The best new singles this week
A heatwave of hot singles
In Love With A Ghost – Gay Story (ILWG)
It’s rare for a lo-fi hip hop album to get a vinyl release, let alone fly off our shelves, so we were pleasantly intrigued to indulge the work of Paris producer In Love With A Ghost this week. ILWG is one of the more eminent artists to come to prominence in the genre since Tomppabeats or b.dsu dropped their landmark albums in the mid-2010s. Therefore, for them make lo-fi beats continually interesting has to be a tall-ish order. In other words: it takes more than a few wonky beats and textural sounds to sate our cravings nowadays – we believe ILWG has what it takes to buck the trend.
‘Gay Story’ is a snappy and lowercase soundpack; as they should, every tender piano progression and guitar cadence judders through the medium of hiss and meticulously recorded background noise. All is apparently tiny and sweet, as if the album is regailing a love story between dolls in a genderqueer toy town. And as is the case with any lowercase album, the extra headroom makes way for more crispness and adventurous audio workouts; ‘Happy When You’re Not Here’ has guitar plucks in spatial audio – as if elves are perched on our shoulders, egging us on into the day.
Just as we thought it couldn’t get any homelier, ‘Feeling Empty Inside Because There’s No More Spaghetti’ is a timeless cottagecore anthem, combining drowsy, cuckoo-clock guitar clicks, kazoo and whistles. The result is a mega-distinct sonic scene – music for just-right pie cooling down on the windowsill, as the sun sets over the pasture beyond. Fittingly, Mommy features on two tracks – it’s not actually the artist’s mum, but a fellow lo-fi hip hop artist hailing from anonymised internet hyperspace. ‘Hyacinth’ and ‘Something Easy’ barely scratch the surface of drums, sounding like half-sleepwalks through what Pokemon game soundtracks would sound like if they weren’t 8-bit. This is perfect wind-down music for the seasoned lo-fi listener, who hopes for something more than whatever it is that that anime girl from the YouTube video bumps.
JIJ
Danger Boys ‘Monsters From The Future’ (Pinchy & Friends)
Funk-flecked Neapolitan outfit Danger Boys land on Pinchy & Friends with a follow-up to last year’s ‘Danger Zone’, presenting four glistening cuts on the ‘Monsters From The Future’ EP. The outfit is formed of West Hill Studio alumni Enrico Fierro and Raffaele ‘Whodamanny’ Arcella. Armed with this information alone, one should be able to glean a fairly solid understanding of both the quality and tone to expect here. Sure enough, the music is excellent throughout, glistening with a futurist funk aesthetic and dexterity of musicianship that are both informed by the classics and deliciously a la mode. Both artists were featured on Dario di Pace’s recent Mystic Jungle record, Deviant Disco, and here the pair spread their wings for a dalliance outside the confines of their regular home on Periodica Records. Joining the duo on guitar is another Periodica contributor, Alessio Pignorio, whose vivacious shredding proves to be a glorious key feature of the music contained herein.
The EP launches with the title track, a low-slung prog-funk groove bursting with freaky synth solos, sensual vocals and soaring guitar leads that are approximately kept in check by the tightest of rhythm tracks. Next, ‘Mind Control’ gently nudges the tempo, once again featuring expressive guitar solos riding over delicately woven instrumentation, rotating with sing-along vocals and atmospheric synth manoeuvrers. On the reverse, feel-good carnival vibes abound on the joyful swirls of ‘Gringo Tropicana’. Rousing percussion drives summery horns, sing-along vocals and agile bass before the fusion guitar solo shoots for the cosmos and steel drums complete the Caribbean funk flex. It’s clear the creators are having fun here, and the revelry continues into the ‘Tropicana Suite’ version, where Latin guitar enlivens an ever so slightly stripped arrangement designed to allow the slick instrumentation a little more breathing space.
PC
Aura Safari ‘Arcipelago’ (Terrasolare)
Italian fusionists Aura Safari show up on a neat little 7” on the Terrasolare label, presenting a pair of breezy jams on the exquisite ‘Arcipelago’. The act consist of Perugia-based jazzers Alessandro Deledda, Andrea Moretti, Lorenzo Lavoratori, Daniele Melloni and Nicholas Iammatteo. While each of them is rooted in vastly different musical universes, together the ensemble manages to channel vivid shades of boogie, funk, Italo, global grooves and jazz into a delightfully refreshing sonic amalgam.
