The best new albums this week

Maribou State’s Chris Davids aka Shire-T heads our list of top LPs this week

ALBUM OF THE WEEK

Shire T – Tomorrow’s People (Dama Dama)

Maribou State’s Chris Davids adopts an all-new moniker to present his debut solo album, ‘Tomorrow’s People’. In a possible nod to his home county of Hertfordshire (lovingly referred to by the Dama Dama label folk as ‘the ‘shire’), Davids metamorphosis into Shire T sees him journey deep into his UK dance roots, only to re-emerge with something sounding altogether fresh and wonderfully captivating.

After the releases he and Liam Ivory crafted as Maribou State first began appearing in the racks somewhere around 2013, the duo truly made their indelible mark on the visible edge of the underground following the arrival of their first long-player, ‘Portraits’. They’ve gone on release a further full-lengths, ‘Kingdoms In Colour’, curated a ‘Fabric Presents’ compilation, and released a gentle stream of singles and remixes. Their sound has won them plenty of admirers from within and without the subaquatic realms, and their accomplished production sensibilities combine with a knack for the infectious to ensure that their music finds its way into the collections and playlists of the more commercially minded. Donning the Shire T cap for the very first time, Davids retains this well-tuned production sheen while stamping his own personal aesthetic onto the nine, well-formed tracks that combine to form ‘Tomorrow’s People.’

The album opens with an immediate call to action, as the words “listen! I need your attention” charge over the freakish synth lines, vibrant bass, and rolling rhythms of ‘Full Attention’. Following the electric start, the tempo drops but the force remains, with the gorgeously converse elements of the immaculately constructed ‘Under The Sun’. Here, slow-burning beats power through acid grit, aberrant leads, and soul rich vocal bursts as the magnetic track journeys through sinister depths, before soaring strings arrive like a tidal wave of emotion. ‘Blue Kiss’ explodes into the fray, with hyped breaks that continuously morph over moody bass, drugged-up acid and a familiar but wildly effective vocal line. As the track fades, the pressure momentarily evaporates, but Shire T doesn’t leave us much time to catch our breath. Next, the timeless vocal honey of soul legend Fonda Rae makes an appearance, as affected licks from her Wish classic ‘Touch Me’ serve as the hook on the uncontrollably wild rhythms of ‘L.D.R.A’.

Straight-up four-to-the-floor drums make an appearance on the string-heavy and gently melancholic march into main room vigour of ‘Over You’, as its full-bodied kick propels the dynamic groove through endless swathes of granular synth textures. The rolling bass of ‘Burnin’ Jungle’ comes as quite a surprise, as the always-infectious disco form is passed through some kind of saucer-eyed refraction device, and what manifests is a deliciously outlandish slab of dancefloor wonkiness. Expertly switching up the tone without sacrificing the album’s distinct flow, the thought-provoking piano motifs and haunting harmonics of ‘London, Paris, Berlin’ elegantly meander beneath soulful vocals and mysterious sweeps, with softly cascading drums adding solidity to the floating sonics.

We are then invited to dive into the eerie half-light of the oceanic depths, as growling acid, searing vocals and distorted synths build to a rousing crescendo on the greasy chug of ‘On My Mind’ – its hands-in-the-air prowess making way for an intoxicating heads-down groove. Finally, Shire T leaves us with plenty to contemplate on the crooked lullaby of ‘Serve No Tea’, its dreamy piano melody allowed full-room to blossom over disquieting effects and sweeps. There’s an awful lot to admire on this eminently accomplished collection. The music offers more than enough variety to engage the listener while remaining supremely coherent. ‘Tomorrow’s People’ feels entirely contemporary, making stealthy use of tried and tested refrains, but presenting them against a modernist backdrop that render this voyage into dance-ready electronica utterly engaging from beginning to end.

PC

Oliver Torr – Fragility of Context (Little Beat Different)

It’s a touchy subject when a project is inspired by an artist’s mental health struggles, and doubly so when enjoying that album comes from relating to those negative experiences. But the flashing reverie of Oliver Torr’s full-length self-released debut ‘Fragility Of Context’ – inspired by the artist’s own panic attacks and depression – is a welcome addition to that cohort. Aiming to both evoke and treat panic, the album is an uncertain arena of digitally-altered voices and blue soundscapes, which sound not unlike the calm before one such fit of terror.

