Dom Servini – Netil Radio Show #6 with special guest Keith Killgo from The Blackbyrds

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Chillin’ on the Rooftop (Intro)
The LAST POETS – Understand What Black Is (Dego & Kaidi KatDowntempo Mix)
Darkhouse Family – Just So You Know (DJ Spinna Galactic Funk Remix) feat. Vanity Jay
Maribou State – Feel Good (feat. Khruangbin) (Edit)
El Michels Affair – Zaharila
Shimshon Miel – Nueiba Nueiba
39.4 – Mas Alto (Ole Smokey Edit)
Vânia Bastos – Tabu (The Sweetest Tabu)
Chancha Via Circuito – Indios Tilcara
ThE DiAboLIcaL LibERTieS – LoVe gROwS
Lorenzo BITW – Kanaan feat rAHHH
Kadhja Bonet – Second Wind
Soothsayers – Watching The Stars feat. Julia Biel
Fatima – Caught in a Lie
Project Karnak – Temple

–Keith Killgo Interview–

Sunburst – Mysterious Vibes
Donald Byrd – The Little Rasti
The Blackbyrds – Blackbyrds Theme
The Blackbyrds – Rock Creek Park
The Blackbyrds – Time Is Movin’
The Blackbyrds – Dreaming About You

Gnawa Vibe – New Born
emanative – Reflection
Nick Kurosawa – I’ll Come Running Back to You (Ash Walker remix) **EXCLUSIVE**
Captain Planet – Oluko
DjeuhDjoah & Lieutenant Nicholson – El Niño
Wood, Brass & Steel – Funkanova (Christian Kon Taylor Edit)
Yondo – Candy Beat
Yazmin Lacey – Heaven

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Wah Wah Radio – June 2018 – R.I.P. Henri-Pierre Noel

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It was with huge sadness that we learned of the passing of Henri-Pierre Nöel, this month.

A tribute to this incredible artist and member of our family, was the only appropriate way to use this radio show.

We discuss his music, his impact on us personally and play some very special clips from his interview with Cerys Matthews on BBC Radio 6 Music. We also have a couple of beautiful session performances to share.

I hope you will join us in celebrating his life and continue the sharing of his music.

Rest in peace, Henri-Pierre Nöel.

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Nine Inch Nails: Bad Witch review – an inventive, aggressive return

(Caroline)

Having spent most of the last decade concentrating on Academy award-winning film scores (2010’s The Social Network) and his How to Destroy Angels project, Trent Reznor rebooted Nine Inch Nails in December 2016 with Not the Actual Events, the first in a series of three EPs. After last year’s Add Violence, Bad Witch completes the cycle, its three distinct moods suggesting a triptych within a triptych.

Opener Shit Mirror reprises some of the aggression of the first two EPs, is distorted of guitar and vocal, and recalls nothing so much as 1999’s Starfuckers Inc stripped of its quieter interludes; Ahead of Ourselves follows in a similar vein. But Play the Goddamned Part changes tack, its insistent yet discordant sax riff backed by a thundering bass line and beats that sound like detonations. There are echoes of If They Move, Kill ’Em-era Primal Scream given an industrial makeover and God Break Down the Door adds skittering rhythms to that template. The final two tracks are more sombre, particularly closer Over and Out, Reznor repeatedly crooning “time is running out” against a building storm of noise.

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by Phil Mongredien via Electronic music | The Guardian

'On repeat in our house': your albums of the year so far

After a mid-2018 Guardian rundown, here’s a selection of additional readers’ favourites from the discussion provoked

• From Lily Allen to Young Fathers – read the Guardian list
  

After many listens this is definitely my favourite Father John Misty album, adding genuine heart and emotion to the usual combination of wit and irony. Can’t recommend it highly enough. BiggsDixxon

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by Guardian readers via Electronic music | The Guardian

Gang Gang Dance: Kazuashita review – shoegazey panglobal dreampop

4AD

In 2008, Gang Gang Dance’s breakthrough fourth album, Saint Dymphna, crystallised a manic moment, a time when blogs were abuzz with motley, abrasively joyous collisions of world and dance. Ten years on, and seven since their moody, complex fifth, Eye Contact, the New York trio have shifted to meet a very different global atmosphere, tuning in, as did Björk’s Utopia, to the soothing sounds of a new age revival and filtering them through shoegazey dreampop textures. Single Lotus would fit neatly on one of those 90s Pure Moods compilations, all loose guitar and soft synths, Lizzi Bougatsos’s voice – as beautiful, infuriating and varied as ever – conjuring a panglobal sacred pop. J-Tree builds its bliss slowly, reverbed guitar rolling and crashing, ending in a sample of Standing Rock pipeline protesters jubilantly greeting the arrival of a herd of buffalo. The title track lifts rattling percussion into light, bubbling beats reminiscent of In Sides-era Orbital, as artist Oliver Payne intones colour names in a mesmerising meditation, dispelled by a big breakbeat breakdown.

There’s always, of course, been a hippie undertow to Gang Gang Dance’s mission to forge communion between disparate sounds. “There’s nothing to be scared of,” a child’s voice assures at the end of J-Tree, but though we’re supposed to be past the stage of guilty pleasures in music, pleasurable or otherwise, these sounds (the scent of Enigma and Enya, the glimmer of fire poi in the corner of your eye) still carry a taint of dippy, fantasist indulgence. The band, however, see the album less as an escape, more of an attempt to sire a better world: it’s named after live member Taka Imamura’s new baby, whose name is a play on words roughly translating as “peace tomorrow”. Whether its dreamy palette is progressive or pacifying, Kazuashita undoubtedly brings moments of beautiful respite, not least on closer Salve on the Sorrow, whose floaty fantasy vistas – crashes of drums and trills of harp, Bougatsos’s cooing and whooping like a tropical bird – end hopefully, with the sound of a match flaring.

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by Emily Mackay via Electronic music | The Guardian

Readers recommend playlist: songs about kings

A regal list this week includes songs from Richard Thompson, Gilbert and Sullivan, Boy George and the Proclaimers

Here is this week’s playlist – songs picked by a reader from hundreds of your suggestions last week. Thanks for taking part. Read more about how our weekly series works at the end of the piece.

This week’s callout produced a great number of nominations: songs about kings, songs about the King (of which more later) and a large number of songs that made me think the phrase “king of...” is somewhat overused by lyricists. So many great songs were eventually discarded, but thanks for nominating them. Do trawl through the suggestions and listen to as many as possible – this has been my favourite topic so far.

Related: Readers recommend playlist: songs about Elvis

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by Chaz Cozens via Electronic music | The Guardian

'Our crowd is willing to follow us around': Club Chai's DJs on the power of DIY nightlife

The founders of Oakland’s diverse east-meets-west nights explain their inclusive, experimental ethos

Ask the two DJs behind Club Chai what type of music they play at their sweaty warehouse parties in Oakland, California, and you’ll be met with an awkward pause. There’s no easy answer to that question – which is one of the major reasons why Club Chai has struck such a chord with its ultra-diverse, thrill-seeking audience, from the artists and activists of its hometown to its swelling global fanbase.

Related: Sign up for the Sleeve Notes email: music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras

Related: ‘DJ culture became weaponised elevator-music’: how Despacio is fighting EDM

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by Chal Ravens via Electronic music | The Guardian

How we made Orbital's Chime

The Hartnoll brothers reveal how their rave anthem was created for £3.75 in a cupboard under the stairs at their parents’ house

We made all our early music at our parents’ house in a cupboard under the stairs, just like Harry Potter. Each time we got a new synthesiser or sequencer, we’d be like little kids unwrapping a Christmas present. One of us would discover a new sound and the other would go: “That’s brilliant. Turn the knob!”

When we played Birmingham, audiences reacted like we were the second coming of Christ

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by Interviews by Dave Simpson via Electronic music | The Guardian

Sophie: Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides review – hyper-lush, but a touch wafty

(Transgressive)

Pop is reputed to be a safe, pappy form. In the hands of producers like the Glasgow-born, LA-based Sophie, it has become a warped carnival of artifice – abrasive, while retaining cutesy tropes. Her excellent debut compilation, Product (2015), was made up of the barest, but most nagging digital melodies. Sophie’s collaborations since – Charli XCX’s Vroom Vroom EP, Bitch I’m Madonna (with Diplo), Vince Staples’s Yeah Right – have snuck her dissonance further into the mainstream.

On her debut album proper Sophie pivots once again, from faceless aggro-merchant to vampish front-person. There’s significantly more conventionality here, like the reassuring album-teaser It’s Okay to Cry, attesting to this versatile artist’s evolving hyper-feminine persona, and her mainstreamablilty. Immaterial Girl, meanwhile, is a stark house-pop track about transhumanism that nods to 80s Madonna; it’s sung, like a number of tracks here, by Cecile Believe.

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by Kitty Empire via Electronic music | The Guardian

One to watch: Leon Vynehall

This new Ninja Tune signing offers sunlit oceanic electronics with literary tendencies

Your grandparents going on a transatlantic voyage isn’t obvious material for expansive electronic albums – the future, space, wild parties at the end of the world, maybe – but Leon Vynehall has quietly built a reputation for defying the obvious. Over the past five years, the Kent-born DJ/producer has become known for his low-key style of house, all grainy analogue grooves and muted soul. But for his debut record, Nothing Is Still, he found inspiration in a more personal place.

When his beloved “Pops” died, his nan revealed that she and her husband had once boarded a boat to Brooklyn “in search of the American dream”. And so Vynehall builds on the sunlit electronica gilding his previous two EPs to evoke that gleaming optimism. Serene strings glide like a hull dividing the ocean, lithe jazz-house and thrums of cello suggest Arthur Russell at a Croatian boat party, and occasionally it breaks into the kind of tenebrous techno of which Jon Hopkins would be proud (in fact, Vynehall is joining him on an forthcoming US tour).

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by Kate Hutchinson via Electronic music | The Guardian

Red Bull’s 21 exhilarating records from the contemporary UK jazz scene

We’re so proud, honoured and happy––but not surprised––to see that Paper Tiger’s Laptop Suntan made Red Bull’s essential records from the glorious contemporary UK jazz scene. Originally released in 2013, Laptop Suntan was Joe Muggs’ pick––big love to you sir!

Listening to Paper Tiger’s records, at first, you could be forgiven for thinking they’ve primarily come out of a computer and sampler. The group, from Walsall via Leeds, are very much in the post-Flying Lotus “beat scene” tradition of psychedelic hip-hop, and the inclusion of UK and US rap and grime voices only amplifies the sense that these are beats first. But then you’ll start to notice how the horn section is locked into the bleeps and swooshes, and that half the time you’re not listening to a breakbeat cutup, but a drummer perfectly replicating a junglist or hip-hop beat scientist – and that’s when the dawning realisation comes that yes, you’re listening to a jazz record.

 

Read the full article here: 21 exhilarating UK jazz records.

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Sophie: Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides review – taking it to sexy extremes

(Transgressive)

In the same extruded plastic lane as pop provocateurs PC Music, Sophie emerged in 2013 with tracks that were as shiny, artificial and joyously fun as the plastic waterslides of their cover artwork: they lurched around, you could feel the joins to each section, and serious people refused to go near them. A shadowy figure, she was snapped up to work with Madonna, Charli XCX and Vince Staples, before emerging earlier in 2018 with the first single from this debut full-length, It’s Okay to Cry.

Like nearly all the tracks here, it is extremely powerful, and marks a deepening of her already unique aesthetic. Using her own quiet but determined voice, it’s like a trance track with the insistent beats removed – a brilliant trick she repeats to even more dramatic effect on Is It Cold in the Water, like a beatless trance breakdown unmoored from its original track and left floating in ecstatic inertia. It segues into cathedral-filling power ballad Infatuation, a weighty, sad track saved from mere moping by her usual authorial flourishes: whinnying sirens, urgent whispers.

Related: Sign up for the Sleeve Notes email: music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras

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by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian

Ammar 808: Maghreb United review – an exuberant, full-tilt affair

(Glitterbeat Records)

It starts with the sound of distant voices at what could be an ancient North African ceremony. Then come repeated, chanting vocals from Sofiane Saidi, urged on by the pounding, insistent electro-percussion that dominates this intriguing blend of ancient and modern styles.

Ammar 808 is the name currently used by Sofyann Ben Youssef, the band’s Tunisian leader, producer and arranger, responsible for the electronics on the album, and it was inspired by his love of that vintage drum machine, the TR-808. Until now, Youssef has been best known for providing the bass rhythms for the rousing Tunisian folk-rock band Bargou 08, who matched electronica against traditional acoustic instruments. Now he has applied the same technique to music from right across the Maghreb, with even more impressive results.

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by Robin Denselow via Electronic music | The Guardian

Virginia Wing: the Manchester pop duo fighting the 'indie edgelord' sexists

Faced with ranks of leering male fans on tour with Hookworms, Alice Merida Richards and Sam Pillay – creators of one of the albums of the year – played in front of an ‘end rape culture’ sign

Virginia Wing have developed a high tolerance for sexism since forming in 2012. Over doughnuts in a punky Manchester bakery, Alice Merida Richards and Sam Pillay laugh off the time one journalist temporarily shut down when Pillay went to the loo mid-interview. They’re used to the “unspoken mythos that he’s the puppet master and I’m the singer,” says Jones. The troglodytic sound guys aren’t even worth mentioning. “They’ll burn in hell!” Pillay decides.

But the synth-pop duo did reach breaking point on a recent “emotionally draining” tour with Leeds psych band Hookworms. They’re quick to affirm their love for the group and their mutual leftwing politics; the problem was the dissonance between Hookworms’ progressive worldview and their blokey fans. “Good old-fashioned rock music!” Richards imitates. “The good old days of Hawkwind and being openly sexist.”

Thanks very much to anyone who watched us at the @HOOKWORMS show in Brixton last night. We're in Sheffield tonight and it's the last show of the tour. Last call for any blokes looking to get very defensive after seeing the word 'rape' pic.twitter.com/n6UAoAksGD

Related: Virginia Wing: Ecstatic Arrow review – rhythmic dream pop with a bite

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by Laura Snapes via Electronic music | The Guardian

Dom Servini – Unherd Radio Show #16 on Soho Radio

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Jonny Drop – The Looking Glass feat. Sarah Williams White

Leon Vynehall – English Oak (Chapter VII) (Edit)

Jordan Rakei – Wildfire

James Alexander Bright – Mallorca

Mr Fingers – Spy

The One O-Ones – Radio Cosmo 101 (Bals Edit)

Magic Drum Orchestra – Hoodoo Udu

Captain Over – Sick (Books Remix) feat. Trim

Balako – Jungle Music

Nonames – Passing The Time (Zed Bias Remix) feat. Alexa Harvey

Lorenzo BITW – Lips and Bones

Steve Cobby & Danielle Moore – Left Handed Books (Ashley Beedle North Street Remix)

Living Colour – Plastic People

Calvin Carr & Company – Without Christ

Calendar – Comin’ On Strong (Jamie 3:26 Edit)

Girls of the Internet – Remember My Name (12″ Disco Mix)

Salif Keita – Madan (Petko Turner’s Afrobeat Edit)

Little Snake – HXD

Childish Gambino – This is America (KON Rework)

N.O.T.E. – Nightframes

Dubkasm – Lei Aurea

The Last Poets – The Bridge

Soothsayers – Natural Mystic

Laid Back – Fly Away (Ole Smokey Re-edit)

Miriam Makeba – Xica da Silva

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Soho Radio Label Lodge Special: Future Wah Exclusives & special guests Tommaso Cappellato, Nicola Conte & Bridgette Amofah

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The radio finale of Wah Wah 45s’ week at the Soho Radio Label Lodge sees Dom and Adam delivering an hour of nothing but forthcoming Wah Wah 45s exclusives, before they’re joined by Italian drummer and producer Tommaso Cappellato and fellow countryman and legend, Nicola Conte, as well as vocalist and good friend of the label Bridgette Amofah.

 

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Soho Radio Label Lodge Special: Scrimshire & Dom Servini’s Friday night party session

Originally broadcast on Friday May 25th, Dom and Adam got their bangers out as part of the Wah Wah 45s Label Lodge on Soho Radio.

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Soho Radio Label Lodge Special: Scrimshire with special live guests Hunrosa

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Scrimshire invites new Wah Wah 45s signing, Hunrosa, into the studio to play some new and forthcoming music live in session as part of the Soho Radio Label Lodge take over.

