go Magic). Around the time he switched coasts and settled down in Northern California in 2016, visual artist and indie singer/songwriter Luke Temple (Here We Go Magic) adopted the persona of animist musician Art Feynman.
Art Feynman - Half Price at 3:30 / Night Flower
The second album by Luke Temple alter ego Art Feynman, Half Price at 3:30, follows Temple's sixth long-player under his own name, 2019's Both-And. Whereas his main solo releases sometimes venture into purer acoustic folk, his output as Feynman has remained in a trippy, ethereal, electro-acoustic territory that often moves seamlessly between structured song and something more improvisatory. There is definitely some stylistic overlap between the two catalogs, however, at least to the outside ear...

Jessie Ware, Gordi, Céu, Bananagun, Pottery, Khruangbin, Sports Team, The Rentals, Haim, Nadine Shah, Derrick Hodge, Art Feynman

063 ALTER.NATION weekly favtraX 10-11-2019

ALTER.NATION #63

Woolworm, Jehnny Beth, The Homesick, FKA Twigs, Jessie Ware, SebastiAn feat. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kate Davis, Josienne Clarke, Beck, Charles Rumback / Ryley Walker, Matt Valentine, Kamaal Williams

weekly favtraX 

1 0 - 1 1 - 2 0 1 9

"I’m The Man"

ALTER.NATION #63 on DEEZER

Leaders of their own self-created genre "Blanket Rock," Woolworm are a band from Vancouver, British Columbia whose music is a fusion of hardcore, indie rock, shoegaze, and ambitious pop. Led by singer and guitarist Giles Roy,
Woolworm - Soon from AWE
Vancouver's Woolworm don't hesitate to speak proudly of their roots in the Canadian hardcore scene, though an examination of their body of work reveals an uncommon virtue among modern hardcore bands: a willingness to evolve and explore. Their third full-length album, 2019's Awe, certainly boasts the intensity and conviction of hardcore, but they've learned how to incorporate pop melodies into their sound, add atmospheric touches drawn from indie rock, and make their guitars tower like shoegaze or jangle like vintage alt-rock.

Best known as the compelling vocalist for Savages, Jehnny Beth is the performing name of French musician Camille Berthomier.
Jehnny Beth - I’m The Man
Savages leader Jehnny Beth has a new song out today, “I’m The Man,” which appears on the soundtrack for the British television show Peaky Blinders... Here’s what Beth had to say about the track in a statement: "I’m The Man’ is an attempted study on humankind, what we define as evil and the inner conflict of morality. Because it is much easier to label the people who are clearly tormented by obsessions as monsters than to discern the universal human background which is visible behind them. However, this song has not even a remote connection with a sociological study, collective psychology, or present politics; It is a poetic work first and foremost. Its aim is to make you feel, not think."

Dutch pop trio signed by Sub Pop Records
The Homesick - I Celebrate My Fantasy
Dutch trio the Homesick have signed to Sub Pop for the release of their upcoming sophomore album The Big Exercise, named after a passage from the Scott Walker biography Deep Shade Of Blue. And today, they’re sharing first single “I Celebrate My Fantasy,” which imbues their brand of post-punk with a prog-pop whimsicality in the form of clarinet and piano flourishes.

FKA twigs is the project of English singer/songwriter/producer/choreographer Twigs, aka Tahliah Barnett. Evoking trip-hop as well as the xx's spare electronic pop, FKA twigs' songs are haunting and vulnerable.
FKA twigs - Thousand Eyes from MAGDALENE
On her early EPs and LP1, FKA twigs' Tahliah Barnett expressed the intersections of love, pain, fragility and strength with remarkable eloquence. While making Magdalene, she embodied them. Not only did she endure the end of a long-term relationship, she had surgery to remove six large uterine fibroids (colorfully described by her as a "fruit bowl of pain"). These events became the heart of her second album, which uses the duality of Mary Magdalene as a lens for its wounded yet resilient feminine energy...  The beautifully nightmarish "Thousand Eyes" is steeped in anxiety that churns in its spiralling pianos and when Barnett sings "It's gonna be cold out there with all those eyes" in an anguished soprano that could cut glass...

South London native with a powerful soul-steeped voice who has collaborated with SBTRKT, Joker, and Disclosure.
Jessie Ware - Mirage (Don’t Stop)
Jessie Ware knows how to make you move. She’s been doing it for years. “Don’t stop moving together,” she intones on her latest single. “Keep on dancing.” “Mirage (Don’t Stop)” is grounded by a sticky bass line that’s impossible not to move along to, fulfilling Ware’s command to do just that. Ware understands the dance floor’s capacity for self-preservation and reinvention, and she builds songs that facilitate moments of sweaty transcendence.
“Last night we danced and I thought you were saving my life,” she sings. The British singer took a bit of a detour into smoldering, loungey music over the last few years, but her most recent singles have her back in the club where she belongs, and we couldn’t be luckier. “Mirage (Don’t Stop)” isn’t flashy or showy, and it doesn’t have to be — it’s an undeniable groove. Ware knows what she wants and she knows how to get it: constant motion, ecstasy among the strobing lights.

French electronic artist noted for his remixes as well as his glitchy, electro-house original material.
SebastiAn feat. Charlotte Gainsbourg - Pleasant from Thirst
The cover art for SebastiAn’s first solo album, Total, is a photo taken by Jean-Baptiste Mondino. It shows the French producer – best-known for his association with revered house label Ed Banger, and for his work on Frank Ocean’s Blonde – kissing himself. On Thirst, a follow-up that has taken eight years to materialise, he straddles his doppelganger and raises his fist, as though about to punch himself in the face... Charlotte Gainsbourg, whose superb 2017 album Rest was produced by SebastiAn, channels another of her regular collaborators – director Lars Von Trier – on the haunting “Pleasant”, which in turn recalls the Nineties trip-hop of Bristol artist Tricky...

Musical polymath who released jazz albums as a teen and wrote "Seventeen" with Sharon Van Etten before emerging with indie rock of her own.
Kate Davis - Dirty Teenager from Trophy
The third solo album by Portland native Kate Davis but her indie rock and singer/songwriter debut, Trophy was several years the making. A one-time jazz prodigy, the vocalist/bassist recorded a pair of cover albums as a teen between performances with youth orchestras, as a guest of the likes of Herbie Hancock and Ben Folds, and as a Presidential Scholar of the Arts at Kennedy Center... Recalling contemporary debuts by names like Anna Burch and Madison Cunningham in terms of its polished sophistication, consistency, and fault-finding lyrics, Trophy introduces a songwriter fully formed.

British folk singer/songwriter Josienne Clarke uses understated guitar arrangements to convey a sense of longing, managing to pursue melancholy atmosphere whether backed by a chamber orchestra -- as seen in her time working alongside Ben Walker -- or as a solo artist.
Josienne Clarke - Dark Cloud from In All Weather
UK singer/songwriter Josienne Clarke worked for years as half of a folksy duo with Ben Walker before completing In All Weather, her first set of hushed, sparely arranged solo songs. Clarke's bright vocal style was at the center of her songs with Walker, as they are with her solo debut, but here they’re allowed to rise even higher in the mixes, ornamented only slightly with light accompaniment. Clarke's songwriting is gentle and bittersweet...

One of the most inventive, eclectic figures of the alternative era, the epitome of post-modern chic in an era obsessed with junk culture.
Beck - Dark Places
20 years ago, the combination of Beck and Pharrell Williams would’ve seemed like the coolest thing that could ever possibly happen. Today, it’s still pretty cool... Beck co-wrote “Dark Places” with Pharrell. It’s a slow, ambling song, built from both an acoustic-guitar strum and a rich, hazy synth sound. Beck, singing as high as his voice will let him go, reflects on a breakup: “Time moves on, and on and love, it goes / Now she’s gone, and all I see are shadows.” It’s closer to Sea Change than it is to Midnite Vultures, which is not something I would’ve ever expected to say about a Beck/Pharrell collab.

Chicago's Charles Rumback is a forward-thinking drummer with a bent toward avant-garde jazz and experimental music. In addition to playing in various jazz configurations, he collaborated with virtuosic folk guitarist Ryley Walker...
Ryley Walker is an accomplished fingerstyle guitarist, singer, and songwriter from Chicago whose music and evolution as an artist have proven mercurial. He moved from noisy avant-garde work in his nascent stages into virtuosic guitar playing and floating spiritual pop that traced lines between Bert Jansch, Van Morrison, and somehow even the Dave Matthews Band...
Charles Rumback / Ryley Walker - Idiot Parade from Little Common Twist
Drummer Charles Rumback and guitarist Ryley Walker came together as a duo in 2016 to create the outstretching improv sprawl of their five-song album Cannots. Sometimes abstract and harsh, other times introspective and subdued, Cannots pitted Walker's virtuosic folk-informed guitar playing against Rumback's flowing jazz percussion.. While the results weren't always seamless or pretty, the players locked into a riled-up unison. Recorded over various sessions between 2017 and 2018, Little Common Twist represents a follow-up to the wild noise and rolling exploration of Cannots...  "Idiot Parade" is more groove-oriented, finding the duo joined by bassist Nick Macri for swells of feedback and drone that ride Rumback's fluid, reverb-effected drumming. Elsewhere they dabble in ambient tones and spirited odd-timed rhythms...

Psychedelic folk singer/guitarist who prolifically released solo work as well as co-founding MV & EE... As the years burned on, Valentine focused on a deep-fried miasma of sounds and styles with solo albums like 2019's Preserves.
Matt Valentine - Light Speed from Preserves
Matt Valentine is no stranger to psychedelic sounds... Assembled from eight years of back-filed recordings, Preserves goes off the deep end into a pool of demented funk, wild-eyed guitar freak-outs, and layered, druggy walls of confusion and bliss. "Light Speed" opens the album with its closest thing to a pop song. Funky bass, buried vocals, and scratchy, zigzagging wah-wah guitar lines all rise and fall in the mix, sometimes making space for what sounds like a violin or random electronics. It's the sonic equivalent of a bad trip in a '70s blaxploitation movie...

London-born keyboardist, DJ, and producer with a funky sound informed by '70s jazz fusion, acid jazz, and modern electronic traditions.
Kamaal Williams - Snitches Brew (Live in Atlanta) (Mixed) from DJ-Kicks
...As a listening experience, the mix is filled with abrupt switches, change-ups, dissolves, and vibe-out moments, seemingly approximating a night spent trying to visit every club in South London for a few minutes each. It also highlights the artist's skill as both a musician and cratedigger, dropping in several of his own creations (as both Williams and Wu) among dozens of records dating back to the early 1980s. Early on, he includes a live recording of his track "Snitches Brew," released as the B-side of a 2018 single, which flips from a meditative groove to an up-tempo breakbeat wig-out filled with loads of fiery soloing...

Woolworm, Jehnny Beth, The Homesick, FKA Twigs, Jessie Ware, SebastiAn feat. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kate Davis, Josienne Clarke, Beck, Charles Rumback / Ryley Walker, Matt Valentine, Kamaal Williams

021 ALTER.NATiON: weekly favtraX 17-02-2019

ALTER.NATiON #21

Jamila Woods, Zora Neale Hurston, Blu & Oh No, Octo Octa,  Jessie Ware, Joseph Mount, pronoun, Wye Oak, Dexter Story, Sudan Archives, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Katarina Pejak, Joni Mitchell, Matmos, HÆLOS, Versing, Archive, Band Of Skulls

weekly favtraX

17-02-2019

Jamila Woods - ZORA
Zora Neale Hurston was an acclaimed novelist who studied the vast complexity of black culture. She was a curious soul who wrote about everything—from marriage and Caribbean voodoo to the American South—by fully immersing herself in it. Yet for whatever reason, Hurston never got the credit she deserved when she was alive; even her masterwork—1937’s Their Eyes Were Watching God—was excoriated by fellow authors in the Harlem Renaissance... Jamila Woods celebrates the icon on “ZORA,” the first single of her forthcoming album LEGACY! LEGACY!, by singing from Hurston’s imagined perspective. Woods—in the spirit of Hurston—hears all the scrutiny from the likes of Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, but it doesn’t affect her in the slightest. “Your words don’t leave scars/Believe me I’ve heard it all,” Woods declares with a shrug...

Zora Neale Hurston

Blu & Oh No - The Lost Angels Anthem
Blu is a crucial and undersung name within the LA underground-rap lineage, a transitional figure between the early Freestyle Fellowship/Project Blowed days and the right-now dominance of Kendrick Lamar. Below The Heavens, the 2007 album that Blu released with producer Exile, belongs in the canon, and he never stopped working after that... Right now, Blu and Oh No — Madlib’s younger brother and a great psychedelic rap mind in his own right — are getting ready to release a collaborative album. This is good news, and on “The Lost Angels Anthem,” we hear just how it might work. Oh No’s track is warm and hazy, a hypnotic swirl of sweaty drum-loops and synthetic tingle. And Blu remains hypnotic in his own way, breaking down one vowel sound after another with deadpan gravitas, weaving images quickly enough to leave your head spinning.

Octo Octa - I Need You
The incantation that begins Octo Octa’s “I Need You,” 30 seconds of euphoric moaning, could introduce any number of songs. A post-yoga chant could develop with layers of blissed-out voices and the hum of a harmonium. A ’90s house sound might emerge, with a diva calling the shots over groovy drums. What actually happens is a bit of both, nine full minutes of bliss masquerading as a beauty of a dance track. “I Need You” is unquestionably the most perfect moment yet for Octo Octa, a producer who was a core member of the scrappy and adventurous house sound of the California label 100% Silk just a few years ago. Newly signed to Ninja Tune, her skills as a producer have caught up with her ambition. While “I Need You” is not a complicated song it still grabs you tight and hugs you close...

Jessie Ware co-wrote the song with Metronomy’s Joseph Mount

 Jessie Ware - Adore You
...Jessie Ware co-wrote the song with Metronomy’s Joseph Mount, and it takes full advantage of the warm intimacy of her voice, the way she always sounds like she’s whispering right to you. It also takes full advantage of her rhythmic poise. Ware has been singing straight-up soul lately, but she got her start guesting on dance producers’ singles, and she knows how to float over a beat. That’s what she does here. The track, which Mount produced, is a sparse and spacious piece of architecture, full of beautiful little synth-glimmers. Ware breezes along over it, the exhilaration of the moment lifting her up. It’s the sound of someone who adores, someone just learning what it means to be adored.

pronoun - stay
The songs that Alyse Vellturo makes as pronoun are huge and immediate. They’re like standing in the middle of a road as an eighteen-wheeler washes over you. That’s how she describes how a break-up feels in her latest song “stay,” but it could just as easily apply to the soaring choruses and breakneck speed she maintains in her songs. “stay” rolls like a boulder down a hill. It takes place in the stolen breaths and dismantling revelations that come with a conversation that ends a relationship, when you realize the person you saw yourself no longer sees themselves with you. She takes that frustration and confusion and turns it into a weaponized pop song, words and thoughts crowding together into an undeniable force that’ll pummel you down.

Wye Oak - Evergreen
...Considering it’s a one-off, “Evergreen” is probably not indicative of any permanent change in Wye Oak’s disposition. But it’s still striking — the first time they’ve really offered up a song that returns to that classic The Knot/Civilian aesthetic. The song almost sounds like it could’ve slotted right in on one of those albums, between Jenn Wasner’s characteristically elusive-yet-expressive vocal, the guitar tones, those spectral horns...

Dexter Story - Gold (Feat. Sudan Archives)
Dexter Story is a Los Angeles-based producer, multi-instrumentalist, and bandleader who’s worked with Madlib, Kamasi Washington, Carlos Niño, Sa-Ra Creative Partners, and more. After sitting in as a drummer for the Ethiopian jazz ensemble Ethio Cali in 2011, he began composing and arranging for the group, developing an interest in East African music that eventually culminated with the release of his 2015 album Wondem, melding modern

Dexter Story

funk, soul, and jazz with music and culture from Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan, and Kenya...
Parks is a kindred spirit to Story, a Los Angeles-based musician who takes inspiration from Sudanese fiddle tradition. We named her 2018 release Sink, a heady blend of R&B, electronic, and classical, one of the best EPs of last year. “I was intrigued by Sudan Archives’ name because it speaks to methodology and preservation all at once,” Story says. “We met through a mutual friend and this song is a result of us sharing and developing our musical wishes at the time.” “Gold” is a deep groove driven by Parks’ violin and coolly confident vocals...

Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah - Ancestral Recall (Feat. Saul Williams)

New Orleans jazz trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah doesn’t play jazz. Instead, he calls the music he makes “stretch music,” because it stretches the conventions of jazz to incorporate all kinds of musical idioms — electronic, hip-hop, trap, dub, R&B, funk, Mardi Gras parade music, all coexisting in one musical gestalt. And on “Ancestral Recall,” he continues his mission to use music as a unifying force, connecting the African diasporic tradition back to its West African roots through rhythm. Although ghostly electronic murmurs and Scott’s searing trumpet give the track an otherworldly, larger-than-life sheen, its true lifeblood is its hypnotic percussion...

Katarina Pejak - Sex Kills (Joni Mitchell cover) from Roads That Cross
Katarina Pejak is a Serbia-born singer, songwriter, and pianist who made her home in Nashville. A classically trained pianist, she embraced American roots sounds via her father's record collection and chose a career in blues while still in high school. In fact, her debut album, 2010's Perfume & Luck, gained her admission to the composition and songwriting programs at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she won the Songwriting Achievement Award. She released First Hand Stories in 2012 while attending, and after graduation issued Old New Borrowed and Blues in 2016. All were acclaimed in Europe. Her recordings and her high-energy live show on continental and Asian festival stages brought her to the attention of Ruf Records, who signed her for Roads That Cross, her first album with worldwide distribution.

HÆLOS - Boy / Girl

...It’s a fairly relatable premise in the year 2019. Sonically, HÆLOS always traffic in darker aesthetics, but “Boy / Girl” may be the most anxious and melancholic single we’ve heard from Any Random Kindness thus far. Over sputtering beats and strangled synths, vocalists Lotti Benardout and Arthur Delaney trade lines back and forth; it illustrates the meaning of the song perfectly, two voices calling out to each other and occasionally intertwining yet fighting against the digital distortions surrounding them. Overall, “Boy / Girl” feels like a claustrophobic cloud, mirroring a mind paralyzed by broken transmissions sent between two people on opposite sides of an online ether. The song is also sneakily catchy the more you listen to it, almost depicting the way it can be hard to get someone out of your head when they keep reappearing as a specter on social media — or when the circumstances refuse to let those voices totally fade away into the past.

Versing - Tethered

Versing play a loose, appealingly spiky form of indie rock with approachable melodies and a few squalls of dissonant guitar noise thrown in for good measure. The Seattle quartet met at University Of Puget Sound’s college radio station and released their debut full-length, Nirvana, a few years later in 2017...  “Tethered,” a surging post-punk churn driven by the half-spoken chant “We’re tied together/ Tied together/ Tied together.” Salas says, “It’s a reminder of the interconnectedness of humans, to people who make excuses for not doing the right thing.” 

Archive feat. Band Of Skulls - Remains of Nothing
Archive is a music-collective, originating from London, UK, but based in Paris, France for many years where they enjoy a much bigger following. They are signed to Warner Music France. Archive was formed by Londoners Darius Keeler and Danny Griffiths in 1994 and began as an electronica project. At the beginning, they mixed Bristol-style, Massive Attack, Portishead with Rap... Archive are a Collective, not a band.

Jamila Woods, Zora Neale Hurston, Blu & Oh No, Octo Octa,  Jessie Ware, Joseph Mount, pronoun, Wye Oak, Dexter Story, Sudan Archives, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Katarina Pejak, Joni Mitchell, Matmos, HÆLOS, Versing, Archive, Band Of Skulls