The best new albums this week
Our writers recommend the albums that are rocking their world this week
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Trentemøller – Memoria (In My Room)
Enigmatic sonic explorer Trentemøller presents his first album since 2019’s ‘Obverse’, offering up a typically adventurous collection of songs on the immaculately crafted ‘Memoria’. Existing somewhere in the mysterious realms where inspiration meets serendipity, the 14 track piece is endowed with a mystical sense of supernature. Thanks, in part, to the ever dramatic sonic landscapes that the Danish artist so skilfully manifests, but also the thematic threads that link the material, ‘Memoria’ is entirely engaging throughout. Shards of golden light glisten through pitch-black shadows, space is infinite yet vividly in focus.
The album takes its name from Roman philosopher Cicero’s five canons of rhetoric, where memoria (memory) sits alongside discovery, eloquence, arrangement, and recitation. This is how stories are told, and it’s clear that here (and in all likelihood, Trentemøller’s entire body of work) a carefully constructed narrative is being laid out, if implicitly, for the listener to piece together. According to the artist, Cicero’s five tenets appear in each track as “seeds, primed for germination.
The collection begins with a series of four compositions exploring the “liminal space between the dream world and reality.” Hypnotically captivating, the bittersweet textures magically capture the half-light of the waking dream. Mysterious, haunting, surreal, the shimmering vocals and thick atmosphere of opener ‘Veil Of White’ set the scene in dramatic style, meandering through an evolving fog before abruptly resolving. Vocalist and long time collaborator Lisbet Fritze provides a spellbinding performance on ‘No More Kissing In The Rain’, examining impermanence through an abstract lens as her shimmering vocal intertwines with tightly woven melodies over a sturdy rhythm. The cinematic drones of ‘Darklands’ conjure a desolate landscape, as choral chants echo over languid guitars before ever-rising harmonies mark a clearing of the skies. ‘Glow’ – the fourth song in the first chapter – serves as a bridge between acts, a transformation of energy to motion where intricate textures are torn apart by pulsing drums and fierce static charges. Stunning sound design meets symbolic melodies here, with the brooding music yearning for repeat listens.
‘In The Gloaming’ is the first single taken from the album, glistening through the dusk’s arrival as the stars of the night’s sky reveal themselves as hallucinogenic arpeggios, with Fritze’s mesmerising vocal drifting through the poignant twilight. The psychedelic swirls of ‘The Rise’ are utterly enthralling, cascading over splashing drums before emptying into the infinite space, before “When The Sun Explodes” marks the album’s fulcrum. Charging deep into the kosmische, the kinetically charged rhythm propels glistening bells through a sea of distant harmonies, as growling bass ignites an explosion of light to burst into the stratosphere. Embodying all the filmic gravity of a Johan Johannson score, the track reverberates with new wave swagger, setting the tone for the fiercely impactful ‘Dead Or Alive’ that follows. Here, post-punk attitude extinguishes the flickering light that preceded it, as snarling vocals charge over unrelenting drums to unceremoniously barge us into the album’s third act.
Underpinning Trentemøller’s fascination with the diametric, ‘All Too Soon’ arrives as a stark contrast to the noise-rock it follows, as once again the vulnerability of Fritze’s vocal triggers a flurry of emotional impulses as it meanders through the forest of instrumentation. A glowing light that intensifies as the listener approaches, the music guides the listener back from the disorienting darkness. The otherworldly interlude of ‘A Summer’s Empty Room’ allows for a moment of reflection, before the volatile bass of ‘Swaying Pine Trees’ bubbles and boils over before dramatically burning itself out. ‘Drifting Star’ sways like a night sky viewed from below the ocean’s surface, before the tripped-out fog of ‘Like A Daydream’ billows with wide-eyed innocence. Finally, closing track ‘Linger’ invites us to ponder the irresistible aurora that’s been witnessed, dwelling in introspection as we marvel at the uncommon mastery of Trentemøller.
PC
StabUDown Productions – Peaches In The Dungeon (StabUDown)
James Donadio is in a scene of one – a self-realised world of hard-knocking nocturnal beatdowns for denizens of dimly lit dancefloors and the sticky-floored spaces adjacent to them. Based in Cleveland, Ohio, the man often known as Prostitutes has spent more than 10 years expounding a staunchly DIY ethic through his machines, speaking with an eloquent dialect all his own. The eloquence manifests in a necessary spark – a flair which elevates the music above the glut of lo-fi miscreants. If Prostitutes sometimes tips towards the snarling, punk end of Donadio’s spectrum, StabUDown represents him getting freaky in the club.
