The best new albums this week
The albums that matter this week
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
For most DJs, scoring an entry on DJ Kicks would amount to a career high-point – a boss level unlocked. Since the mid 90s !K7’s flagship mix series has acted as a showcase for marquee acts from across Detroit techno, drum & bass, downtempo and beyond. From the outset it was a headsy premise that indulged the particular artistic quirks of anyone invited to take part, in some way bolstering their creative credentials. There are a lot of landmark entries from the past three decades, including Motor City luminaries like Carl Craig, Claude Young and Stacey Pullen, plus more recently Moodymann and Robert Hood, but in the case of Theo Parrish it feels more like !K7 are the lucky ones.
As a steadfast independent artist who appears to keep the reins tight on the trajectory of his career, you just don’t imagine Parrish to sign up for these sorts of projects that easily. This is the guy whose catalogue of DJ mixes to date have been almost exclusively CD-rs, bar one exception to pay tribute to pioneering Oakland label Black Jazz Records. How Parrish feels about joining the DJ Kicks alumni is his business, but he’s seized the opportunity to further his aims in promoting the talent from Detroit. At a time when the narrative around the city’s electronic music too often gets stuck on the same established figures, compilations like this one provide an invaluable insight into what’s happening on the ground, in the here and now. When your filter to sift out the talent is Theo Parrish, you’re getting a lowdown like no other.
If that sounds a little fawning, then so be it, but Parrish’s uncompromising approach has more than proven itself over the years. In a scene littered with insincerity, he seeks out authenticity and lets it shine. As he winds through the mixed version of this compilation, he switches gears, rides fade outs and generally moves freely. When he wants to throw down he will, but even in the more beat-matched mixes he takes a light approach, letting the mellow Rhodes of Jon Dixon’s ‘Wind Drifts’ take over from RayBone Jones’ ‘Green Funk’ with the calmest of transitions. Whatever the crossover between tracks, the narrative itself is captivating enough on its own, gliding through runs of rugged house, jazz-inflected broken beat and crooked soul on a 90-minute trip that radiates warmth out into the room like a good long-form collection should.
More useful in picking apart specifics of Parrish’s DJ Kicks are some of the tunes themselves, for there are certainly more than enough standout moments that snap your attention into sharp focus for the sheer freshness of the sound. Deon Jamar’s ‘North End Funk’ is an incredible piece which borders on baroque as clamouring rompler keys spring over one another backed by the rawest of drum machine structures. mBtheLight’s ‘aGain’ gets an edit from ‘T’, presumably meaning Parrish himself, but either way Monica Blaire makes a show-stopper mid-mix with her stark, vocal-first style (which should point you in the direction of her Mahogani Music debut from earlier this year).
De’Sean Jones brings a truly ascendant, rockist strain of jazz funk to ‘Psalm 23’ and Whodat reminds us why she’s one of the finest talents in Detroit with a little help from Sopiya E and some truly mind-bugging synth flex. KESSWA and Nova Zaii take things in a knotty neo-soul direction which plays out like a futurist fever dream, rap lines folding over murmurs, woozy synths daubing the walls and the click clack beats switching kits throughout. Raj Mahal’s ‘Hudsons’ is an Eastern-tinted dub meditation with lo-fi hooks and a beat which could collapse at any moment.
Each one of these pieces is loaded with the thrill that comes from hearing something new and brilliant, and in most cases there’s a good chance this is the first time you’re hearing them. Parrish has absolutely done DJ Kicks his way, and once again proven himself to be an enlightening force for true, visionary soul music outside the tired industry lines of definition.
OW
Dego – Love Was Never Your Goal (2000 Black)
Emotion-heavy soul meets rugged funk and imaginative broken rhythms on Dennis ‘Dego’ McFarlane’s latest long-player, ‘Love Was Never Your Goal’. Dego’s work sits alongside the creative select who successfully manage to carve an instantly recognisable but never static sound signature. Alongside wingman Kaidi Tatham and the rest of his 2000 Black family. he’s become synonymous with jazz-rich and funk-informed broken beat, serving consistently top-drawer productions across decades immersed in the deepest of grooves.
