Duma: Duma review – extreme Kenyan metalheads bring doom to the dancefloor

(Nyege Nyege Tapes)
From Nairobi’s metal scene, Martin Kanja and Sam Karugu add techno to doom-laden guitars and distorted vocals on this exciting album

Alongside the burgeoning experimental electronic scene in east Africa is a small but committed underground of metal bands, based in Nairobi. These groups are breathing life into a field hampered by a continued lack of diversity and the preponderance of racist imagery.

Duma is released on Nyege Nyege Tapes on 7 August.

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by Ammar Kalia via Electronic music | The Guardian

Electronic at the Design Museum review – a sweaty rave paradise lost

Design Museum, London
From squat synthesisers to a gyrating cube, a new exhibition dedicated to dance music culture poignantly brings the spirit of communal celebration to a museum

One of the first items you see upon entering the Design Museum’s ambitious new history of electronic music is a vast Andreas Gursky photograph of ravers in Dusseldorf in 1995. Electronic debuted at the Philharmonie de Paris last year and this expanded, anglicised version was meant to open in April, but subsequent events have rendered the curators’ efforts to represent electronic music’s fans as well as its practitioners unexpectedly poignant. A scenario that was commonplace for 30 years is suddenly unattainable: a sweaty paradise lost. Social distancing hasn’t just changed the layout of the exhibition but its emotional resonance. It’s just a shame that there’s no mention of masked rave duo Altern-8 now that every museum-goer resembles them.

Related: 'Keep the dist-dance' - Design Museum reopens with electronic music exhibition

Electronic: From Kraftwerk to the Chemical Brothers is at the Design Museum, London, from 31 July–14 February 2021.

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by Dorian Lynskey via Electronic music | The Guardian

'Keep the dist-dance' - Design Museum reopens with electronic music exhibition

Musicians from Daphne Oram to Chemical Brothers feature in a show organised under coronavirus restrictions

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With the sour tang of dry ice, pounding dance music and more strobe lights in one room than are normally on the main stage of Glastonbury it may finally be an opportunity for some hedonism. With strict social distancing and hand sanitisation, of course.

“It’s not for the faint-hearted,” designer Adam Smith said of the sensory Chemical Brothers experience he has created with his studio partner Marcus Lyall. “We were trying to bring some of the visceral feeling you get from a live show into a different setting.”

Electronic: From Kraftwerk to the Chemical Brothers is at the Design Museum, W8, 31 July to 14 February

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by Mark Brown Arts correspondent via Electronic music | The Guardian

'She gold-plated songs': Denise Johnson, the voice of Manchester's dancefloors

Nineties bands in need of rave vocals looked to the late Johnson, whose rich, fiery voice alchemised their music into something else entirely

News: Denise Johnson dies aged 56

Manchester’s nostalgia industrial complex tends to privilege its white men: Joy Division and Tony Wilson are the ones to have had biopics made about them, with another about Shaun Ryder on the way. But these rightful remembrances can crowd out figures such as Barry Adamson and Rowetta: black, genre-fluid pioneers amid the city’s wildly exciting music scene in the 1980s and early 90s. Vocalist Denise Johnson, who died this week aged 56, was another of them at the vanguard.

“Even though she was a mate,” remembers Johnny Marr, “you felt it was a privilege her being on your song. She kind of gold-plated songs – you knew that the track was going to acquire a few extra gold stars.”

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by Fergal Kinney via Electronic music | The Guardian

Jon Hassell, music's great globetrotter: 'Be more aware of the rest of the world!'

The 83-year-old is heralded by everyone from Bono to Basquiat for his ‘fourth world’ vision for music – and pop has caught up with him

Crackling down a phone line from Los Angeles, Jon Hassell apologises in advance. Now 83, the multi-instrumentalist and composer – a hero of Brian Eno, Björk, Bono, Jean-Michel Basquiat and others – fell in his recording studio earlier this year, breaking his leg. The subsequent recuperation in a convalescent hospital went on for four months. He had no visitors, due to the coronavirus pandemic, “so I only had my cell phone to maintain contact with the outside world”.

It is an experience that has had after-effects. “I’m feeling a little bird-out-of-cage-like,” he says. “I’ve just got a new apartment and I’m sitting here looking at all the things I’ve brought out of storage yesterday. The place is full of stuff and I have to dig through a lot of things now. And that kind of includes my memory,” he adds, referring to our conversation. “You might hear me searching for really polished answers. But let’s give it a try.”

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by Alexis Petridis via Electronic music | The Guardian

Kraftwerk, Tribal Gathering 1997: past, present and future become one

The German electronic music pioneers’ first festival set was a pivotal moment, one that showed just how profound their influence was while acknowledging their influences

Read all of the pieces in the 20 iconic festival sets series

One night in 1997, in the grounds of a country house just off the M1, I watched Kraftwerk, the enigmatic Mensch-Maschine, successfully evolve. Their appearance at the dance music one-dayer Tribal Gathering was the group’s first ever festival set. To be there was to witness Kraftwerk in the context of the black dance music they had inspired and were inspired by.