The band have for years been key figures in Perugia’s bubbling music scene, regularly performing at the city’s seminal Red Zone Club and lighting up the stage at the annual Umbria Jazz Festival. Having made a series of delectable contributions to the always-enjoyable Hell Yeah! Records roster since their Church Records debut in 2019, they return to Terrasolare with an unmissable follow-up to last year’s roundly popular ‘Niagara’. The Umbrian region is known s Italy’s ‘green heart’, renowned for its high quality of life, temperate climate and lush forests.
With a sound that exudes a sense of warmth and good living, it appears as though these fertile ingredients penetrate Aura Safari’s delectably palatable sound. A side track ‘Arcipelago’ is a case in point, with sunshine keys, dreamy chords and growling synth bass delicately arranged over splashing drums in a gloriously freeform but jazz-flecked groove. On the reverse, ‘Gemini’ adds a touch of intrigue, with tension-building chord progressions servicing spirited synth solos and rich bass notes as energising drum fills provide thrust to the rhythm. Magnificently musical and supremely well-executed, this is a must for fans of contemporary jazz and health-giving Balearic elixirs.
PC
Samuel Smith has done a mighty fine job of carving out his own niche within this here tangled web of modern dance music. From his first drops as Ploy on Timedance and Hessle Audio, it was clear he had that sharp instinct for kinetic techno energy and the catch-all sound palette of UK soundsystem music. On records like Iron Lungs and Intrigued By The Drum he teased the divide between rowdy rave energy and smart production swerve, creating the kind of dramatic dynamics that get a crowd truly wound up, but doing so with a sense of maturity, elegance and experimentation which resulted in something genuinely fresh.
Much like his peers (Batu, Bruce et al) Smith has made Ploy into something of a standalone phenomenon, wholly compatible with other current club music but very much pursuing his own sound. The past few years have confirmed that many times over as Smith’s work began to appear exclusively on his own Deaf Test label, run in tandem with some infamously heated parties at Venue MOT Unit 18 in Bermondsey, South London. It’s refreshing to see an artist placing importance on a physical dance as part of their creative arc, and it’s clear Smith is doing just that as he names his latest EP after the club he calls home.
There’s no need to try and dissect ‘Stinky’ – its make-up and intentions are abundantly clear. From the choppy MC sampling to the bashy drums, this is built to set a party off in no uncertain terms. But Smith uses his own weird tricks to denote breakdowns and drops rather than pandering to any established triggers for dancers to lose their shit. ‘Ninety One’ ploughs a similar furrow in vocal-peppered weaponry, but it’s a different beast that has a slightly more techno-informed architecture and some deliciously ghoulish dread notes in the mid section.
‘Unit 18’ is perhaps the track which will chime with those who still hold the early Ploy tracks dear, as a dense tapestry of percussion dances across the cut behind a flute hook which comes on more than a little grime-y. Overall, the track feels more pitched towards a DMZ meditation style, providing the balance to the in-yer-face fist-shaking fun of the two tracks which bookend it. That doesn’t make ‘Unit 18’ any less of a head-turner though – just another example of how powerful Ploy has become in this ill-defined zone of fully charged dance music.
OW
Azu Tiwaline – Vesta EP (IOT Records)
It feels like we’re still only just scratching the surface of what Azu Tiwaline has in store. The Tunisian artist laid out a fine spectrum on her 2020 album Draw Me A Silence, while her Livity Sound drops helped break her to a wider audience, but there’s a furtive quality to her sound which hints as much as it tells. More than the average producer tinkering with percussion and bass, she seems able to open up hidden worlds in each track and let you see just a fraction of what’s out there. It leaves you in a perpetual state of intrigue, even as you move instinctively to the rhythmic impulses.
This thread continues on Vesta EP, as more of these distinct sound pieces throw light onto new dimensions of Tiwaline’s sound. ‘Medium Time’ does sound in line with other tracks she’s produced in the past, but there’s a way in which the drums cut through as the melodic pad tones emerge which creates a narrative in the track as gripping as any expertly scripted film sequence.
Elsewhere you can hear a dub techno influence creeping in, from the Porter Ricks-esque shifting sound slabs on ’Lowww’ to the steely chord blooms blowing over ‘Into The Void’. You’d instantly think of dub techno when you hear those chords, but equally Tiwaline knows how to reframe them with drums which keep the energy in the mix – something a lot of dub techno falls short on. Like everything else she turns her hand to, it’s quite simply better than the majority of releases trying to move in the same territory, while also teasing the idea there’s so much more we haven’t heard yet.
