The best new albums this week

Our writers recommend the long players you need in your life

The Go! Team – Get Up Sequences Part Two (Memphis Industries)

If you’re going to start an album, start it like this. ‘Look Away, Look Away’ sounds like the theme tune to a ‘Banana Splits’ cartoon, you know, with a badger in a deerstalker as a detective or something. There’s a field full of drummers rattling away and Star Feminine Band, a fabulous seven-piece all-girl teen group from West Africa, belting out the (French) lyrics like they’re double-dutching in the school playground. It does not let up for one second and it is magnificent.

There’s always been something properly life-affirming about The Go! Team. From the moment their debut album Thunder, Lighting, Strike landed in 2004 they’ve stood out from the crowd with their distinctive, joyous sound. Sure, all bands strive for their own sound, but The Go! Team own “distinctive”.

‘Get Up Sequences Part Two’ – their seventh long-player and follows 2021’s… wait for it… ‘Get Up Sequences Part One’ – is no different. It’s a heady brew, a proper kitchen-sinker with as much chucked into the mix as possible for maximum effect. And as always it fair drips with retro-modernism, a record that is so thoroughly now, but nods heavily at what’s gone before. The way The Go! Team could be making music in any decade between here and the 1960s is quite the trick.

First single ‘Divebomb’ sounds slap-bang up-to-date with 19-year-old Detroit-based rapper IndigoYaj getting stuck into a “Pro Choice exaltation of acting up and activism”. The whole album brims with guests vocalists, from all over the world. “Maybe it’s an anti-Brexit reflex,” says big chief Ian Parton. “A rejection of flag-waving and inward-facing.”

Whatever, it works. Alongside Go! Team mainstay Ninja – who makes her start turn on ‘The Me Frequency’ ably backed up by the aforementioned Star Feminine Band – we get the sweet pipes of Bollywood singer Neha Hatwar on the string-soaked melodic closer ‘Baby’, Kokubo Chisato from J-Pop indie band Lucie, Too on the knockabout chiptune ‘Going Nowhere’. There’s ex-Apples in Stereo’s Hilarie Bratset on ‘Sock It To Me’, while the sleek flow and surreal cut-up rhymes (“It’s a different grind of a different kind / I never met a magnet that changed its mind”) of Brooklyn rapper Nitty Scott stands out on ‘Whammy-O’. The wonderful ‘Getting To Know (All The Ways We’re Wrong For Each Other)’ comes on like it’s just swaggered out of the Brill Building in search of The Jackson 5. The spoken word intro, Shangri-la’s style from London-based multimedia artist Niadzi Muzira, is a real treat.

In 2019, Parton was diagnosed with Meniere’s disease, a rare disorder that affects the inner ear. You can’t see how something like that isn’t a musician’s worst nightmare. You can also see how a condition like that could change your outlook, but not Parton. He just parks any negativity and gets on with what he does best. He’s previously talked about how The Go! Team has always been about the good stuff. “I’ve always loved the idea of life being about curation,” he said around the release of ‘Part One’. “You choose what to surround yourself with, you can filter out the bollocks and you can just hit the good shit.”

And hit the good shit ‘Get Up Sequences Part Two’ most certainly does. He says the album continues with the Technicolor overload of ‘Part One’, “a feeling that there is so much good shit out there that you are grabbing it all at the same time.” He’s not wrong. Marvellous stuff, but isn’t it always when it comes to The Go! Team.

NM

Young Fathers – Heavy Heavy (Ninja Tune)

Anyone who has been lucky enough to witness Edinburgh trio Young Fathers live in the flesh will know there’s been a disconnect of sorts between their tastefully chiselled recordings and the passionate rampage that they’re capable of turning in as a live act. The first time this writer caught them on such an occasion – August 2016, when they headlined the Visions festival in East London – he was left trembling, disorientated, like he’d been physically assaulted, battered even.

