The best new albums this week

Our writers select the albums tickling their proverbial fancy at the mo

ALBUM OF THE WEEK

Tour Mauborg – Spaces Of Silence (Pont Neuf)

The muse has certainly been in the room for Paris-based producer Tour Maubourg of late. Since emerging in around 2017, his work on labels including Shall Not Fade, Better Listen and Pont Neuf has arrived with both an impressive prolificacy and a far above average quality threshold, winning plenty of admirers and helping to spread his name and music far across the vastness of the electronic underground. From shuffling deep house to jazz-soaked electronica, the French artist’s accomplished productions are routinely engaging, and there’s a palpable sense that his musical journey has many miles left to reveal.  

His debut album ‘Paradis’ arrived to critical acclaim back in 2020 on Pont Neuf, and here he resumes his fruitful relationship with the Parisian label for an equally enchanting follow-up. ‘Spaces Of Silence’ continues in a similar sonic vein, with the artist returning to his Belgian roots to craft a captivating collection forged out of solitude. The artist, real name Pierre d’Estienne d’Orves, spent 18 months holed up in a makeshift studio at his grandparents’ house in Brussels, immersed in the familiarity of his hometown for the first time since leaving the Belgian capital in 2013. Away from the effervescence of Paris and in self-imposed isolation from social distractions, he was alone with music, making the most of the opportunity to hone in on the intention of his sound.

The album title reflects a paradox that’s afflicted d’Estienne d’Orves since 2018, from which time he’s been permanently suffering from (the musician’s curse), tinnitus. Ironically, the only time he is free of the conditions’ endless high-pitched drone is when he’s listening to music, allowing him to enjoy, if not strictly speaking silence, relative freedom from the affliction. Musical composition, then, allows him an opportunity to find balance, and the album was constructed to express this notion — reflecting on the duality of noise and silence using tape, cassette background noise and field recordings.

Evoking the jazz-soaked finesse of iconic French outfit, St Germain, the album finds Tour Maubourg exploring sumptuous crossover territory, as the familiar vocal licks and fluid instrumentation of ‘Just Believe’ vividly demonstrate. Steeped in musical heritage and composed with variegated flair throughout, there’s every reason to believe ‘Spaces Of Silence’ will edge him closer to the universal standing of some of the French underground’s most successful exports. Rolling into the coffee table seduction of ‘Why (Life)’, with its splashy drums, mutant guitar licks and rapturous flute motifs, the genre-glide is in full effect. Agile keys abound over the taut rhythms of ‘I Never Will’, with funk-enhanced clavs and searing synths intertwined over a head-nodding tempo before Maubourg pumps the gas as we rise into the deep house allure of ‘Paradise’. Here, nebulous chords surround free-flowing instrumentation as soaring strings shimmer high over throbbing four/four drums.

The ethereal atmosphere of ‘L’hiver’ elegantly shifts the mood, with celestial melodies drifting across scattered drums and metallic bass notes as off-world pads sashay over misty horizons, before the dexterous funk of ‘La Berceuse Des Vieux Amants’ effortlessly seduces, its low-slung groove and burnished e-piano enchanting as the groove unfolds. ‘Solace’ sees soothing swells amble over hypnotic percussion and tension-building bass, while the spiritual house of ‘You’ fuses soul-rich vocals with jazz-soaked horns, emotion-heavy chords and spirited Latin rhythms. Trip-hop sensibilities return to the fore over the rhythmic thrust of ‘La Peruvienne’, before the dubbed-out infusion of ‘Grief’ provides a profound spell of introspection, Ismael Ndir’s expressive sax solo proving magnetic as it courses through the empty space.

Coherent, accomplished and elegantly hued, this is spectacular work from Tour Maubourg, an artist who appears locked into an ever-skyward trajectory.

PC

Paramore – This Is Why (Atlantic)
With the success of last year’s inaugural When We Were Young Festival in Las Vegas; drafting a line-up evoking the Warped Tour MySpace era of emo/pop-punk, the resurgence has seemingly hit full steam with the reformation of both Blink-182 and Paramore, who are both confirmed to headline the second instalment later this summer.

While the Blink comeback record is still on the horizon, the sixth full-length from Hayley Williams and co, marks the first time the group has maintained the same exact members for two consecutive albums.

To be clear, This Is Why, may have the same team as 2017’s lauded indie-pop change-up After Laughter, but it couldn’t be more of a sonic far cry from the sugary sweetness that project flaunted. The amicable hiatus over the last few years granted Williams a chance to work on her two acclaimed solo works, ‘Petals For Armour’, and it’s sister-album/prequel, ‘Flowers For Vases/Descansos’, which showcased a much darker fragility and art-pop sensibilities, while drummer, Zac Farro, spent time on his HALFNOISE project.

Considering the freedom for experimentation outside of the Paramore banner, and the maturity of natural aging, their return effort appears majorly disinterested in resting on the laurels of yesteryear. From the mathy noodling of the standout opening title-track and lead single, there’s a notably increased focus on post-punk machinations, with the band initially promising the project would be much more guitar-centric than the synth-pop waters they previously waded in.

Citing Bloc Party as an integral inspiration (the band are billed as support for the upcoming UK tour), their influence is brazen on the anthemic, almost Placebo-esque cut, ‘The News’, which sees Williams lambasting our nihilistic nature and the damage of constant doomscrolling. Elsewhere, the endlessly entertaining, ‘C’est Comma Ca’, flaunts a Talking Heads vibe with its jittering guitar flourishes and Williams’ unhinged, maniacal delivery, where she details her own emotional struggles following her divorce from New Found Glory guitarist, Chad Gilbert; complete with her therapist’s advice and self-aware self-sabotage.

While it might not satiate those still pining for a return to the classic emo sound of old, or those who were well on board with the latter, more instantly accessible material, fans of the musicians first and foremost will likely realise that, This Is Why, is easily the most challenging, rewarding and mature effort the group has ever crafted. Brooding, anxious, and sonically uncertain, yet retaining the crisp songwriting chops that renders each of the ten cuts an instant earworm, Paramore have long since transcended the pop-punk moniker, but here stake their claim as one of the most intriguing modern alternative rock/post-punk acts in the scene today. ‘This Is Why’ their legacy will only be elevated further with, what is simply, their finest work to date.

ZB

Maps – Counter Melodies (Mute)

Anyone who knows the work of Maps’ James Chapman surely won’t be expecting this. Counter Melodies, his fifth long-player, is a euphoric, hands-in-the-air, floor-filling belter. No, really.

The whole thing emerged in the wake of his last album, 2019’s Colours. Reflect. Time. Loss., Instead of touring the record he found himself DJing and dropping new Maps tracks into his sets. “I really liked the idea of my tracks flowing into one another, like a continuous DJ set,” he offers.

While his music to date tends to err on the side of melancholy, Chapman admits to being “a bit of a raver” in the late 90s/early 00s. He says that with Counter Melodies he was keen to produce something that offered an escape, something upbeat and uplifting that allowed him to journey “far away from the dystopian news flow”. Mission accomplished I’d say.

Opener ‘Witchy Feel’ comes on like chiming church bells before hurtling off with a metronomic thud and cut-glass melodic tinkles. The flamenco-ish pounding of single ‘Heya Yaha’ taps into the spirit of Orbital with its choppy keys and dreamy vocal snippets while the belting ‘Psyche’ froths with rich, joyous chords which, like the aforementioned continuous DJ set, melt seamlessly into the pulsating A-side closer, ‘Windows Open’.

The second half feels more post-rave. The beats and the tunes are still there, but there’s a slowing of tempo and more atmosphere to cuts like ‘Transmission’, which stalk the edges of the dancefloor rather than bath in the light of glitterball.

The chunky stabs and clip clop beats of ‘Lack Of Sleep’ comes on like a rave fever-dream. And indeed, there’s a track called ‘Fever Dream’ prompted by a bout of severe insomnia.

The titles form a sonic diary with each piece titled after an event in Chapman’s life. ‘Windows Open’ was recorded during a heatwave when his studio was way too hot, while the loved-up ‘Valentine’ draws from being home alone during lockdown on Valentine’s Day. Business-as-usual Maps would have channelled that sort of glumness in a very different way. Here it’s pure hands-in-the-air.

Closer ‘My Love Is Like’ is perhaps the standout on a record of standouts. It builds slowly and carefully until a thumping, insistent rhythm kicks in, eventually giving way, Ulrich Schnauss-style, to full-blown euphoria, with knobs on.

“My early days of soaking up rave culture obviously stayed with me,” says Chapman. Clearly. This is great stuff.

NM

Blue Lake – Stikling (Polychrome)

Jason Dungan has been quietly working away on a gentle kind of instrumental music for the past few years, self-releasing LPs before this first outing on Polychrome. To call his work ambient falls short – it’s a short of expressive, experimental folk centred around his primary instrument of choice, the zither. In his exploration of this distinctive medium, which is perhaps most readily associated with the likes of Laraaji and Ruth Welcome, he’s built his own instruments which have progressed in line with his recorded works. On Stikling, this practice developed considerably with the completion of his 48-string zither, which becomes the defining character of the four-track album.

It’s no surprise to learn these pieces were recorded in settings such as churches in small-town Sweden – there’s a sense of calm and quiet however lively the music becomes, with open space away from urban sprawl affording the music a lightness which feels absolutely medicinal during the short days of the Northern hemisphere’s Winter. Underneath the zither you can hear a steady drone (often drawn from an organ), and other characters come trailing into the story as Dungan sees fit. His instrument list takes in piano, clarinet, acoustic guitar, organ, saxophone and cello, and the arrival and departure of each feels like the meandering evolution of a narrative at the whims of the author.

On ‘Shoots’ there’s also space for some lightly brushed drums, and Duncan leans in more heavily on layered instrumentation to create a busier soundscape. The same gentle, bucolic demeanour abounds, but there’s a welcome variation to these energetic peaks compared to the more delicate passages, helping bring depth into the tale so expertly woven from one man and his many instruments. Heralding longer days in pastoral splendour, it’s the kind of record which will make you dream of decamping to the countryside in a heartbeat.

OW

Crimeboys – Very Dark Past (3XL)

3XL are by now more or less unequivocal. There is no one else like them. Read between the lines and you’ll know this ‘tactile ambient’ imprint is the creative brainchild of one man: Shy aka. Special Guest DJ, whose electrifying DJ sets in, and listenership for, a very particular sound are rarely matched. Recent appearances by the originally Brooklyn based artist here in London have since cemented strong Transatlantic ties, including associations with local pushers such as Nexcyia and Stone.

Here comes a rare LP from the label, less generously focusing on the work of fresher international artists. It’s a collaborative album under a new alias, Crimeboys, by Shy and fellow alien Pontiac Streator. For fans, little needs to be said regarding what to expect, as theirs is a memorable sound. But just in case, we’ll indulge a description: ‘Very Dark Past’ is a nearly genreless wash of rarefied chamber ambiences and vaporeal sonic gases, in which all manner of posthuman phenomena take place. The ‘tactile’ element of the music is as present as ever, with its foley including some of Shy’s best-known personal trademarks, such as the huff of a vape (this can also be witnessed during his DJ sets) and the pressurized release of a spray can. At one point on the track ‘Revenge Tastes Good’, a helial voice mutters something about enacting cold retribution, prior to a monkey20-esque beat drop – it’s as if we’d just inhaled an aerosol canister before taking out our anarchic leanings on some private property.

Of course, the graff scene usually aids the emergence of brilliant music, but we’d argue ‘Very Dark Past’ is the cream of its more experimental inceptions. Many of its hedonistic allusions (‘Sex And Drugs’, ‘Crimeboys’) nod to a playful relationship with popular yet misguided perceptions of the lawless craft. If anything – even though it might be just another humorous alias coming under the 3XL umbrella – Crimeboys has laid down an impressively solid project, nailing a spine-tingling dubbiness best heard while trackside, earphones in.

JIJ

Various – 11th Anniversary Remix Compilation (Soul Clap)

The Soul Clap duo have been enlivening the dance underground for a good many years now, their kaleidoscopic sound and polychromatic vigour thing brightly throughout their storied musical journey. With a gravitational pull as powerful as theirs, it’s unsurprising that they’ve continued to attract a host of like-minded creative souls into and around their evolving orbit, so the decision to launch a label arm just over a decade ago felt like an entirely fitting way to amplify the collective message. Presumably due to the restraints of the pandemic, Eli and Charlie Soul Clap opted to mark the imprint’s eleventh year in operation rather than the customary tenth. No matter, though, because the quality of the music is entirely worth the year-long celebratory stasis. Here, they invite a selection of their closest friends and collaborators to remix pearls from the Soul Clap archives, and the result is a luminous collection of genre-gliding musical wonder.

Featuring bona fide funk royalty alongside underground mavericks and rising talents alike, there’s plenty to savour throughout. XL Middleton’s boogie-flecked take on Funkadelic and Soul Claps ‘In Da Kar’ sets a high bar as it opens the compilation, segueing into the seductive tones of Turkish artist Zeynep Erbay’s stunning remix of ‘Nmani’ by Underground System’. The funk returns with a vengeance on FSQ’s evocative version of ‘Keep Funkin For The World’ by Nona Hendryx, while Colleen Murphy’s ever-reliable Cosmodelica return the remix favour on their typically saucer-eyed remix of FSQ’s ’11 AM’. In full swing from the get-go, the party shows no signs of abating as the jagged rhythms of Lonely C’s ‘I Ain’t Worried’ — ably retouched by Zopelar — before we journey through a series of honeyed house flavours courtesy of remixes from Michael The Lion, Dazzle Drums and Liam Mockridge. The mood shifts as the heavy ghetto sleaze of The Fitness & Pony’s ‘I’m A Sex Addict’ is brilliantly revised by Afriqua, while Charlie Soul Clap sees the album out in gloriously fusionist style via the emotive horns and growling bass of his mix of John Camp’s ‘Mistral’. Vibrant, varied and captivating throughout, this landmark album offers a vivid snapshot into the lustrous world of the Soul Clap family.  

PC

Samuel Rohrer – Codes Of Nature (Arjunamusic)

Following Samuel Rohrer’s output is akin to diving down a rabbit-hole shaped like the double-helix patterns that unspool from his canny blend of live drumming and modular synthesis. From starting out working with noted players like Jonas Westergaard and Daniel Erdmann, the Swiss jazz drummer has pursued a path of his own intrigue, embracing the experimental potential of electronics with intuition which reaches beyond simple fusion – even if there are very human processes and qualities in his work now, it behaves more like machine music than anything traditional. The deft drum patterns crackle with feel and groove, but they’re also so deft and dynamic, so naturally woven into the synthetic elements, it’s hard to believe they weren’t sequenced and arranged with computer-aided precision.

Rohrer’s work attained a wider recognition in electronic fields thanks to the Ambiq project with Max Loderbauer and Claudio Puntin, while last year the Microgestures double 12” with Ricardo Villalobos confirmed his affinity with the subtler kind of techno. But those projects are just a few drops in the ocean of work he embarks upon, most of which comes out through his own Arjunamusic label. Codes Of Nature opens up proceedings for 2023 with no specific premise to lean on, just another impressive suite of expressions which strike an artful balance between detail and patience.