With (knowing or otherwise) sonic allusions to G.G. Tonet and Oneohtrix Point Never, this is a thoroughly varied vocaloid album, with traditions from IDM, new wave and glitch resounding like neuronal overfire. Every track is some form of ballad; one such is ‘Run The Streets’, featuring Chrysalism, which has an endearingly distorted trap motif backboning a nervous vocal line, all taking place in a buzzing haze.

Creative minds are subject to paradigm shifts, which is why we find it to be no great surprise that John Berger is a reference point for ‘Rekontext 1’ and ‘Rekontext 2’, which upend the album’s mood each time. After the first ‘Rekontext’, we hear ‘cthru’, which is a sprawling electronic bit of splattered drum parts and electrocuted vocals. It marks a complete change to anything heard prior, like an attentive, long-lost Richard Devine tune in an otherwise nervous dream.

The penultimate track ‘Deià’ reflects Torr’s mind in the grip of an intense panic attack, experienced in the seaside town of the same name in Mallorca. By this point, it’s obvious Torr is an adept vocal synthesist, capable of making his vocals sound as demonic in the high register as the bass does in the track’s lows. For those who understand panic, this is an intense, electromagnetic album, and a realistic portrayal of the fight-or-flight response – it’s not all intensity, and comes in waves.

JIJ

Phobophobes – Modern Medicine (Modern Sky)

If truth be told the much-lauded south London scene probably starts and ends with wonky upstarts Phobophobes. The group’s lynchpins James Bardolph Taylor And Chris OC report early stints with fledgling versions of Fat White Family and guitarist Jack Fussey is latterly making hay with current pretenders Muck Spreader, the aforementioned OC also moonlights as a member of avant-filth merchants Meatraffle. Two groups that perhaps are sending off the latter stages of a scene, which these days carries as much criticism as it does support.  

Phobophobes as mysterious as they are an anomaly is the go-to reference point to understand the period in between 2015 and now. Always a group formed of genuine talent comprising various weirdos and vagabonds from the core of the Brixton scene, the band seemingly fell straight from the nipple of goodness into disastrous and tragic beginnings and have frankly jockeyed ever since from one tits-up to another.

And despite the three long years, and constant internal pandemonium, since their excellent and well-received debut, its follow-up Modern Medicine emerges now, however ravaged the band, as a truly engaging, richly layered and mind-blowing affair.

Great art we know comes from struggle. And with a revolving door of personnel, a list of managers as long as Rachmaninov’s arm, countless sound engineers, producers and mixers (Youth is credited as co-producer), not to mention an unfortunate run of labels, Phobophobes’ short career seems to have worked to harness a solidified yet peculiar energy.

The album’s opener ‘Hollow Body Boy’ through to ‘Muscle Memory’ via title track ‘Modern Medicine’ (originally entitled ‘Whisper’) demonstrates main man Taylor’s brooding discomfort with the status quo and continues with the band’s long and understandable relationship with tortured paranoia, all the while constructed on classy production skills courtesy of not only Youth but also mixer Dave Emery (Rudimental, Rita Ora, Liam Gallagher)

By rights Phobophobes should be languishing in the bargain basement, bottom-feeding end of the British music industry, and indeed with this group’s luck they probably will. Artistically at least, this latest offering saves them from such a dire fate, commercially however it is anyone’s guess what is next. One can only wish them the best of luck.

APC

Various – After Dark 3 (Italians Do It Better)

Johnny Jewel’s ever-venerated Italians Do It Better label are back in compilatory action with the third edition of their ‘After Dark’ series. LA-based producer, composer, and visual artist Jewel set up the label alongside Mike Simonetti back in 2007, but – following the latter’s departure in 2013 – now pilots the mighty IDIB vessel all by himself. Over the years, the label has provided a home to artists as diverse as Jacques Renault, Nite Jewel, Bottin, Glass Candy, and even pop pin-up, Katy Perry, among many others. The first instalment of After Dark was among the label’s first releases, with a follow-up arriving in 2013. Thanks in part to the lengthy gaps between chapters, volume three generated a good deal of disco heat in advance of its digital release last year, and the compilation is finally available on (decidedly colourful) wax. The music contained within comes from across the extraordinarily vast label roster – including from Jewel himself as well as his bands Chromatics and Desire. Approximately characterised by the poppier end of the neo-Italo sound, each of the 17 effervescent tracks included is steeped in production gloss