The new album follows on from last year’s exceptional ‘The Negative Positive’, offering a similarly rich and immersive set of analogue-fuelled sonic highs. If it’s Dego who brings the raw ‘bruk’ funk to the proceedings, the honeyed soul arrives courtesy of newcomer, Samii, who graces the bulk of the tracks with her distinctive vocal allure, Meanwhile, regular collaborators Tatham, Matt Lord, and Mr Mensah also drop in to add sustenance to the sounds. Elegantly merging alien synths with delicate keys, opener ‘Take Me Away’ does exactly that: transporting listeners to their respective happy places thanks in no small part to Samii’s heartfelt and agile vocal flow.
Jazz makes its presence felt on the spirited groove of ‘Start Again’, the vocal once again adding enchanting texture and tone to the captivating chords, held-down bass and spacious rhythms. ‘En Route’ evolves over stark drums and fizzing pads, the vocals flitting between the gaps as floating harmonies and bubbling acid augment the stripped arrangement. ‘Catch The Sun’ provided a gorgeous soul-flecked interlude, before the scattered bass, shimmering chords and off-world synths of ‘Proxima Centauri’ combine majestically to sate instrumental lovers.
‘Warp 7’ is a definite highlight, its string orchestration serving as a dramatic counterpoint to the aberrant synths, cerebral chords and upright bass glides, before the low-slung synth swagger and glistening rhythm guitar of ‘Ubliation Light Years Away’ arrive like a West London Balearic amalgam. Samii returns for the sing-along strut of ‘Don’t Stall’, another title in with a solid shout of album standout, before the Brit-funk infusion of closing track ‘UNIA’ embraces four-to-the-floor disco drums to devastating dancefloor effect.
Accomplished, enlivening, and dripping in virtuosity, this is sensational work from Dego and co.
PC
Ura – Baby With A Halo (Motion Ward)
Tucked away in the folds of Montreal’s leftfield electronic music community sits a curious organism known as Ura. Ura’s sound is such you envision the music more than the maker, as though it existed in and of itself without outside interference – a kind of sentient, energetic biome. This was the case on Zac MacArthur’s first album under the name, Entertainment, even if the overall style was more discernibly informed by downtempo, trip hop, electronica and dub. Even at that point, three years ago, there was a sense of Ura’s sounds coalescing, passing in and out of each other until it was hard to catch where all the supple groove was coming from. The synths became crucial accents and the drums developed expressive tonality, and it all moved forwards as one.
The same spirit engulfed Blue, a follow-up mini-album on leading Montreal label naff, although there was more space edging into the mix, and now MacArthur appears to have walked in and pushed the edges of Ura way out. The familiar motifs which make up the sound are still there, but on ‘Halogen’ and ‘Medicate’ they call out across vast expanses of negative space. The slow-creeping dubwise beat sculptures of old have been dislocated, and even if there is a whispered pulse to the likes of ‘4give’, it’s stretched and submerged.
There remains an inquisitive streak to Ura though, as ‘Baby With A Halo’ happily enmeshes stuttered leads, molten monosynth bass and ASMR filter-fiddling organisms for a beauteous slice of refracted electronica. The track moves with a more pronounced melodic intention compared to the scuffed and obscure emotional lilt previously experienced around these parts. ‘Glueicide’ meanwhile nervously toys with some squarewave bass that almost tips over into weightless grime territory, albeit deconstructed with a swathe of interference.
Conjuring a third album in as many years, MacArthur clearly has a method that works wonders in developing the sound of Ura. Each release so far has been markedly different, but it all feels born from a shared sensibility. For anyone who appreciates nuanced production and immersive, dub-licked world building, this self-contained environment is nothing short of nirvana.
OW
Mars89 – Visions (Bedouin UAE)
In today’s electronic music climate – one which runs in large part on on proximal clout, cronyism and money – trying to make an anticapitalist album is rather like casting your pearls before swine. The artist of today is compelled to treat their art as a form of capital, for reasons we need not drone on about. When there are swine everywhere – and you’ve got to cast your pearls somewhere – why not at least mobilize all the best sonic weaponry and at least attempt to build a murderous, implosive, anti-cap pearl?
Mars89 has released a few albums stooped in electro, a revolutionary genre emergent from economically abysmal Detroit. But ‘Visions’, the Japan native’s latest for Bedouin, opts rather a wider palette of general post-apocalyptic doom and gloom, soaring over rather than nestling into any beat. And for good reason. The ‘urban infrastructure’ it slates is killing us all with pollution, concrete and coercion; and the album’s drones, saw arpeggiations, bell clanks and massive reverbs all sound like expressions of these evils.
Opener ‘They Made Me Do It’ forces us to look on our irreligious urban ruins on high, and to stop avoiding ecological responsibility with phrases like that one. Meanwhile, rain-sodden impacts and gunfiring military paradiddles poke through the floodlit rains of tracks like ‘Hinterland’ and ‘Goliath’. The album closes on a colossally cruddy drum n’ bass note for ‘LA1937’, a neo-noir protofuture hellscape. And to top it off, there are even references to David Lynch and Chris Marker in there. ‘Visions’ is an album of bleak omens, suitable for fans of electronic-ecologic mourners like Galaxian or Seagrave, as much as it is for sci-fi film buffs who have a tendency to read a little too much between the lines.
JIJ
Dead Cross – II (Ipecac)
Hardcore/crossover thrash absurdists, Dead Cross, make their demented return on the aptly titled, ‘II’; the much anticipated follow up to 2017’s self-titled debut full-length.
The misfit supergroup that includes legendary Faith No More/Mr. Bungle/Tomahawk/ (and a million other projects) vocalist extraordinaire, Mike Patton, along with original Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo, Mike Crain of Retox as well as bassist/vocalist of The Locust, Head Wound City, Deaf Club and all round Three One G Records and west coast outsider punk mastermind Justin Pearson, defies easy categorisation.
Toeing a line between sardonic, cynical hilarity and genuine chaotic vitriol, the half-decade respite between projects has allowed time for reflection and gestation. With Patton’s recent mental health and alcohol struggles, plus a subsequent diagnosis of agoraphobia, as well as the tragic passing of original vocalist and Pearson’s long-time creative partner, Gabe Serbian, this is an emotionally raw, earnest, darkly humorous and unhinged return.
From the blistering, under-two-minute lead single, ‘Reign Of Error’, it was already evident how much more snarling venom was libel to ensue across this sophomore assault. What wasn’t necessarily hinted was just how much more dynamic and menacing the material would be this time around, leaning simultaneously into the caustic hardcore fury and sultry sinister macabre atmosphere of Patton’s myriad of other works.
There’s the slow swelling goth opera vocals of opener, ‘Love Without Love’, which devolves into mayhem rather than immediately bursting, then you have the jagged bravado of, ‘Animal Espionage’, while the progcore standout, ‘Ants & Dragons’, allows Patton to flex his ludicrous vocal range more than is often facilitated under the Dead Cross banner. There’s even a notable increase in the presence of Pearson’s backing vocals, with his snot-nosed whine bouncing off of Patton’s bellows and howls like two demonic parentals having a domestic. With their debut recorded and all but complete by the time Patton was enlisted as a last-minute replacement vocalist; ‘II’, is a much more organic follow up, reflecting each members dynamic strengths (yes, Dave Lombardo murders his kit with inhuman nightmare pummelling), conjuring a unique formula that’s equal parts abrasive hardcore thrash and absurdist chaos of the most endearing degree.
ZB
Dana Kuehr – Basic Moves 18 (Basic Moves)
You can tell Dana Kuehr has roots in the American Midwest. Her music isn’t rote Chicago house, but it moves with that punchy urgency which seems to naturally pulse from that part of the world. Kuehr has since settled in Brussels and builds on a life immersed in dance music DJing to present her debut album on Basic Moves. The label has an interesting habit of titling all releases as catalogue numbers, but much like ADI’s outstanding Basic Moves 14, Kuehr’s LP is every inch her own statement.
There’s space for rugged breakbeat rollage as much as straight-up deep house beatdowns, but Kuehr’s sews everything together with shimmering, mystical pad tones which give her productions a genuine freshness. It’s worth nothing these melodic touches never edge towards the dominant trance-lite house du jour, but rather tap into something more obscure and intriguing, which makes the music all the more magical.