The hooks come on heavy on this latest StabUDown drop, not least with the gated stabs punching out of ‘Nuclear Wolf’. It’s devastatingly simple, and simply devastating, all squashed together with a signal chain which holds true to the gnarly spirit Donadio answers to in all his music. The dirty slug of the bass on low-slung retro-electro joint ‘Battle Between Witches’ comes on like the theme from Wild Style, the crisp B-boy styles given a couple of ‘ludes to loosen up the joints.
One of the record’s most profound moments comes in ‘Dragon Tapestry’, an artfully reduced Detroit techno variation nodding to the bugging machine funk of Carl Craig’s 69 productions with just as much grit and an added dose of spookiness. Equally, his approach to slow and nasty breakbeat on opening track ‘No Recipe For Spells’ seems to summon those hazy days where the mixes were always in the red and the vibe took precedent over the production. More than just stylishly dishevelled, though, Donadio’s gift lies in bedding these tracks with heart and soul. It feels as sincere as it is funky, as intentional as it is experimental. Quite where it fits in with the bigger picture is unclear, but fortunately Donadio’s soundworld is rich enough to explore on its own.
OW
DKMA – Boston Boy Vol 1(Guidance)
Dana Kelley wasn’t unappreciated in his life – his accomplished catalogue across all kinds of aliases would disprove such a theory. But now, nearly 10 years since his death, his work is getting the kind of lavish package treatment it always deserved. Above Board appear to have approached the matter sensitively, in dialogue with Kelley’s family, and giving his legacy the sensitive treatment it deserves. After the run of three Callisto collections on a specially revived Guidance, now attention shifts to his work as DKMA, and there’s plenty more frankly astounding house music to cruise through.
More volumes are promised, but equally Kelley’s music deserves to be cut loud for the club, and so the selection feels measured and thought-out. Many of the joints on here have been fetching wild prices second hand, so it’s a treat to be able to hear 1997 joint ‘Spin Hands’ freshly remastered and sounding utterly spellbinding in its swirl of blue-hued pads and dreamy organ. This is house music through and through, but it has that auteur quality, that subtle something which lets you know a grandmaster is on the buttons.
Two tracks from 2002 release The Other EP land here, with ‘Creepin’ in particular pulling a smoky veil down behind the crisp snap of the drums with an incredibly understated touch. If the Callisto material sometimes displayed the spicier inclinations of Kelley’s work, DKMA shows him working in subliminal, superlative fashion. The previously unreleased DAT finds match up to the reissues too, edging towards a bumping kind of deep techno on ‘DAT-10_02’ without losing that seductive, mellow mood. It may be bittersweet to consider Kelley isn’t here to see the treatment his incredible music is enjoying, but at least it lives on to spread its low-key positivity further than it reached before.
OW
Cold Beat – War Garden (Like Ltd.)
Context is optional, but musical integrity is sacred. Case in point: read around Cold Beat’s ‘War Garden’ (but fail to actually listen to it), and you’ll be hard pressed to differentiate it from all the other ‘product of lockdown’ albums that have cropped up in recent years. Musically, though, we’re thoroughly blown away by this, and are for once impressed that a project like it could have been produced entirely between four people over Zoom. Again, that’s a practice many artists have taken to showing off about in the past two years, but have little to show for. The latter half of that statement, abjectly, cannot be ascribed to Cold Beat.
‘Fronted’ on vocals by Hannah Lew – and backed by the production and instruments of Kyle King, Luciano Talpini Aita, and Sean Monaghan – Cold Beat have existed since 2014, riding the happy coattails of indie-dreamy rock, Anamanaguchi-style chiptune, and synthpoppy goodness. A brief stop-off with James Murphy’s DFA Records for their fifth album ‘Mother’ in 2020 – finally achieving the recognition they have always deserved – have now lent them the confidence to put out yet another self-released record.
‘War Garden’ is their best. It’s their brightest sounding, most cohesive album, lyrically touching on the apocalyptic themes that surround and confuse us nowadays (whether they originate online or from our scaremongering peers). Bolstering this sense of confusion is the nigh-perfect 8-bit production of lead bits ‘Year Without A Shadow’ and ‘Tumescent Decoy’, which leave us in a Huxleyesque, Brave New World of ‘utopian’ digital production, tinged by the dystopian loss heard in the lilting voice of Lew. Such is what makes this album fit nicely within the continuum of Ghost Box or Scarfolk. It’s got hauntological 80s and post-Hacienda 90s references, but also draws just as easily on the nu-school pop of Chvrches or Chromatics – and of course, does much better than them at wringing meaning out of listlessness.
By the end, ‘New World’, the complete electrification of the album’s instrumentation sounds like an AI takeover. At the same time, its mood becomes optimistic, as though humanity was what was holding us back. It’s all summed up by Lew’s musing: “will I be alive in this new world?” A fascinating rumination on the fate of life.
JIJ
There’s something eternally satisfying about the sound world 7FO crafts. The Osaka-based producer has a distinctive style, using stark, gallery-like environments in which to suspend gleaming, crystalline sounds. In their curious individual design as well as their arrangement, they acquire sculptural form. You’re left with something to consider as a true artwork, revealing different dimensions depending on the angle of approach, sometimes compelling, sometimes beguiling, but always beautiful. His previous works on Rvng Intl., EM Records and Bokeh Versions amongst others all share this quality, even if the microscopic details in the music can be quite different.
You instantly know you’re listening to 7FO as Ran Bouten opens up to reveal itself. Deeper into the album there are moments which feel a little different. ‘Track 3’ has a denser, dubbier tone with busier patterns of cascading melody and pronounced bass. While stopping short of an outright danceable production, there’s enough movement and bass presence to imagine a bold selector doing something exciting with the track on a proper soundsystem. Elsewhere ‘Fiction’ offers up perhaps the most standard construction you could expect of 7FO, with linear 4/4 drums (of the clicky, C76 kind) driving a catchy set of sounds. Even in these diversions though, there’s still a clean air lingering around the music – an expanse of whitewashed surfaces which tidily contain all these pockmarks of sound.
Ultimately, the 7FO listening experience is a soothing one, but it’s also strange enough to stimulate the mind. Here is an artist with a clear trajectory, who struck upon a mode which is unique to them, and which they can continue to explore at will. The progression from release to release is subtle, but why hurry to depart from such delightful filigrees of FM synthesis?
OW
Saint Etienne – Foxbase Alpha (30th Anniversary Edition) (Heavenly)
It doesn’t seem possible that the debut album from Bob, Pete and Sarah is 30+ years old. First released in 1991, it laid bare their quirky crossover world, a place where breakbeats and samples meet 60s pop. It was one of those records that featured heavily in all-back-to-mine sessions after the clubs had kicked out (London-based night owls did enjoy it when their patch was name-checked in the list of locations in ‘Girl VII’).
It’s also an album responsible for something of a musical education in itself. Two of its best-known tracks – ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ and ‘Kiss And Make Up’ – were cover versions of songs by Neil Young and The Field Mice respectively. Whoah, was the usual response to that discovery. Oh, and ‘Nothing Can Stop Us Now’ uses a Dusty Springfield sample so obvious it’s an inch away from being a third cover. Again, whoah.
The nods here are knowing. Saint Etienne have always been smarter than your average band without being sniffy about it. They make unashamed pop, drawing influence from all over the place. Last year’s excellent ‘I’ve Been Trying To Tell You’, which digs all its samples from the years 1997-2001, shows they’ve lost none of their touch. That these two records bookend 30-odd years takes some believing. Foxbase Alpha is a timeless classic.
NM
Vicious Pink – West View (Minimal Wave)
In the annals of British synth-pop history, Vicious Pink are surely one of the brightest sparks. They didn’t get anywhere near the giddy heights reached by Depeche Mode, The Human League and the like, nor their friends and collaborators Soft Cell, but even with a small clutch of hits they made a sizable mark which left ripples in electronic music culture for a variety of reasons. On one hand they make perfect sense for reissue treatment on Minimal Wave, given their idiosyncratic approach to early synth music with the have-a-go spirit of punk, a grip of artistic ambition and stylistic flair, raw compositions and deadpan vocals. But there’s something distinguished about their sound which feels like it transcends the trappings of the DIY misfits who normally embody minimal wave.
Of course, much of the impact of Vicious Pink centres around their biggest hit, ‘Cccan’t You See’, and to this day it’s a remarkable piece of music. The sampling chop up of Josephine Warden’s vocal was so catchy it got picked up and flipped wholesale by Nightmares On Wax for the dance-upending bleep classic ‘I’m For Real’, bedding it in the minds of countless generations of ravers. It was an important echo through the musical subcultures of West Yorkshire in the 1980s, just like when Warden and her VP partner Brian Moss delivered off-kilter backing vocals for Soft Cell on Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret.
West View is peppered with the singles Vicious Pink released – the noirish, deliciously odd ‘My Private Tokyo’, the dancefloor-honed motorik thrust of ‘8:15 To Nowhere’, but also a wealth of unreleased demos. There’s so much to savour – the uptempo snag of ‘My Man & Me’, the visionary EBM stylings of ‘Baby It’s Too Late’, the moody Balearic delights of ‘Cccan’t You See’ inversion ‘Blue (World Of Blue)’. The ideas and inspiration are undeniable, and you’re left wondering why on earth Vicious Pink weren’t picked up for bigger things. Even in their most primitive demos, there’s something extra at work compared to the average Minimal Waver, and this LP at least does a fine service to the memory of one of UK synth-pops greatest.