Related: Kraftwerk: where to start in their back catalogue

Related: Kraftwerk: their 30 greatest songs, ranked!

Related: Florian Schneider: the enigma whose codes broke open pop music

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by Jude Rogers via Electronic music | The Guardian

Jessy Lanza: All the Time review – witching-hour jams

(Hyperdub)
The Canadian producer takes a wicked turn in her deliciously offbeat third album

Should you ever find yourself pondering what sort of music ghosts play in the wine bars of the underworld, fret not, for Canadian producer Jessy Lanza has been answering your question since 2013. Her first two albums, Pull My Hair Back and 2016’s Oh No, perfected a witching-hours R&B haunted by a rich range of past styles, otherworldly alt-R&B rubbing up against lean club music and Lanza’s playful, gossamer falsetto in spare but compulsive spectral slow jams.

Her third album stays close to the formula, though with a slightly darker, starker turn: opener Anyone Around brings together a tight, crisp beat with dubby reverb, hazy, squidgy vintage keys and the sort of cheesy come-on line Lanza does so well: “I never behave when I’m around so close to you.” Face has the nervy tempo of footwork or garage, its seesawing vocal refrain giving it an unnerving bite, while Badly nails a uncanny pirate radio 4am feel, its slinky spareness blossoming into something deliciously just a little off-kilter. None of this is particularly radical in a post-everything musical landscape, but Lanza and her production and writing partner, Jeremy Greenspan of the underrated Junior Boys, do it particularly well, bringing a little of the afterlife’s rewards to the everyday.

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by Emily Mackay via Electronic music | The Guardian

Dom Servini – Unherd Radio Show #44 on Soho radio

Listen here!

Intro
Danielle Ponder & Karate Boogaloo – Look Around

Alabaster DePlume – Black Drifts

Bastien Keb – Rabbit Hole

Brainstory – Runaway

Mammal Hands – Chaser

Vex Ruffin – I’m Still At It

Rivage – Answer

Ras G – De La Soul

Visitor – Fruit Day 

Ben Marc – Dark Clouds feat. Joshua Idehen

Jimi Tenor – Lover’s Bridge (instrumental)

Keleketla! – Papua Merdeka

Kutiman – Tanzania 

Dele Sosimi x Medlar – Full Moon (Detroit Swindle Remix)

Jayda G – Both Of Us

Ladies On Mars – Just Enough

Romare – Heaven (Edit)

Moodymann – Taken Away

Lord Funk & MOAR – Corcovado (Edit)

Zara McFarlane – Roots of Freedom

The Milk – The Great Sorrow (Scrimshire Remix)

Paul Weller – More

Common Saints – Idol Eyes

Scrimshire – Morning Affirmation

Angela Muñoz – Don’t Show It

Angela Muñoz – I Don’t Care

Nikitch & Kuna Maze – La Fin

The post Dom Servini – Unherd Radio Show #44 on Soho radio appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

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Jessy Lanza: All the Time review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

(Hyperdub)
Lanza’s enticing jumble of electronic experimentalism and R&B moves closer to the mainstream on her third album – you sense Janet Jackson would approve

Last week, Jessy Lanza livestreamed a performance-slash-DJ set. Nothing unusual in that, of course. You currently can’t move for artists, producers and DJs whipping out their cameras and video encoders, either to promote their new releases or earn a few quid in lieu of lost revenue. And yet, amid a sea of similar online events, Lanza stood out. She performed in the back of what looked like a people carrier. Its boot opened to reveal the Canadian producer sitting cross-legged, surrounded by electronic equipment and two disco lights, the latter the kind of thing you buy from Argos for a six-year-old’s birthday party. Thin clouds of dry ice wafted forth, which failed to add an air of atmospheric mystery: it looked like Lanza was suffering from both engine trouble and faulty air-con. She played pounding footwork, deep house, a ferocious example of Bristol producer Addison Groove’s take on Chicago juke and sang a few songs from her third album, All the Time, their sweetness at odds with the pounding minimalism of her other musical selections. Then she shut the boot. Livestream over.

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

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by Alexis Petridis via Electronic music | The Guardian

Wah Wah Radio – July 2020

Listen here!

Intro

Zara McFarlane – Saltwater

Huw Marc Bennett – Tresilian Bay

Aeshim – Call Me Now

The Milk – The Great Sorrow (Scrimshire Remix)

Ruby Rushton – Sun Khosi

Kutiman – Lost in the Bush

DNGDNGDNG – Atlantida

Elliot Hollins – Nadda

Rivage – Answer

Steve Arrington – Keep Dreamin’

Dal – Fontanel

The Love Affair & Troy Raglin – Never In My Life

Outro

The post Wah Wah Radio – July 2020 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

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Steve Barker: the 'anti-John Peel' sidelined by the BBC after 43 years

The 72-year-old DJ has been beaming leftfield music – plus interviews with Bono, Morrissey and more – into Lancashire since 1977, but drastic local radio cuts have ‘left us to drown’

Not many people casually call themselves “Zelig-like”. But then not many people can say they were at Bob Dylan’s “Judas!” Manchester Free Trade Hall show as well as the Sex Pistols’ second ever gig, and that they gave A Guy Called Gerald’s acid house classic Voodoo Ray its first radio play.