‘Almagest Slide’ is a truly spiritual trip, but it never sacrifices the gritty rhythm section in pursuit of its atmospheric aims. There’s subtly spooky deep techno meditation courtesy of ‘Cloud B’, crying out for the edge of the afters where reality starts to slip away, and ‘Great Lakes Empty Branches’ reaches for a classic sound comfortably resting between Chicago and Detroit. The influences might be apparent on this LP, but Kuehr has a strength of personality in her sound which transcends any reference points to offer something compelling – no mean feat when it comes to house and techno in the year 2022.
OW
Anja Lauvdal – From A Story Now Lost (Smalltown Suoersound)
Good things come to and from those with the patience to wait. And wait. Anja Lauvdal’s discography began in 2013, but this is the Norwegian multi-instrumentalist’s debut solo album, arriving on Smalltown Supersound, a label you can say without much fear of reprisal has long been known for offering a home to consistently excellent music. In this case, defining exactly what that music is might be difficult, except via broad adjectives like ‘beautiful’.
Let’s not be reductive or lazy, though — even if these 10 pieces encourage us to take time out and consider things. Lauvdal, a graduate of the Trondheim Conservatory of Music, is a master of jazz, piano, synths and other plugged-in noise makers, and here offers evidence of just how innovative her thinking is. Process-wise, it’s as conceptual as they get, effectively building an album from improvised movements, loops, and textures of sound which were sent to esteemed LP producer Laurel Halo to manipulate, process and, essentially, nurture. Results then returned from whence they came so the Scandinavian could finalise into tranquil fragments of rich deepness, tracks seamlessly envelop each other, gently flowing from one gorgeous group of keys, refrains, atmosphere, and hints of rhythm, to the next.
MH
Loraine James – Building Something Beautiful For Me (Phantom Limb)
As the world continues to play catch up with the genius of Julius Eastman, projects such as this one will do wonders to help enshrine the late American composer’s name beyond the realms of classical music. Through a connection with Eastman’s brother Gerry, Phantom Limb have been able to commission Loraine James to create a bold yet sensitive response to Eastman’s work.
Building Something Beautiful For Me feels intimate beyond James’ prior albums for Hyperdub. While her beat-oriented work still operates with a certain internal logic that keeps it independent from broader stylistic trends, her ability to seemingly transcode her personality into her music comes through stronger in these more delicate pieces. It’s aligned more naturally then with the Whatever The Weather project which appeared on Ghostly earlier this year, but of course there’s a strong variable here in the form of Eastman’s compositions, sample source material and overall imposing presence.
From one gay Black artist to another across a generational and geographical divide, the resonance remains deep, but equally James doesn’t sound phased by the project and instead projects herself through it with grace. Eastman is unquestionably there in this work, but ultimately, it’s another development for Loraine James, one of the strongest voices in contemporary electronic music.
OW
Common Courtesy – A Day To Remember (Epitaph)
The fifth full-length from Ocala based pop-punk meets metalcore mainstays, A Day To Remember, was for many, the last glimpse of their initial mission statement and vision before taking a more accessible route on later projects.
Common Courtesy, came three arduous years after 2010’s seminal, ‘What Separates Me From You’, and in that time, the band had to take their original label Victory Records to court in a move that saw them finally released from their unreasonable contractual obligations and finally in control of their art and monetary income.
With the longest wait for avid followers yet, the album would be a victory (no pun intended) lap of every aspect of their formula that’s made them such genre staples across almost four different circles or scenes.
The New Found Glory indebted anthemics of, ‘Right Back At It Again’, or, ‘City Of Ocala’, brim with mega hooks and sugary optimism, while at the other end of the spectrum, the crushing heft of, ‘Violence (Enough Is Enough)’, and, ‘Sometimes You’re The Hammer, Sometimes You’re The Nail’, feel both venomous and cathartic in their expulsion of years of frustration and deceit.
Arguably, the last effort to feature the band’s obligatory mammoth breakdowns, and utter disregard for genre parameters; ‘Common Courtesy’, was in many respects, the end of an era, and this long overdue repress is ideal for fans old and new to rediscover and re-remember why the band’s name is treated with such reverence today.
ZB
This week’s reviewers: Zach Buggy, Patricio Calvaliere, Jude Iago James, Oli Warwick, Martin Hewitt.