It’s a feeling that’s returned, having heard Heavy Heavy in all its glory. The band’s lyrics are often obtuse, but the feeling, the soul of the music, is clear enough to any observer. There’s rage, plenty of it, but also a tenderness and a humanity that connects the political to the personal.

There’s plenty of both of those feelings running through this album, the band’s fourth, fifth or sixth depending on how you count their debut mixtapes Tape One and Tape Two, later reissued as one set. From the opener ‘Rice’, a gloriously optimistic portrayal of people on the move that seemingly debunks completely the impression right wing thinking gives about grasping refugees heading over here to steal a bit of what is rightlfully “ours”, to the utterly tragic closer ‘Be Your Lady’, it’s all about emotion. The arrangements rise and swell from whispers to tempests in a matter of moments, or twist into new time signatures when you’re least expecting it. It’s bewlidering, but in a most glorious way.

‘I Saw’ is probably the most obvious political moment, detailing how others looked on and did nothing as others were bullied and victimised by fascists. It could be Germany in the late 30s, South America in the 80s or Britain circa Brexit, either way it’s a terrifying pciture to paint. But the political with the small C is never far from the surface.

The biggest clue lies, we would argue, in the word soul.  It crops up several times in the official biography, and if we ignore its more usual, lazy usage – too often it’s merely a byword for any kind of black influence in music – and bore down to its roots in gospel, there is a clear comparison.  Namely, that soul is something felt not understood, a rapture, a rising ecstasy that’s unmistakable but hard, even impossible, sum up in mere words.

Other highlights? ‘Drum’, with its native American drumming, is impossible to ignore, as is ‘Shoot Me Down’,l with its shuddering sub-ass. But this is an album in the old sense of the word, one that can’t be asset stripped for playlists, but rather benefits from a serious start to finish session. Heavy? Twice as heavy as that, we’d say, but press start and we reckon you’ll be repeating the process when it hits the end.

BW

Pumpkin Witch – The Return Of The Pumpkin Witch (Deathbomb Arc)

Pumpkin Witch have risen to the cream of the internet’s most enigmatic music collectives, rivalling Bar Italia or Sault in their dedication to a high-concept, elusive music project. This time, it’s an anonymous three-piece dungeon synth act from the wildest depths of the USA (judging from the music, we’d wager this trio reside in a murky Texas backwater or Kansas ghost town). These hallowed heads don’t have normal names, but are rather individually known only by the past lives which they now haunt: the Haunter Of Darkened Forests, The Disgraced Scientist, and The Vampire Tyrant. 

Three tapes (all “found” in wooded or secluded areas, but also conveniently available via the Deathbomb Arc site) preceded this latest opus, containing beatless graveyard scene-setters of both shrill and moody sonics. They were also decorated in tape-culturey hand-drawn scrawls on the J-cards, like lost artifacts left over from the group’s latest chainsaw massacre. But this latest blood offering – ‘The Return Of The Pumpkin Witch’ – is their most refined project to date. Mysteriously found alongside security footage from a locationless cemetery known as Pine Ridge, as well as a blood-chilling EVP recording, the music heard on this cassette detritus is angular, twinging and spine-tingling, indulging in every possible opportunity to crush, clip, distort and magickally enchant each mix. 

The opener ‘Black Clouds Gather Once More’ reminds us of the UFO-cloud from the recent film Nope, or the mood of the Tangerine Dream-scored supernatural horror The Keep. Toned synth hits plod doomily as we hail the fourth coming of the Witch, not long before ‘Ectoplasmic Refractions’ occur involuntarily and ‘Skeleton Keys in Trembling Hands’ are wrestled from our grips. Both tracks dribble and undulate, with the latter in particular nodding towards a far greater, perhaps even cosmic horror behind the illusory pumpkin helmet. Further sonic detours like the screeching ‘They Roam The Night’ are compelling; it’s clear that the high-concept nature of this project, especially for all its dungeon synth tropes, allows the band to indulge in more sonic black magic than normal. 