OW
Silver Apples – Selections From The Early Session (Chickencoop)
Previously only released in the US, this is a Frankenstein’s monster compilation of tracks drawn from the first two albums – 1968’s self-titled debut and 1969’s ‘Contact’ – by the influential US duo. Tacked on the end is ‘Anthem’, a fabled recording where the band’s lynchpin Simeon Coxe jams with Hendrix, letting rip with a monster of his own – a hotch-potch box of oscillators, effects, pedals and a multitude of controllers that he called The Simeon.
While drummer Danny Taylor died in 2005 and Coxe in 2020, their influence as electronic music pioneers continues to permeate and rightly so. On these early seminal albums, they marry driving rhythms with otherworldly electrically pulses. Everyone from Can to Portishead wears their influence. Even John Lennon was reputedly a fan. Tracks like the melodic ‘Program’ (from the first album) are waaaay ahead of their time. Sounding like a trip up and down the radio dial, it has it all – metronomic drumming, wild electronic blips and bleeps, spoken-word samples, and a sweet 60s flower power-like vocal.
There really is no one like Silver Apples. If you’re yet to discover their radical charms ‘Selections From The Early Session’ is the perfect introduction.
NM
Flaty’s obtuse angles are a constant source of fascination as he glitches out the edges of the idiosyncratic Russian scene. Last year he dropped the sonically rigorous RAILZ album, which dealt in a particular palette of abrasive textures from specific sources. On this occasion he’s back with the third instalment in a collaborative project with Oleg Buyanov, aka OL. Previously Serwed have released their slippery constructions on Buyanov’s own Asyncro and Huerco S’ West Mineral Ltd, and now they’re landing on Flaty’s ANWO for a mind-flaying trip through outré techno gear that hangs on to rhythmic integrity by a fine, almost imperceptible thread.
There’s a curious duality in the sound achieved on Serwed III – it deals in fulsome tones which often sport the gnarled charms of outboard circuitry, but it moves with the needlepoint detail and staggered awkwardness of high-end digital production. To hear the bit-reduced atmospheric swirl behind ‘Scruff’, a thousand lo-res YouTube fantasies are lit up behind the thump of a drunken 808 trying its best to trap out – a disorienting concoction which can only come from binary trickery. It doesn’t matter of course, but rather this canny diversity in sound creates a tangy stew that manages to gleam behind layers of muck.
The overall approach on Serwed III is freewheeling, stopping by angular techno tryptamines on ‘Serpent’ and staggeringly expressive, modal acid on ‘c-catch’. ‘Hobot’ is a network of metallic chasms lit by microtonal sprites. The sound design is so developed and inventive, the imagery comes on strong throughout, and no moment sounds like a repeat of the last. If you need something with real substance to sink your brainteeth into, Serwed III will keep you sated for days.
OW
Nid & Sancy – The Cut Up Jeans Technique (Digital Piss Factory):
Straight from the post-Alec Empire, noughties era of ravey cut-up music comes a reissue of the fourth album by Nid & Sancy (Bart Demey and Tania Gallagher). ‘The Cut Up Jeans Technique’ was originally released on their very own label Digital Piss Factory (yes), and is a masterclass in raw, maximized cut-up, rivalled only by the most janky b-boys breaksters and enigmatic Japanese scratch DJs.
The original press file for this one read: “Welcome to the ancient art of making music with samples from your cutlery… Also featured on this record: people cleaning their throats in various ways… SHUFFLE YOUR BRAIN.” From this raucous, post-punky declaration of imperfection comes 14 bangers, emanating straight from your half-destroyed earphones and through to your now tinnitus-racked, perforated eardrums. Don’t be fooled by its use of “samples from cutlery”… this is far from Matthew Herbert’s chi-chi “domestic house”. Most tracks on this one, rather, range from 30 seconds to a couple of minutes long, and function as the perfect follow-up to Mr. Oizo’s compressed ‘flat beat’ style.
‘Cyrrone Was Here’ and ‘Randy’s Attack’ are mired in distortion and womp. From there, the album grows weirder and weirder; ‘Skinny Fit’ ups the experimentalism to reversed zipper sound effects, swear word bleeps, and metallic scratches, somehow fashioning a banger out of them. It really begins to amp up by ‘The Stream’; Gallagher’s vocals sound like an angsty, strangled commentary on TV culture, while ‘The Spillover Memory’ sounds like a los t‘No Love Deep Web’ cut, fronted by the mantra: “you can’t download a meal”. A message to music heads: this album, if anything, should be one of your go-to references for weirdo net culture.
JIJ
This week’s reviewers: Neil mason, Jude Iago James, Patrizio Cavaliere, Oli Wariwck