and synth-heavy sheen. The compilation is full of highlights and is sure to appeal to crossover lovers – especially those who enjoy their disco with a measure of bad boy swagger. The sugary club manoeuvres of Jewel’s ‘Surgery’ make an instant impression, as to the tough rhythms and searing new beat synths of ‘Holodnoe Solnce’ from Love Object. Elsewhere, MOTHERMARY’s ‘Resurrection’ blends seductive vocals with sparse drums and powerful atmospherics, while the Balearic melodies of Guy Gerber’s ‘Cameo’ don’t take too long to get under the skin. Maintaining a spirited drive throughout, Chromatics’ ‘Endless Sleep’ closes proceedings with a modern-day lullaby, ensuring plenty of room to wind down after the wildest of California sun-drenched rides.

PC

Ruth Goller – Skylla (Vula Viel)

Skylla is the solo project of composer and bassist Ruth Goller (Melt Yourself Down, Rokia Traore, Sam Amidon, Vula Viel) – featuring herself on bass guitar and vocals, as well as featuring outstanding UK vocalists Lauren Kinsella (Snowpoet) and Alice Grant (Matthew Herbert). The music takes inspirations from Bulgarian folk song, to Free Jazz, to ‘Joyce’ to the Italian Alps from where she hails – with bewitching compositions, featuring bass guitar harmonics in different tuning systems sparkling underneath other-worldly polyphonic songs.

Skylla takes after the mythical three-headed sea monster of the same name, their music is both mysterious and arresting – in it’s own intimate and unique way. Ruth Goller’s songs on Skylla play out like a game of passing the story along between composer and instrument. Flurries of notes met with bouncing clusters of vocal phrases. An idea knocked back and forth, extended and elaborated in a state of constant evolution. The result feels deeply emergent, a dialogue which is maze-like yet open ended.

Having never released a solo project previously, Skylla, her debut LP, is well worth a listen, in part because it’s such an unusual and inspired set. Featuring unusual vocals and layered vocalizations throughout, many of the tracks are built around left-of-centre bass riffs, fuzz-tone seeped lo-fi guitars and effects-laden aural textures. With very little distinguishable vocals throughout the record, it’s not hard to see different interpretations surrounding the deeper meanings of the record. Goller cites her post-punk roots as an inspiration, and while it might not be obvious in this album’s soft, smokey hues, it’s there in the defiant, convention-evading energy. It sits on a gentler yet related parallel to the line that runs from The Raincoats through to Still House Plants, in that it uses spontaneity and playfulness to break inscribed convention. Skylla captures a sense of stepping over a threshold into unfamiliar territory, elation surging through the grasping for new associations and relations.

It’s a very hard album to pin down, but it’s entertaining, experimental and eccentric in equal measure. Impressive stuff all told.

AY

Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand (Domino)

At only 38 minutes long Franz Ferdinand may not be a particularly long album, but it is a masterpiece of funky, punky, suave cool from the first track to the last. Alex Kapranos and co. had always got the formula just right. A pinch of this and a smattering of that from here, there and everywhere. “Come on Home” and “Auf Achse” could be distantly related to Blondie’s “Atomic” while “Tell Her Tonight” sounds a bit like “Boogie Nights” (in a good way). The whole album sounds sort of familiar, especially considering the time of its original release date. Despite this, it’s always unmistakably Franz Ferdinand. But that’s usually the way with great albums isn’t it?

Like all lasting records, Franz Ferdinand steps up to the plate and still boldly bangs on the door to stardom. There’s no consideration for what trends have just come and gone. There’s no waffling or concessions for people who still won’t get it. This is an album as much about preening and posing as passion, that’ll have you poring over the lyrics for all ages. The fear that they couldn’t match their first two singles proved unfounded. They’ve done it. With style, wit and, well, great posture.