JIJ

Bandler Ching – Coaxial (Sdban Ultra)

So it turns out a mixture of composer and saxophonist Ambroos De Schepper (Kosmo Sound, Azmari, Mos Ensemble), Alan Van Rompuy (Azertyklavierwerke), Federico Pecoraro (ECHT!) and Olivier Penu (Kel Assouf) makes for a pretty potent brew. A strange one, but definitely intoxicating. Now done with their period of experimentation and the kind of ideas meetings where you can imagine pretty much most things go, musically at least, the freshly formed quarter have delivered a startlingly good debut album in Coaxial.

Working out how to describe it is half the fun, and challenge. ‘You Call It’ opens the floodgates of possibility at track one. Elements of jazz, disco and funk are wrapped up in a dream-like beauty. We return to similar-ish places on ‘You Have Got Me’, albeit with tempo turned down, glass overflowing with full-bodied red wine, and fire roaring. All that’s missing is the rug, but maybe that goes without saying. If not, ‘Rave Fever’ has enough depth to swaddle listeners in its rich soundscapes.

Things aren’t as they always seem, though. ‘April’ delivers a swift interjection as the opener fades, staccato, jerky rhythms, textures and sounds that feel informed by retro electronica and video games, eventually subsiding into a weighty brass swagger. ‘RoodGroen’, featuring idiosyncratic poet Vieze Meisje, AKA Maya Mertens, switches from blissful downtempo soul to this bass-heavy, lunging, and distressed stepping oddity. Meanwhile, ‘Delice’ opts for a leftfield house-techno excursion, pared back to the limits, hypnotic hook-line emerging from under a combination of percussive echoes, distorted and whisky vocals, and snapshots of noises we’re not even going to hazard a guess at. Beguiling and shape-shifting, while there’s enough here that could prove difficult for some, the rewards are unarguably worth everything that’s asked of listeners. Our best advice, then, is to succumb, commit, fall in love.

MH

The WAEVE – The WAEVE (Transgressive)

Well, this is an interesting team-up. The WEAVE is Graham Coxon and Rose Elinor Dougall. The Blur guitarist needs little introduction, Rose Elinor Dougall you might not be so familiar with. She started out as a member of the Pipettes alongside Gwenno, has collaborated with the likes of Mark Ronson and Baxter Dury and released three cracking solo albums, all worth checking out.

The pair met backstage in an unspecified London gig in late 2020. They exchanged playlists, as you do, and discovered plenty of common ground they felt worth exploring… not least each other it would seem as they had a baby together last year.

Anyway, this 10-tracker is, as their people would have it, “a powerful elixir of cinematic British folk-rock, post-punk, organic songwriting and freefall jamming”. Exhibit A is the cracking opener, ‘Can I Call You’, which starts with a low synth thrum building to a very pleasing krauty wig-out. Chuck in Coxon on sax and the pair sparing vocally and it bodes well for the rest.

The duo pick up almost all the instrumentation on the record between them (‘All Along’ features Coxon on cittern, a medieval folk lute, while among Dougall’s arsenal is an ARP 2000 modular synth). Drums were added at James “Simian Mobile Disco” Ford’s studio, and the Elysian Quartet serve up some brilliant string parts which are especially effective on ‘Sleepwalking’, where they add filmic drama, and during the beautiful extended outro of the closer, ‘You’re All I Want To Know’.

Throughout, you can hear the exploration of this new relationship, both musical and personal. Indeed, the album’s epic centrepiece is the seven-minute-plus ‘Undine’. Featuring some fine ARP arpeggiating and more dramatic strings it comes from twin perspectives – Rose first, then Graham – exploring feminine strength and male vulnerability.