 

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Rest in peace, Henri-Pierre Nöel

It’s with great sadness that we have to tell you that the pianist, vocalist, Wah Wah 45s recording artist and our friend Henri-Pierre Nöel passed away unexpectedly on Sunday June 10th.

Henri was a very special man, and incredible spirit, with a wonderful, gentle sense of humour. He touched everyone he met not only with his amazing energy, but his unique musical talent.

We are very proud and honoured to have released his music on our label, and to have managed to get him over to the UK to play The Jazz Cafe in London a few years ago, as well as spending precious time with him in his hometown of Montreal in Canada. 

HPN, as we knew him, will be hugely missed by us all. His music is his legacy but we will always remember the warm, beautiful man that we were lucky enough to get to know for a little while. Our thoughts go out to his family and friends across the water at this time. Merci Henri xx

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Private funeral held for Avicii in Stockholm

Ceremony for Swedish DJ, 28, attended by only his family and closest friends

The funeral of the Swedish DJ and music producer Avicii, one of the biggest stars in electronic dance music, took place in a private ceremony in Stockholm last week, his publicist has said.

The musician, whose real name was Tim Bergling, “was buried [on] Friday at the Skogskyrkogården cemetery in Stockholm”, Ebba Lindqvist said on Tuesday. “Only his family and closest friends were present.”

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by Agence France-Presse in Stockholm via Electronic music | The Guardian

The month's best mixes: Eris Drew, Afrodeutsche, Sharda and more

In the first of a new monthly Guardian series picking out the best DJ mixes, radio shows and other musical ephemera, we explore Afrofuturistic UK techno and Colombian sound design

This is the first in a new monthly column that will look at new music beyond the usual round of albums and singles, sharing the latest DJ mixes, digital releases, radio shows, recorded conversations, documentaries on music and any other ephemera. The sheer volume of cutting-edge music online means that it can be, even for the most faithful digital trawler, a challenge to keep up – so I, along with Tayyab Amin on alternate months, will be skimming off the best bits. This month’s column features ecstatic rave breakbeats from the US, fizzing bassline bangers with big licks of Jamaican dancehall, Afrofuturistic UK techno, Colombian sound design, and more.

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by Lauren Martin via Electronic music | The Guardian

Parklife festival review – Manchester turns night to day with punishing party energy

Heaton Park, Manchester
Liam Gallagher is incongruous, but prompts massive singalongs, while the xx and Confidence Man are other big successes

‘Who here is on drugs?” asks a member of Levelz, at 4.30 on Saturday afternoon. This may seem like an odd question, but at Parklife time feels mirrored, with the 11am-11pm festival feeling as if it’s 11pm-11am. Drugs seem to be ubiquitous; wide eyes, wonky gurns and euphoric grins cannot be hidden in the beaming sun. The Manchester rap collective then play the infectious Drug Dealer as part of a genre-hopping set.

With the crowd full of shirtless dudes, buckets of glitter and people wearing sparkly outfits, Parklife seems like Coachella relocated to Prestwich and sponsored by the North Face. There are a lot of stages: the tower block-shaped Valley, the Bronx-themed Elrow tent, the foliage-filled Palm House, the oil rig-resembling Temple (which shoots flames) and a giant airplane hangar. The production is impressive and the sound systems are pristine, with afternoon DJ sets from Jackmaster and Peggy Gou pushing their limits.

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by Daniel Dylan Wray via Electronic music | The Guardian

Lykke Li: So Sad So Sexy review – despair you can dance to

(RCA)

From the post-adolescent ennui of Lorde’s Melodrama to the Weeknd’s My Dear Melancholy EP and Drake naming his latest single I’m Upset, lugubrious pop is all around. Indeed, a recent study found that the genre has become sadder over the past 30 years, a kind of Adele-ification process, if you will. Despite this, it’s also “more danceable” and “party-like”, which may explain why the latest album from Sweden’s sad-pop champion Lykke Li has the power to trigger both shape-cutting and existential crises. So Sad So Sexy marks Li’s return to music after having a baby, losing her mother and experiencing a creative dry spell, and is defined by overt, intoxicating emotion in lieu of her more quaint, contained sadness of old.

From opener Hard Rain, whose polyphonic R&B swagger jars with its message of lovers needing to be put “back together / though we never been apart”, all the way to closing track Utopia – released on Mother’s Day – and its touching, if simple, chorus of “we could be utopia, utopia”, a sense of bittersweet happiness and streamlined sadness flows through its 10 tracks. At times it’s a hard sell; Deep End’s water noises and lines like “bae, you burned me” could feel naff, if not for the rawness in Li’s voice, while Last Piece’s pared-back drum machine and synth haze staggers between vulnerable and understated. But when this juxtaposition works – as on the title track, a worthy entry to the sad pop canon – the effect is sad, sexy and enthralling.

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by Hannah J Davies via Electronic music | The Guardian

50 great tracks for June from Christine and the Queens, Playboi Carti, the 1975 and more

From Troye Sivan’s ode to bottoming to Oneohtrix Point Never’s joyous electronic cheese, here are 50 tracks you shouldn’t be without this month – subscribe to the whole playlist and read about 10 of the best

Related: Sign up for the Sleeve Notes email: music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras

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by Ben Beaumont-Thomas and Laura Snapes via Electronic music | The Guardian

Field Day review – shifting sounds tighten up London's festival scene

Brockwell Park, London
Under orders not to upset new neighbours, Field Day got strict with its headliners – pulling the plug on an overtime Erykah Badu – while serving a jazzy lineup of fresh stars

When the sound gets shut off on the first night of Field Day, Erykah Badu has just peeled herself off the floor, where she’s been serenading us on her belly like a teenager on a late-night phone call. The neo soul queen may be upfront about her age – tweaking the lyrics of Me to sing: “This year I turned 46” – but she still has the youthful insouciance that brought her acclaim as a thrilling live performer in the 90s. Drowned by an oversized cream suit and enormous wodge of crimped hair, Badu is the sparky counterpoint to her ultra-tight backing band, bashing out beats on a drum machine as she introduces “the 90s babies” to classics like Next Lifetime and Tyrone.

But she’s late, and the curfew comes anyway – after barely an hour, she’s on a mid-set high during Bag Lady when the plug is pulled. It was always going to be this way – Badu isn’t renowned for her punctuality, for a start, but Field Day, now in its 11th year, is under strict orders to keep a lid on the noise and chaos. This is the festival’s first appearance in south London after events behemoth AEG nudged it out of its slot in east London’s Victoria Park. Residents of the affluent area around Brockwell Park were quick to raise the alarm, warning of vandalism and damage to biodiversity.

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by Chal Ravens via Electronic music | The Guardian

Summer 2018 playlists, chosen by Goat Girl, Justice, Hot Chip and more

Musicians reveal the songs they turn to when the sun hits the sky – listen to their hot tracks below

Bandleader and saxophone and clarinet player; member of the Comet Is Coming and Sons of Kemet

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by Interviews by Kathryn Bromwich and Sam Lewis via Electronic music | The Guardian

Oneohtrix Point Never: Age Of review – a subversion of expectations

(Warp)

The twinkling baroque harpsichord that opens producer Daniel Lopatin’s latest album is a perfect representation of his unpredictable work. Having made his name over the past decade with albums that encompass noise music, synthesiser-heavy electronics, and luscious harmonies, his ninth record continues his legacy of off-kilter composition and unexpected instrumentation.

Lopatin, AKA Oneohtrix Point Never, has become increasingly collaborative in recent years, producing for David Byrne, writing for singers FKA Twigs and Anohni, and composing an eerie soundtrack for the Safdie brothers’ 2017 film Good Time. As such, Age Of is a collective effort, employing Anohni’s choral vocals on the distortion-heavy Same, noise artist Prurient’s screams on Warning and James Blake’s keyboards on the pixelated melodies of Still Stuff That Doesn’t Happen.

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by Ammar Kalia via Electronic music | The Guardian

Jamie Isaac: (04.30) Idler review – an unlikely heir to Sade

(Marathon Artists)

From Bon Iver to the Weeknd via our own James Blake, sad boys have stamped their imprimatur on the early years of this century. The latest exponent finds the subgenre subtly levelling up. Jamie Isaac is a classically trained multi-instrumentalist infused with the smoky sensibility of south London – the bass of dubstep, the loneliness of the night bus – as well as jazz and granular digitals. His 2016 debut, Couch Baby, found the twentynothing lolling on soft furnishings, yearning and regretting.

This sequel, written in sunny California and recorded with a full band in London, throws open the curtains a little, taking Isaac closer to the mainstream. Songs such as Maybe re-introduce him as a jazz-pop loverman, an unlikely heir to Sade; Doing Better actually swings. Wings, meanwhile, leans on bossanova rhythms. True to its roots, the song starts off watching a girl gnawing on chicken. (04:30) Idler/Sleep is intended to soundtrack night-time journeys – Isaac’s insomnia is a major inspiration – but the headspace remains interior, with Doppler-effect burbles and inhales adding to the atmosphere. These aren’t vast nocturnal canvases, but immersive miniatures that repay close attention.

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by Kitty Empire via Electronic music | The Guardian

URB Magazine: Alexandre Francisco Diaphra – Glossolália (Premiere)

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Alexandre Francisco Diaphra – Glossolália (Premiere) AUDIO0 Alexandre Francisco Diaphra – Glossolália (Premiere) By URB Staff · On July 6th, Guinean-Bissau born Alexandre Francisco Diaphra returns with a brand new album entitled EVMS (pre-order). Now living in Portugal, the musical art piece follows a man’s journey from birth, life, dreams and death. The dusty production by Diaphra lays a musical foundation for the poet/rapper’s ability to create dense and complex environments that is rooted in tradition but always forward thinking. The album carries listeners with the depth like Tarkovsky or a David Lynch movie. Today, check out the first single for the song “Glossolália.” With raps in Portuguese, the disjointed and Afro-Futuristic production alongside hypnotic chants is a mind-altering experience even for those who don’t speak the language.

Basement Soul: Ifan Dafydd - Crombil / lisa @ Musique Non Stop

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Ifan Dafydd - Crombil / lisa Posted: 29 May 2018 08:08 AM PDT

NPR Jazz: At The Helm: Harold Mabern, Stalwart Accompanist, At 82

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At The Helm: Harold Mabern, Stalwart Accompanist, At 82 Posted: 29 May 2018 04:56 AM PDT Harold Mabern has been one of jazz's most consistent accompanists over the last 60 years. In this episode of Jazz Night in America, we explore some of that history with him. (Image credit: Alan Nahigian/Courtesy of the artist)

Basement Soul: Brahmulus - Catch A Tiger @ Musique Non Stop

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Brahmulus - Catch A Tiger Posted: 29 May 2018 08:10 AM PDT

Stones Throw News: Stones Throw by the Pool at the LINE

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Stones Throw by the Pool at the LINE Stones Throw is back at the Line Hotel for another summer By The Pool. Every Sunday from 3pm - 7pm and always FREE. Music provided by Stones Throw DJs with surprise guests each week. This Sunday we'll have some special Snax for sale.  RSVP bythepool.splashthat.com  Entry is subject to capacity, so come early!

Best New Tracks - Pitchfork: Pusha-T: “The Story of Adidon”

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Pusha-T: “The Story of Adidon”

• Pusha-T

“The Story of Adidon”

0:000:00

VIA SOUNDCLOUD

Drake inherited his beef with Pusha-T from Lil Wayne, and the two have been trading potshots for years, but in a post-“Two Birds, One Stone” world, in which Drizzy questioned the validity of Pusha’s drug dealing past, the Virginian seems to have a newfound fire for his younger rival. Taking on rap’s biggest star has become a point of pride for him. “Let’s deal in real truths,” Pusha told Vulture. “My truth was questioned, and I’m gonna deal in truths all summer long.” With his latest Drake diss, Pusha-T runs an exposé on the Graham family, claiming the Toronto rapper is an absentee dad.

“The Story of Adidon,” rapped over No I.D.’s beat for JAY-Z’s “The Story of O.J.” with artwork taken from a photoshoot of Drake in blackface, is at once a three-dimensional chess move and vicious sucker punch. (As the Nina Simone sample yelps, “My skin is black!” you stare directly into Drake’s charcoal-covered face; the racially charged cartoon caricature on the Too Black Guys tee he wears calls to mind both JAY’s animated “Story of O.J.” visuals and Pusha’s “Infrared” line: “I don’t tap dance for these crackas and sing mammy.”) The specific reasons for the shoot remain unclear, but out of context images can tell their own stories, and Pusha uses this one to frame Drake as uncomfortable with his blackness.

Both Drake and Pusha-T are noted students of JAY, and they’ve each ripped pages out of his playbook for battle strategy. Drake’s “Duppy Freestyle” took a calculated, debater’s approach à la “Takeover,” rebutting Pusha’s “Infrared” claims, preemptively explaining away old Clipse fandom and building what then seemed like an ironclad defense against future salvos. Pusha-T changed the state of play, jumping straight into “Super Ugly” levels of rudeness and boundary crossing, essentially bringing a gun to a knife fight.

In keeping with the Pusha mandate, “The Story of Adidon” is a ruthless diss track: If Drake’s tactic was merely comparing résumés, then Pusha’s is character assassination. These aren’t his sharpest raps because they don’t have to be. Since Drake presents the realm of his songs as an endless string of missed connections for which he is rarely responsible, it feels damning to learn he is allegedly leaving a family behind. Pusha’s talk of living in “truths” informs the diss, which is damaging to the longtime narrative Drake has constructed for himself. It does what no other opponent has ever managed to do: make Drake look bad. The man who sees himself as a master schemer and duelist has been caught flat-footed.

Pusha’s talking points are well-thought-out, researched, and coordinated: He implies that Drake’s dad leaving broke something in him, which is presented as the crux of an identity crisis (“Afraid to grow it ’cause your ’fro wouldn’t nap enough”) and used to explain why his music is so “angry and full of lies.” The subtext is that Drake’s subtle misogyny stems from seeing his father mistreat his mother, and that those same wounds are perpetuating a cycle of fatherlessness to which he has now fallen victim. “You are hiding a child, let that boy come home/Deadbeat muthafucka playin’ border patrol,” Pusha raps, going from life coach to arbitrator.

There is a sense of lawlessness and vitriol to all of this, which is something we should probably expect from someone who has rapped unregretfully about selling coke for two decades. His barbs about Drake refusing to own up to having a child with a former pornographic film actress are tinged with an odious sense of slut-shaming. And he mocks Noah “40” Shebib’s multiple sclerosis, as if to suggest it’s selfish of Drake to have an ill man making his beats instead of on bedrest. This ableist bit, where he counts 40’s days and derides his disability, has been publicly condemned by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. (Coincidentally, today is World MS Day.)

It is startling to hear him spit such cruel things with a sort of demented glee. “How dare you put Ye in my verses?/I’m selfish, I want all of the curses,” he snarls, damn near foaming at the mouth. “I’m pre-bookin’ the churches/Me versus three hearses/If we all go to hell it’ll be worth it.” With “The Story of Adidon,” Pusha takes us into uncharted territory in this era ruled by rap kayfabe. In so doing, he’s created a new truth for all of us: a world in which Drake has the higher ground but is somehow less secure for it.

FACT Magazine Hear FACT’s Parklife playlist with IAMDDB, Young Marco, Bicep and more @ Musique Non Stop

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Hear FACT’s Parklife playlist with IAMDDB, Young Marco, Bicep and more Posted: 31 May 2018 10:57 AM PDT Manchester’s Parklife weekender is back again on June 9 with FACT faves like Shanti Celeste, Nina Kraviz, J Hus, The Black Madonna and more. We’ve pieced together a bumper playlist to celebrate. This summer, Manchester is gearing up for another bumper weekend of music courtesy of Parklife. The festival is taking place on June 9-10 at the city’s Heaton Park and features performances from a litany of FACTy favorites. There are shows promised from Skepta, IAMDDB, N.E.R.D, Nina Kraviz, Shanti Celeste, Young Marco, Midland, Denis Sulta, Peggy Gou, Mall Grab, Soul II Soul, The Black Madonna and loads more. To celebrate, FACT has pieced together an epic playlist with a selection of music from our favorite performers. Take a listen now on Apple Music or Spotify. And if you still don’t have tickets for Parklife, you still have a few days to grab ’em. Watch next: Explore Shibuya's dance music history in this short film The post Hear FACT’s Parklife playlist with IAMDDB, Young Marco, Bicep and more appeared first on FACT Magazine: Music News, New Music..