OW
Let’s face it, the summer months are not the natural time to be basking in the dank, greyscale pressure of Pessimist. But then Pessimist is equally an artist who doesn’t appear to operate at the behest of such basic notions as, ‘hey, the sun’s out, let’s have a nice time.’ Landing on UVB-76 for a third release, you might well still have the bleak tones of last year’s All Hope Lost for Berceuse Heroique ringing in your ears. Fear not, because your man Kristian Jabs isn’t about to buck the trend (he saves that for aliases like Soft Boi).
‘WPN-1’ is a prime example of why Pessimist’s approach to drum & bass is noteworthy. It doesn’t roll with a standard rhythm whatsoever, even if the pace and rattling snares feel more than ready to blend with the more adventurous end of the junglist tempo range. It’s absolutely a weapon as the name would imply, and unrelenting in its execution, but it’s also decidedly other.
‘WPN-2’ is no safe play either, even if the breaks are diced up a little more straight and narrow. That’s in large part thanks to the monstrous bass warping its way across the track – a globulous monosynth lifeform oozing out one note for the duration and yet sounding full of life and expression thanks to the slow-release modulation at work on the filter.
With this two-tracker, Pessimist has absolutely gifted us two weapons, but these are the kind of volatile goods only effective in the hands of those with the mettle to deploy them.
OW
The Reflektor – Taino EP (Technoindigenous Studies)
Gabriel Reyes-Whittaker always seems to operate in a scene of one, whether recording as Gifted & Blessed, The Abstract Eye or The Reflektor. There was a flurry of work from the LA-rooted artist about 10 years ago, when 12”s sprang up fairly consistently on labels like Wild Oats, Eglo, All City, and his own self-steered label, but the kind of electro he was pushing struck out on its own. Admittedly the electro scene wasn’t what it is today, but even looking back from these bountiful machine funk times Reyes-Whittaker has a touch which sits apart from the average approach.
Reviving The Reflektor after a 10 year gap, Reyes-Whittaker inaugurates a new label called Technoindigenous Studies which speaks volumes in terms of music and presentation. His sound taps into the essence of techno and electro as Black music, communicating through machines with an honest and instinctive tone which stands shoulder to shoulder with the Motor City pioneers et al, even if the specific approach is all his own.
The four tracks on Taino EP are delicate and heartfelt, keeping the drum machines light and unfussy to make room for the synths, for that’s where Reyes-Whittaker has always focused his sound. There are elements which can absolutely go down well in a club environment, but truthfully this is electronica for headphone reveries looking out over cityscapes – dreamers diary entries jotted down in a clear, uncluttered vernacular that allows all the emotion to come through.
OW
ISOR29 – Moon Phase Gardening (Second Circle)
Although billed as a mini-album of six tracks, it’s easy to think of Tomas Garcia Station’s first release as ISOR29 as an album. For a start, his sound has that kind of sofa-bound backroom mood which revels in a long-playing format rather than a club 12”. There’s been a resurgent interest in such sonics of late, with the likes of Stasis reissuing material and a steady trickle of compilations seeking out the ample hidden gems tucked away in 90s and 00s electronica, and Moon Phase Gardening adeptly fits into that mode in its soft-focus approach.
Fusing hang drum chimes with gossamer threads of synth, gentle touches of field recording and submerged vocal samples, Garcia Station ably transports you straight to the heavy-lidded bean bag zone, but not always at the expense of energy. ‘Spirals’ naturally glides into a steady deep house beat, while ‘Genesis’ enmeshes knotty break slices and dubby space-shaping sonics with a downtempo funk that inspire pronounced head nodding. It’s not a sound that tries to break new ground, but there’s a clarity in the intention which makes Moon Phase Gardening incredibly satisfying to melt into. Tripping out over 11 minutes, ‘Doll House City’ is a simple, honest joy to drift away to, and the inherent mysticism of ‘Banshiki’ maintains intrigue in its folds of hand drummed percussion and snaking melodies. If you regularly check the Second Circle releases, not to mention those on parent label Music And Memory, you’re sure to find escapist bliss across this refined transmission from the chill-out sector.
OW
This week’s reviewers: Oli Warwick, Jude Iago James, Patrizio Cavaliere