You do wonder what came first. Did the album grow out of a blossoming romance or was it the other way round? You rather hope they fell for each other during the making the album. Whatever, it’s a rather fine first offering. Looking forward to seeing where all this goes and how it grows. Oh, and let’s keep an eye out down the line for the offspring. There’s some serious talent those genes.

NM

CHOP aka Channel Operators – Fantasy (Best)
Italo institution Best Record have pleased many a digger with their exhaustive re-issue exploits in recent years, so it may come as a surprise to some that the label’s history is rooted in delivering original material. Set up by radio jock Claudio Casalini back in 1981, the Rome-based imprint was the Italian capital’s first to specialise in Italo-disco when its titles first began hitting the shelves all those years ago.

With innumerable treasures from the European funk and disco vaults successfully polished and primed for grateful collectors, Best one more turn their attention to newly-formed sounds, enlisting a pair of the brightest shining luminaries from the Bel Paese’s current musical crop to present the label’s first original album in 40 years. Raffaele ‘Whodamanny’ Arcella returns to Best following 2019’s unthinkably charming Afrodesia EP — produced alongside Dario ‘Mystic Jungle’ di Pace and West Hill friends.

Here, he joins Slow Motion regular Cosimo ‘Cosmo’ Mandorino under the CHOP guise, delivering a beguiling set of retro-leaning sounds on the ‘Fantasy’ LP. Fans of Periodica Records’ funk-centred output will have a fair idea of what to expect, and sure enough, deft musicianship, playful melodies and floor-enlivening grooves are very much the order of the day. Without prior knowledge, one would be forgiven for assuming this was another esoteric collection resurrected from the Napolitano musical troves, so faithfully composed and earnestly manifested are the wild alluring songs enclosed. There are plenty of highlights to savour, not least the pop-centric title track, with its innocent vocal lead, searing sax solo and seductive machine drum rhythm.

The instrumental ‘Dub Fantasy’ version works just as well, while the glossy chords, vocoder vocals and cheerful synth melodies of ‘Software On Request’ are likely to bring a smile to even the sternest of beard stroker’s faces. Whimsy abounds on the delightfully carefree opener ‘Let It Go’, with slap bass and jolly chords guiding sultry vocals across a propulsive drum track. A feel-good sense of abandon permeates the LP, with each track endowed with copious amounts of fun and composed with a heartfelt appreciation of lineage.

The imagination with which the music is constructed distinguishes it from mere pastiche, so much so that it’s effortless to imagine ‘Fantasy’ being on the receiving end of its own re-issue in the decades to come.  
PC

Rapoon – These Are Dreams (Klanggalerie)

Rapoon is the solo project of Robin Storey, known for his key role in forming the industrial outfit :zoviet*france: yet another favourite project of ours that has erred on the side of anonymity. Storey’s solo material is wildly variable. Even so, it retains some common characteristics. Ever since the Rapoon debut ‘Dream Circle’ came out in 1992, his music has dealt in rhythmic exploration, spirituality, and themes of the oneiric.

While much of his music in the 2020s has been beatless, ‘These Are Dreams’, his latest cassette, is entirely rhythmic, with each of the ten tracks homing in on a different, drum-driven entrainment. Recalling the eyelid-beatings of REM sleep, or the rhythms involved in therapies like EMDR, or even simply hypnotism, this is an album that cuts deep into the unconscious part of the psyche from the word go. The self-titled opener hears a mystic, deep-voiced narration overlay a beat-sequenced timbale loop: “hear the water, feel the water, see the water… touch the dreams… I don’t care… these dreams are not yours.”

After the tone is set, the dublike and jammy nature of the ensuing tracks suggests that the main kind of “dream state” evoked here is ‘flow’ – the kind of dreamlike focus one gets locked into when performing an enjoyable creative task. But the implication here seems to be that Rapoon’s flow states are much more than just deep focus – they’re divine focus. The muted and intermittent ambiences of ‘Deep In My Heart’, the layered synth whalesong of ‘Floating Words’, and the almost weightless grime-like strings of ‘Strange Voices’ all convey a sort of religiosity, especially when their most entrancing elements are considered in relation to the Medieval Tarot imagery on the tape’s front and back covers. Just how truly apt this music is aiding sleep rituals, is, well… try it at your own risk, and see how it infiltrates your dreams.

JIJ

Carsten Jost – La Collectionneuse I – X (Dial)

At the helm of Dial Records, Carsten Jost has overseen a fair ebb and flow of deep, techy house music since the dawn of the millennium. Initially, alongside his peers such as Lawrence, he was quite steadily issuing 12”s and LPs, but around the 2008 mark things went quiet and we didn’t hear much new music from Jost until 2017 LP Perishable Tactics. Now he is seemingly on a more productive streak which now manifests in La Collectionneuse I – X, a collection of upfront hardware house jams which speak to his roots and reflect the wider culture of deep-diving German tech house.

Where the Workshop set (Lowtec, Kassem Mosse et al) favour dusky, smudged beat tracks, the Dial sound has a crisper, punchier edge, and it comes through on this LP. There’s still space for grainy overdrive and murkiness in some of the pads (see the scuffed atmospherics on ‘La Collectionneuse II’), but the drums tend to be mixed a little brighter, and there’s space for more pronounced melodic elements to come through. Either way, there’s an abundance of this moody, twilight material on this album. It spills forth with a natural ease which nods to Jost’s experience – there’s no pressure on the arrangements to rush to a plot twist or dramatic conclusion. Instead, finely sculpted elements from one core idea swap in and out as we’re guided through a particular frame. If you appreciate this kind of honest, unfussy house gear loaded with vibe, this album is a no-brainer.

OW

The Tubs – Dead Meat (Trouble In Mind)

Clout by affiliation is among the driving forces for success in today’s music world, so it’s no surprise The Tubs have made a splash with Dead Meat. But their sund is what charms most listeners, as this distinctly uptempo kind of indie jangle is a sound shared by few. In our view, it’s claimable as The Tubs’ own. Brightly-strummed, toothy-bassed, and washy-drummed, it instantly throws us into a space where emotive guitar comes front and centre, even taking precedent over Owen “O” Williams’ vocal parts.

Said fast-drums-only, shoegazey washout is apt for the lyric “have I finally lost the plot?”, nicely alloying the blurry, grin-and-bear-it, yet psychotic nature of the sound. It does sometimes fall at risk of losing itself in its own formula, as each track does sound rather similar to the last. But this is a savable worry, as its lyrics and convincingly retro sound convey the central character – that of the disaffected, provincial British youth – well enough. Highlights include the wall-of-soundy double-up vocals of ‘Sniveller’ and the low-slung ‘Duped’: “I cannot take it anymore… why did I bother? Why did I bother? Why did I bother?”

JIJ

Mom Jeans – Best Buds (reissue) (Counter Intuitive)

With the release of their acclaimed third full-length, ‘Sweet Tooth’, dropping last year, and a near entirely sold out UK tour later this month; San Francisco emo-punks, Mom Jeans, are a prime example of the DIY ethos, and their upward trajectory has been a motivating spectacle to behold.

2016 marked the introduction for many to their charming brand of slacker stoner pop-punk with math-rock twinkles on their underground debut cult classic, ‘Best Buds’; a project that makes college seems like the most tragic and emotionally devastating experience one will ever go through.

From the opening jangles of, ‘Death Cup’, we’re greeted with the overtly serious yet simultaneously self-aware disclaimer, “I think it’s about time that I warned you I might cry in front of you”. From there, we’re taken through the trials and tribulations of early 20’s heartbreak, substance abuse and the utter lack of motivation that can plague us all. 

‘Poor Boxer Shorts’, details the struggle of getting into the shower, while standout fan favourite, ‘Edward 40hands’, champions relationships where lies are told and secrets are kept for the sake of holding onto companionship for dear life. It’s all definitively emo subject matter, that culminates in the penultimate track, ‘Scott Pilgrim Vs My GPA’, which brings out trumpets for its anthemic close, signalling influences ranging from the atmospheric American Football to the playfulness of Cap’n Jazz. While lo-fi in production, this debut teemed with so much wit and weariness, as well as musically impressive capabilities that it was almost known from the outset that Mom Jeans were a success story in the making. Reissued for the umpteenth time, what better chance to revisit a modern genre staple, and possibly cringe at your own lovelorn past. 
ZB

Starlight – Starlight (reissue) (Afrosynth)
Afrosynth dig up yet more sonic gold with their latest inspired musical resurrection, this time turning their attention to lesser-known South African outfit, Starlight. The band were formed in the early ‘80s by singer/producer Emil Zoghby and multi-instrumentalist, John Galanakis. The duo had previously enjoyed storied careers as session players, and the bulk of their work under the Starlight flag consisted of electronic covers of international club hits. However, all but one track on their eponymous 1983 debut album was an original composition, and the quality of the Italo-Afro-disco-fusion they crafted makes for a tantalising reissue.

The LP begins with the solitary cover, a woozy remake of Sello Mmutung and Keith Hutchinson’s ‘Picnic’, gliding into the rousing horns and gospel organs of the vivacious title track, with its boogie bass and ornamented guitar licks. The unfettered synth solos and general cosmic abandon of ‘Picnicing’ make it an extraordinarily strong contender for standout, its psychedelic allure and absence of saccharine giving it a gently abstract edge. Finally, the jagged rhythms and indelible bass of ‘Keep On Moving’ provide a memorable finale, with triumphant horns embellishing a kinetically-charged arrangement that’s ripe for dance eruption. Another belter from the Afrosynth gang, and a must for lovers of any variation of Afro, Italo, cosmic or (just plain) disco. 

PC

This Town Needs Guns – Animals (reissue) (Sargent House)

There’s arguably few math-rock bands as widely renowned as Oxford based underground heroes, This Town Needs Guns. While nowadays they operate as an ethereal, distortion-avoiding power-trio with the addition of Henry Tremain (originally of Pennines), in their early days the group was led by the vocally eccentric Stuart Smith.

Taking influence from the 90’s genre greats such as Cap’n Jazz, American Football, Make Believe and Owls, their early work was a dizzying blend of punk energy delivered in an extremely technical foil, while managing to stick rigorously to a standard song structure format.

While the self-titled mini-LP is still regarded as their finest work, many regard their true debut full-length, ‘Animals’, to be the high watermark of not only the discography but of the entire scene. Crafting the tracks under working titles of different animals, when it came time to finally release the project, they opted to keep the song titles intact, with their album name essentially decided for them.

Delicate, frenetic, emotive and cathartic, their nuanced blend of highly intricate math-rock and serene emo, led to an utterly adored work that teems with essential cuts still given live attention fifteen years on, such as, ‘Pig’, ‘Gibbon’, and, ‘Chinchilla’, to name but a few.

Reuniting with Smith in 2018 to coincide with the re-imagined, ‘Animals Acoustic’, album, and going on a subsequent worldwide 10 year anniversary tour, exuded a zero animosity atmosphere to remind all that the original line-up shift was out of nothing more than amicable life choices, while the sold out venues across the continents served as undying validation for a project still so adored, and held dear by genre aficionados. With the increased platform of label Sargent House in recent years thanks to acclaimed releases from the likes of Deafheaven and The Armed, it’s a pleasant surprise to see reissues of some of the most seminal albums from the label’s early days receiving some well-deserved reverence. 

ZB

This week’s reviewers: Neil Mason, Martin Hewitt, Zach Buggy, Patrizio Cavaliere, Oli Warwick, Jude Iago James, Ben Willmott.