AY

Deafhaven – Infinite Granite (Sargent House)

Deafheaven have never been strangers to controversy. Their seamless, genre-defining blend of black metal, post-rock and shoegaze, has often garnered as many detractors as worshippers. Too heavy for the gazers, too serene for the metalheads.

While 2013’s breakout ‘Sunbather’, earned the band critical acclaim and worldwide exposure, the ferocious ‘New Bermuda’, and its romantic, grandiose successor, ‘Ordinary Corrupt Human Love’, hinted at desirous expansion, with an increased focus on melody, texture and positivity.

Album five, ‘Infinite Granite’, sees this desire and disregard for listener expectation maximised to a staggering degree. While the possibility of a fully-fledged post-punk project always seemed somewhere out on the horizon, it will still come as a shock to many to hear just how hopeful and euphoric these cascading pieces truly are.

‘In Blur’ shimmers with the grace of early Smashing Pumpkins but with more restrained, almost tepid delivery, while cuts like ‘Great Mass Of Color’ and ‘The Gnashing’, make evident the groups newfound taste for watery, fuzzed-out dream-pop riffage and earworm hooks.

The most glaring and obvious of differences is vocalist George Clarke, who eschews his trademark shrieking and black metal rasps for a more subdued performance. Smothered in aquatic reverb, the enigmatic frontman weaves through soft croons and lush falsetto with a cadence and demeanour similar to Peter Murphy of Bauhaus or Morrissey in his prime.

Likely to fan the flames of frustration for those who’ve never appreciated Deafheaven as a true metal entity, ‘Infinite Granite’ is sure to perplex, enamour and endear in equal measure, with its spectral sound-scaping and compositional elegance.

ZB

Linkin Park – Meteora (Warner)

Rock superstars Linkin Park’s outstanding album Meteora gets the star treatment with a record day reissue for those fans old enough to follow them, but too young to understand the importance of vinyl. But rather than drawing inspiration from classical music or Hobbits as their art-rock forefathers did, Linkin Park are rooted in contemporary Asia, postmodernism, sample-based music and anime superheroes. The common denominator between the band and its antecedents is psychology: Whereas, say, Pink Floyd grappled with insanity, this LP dramatized the conflicts of father and son, man and woman, or friend and friend — all from the vantage point of a young guy struggling for harmony with or separation from an unnamed “you.”

Many lyrics will resonate with listeners, still in the wake of the Late Chester Bennington with this record coming at the height of the band’s fame. They are angry and insecure and clever and great. A tightly controlled montage of hooks, riffs, dodgy rapping, roaring, sweet singing, noises and scratching, ruthlessly edited into classic songs. Every track from ‘Faint’ to ‘Figure 0.9’ now romanticises an age where everyone wore their angst on their sleeves. And now a classic record to pick up when revisiting lost youth.

AY

Modulaw, Xzavier Stone & Daemon (self-released)

It’s the return of the dream trio; producers Modulaw and Xzavier Stone have again hooked up with vocalist and neo-futurist visionary Daemon this week, dropping their latest mixtape ‘Juice’. It follows up ‘The Game’, released earlier this year, and while that project did infect our ears with its flurrying autotuned vocals, scythelike trap production and plodding tempos, it did leave us wanting much more. The artists involved clearly knew how to rip asemic ‘mumble’ rap from its homely origins, blending it with godly metalloid sound design not of this Earth. But something was still rigid, unpotentiated, a vacuum unfilled.

‘Juice’ fills that space. This seven-tracker is a tempo-crushing monstrosity, bouncing between beats, times and registers at least once or twice per track. It opens with the airhorn-laden ‘Familiar Faces’, but contrary to the title, we’re becoming less and less familiar with the new face of Daemon, whose shrill, imp-like triplet flows are unrecognisable compared to those on his former project ‘Aeos’. Choice cuts include ‘Laguna’ – which blends a ratchet tempo, a floating vocal ‘aah’ hook, and synths and impacts which sound like magic swords being egregiously unsheathed – and the drill teaser ‘Magnolia’ – which lifts the usually dark and wobbling genre to new, freeway-cruising heights.

JIJ

This week’s reviewers: Zach Buggy, Andrew P Childs, Jude Iago James,. Ava Yusuf, Patrizio Cavaliere.