This is Steve Barker, the 72-year-old host of On the Wire on BBC Radio Lancashire, which has been taken off air after 36 years and 1,850 episodes amid devastating cuts to local radio UK-wide. When the Covid-19 lockdown began, BBC local TV and radio stations were reduced to skeleton staff, but earlier this month it was announced that the new structures would be permanent, with the loss of at least 450 jobs and a major reduction in specialist and current affairs coverage.

I knew one day they'd seal the escape hatches and leave us to drown. But I'm not ready to stop

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by Joe Muggs via Electronic music | The Guardian

San Cisco, Mo'Ju, Alex the Astronaut and more: Australian music for isolated times

Each week we add 15 (or so) new songs to a Spotify playlist to soundtrack your physical distancing amid coronavirus – and help artists you love get paid

As some states around Australia begin to slowly open back up and Victoria heads back into shutdown, Australia’s arts industry is still largely dormant – and the music industry was hit harder, and earlier, than most others. But until large gatherings and gigs happen again, there are small things you can do: it’s an imperfect solution but streaming Australian music can help.

Each week, in partnership with Sounds Australia, Guardian Australia adds some 15 new songs to a playlist for you to put on repeat.

Related: From Eskimo Joe to Hearts and Rockets: Australia's best new music for July

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by Guardian staff via Electronic music | The Guardian

Splendid Fridays with Dom Servini

Listen here!

Intro
Teddy Rok Seven – The Beginning
Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes – Wake Up Everybody (Psychmagik Edit) 
Billy Paul – It’s Critical
Keith Robinson and Some Mates – Keep On Dancin’
Dr. Togo – Bee Free
Lea Lea – Apartheid (Skinshape Remix)
D*Note – Waiting Hopefully (4-Hero Vocal)
SAULT – Miracles
Astrud Gilberto – Touching You
Severin Browne – Stay
Terry Callier – Gotta Get Closer To You
Spinning Motion – Prisoner of Life (NOAJ Remix)
Keyboard Money Mark – Sometimes You Gotta Make It Alone
Martine Girault – The Revival
Dr. Music – In My Life
Lyn Christopher – Take Me With You
Omar – Outside
Lady Blackbird – Blackbird (Emma Jean Thackray Remix)
Chambers Brothers – Time Has Come Today
Fleetwood Mac – Go Your Own Way
The Perfect Circle – The Hands of Time
Etta James – Out on the Street, Again
Nicole Willis & The Soul Investigators – Feeling Free (Aaron Jerome Remix)
Rhye – Last Dance
Nitin Sawhney – Letting Go
Incognito – Out of the Storm (Carl Craig Remix)
Tribe – Livin’ A New Day

The post Splendid Fridays with Dom Servini appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

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Josh Pyke, the Veronicas, Lime Cordiale and more: Australian music for isolated times

Each week we add 15 (or so) new songs to a Spotify playlist to soundtrack your physical distancing amid coronavirus – and help artists you love get paid

As some states begin to slowly open back up, Australia’s arts industry is still largely in lockdown – and the music industry was hit harder, and earlier, than most others. But until large gatherings and gigs happen again, there are small things you can do: it’s an imperfect solution, but streaming Australian music can help.

Each week, in partnership with Sounds Australia, Guardian Australia will add some 15 new songs to a playlist for you to put on repeat.

Related: Drive-in concerts: music to the ears of audience- (and cash-) starved bands

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by Guardian staff via Electronic music | The Guardian

Denai Moore: Modern Dread review – hypnotic, surrealist bid for freedom

(Because Music)
Moore’s genre-blending electronic pop is an unsettling exploration of isolation and selfhood in an over-connected age

In her previous releases Elsewhere and We Used to Bloom, British-Jamaican artist Denai Moore incorporated R&B, folk and electronic influences, positioning her sound as having no boundaries. For her third album, her genre-blending tracks explore the paradoxical isolation that arises in an age when we are supposedly more connected than ever.

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by Timi Sotire via Electronic music | The Guardian

Beck's greatest songs – ranked!

As the prince of American alternative turns 50, we select his finest moments, from bluegrass ballads to breakup masterpieces and ‘beefcake pantyhose’

Beck’s most recent album, Hyperspace, was a missed opportunity, a gorgeously produced modern R&B album with barely any strong tunes. But See Through is good – its wash of synths paired with a staccato chorus makes it evocative of Swae Lee.

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by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian