Details
The post Soothsayers at London Jazz Festival, Rich Mix on 11/11 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
via Wah Wah 45s
Musique Non Stop - Jazz, Funk, Soul, Broken Beat, Electro, Electronic, Funk / Nu Disco, NU Jazz, House, Techno, Ambient, Lo-Fi, Downtempo... and Many More!
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
45 songs by Chris Brown, anyone? Why albums are getting longer
R&B and hip-hop albums frequently number 20 tracks or more, while dance artists are making records that last five hours. Are musicians spreading themselves too thinly?
Lock the doors, shutter the windows and keep the lights on, because something truly terrifying has descended upon us this Halloween: Heartbreak On a Full Moon, a Chris Brown album that has been allowed to witter on for 45 songs.
Brown’s amorality, trust issues and joyless acquisitiveness have occasionally made for unwittingly spellbinding songs (Deuces, Loyal), and he made for a convincing EDM-pop frontman, but our era of Latin pop and bleak rap has him flailing. Questions, the big lead-off single from his bloated opus, features karaoke versions of dancehall hits in lieu of a chorus; its creative redundancy has stalled it at a high of No 84 in the US charts. The calculated humility of a recent documentary meanwhile, in which he finally discussed his abuse of Rihanna, merely nauseated as he admitted: “I’m [going to] be me, and be evil … She tried to kick me … and I really hit her, with a closed fist, I punched her.”
Related: 'They could destroy the album': how Spotify's playlists have changed music for ever
Continue reading...by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian
Sunday, October 29, 2017
'There are a lot of weird people around here': how the north stayed underground
From turbo-charged Eurodance in Newcastle to Pennine psychedelia and grime in Hull, the north of England keeps underground scenes thriving outside the glare of the mainstream. Welcome to five of the strangest
Continue reading...by via Electronic music | The Guardian
Fever Ray: Plunge – a mood of menace
(PIAS)
by Kitty Empire via Electronic music | The Guardian
Trailed by a mysterious video, preceded by an arresting single, To the Moon and Back, and stealth-released on Friday, Fever Ray’s first new music in eight years finds Karin Dreijer (she seems to have lost the Andersson) in fierce form. Pitch-shifted into a pervading mood of menace, Dreijer’s vocals grapple with sex and relationships, with political engagement never far away (“Free abortions and clean water!” she huffs on This Country). Her electronics, meanwhile, are unrelentingly engaging, never just hitting presets. IDK About You uses a female gasp as percussion while the title track is an easygoing instrumental that suggests Kraftwerk.
Continue reading...by Kitty Empire via Electronic music | The Guardian
John Maus: Screen Memories review – nihilistic synth pop
(Domino)
by Damien Morris via Electronic music | The Guardian
Apparently John Maus has spent some of the six years since his last album finishing his doctorate in political philosophy. Perhaps he should have taken a degree in common sense, given his worrying assignations with the “alt-right”, and daft assertions such as “the notion of the homosexual is really an invention of the 19th and 20th centuries”. Luckily, Screen Memories isn’t particularly political, and all the better for its lack of lyrical ambition. Instead, it’s the teenage nihilism of songs such as The Combine, its muffled vocal presumably due to the presence of both feet in his mouth, that proves the perfect subject for Maus’s gothic synth pop.
Continue reading...by Damien Morris via Electronic music | The Guardian
Friday, October 27, 2017
Paper Tiger at The Eagle Inn on 19/11
Details
The post Paper Tiger at The Eagle Inn on 19/11 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
via Wah Wah 45s
Dele Sosimi at Clwb Ifor Bach on 23/11
Details
The post Dele Sosimi at Clwb Ifor Bach on 23/11 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
via Wah Wah 45s
Dele Sosimi & Seun Kuti at Islington Assembly Hall on 11/11
Details
The post Dele Sosimi & Seun Kuti at Islington Assembly Hall on 11/11 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
via Wah Wah 45s
Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 22/12
Details
The post Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 22/12 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
via Wah Wah 45s
Dele Sosimi at The Jazz Cafe on 15/12
Details
The post Dele Sosimi at The Jazz Cafe on 15/12 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
via Wah Wah 45s
Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 15/12
Details
The post Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 15/12 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
via Wah Wah 45s
Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 08/12
Details
The post Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 08/12 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
via Wah Wah 45s
Dom Servini at La Marquise, Lyon on 09/12
Details
The post Dom Servini at La Marquise, Lyon on 09/12 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
via Wah Wah 45s
Thursday, October 26, 2017
Desert nights: how Marrakech's party scene is taking root
A wave of new electronic festivals are fuelling the clubbing scene in Morocco, where traditional culture fuses with underground music scenes
I cut my hand on a cactus as I was rushing to see Nicolas Jaar. There was the smell of rosemary and lavender on the desert air. Guided by a booming kick drum, I arrived at the rectangular pool that reflects the main stage of Oasis festival. As I joined the sweating crowd, a smooth electro track drifted into a soaring Arabic a cappella. A young Moroccan woman in a vest top that said “Detroit Hustles Harder” danced alone nearby. As Jaar slammed into a techno groove, thousands of hands flew into the air, beyond them the half-smile of a moon was almost lost among the stars. I instantly forgot about my injury.
European tourists have long come to Marrakech, chasing a fantasy of exotic Moroccan culture. And they find it: people in Djemaa el-Fna square really do charm cobras and pile colourful spices into gravity-defying pyramids. But over the past three years another kind of tourist has been visiting Morocco. Spurred by a wave of new electronic music festivals, the country’s clubbing scene has jumped into the spotlight, pulling in the kind of crowd who might usually spend their long weekends in Berlin or Amsterdam.
This confluence of traditional and modern cultures is one of the unique draws of Morocco’s club scene
Continue reading...by Tom Faber via Electronic music | The Guardian
Dom Servini at Grand Ol & Mat, Malmo on 18/11
Details
The post Dom Servini at Grand Ol & Mat, Malmo on 18/11 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
via Wah Wah 45s
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Alice Glass accuses former Crystal Castles bandmate of sexual assault
Ethan Kath is also accused of physical abuse and other controlling behaviour, all of which he denies
Canadian musician Alice Glass has posted a statement accusing Ethan Kath, her former bandmate in the duo Crystal Castles, of sexual assault.
Writing on her website, she says that she and Kath, whose real name is Claudio Palmieri, first met when she was in high school. She details that subsequently, “over a period of many months, he gave me drugs and alcohol and had sex with me in an abandoned room at an apartment he managed,” she writes. “It wasn’t always consensual.”
Continue reading...by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Dom Servini – Unherd Radio Show #8 on Soho Radio
Ryan Porter – Spangle-Lang Lane Theme
Phenomenal Handclap Band – Traveler’s Prayer
Children of Zeus – Tonight
Sampa The Great – Rhymes to the East
Album of the Month: Radio Citizen – Silent Guide
Radio Citizen – Opium
Ra Toth & The Brigantes Orchestra – Nico’s Bass
Tannyson – Pancake Feet
Steve Cobby – Fixing The Shadows
Blood, Wine or Honey – Loose Foot
Hello Skinny – Mr. P.Z.
Kiasmos – Paused (Stimming Remix)
Concept Neuf – The Path (Sofrito Edit)
Album of the Month: Radio Citizen – Silent Guide
Radio Citizen – Dense Dance
Kamasi Washington – Humility
Lee Morgan – Afreaka
Harry Case – Ride ‘Em Off
Les Ecoliers Reveurs – La Grenouille Qui Veut Se Faire Aussi Grosse Que Le Boeuf
Empire – Freakman
Lalomie Washburn – Freaky Strangeness (Scrimshire Edit)
Honeyfeet – Sinner
Kenny Barron – Spirits
Tony Burkill – Third of all Numbers
Ezra Collective – Juan Pablo
Dego & Kaidi – Treasure Beach
Afro Train – Tumba Safari
DJ Khalab – Mostra
Daev Martian – Blue Tick tricks
The New Dance Orchestra – The Trackers
Light of the World – I’m So Happy
Rodena Preston & Voices of Deliverance – Be A Friend
The post Dom Servini – Unherd Radio Show #8 on Soho Radio appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
via Wah Wah 45s
From Arsedestroyer to Zoogz Rift: 50 underground albums you've never heard of
Sexed-up Canadian synthpop, Japanese junglism, ritualistic Finnish bear hunting music … our writers select treasures from the darkest corners of their record collections. Please share your own curios in the comments below.
Continue reading...by via Electronic music | The Guardian
Monday, October 23, 2017
Simple Things festival review – neo-glam, power punk and the giddy glow of trance
Various venues, Bristol
From HMLTD and IDLES to Nadine Shah and the British Paraorchestra, festival season wound down with a wildly eclectic lineup – and no need for wellies
With most British festivalgoers having packed the mermaid leggings away for another year, Bristol’s Simple Things gives wristband junkies one final hit by setting up shop across a number of the city’s indoor venues. Like the Great Escape, Tramlines and other similar ventures, national stereotypes about queuing are tested to their limits; on the plus side you don’t have to tape up your feet against welly-chafe.
The foyer of the Colston Hall – soon to be rebranded to exorcise the spectre of the slave trader it is named after – plays host to, in their words, “the most incongruous sight in the history of popular music”: neo-glam troupe HMLTD, who you suspect would rather be playing a Transylvanian castle orgy than a thoroughfare in a medium-sized arts venue. Dressed like Beetlejuice and the Lost Boys doing their Goldsmiths foundation year, they play not so much songs as flounces in sound, as frontman Henry Spychalski constantly beseeches the hipsters in the front rows, who studiously try not to fall in love with him.
Related: The month's best music: Post Malone, Björk, Lorenzo Senni and more
Continue reading...by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian
Sunday, October 22, 2017
Destroyer: Ken review – shot through with scorn
(Dead Oceans)
You never know what to expect from Dan Bejar, whose albums as Destroyer range from balladry to art rock. Ken, the Canadian’s 12th set, is informed by New Order in their 80s pomp, though Bejar’s lyrics are cryptic and shot through with scorn. “The groom’s in the gutter and the bride just pissed herself,” he sings on the lofty opener, Sky’s Grey, which starts slowly then grows menacing, its wintry riff energised by Bejar’s sneery voice. Over the course of the album, however, his mannered delivery grates, turning Ken, with two notable exceptions (Tinseltown Swimming in Blood; Saw You at the Hospital), into a twisted strain of cabaret.
Continue reading...by Paul Mardles via Electronic music | The Guardian
Friday, October 20, 2017
Jessie Ware: 'I didn't get maternity leave! I'm self-employed – being a musician is my business'
The London singer has had her first child – and with it a whole host of insecurities. She discusses anxiety, writing with Ed Sheeran and why she got hypnotherapy after a bad Guardian review
“Are you sure I don’t sound mad and unhinged?” Jessie Ware asks, again. We have spent two hours discussing hypnotherapy, impostor syndrome and her fears about failing as a mother as she tours her third album, Glasshouse, with her one-year-old in tow. No, I tell her. She sounds like a new mum who apologises too much because people like to make new mums feel they’re failing. Babies cry, that’s what they do – her daughter was meant to be asleep in their Berlin Airbnb all afternoon, but did a giant poo and woke up as we were about to start talking. “We’re buggered!” Ware laughs, before husband Sam Burrows takes the tot to the park.
Tonight, Ware will play a small club in Kreuzberg, debuting an ambitious, poppy revamp of her sophisticated soul sound. She wants to wear a sleeveless top but it’s being filmed for German TV: “Bingo wings, fuck that.” She’s nervous. Last night in Paris she had a massive cry, finally unleashing the pressure of spending nearly two years managing a career and new parenthood. “I felt like maybe this whole attempt at trying to be a superwoman was coming crashing down at the last hurdle,” she says.
Continue reading...by Laura Snapes via Electronic music | The Guardian
Thursday, October 19, 2017
Lindstrøm: It’s Alright Between Us As It Is review – back on track with bubbling beats, jazz piano and goth feathers
(Smalltown Supersound)
Oslo producer Hans-Peter Lindstrøm, already known for being pretty cosmic, went further out than ever before with his last album, a collaboration with Todd Rundgren that turned them both to spaghetti in a psychedelic black hole. He’s now back out the other side, making his traditional “space disco”, but with some beautiful acid-flashback flourishes. Spire and Tensions evoke cocktail hour at an Ibizan villa, before But Isn’t It and Shinin nicely showcase house and Italo songcraft. All pleasant enough, but Lindstrøm then levels up in the final third, with Drift, a hail of petals that recalls Orbital’s Belfast, and the jazz piano that poignantly destabilises closing tracks Bungl (Like a Ghost) and Under Trees. The former is also invigorated by stark poetry and black-feathery cooing from Jenny Hval, a gothic phantom haunting the club with a gravestone on her back.
Continue reading...by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian
Jessie Ware: Glasshouse review – smooth soul, ramped up when the diva lets loose
(PMR/Island)
Emerging at the tail end of the dubstep movement, south London’s Jessie Ware has long been the musical equivalent of a minimalist Scandi clothes store, all restrained vocals thoughtfully draped over barely there electronica. On Glasshouse, she manages to harness her rarely seen diva mode in among the pared-back hallmarks, but the result is a mixed one. Opener – and lead single – Midnight sees her push her vocals in all directions for striking falsetto-propelled soul, while Selfish Love capitalises on the current Latin pop trend in pleasingly classy fashion with no clunky attempts at Spanish. Elsewhere, Sam – co-written with Ed Sheeran – is a four-chord story of finding The One and having her now one-year-old daughter, lifted by Ware’s raw family confessional. Unfortunately, though, there’s plenty of “pleasant-but-insipid” here, such as Slow Me Down and Stay Awake, Wait for Me – both drowned in radio-friendly sultriness – and Your Domino, which feels like a paunchy, overproduced take on 2012 single If You’re Never Gonna Move. Ware is arguably at her best here when she drops the hyper-stylised veneer and gives the pop star lark her best shot, rather than openly hedging those bets.
Continue reading...by Hannah J Davies via Electronic music | The Guardian
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Flying Lotus apologises after defending the Gaslamp Killer over rape allegations
The Grammy-nominated producer, who told an audience ‘the internet is a liar’, admitted his comments were insensitive
Grammy-nominated electronic music producer Flying Lotus has apologised after he made comments supporting fellow producer the Gaslamp Killer, who has been accused of rape.
The Gaslamp Killer has been accused of drugging and raping a woman and her friend in 2013 – one posted an account of the alleged attack on Twitter. He has since issued a statement denying the allegations, saying: “I would never hurt or endanger a woman. I would never drug a woman, and I would never put anyone in a situation where they were not in control, or take anything that they weren’t offering.”
Related: #MeToo named the victims. Now, let's list the perpetrators | Jessica Valenti
Continue reading...by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian
Monday, October 16, 2017
No Bounds festival review – pristine rhythms, punky noise and visceral electronic thrills
Various venues, Sheffield
Terre Thaemlitz’s polemic kicked off an extraordinary festival celebrating everything electronic, from Jeff Mills’ minimalism to Giant Swan’s improv rave
Rare is the music festival that kicks off with an audiovisual polemic against reproduction pieced together from blurry clips of Japanese pornography – but then not every music festival is bold enough to book Terre Thaemlitz as its opening act. The Kawasaki-based DJ is always good for an unorthodox viewpoint, and by the end of this thrillingly provocative presentation a room full of twentysomething ravers find themselves unexpectedly committed to the destruction of the nuclear family.
Thaemlitz’s disturbing, thought-provoking show adds a brief political frisson to a festival that’s otherwise all about the sheer thrill of electronic sound. Sheffield’s legacy as a crucible of electronic innovation seems to hold little sway over this first edition of No Bounds, which draws its lineup from around the world – though local computer-music elder Mark Fell is given a hero’s welcome, a testament to this crowd’s appetite for challenging rhythms.
Continue reading...by Chal Ravens via Electronic music | The Guardian
No alternative: how brands bought out underground music
Timberland hosts rap gigs. Princess Nokia makes films for Maybelline. And Red Bull is the new school of rock. Have brand partnerships destroyed counterculture? Or are they all that’s keeping it alive?
Timberland hosts rap gigs. Princess Nokia makes films for Maybelline. And Red Bull is the new school of rock. Have brand partnerships destroyed counterculture? Or are they all that’s keeping it alive?
Continue reading...by Rachel Aroesti via Electronic music | The Guardian
Sunday, October 15, 2017
Organ Reframed review – kitsch, rapture and white-knuckle intensity
Union Chapel, London
Indie rockers joined doyens of the electronic avant garde for a festival of new music exploring the otherworldly sounds of the pipe organ
In the last few years it has become fashionable for electronic musicians to renounce their computers in favour of the pre-digital delights of 60s- and 70s-style modular synths. Evidently, the next logical step is the reappraisal of the pipe organ – for what is a pipe organ but the original synthesiser, its array of keyboards, knobs and levers designed to produce an awe-inspiring barrage of otherworldly sound? This is the thinking behind Organ Reframed, a festival of new works for pipe organ by doyens of the electronic avant garde (plus the odd intrepid indie rock band), now in its second year at Union Chapel, London.
Along with the flamboyant recitals of Cameron Carpenter and its appearance on acclaimed experimental releases by, among others, Kara-Lis Coverdale and Tim Hecker, it seems that the organ might be having a bit of a moment.
Continue reading...by Sam Richards via Electronic music | The Guardian
Friday, October 13, 2017
Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 10/11
Details
The post Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 10/11 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
via Wah Wah 45s
Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 10/11
Details
The post Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 10/11 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
via Wah Wah 45s
Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 24/11
Details
The post Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 24/11 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
via Wah Wah 45s
Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 17/11
Details
The post Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 17/11 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
via Wah Wah 45s
Thursday, October 12, 2017
Dom Servini at The Jazz Café on 03/11
Details
The post Dom Servini at The Jazz Café on 03/11 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
via Wah Wah 45s
Tuesday, October 10, 2017
Dom Servini at The Church Inn on 28/10
Details
The post Dom Servini at The Church Inn on 28/10 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
via Wah Wah 45s
Dom Servini at The Independent Label Market on 25/11
Details
The post Dom Servini at The Independent Label Market on 25/11 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
via Wah Wah 45s
Dom Servini at POP Brixton on 17/11/17
Details
The post Dom Servini at POP Brixton on 17/11/17 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
via Wah Wah 45s
Monday, October 9, 2017
Grime trailblazer Major Ace dies
Rapper and founding member of the influential UK garage group Pay As U Go Cartel had suffered from a brain tumour for three years
Grime pioneer Major Ace has died, his family reports. The rapper, whose real name was Luke Monero, had been suffering from a brain tumour for almost three years.
Major Ace was part of the UK garage crew Pay As U Go Cartel, which was instrumental in shaping the grime sound. His brother Cass confirmed Monero’s death via Instagram on 9 October.
Thank you for the memories bro sleep deep. #RIPMAJORACE
Related: A history of grime, by the people who created it
Continue reading...by Guardian music via Electronic music | The Guardian
Sunday, October 8, 2017
Gary Numan: how the Billboard charts told him his tracks aren't electric
Despite 95% of the instrumentation on Numan’s new album being electronic, the US chart company says it does not qualify for their dance/electronic countdown
Gary Numan is one of the most famous creators of electronic music. Since 1979, when his band Tubeway Army’s single Are ‘Friends’ Electric? – a song about a robot sex worker – spent four weeks at No 1, he has been routinely described as an “electronic pioneer” and a Google search for “Numan electronic” produces 526,000 results.
However, this doesn’t satisfy US chart company Billboard, who have decreed that his new album, Savage (Songs From A Broken World), does not qualify for their dance/electronic chart, even though 95% of it was produced by electronic instruments. According to producer Ade Fenton, Savage’s 51 channels of synthesisers and electronic drums make it the “most electronic” of the four albums he and Numan have worked on. However, the album’s classification as rock/alternative means that Numan has missed out on an almost certain dance/electronic No1, instead having to settle for a rather more lowly rock/alternative No 22.
Continue reading...by Dave Simpson via Electronic music | The Guardian
Moses Sumney: ‘I have an obsession with loneliness, singledom, isolation’
It’s impossible not to love the genre-spurning singer with a heavenly falsetto – despite his ‘obnoxious obsession’
by Kate Hutchinson via Electronic music | The Guardian
Of the many striking aspects of Moses Sumney – his skyscraping height, his hallucinatory, Nina Simone-like dreamscapes, his Rolodex of starry musician friends – most intriguing of all is his voice. A feathery falsetto, often layered to celestial effect, it flutters daintily over lambent guitar and sweeping strings. It’s surely the reason that Sufjan Stevens and James Blake asked him to join them on tour. Or why Beck chose Sumney to appear on his covers compilation, Song Reader; ditto Solange Knowles, for last year’s epic A Seat at the Table. As he explains one evening in a restaurant in Echo Park, Los Angeles, sometimes singing to him “feels like dancing”.
There is plenty of vocal pirouetting on his debut, Aromanticism, an album that shades in the grey between folk, soul and something else – something otherworldly – entirely. So it’s surprising to hear that his soft style stems from being so shy in his school days that he would “sing under my breath a lot”. At 10, his pastor parents moved from California, where he was born, to Accra in Ghana, where his fellow students would mock his American accent. It kickstarted what he calls “an almost obnoxious obsession with loneliness, singledom, isolation…”, which has permeated his music ever since.
Related: Moses Sumney: Aromanticism review – a single-minded star
Continue reading...by Kate Hutchinson via Electronic music | The Guardian
High Contrast: Night Gallery review – muscular rhythms, winning melodies
(3 Beat/Universal)
by Damien Morris via Electronic music | The Guardian
Lincoln Barrett pushes himself further out of his drum’n’bass comfort zone on this sixth High Contrast album, with varying results. Disconcerting glam call-to-arms Shotgun Mouthwash (which puts forward the uncontroversial proposition that the former is “a good substitute” for the latter) doesn’t quite succeed, but on the marvellous, audacious Tobacco Road he effectively invents drum’n’blues. Barrett’s latest shot for the charts, The Beat Don’t Feel the Same, is tepid Chic-ish house, yet the previous single, Questions, is a glorious success. The best songs are smart, bassy takes on EDM, blending muscular rhythms and winning melodies reminiscent of Barrett’s anthemic Adele remixes.
Continue reading...by Damien Morris via Electronic music | The Guardian
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: The Kid review – a charming electronic exploration of life
(Western Vinyl)
by Kitty Empire via Electronic music | The Guardian
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s last album, 2016’s EARS, was a suite essentially about wonderment. The one before, Euclid (2015), took its inspiration from geometry. Dry summaries like those don’t really do justice to the swirls and whorls of the LA-based musician’s electro-acoustic work. Here, Smith tracks the life of a person from twinkle in the eye to autonomous being contemplating life’s end; the journey’s emotional arc is conceived as four sides of a double album. To say that the title track sounds like she has trapped some analogue synths and a choir in a washing machine means no disrespect. This album is crammed with tweeting electronics, hydraulic rhythms, sleights of hand and Smith’s own backseat vocals; she hints at non-western forms and systems music, but never so you are not charmed.
Continue reading...by Kitty Empire via Electronic music | The Guardian
Thursday, October 5, 2017
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: The Kid review – analogue psychedelia with some growing up to do
(Western Vinyl)
With modular synths growing densely around her multitracked voice, this album from Pacific-coastal artist Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith becomes as lush, heady – and occasionally trying – as a rainforest. It’s an ambitious record in four parts, with each quarter representing a different emotional phase of a human lifespan.
Her melodies share the courtly poise of English folksong and the psychedelic naivety of Animal Collective – they accurately evoke the blitheness of youth in the album’s first half, but also, less fortunately, its directionlessness. The textural pleasures of tracks such as I Am Learning and A Kid – full of wonky tiki kitsch – are muted by the vocal lines which, given starker backing, would be embarrassingly underwritten. Things improve in the later, more reflective tracks, as the rhythms and melodies simplify and stretch out, particularly on the beautiful closing track To Feel Your Best, underpinned by a faint, watery dancehall beat.
Continue reading...by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian
Kelela: Take Me Apart review – future-facing glitchy R&B with traction
(Warp)
When Washington-born singer Kelela released her first mixtape, Cut 4 Me, in 2013, her fusion of sumptuous R&B vocals and harsh, avant garde electronica made a splash. But in the four years since, alternative R&B has gone from bleeding edge to genre du jour: in a class now crowded with thoroughly modern divas, has anyone has been saving Kelela a seat? As her debut album opens, the idea that the singer may have been left behind by the sound she helped establish doesn’t seem outlandish: Frontline is funky but plodding and retro in its staccato style. Thankfully, Take Me Apart soon proffers tracks that are both pop-minded and gratifyingly future-facing. Producer Arca may be her not-so-secret weapon in the latter regard, creating sublime but techy sonic hellscapes among the ambient synths and skittering beats.
Meanwhile, Kelela’s vocal stops Take Me Apart ending up as a fragmented series of sounds: consistently exquisite as it dances between lovesick confusion and shrewd sensuality.
Continue reading...by Rachel Aroesti via Electronic music | The Guardian
Readers recommend playlist: your songs about spinning
A reader takes a dizzying look through your suggestions, with Kylie Minogue, Dead Or Alive, Kate Tempest and Arctic Monkeys all making the list
Here is this week’s playlist – songs picked by a reader from hundreds of suggestions on last week’s callout. Thanks for taking part. Read more about how our weekly series works at the end of the piece.
Admit it. You’ve had that slightly sicky feeling when a special person comes close. You know the one – the nausea, the worry your legs might buckle, the head-rush, the dizziness. That. Our opening two pure pop tracks – Dead Or Alive’s You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) and Vic Reeves and the Wonder Stuff with Dizzy – capture all this and get us under way in a whirlwind of love and confusion.
I go round in circles
Not graceful, not like dancers
Not neatly, not like compass and pencil
More like a dog on a lead, going mental
The vaspod has Dizzies by Vic Reeves, Siouxsie & The Banshees, and TM. This is the best. Kristin Hersh's conscious attempt to write a hit single. And had there been any justice in this world she would have done. Gorgeous and bitter melancholy about the last Native American in Oklahoma. (I've just been there, there are actually loads.)
Continue reading...by Sarah Chappell via Electronic music | The Guardian
Monday, October 2, 2017
The month's best music: Post Malone, Björk, Lorenzo Senni and more
From Charlotte Gainsbourg’s delicate minimalism to kick-ass indie-punk by Dream Wife – plus Somali disco and elegant techno – here are 50 of the month’s best tracks
Last month we launched the first of an ongoing series at the Guardian where we round up 50 of the month’s best tracks, across all genres – and tell you a bit more about 10 of the most exciting ones below. You can subscribe to the playlists via various streaming services in this widget, and let us know what you think in the comments. Google Play Music users can access the playlist here.
Continue reading...by Ben Beaumont-Thomas and Rachel Aroesti via Electronic music | The Guardian
Sunday, October 1, 2017
Four Tet: New Energy review – hardly true to the title
(Text)
by Emily Mackay via Electronic music | The Guardian
There are those for whom Kieran Hebden’s drift towards the dancefloor is something to lament, and those for whom it was an unexpected flash of excitement in the subtle folktronica master’s largely super-chilled career. But even for the latter camp, there is a growing suspicion that he’s now best experienced live; this ninth album has the expansive, wandering pleasantness of a self-release unbothered by PR hurly-burly. What it doesn’t have is a great deal of tracks to pull you back, bar perhaps the insistent pulse and fluttering vocal samples of Scientists. The unremarkably housey SW9 9SL tries to up the stakes, but dreamy as the somnolent groove and sitar twinkle of Two Thousand and Seventeen and the nervily upbeat steel pan sounds of Lush are, there’s nothing with the jolting surprise of Kool FM from 2013’s jungle-flavoured Beautiful Rewind, and the album title feels, ultimately, misleading.
Continue reading...by Emily Mackay via Electronic music | The Guardian
Andrew Weatherall: Qualia review – sumptuous take on dancefloor solitude
(Höga Nord)
by Damien Morris via Electronic music | The Guardian
“Qualia” is a lovely word for the private sensations of experience. Or the private experience of sensations. Either way, it’s an excellent take on the communal solitude of the dancefloor, all of us alone together. Appropriately, where Weatherall’s last album Convenanza was largely expansive and vocal-led, Qualia is more insular and instrumental. Over the last few years, the DJ-producer has been proselytising for slower, lower dance music, but this set goes for a mid-paced, light feel with live-sounding drums, no brass and little bass. Apart from Vorfreude 2’s militant chug, it’s unexceptional. Sumptuous listening, immaculately constructed, but lacking the malevolent heft of his classics.
Continue reading...by Damien Morris via Electronic music | The Guardian
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)