In Rohrer’s drumming you can sense the micro-measures which hold back and accent the groove amidst the snaking, rolling percussive patterns, and likewise the synth parts ripple and shimmer busily but with elegance. The likes of ‘The Banality Of Evil’ have a hypnotic, repetitive movement which isn’t a million miles from the Mortiz Von Oswald Trio if they went jazzier instead of dubbier, but in the somnambulant immersion the track encourages there’s also an ever-shifting world of detail to marvel at. The formations spiral up and out, lending themselves to an exacting evaluation as much as an unconscious absorption – a truly transcendental music.

OW

Ma Spaventi – Vicino Lontano (Bordello A Parigi)

Marc Antonio ‘Ma’ Spaventi steps up with his third studio album, conjuring evocative ambient spells on his ‘Vicino Londato’ LP. Originally from Rome — a city not especially well known for its subterranean musical output, Spaventi made the move to Amsterdam back in 2007, and it’s from the Dutch capital that his music career has been quietly flourishing. With releases under his belt on the likes of M>O>S Recordings and Most Excellent Unlimited, ‘Vicino Lontano’ sees him return to Bordello A Parigi, from where he serves a genuinely mesmerising set of gorgeously carved sonic soundscapes.

While he keeps something of a low profile, his music has won him plenty of admirers, with his captivating remix of Tom Trago & Lonely C’s ‘Compass Joint’ living especially long in the memory. Complimenting his production pursuits, Marc Antonio works as a mastering engineer and production teacher, and his sonic mastery is there for all to hear on his latest effort. Largely comprised of immaculately crafted ambient soundscapes, the musically rich collection brims with elegant flourishes and imaginative chord progressions.

From the intoxicating opener ‘Solitario’ to the transportive waves of the ‘Bidderosa’ finale, the immersive work is powerfully atmospheric, while kinetically charged moments arrive, too, via the hypnotic chug of ‘Velvet Lights’ and the tropically charmed ‘Endline’. Nuanced, elegant and spotlessly produced, this is beguiling work from a master of his craft. 

PC

Pavel Milyakov – project Mirrors (AD93)

Pavel Milyakov is the kind of artist versatile enough to become a cult genre all on his own. Under his own name and as Buttechno, the Berlin-based artist has managed to push a kind of personality amidst his stoutly leftfield offerings, rarely pandering to expectations while always enthralling listeners. Initially, and not least because of the ‘techno’ part of his pseudonym, it was expected he was more focused on the dance floor, and sure enough he’s put out some genuine belters on Incienso and Zodiac 44 amongst others, but that’s only a small part of the story. Cracked minimal wave, strung out goth and indie, industrially-weathered abstraction and punky dubbings are all prevalent throughout his oeuvre, and now he arrives on AD93 with a suitably open-ended trip through loops recorded over a five-year period.

The premise for the record speaks to Milyakov’s appeal overall, as the true artist simply creating and sharing without dressing things up or pontificating too loudly on what it all means. As such, we can glide from the hyped up rush of ‘202 days of summer’ to the trance-ified edge-out of ‘raveing’, where the arps evolve from joyous to panic-stricken and there’s not a drum in earshot. So many would-be producers sit at their machines with loops spinning around aimlessly waiting for an arrangement to appear, but Milyakov displays a conviction in this raw creative essence which transcends the need to labour over something deemed ‘presentable’. It’s wholly free in a way so many artists wish they could be.  

OW

Bardo Pond – No Hashish No Change Money No Saki Saki (Three Lobed)

Bardo Pond’s early and obscure album ‘No Hashish, No Change Money, No Saki Saki’ was self-released in 1993, after a period of inspiration fleshed out by its members Isobel Sollenberger, John Gibbons, Michael Gibbons, and Joe Culver. The album was first released on cassette in an effort to find more gigs in their come city, Philly, and is duly noted as a project capturing the youthful essence of a band who had yet to find their feet. It also happens to be a gushing favourite of one Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), who described it last year as a right-on soundtrack for today’s youth’s great resignation, and whose outpouring of praise arguably lit the fire for this reissue.

Nowadays Bardo Pond are a household name in the venn crossover that might be said to straddle the fields of post-rock and shoegaze. But the lo-fi quality of this 10-piece doomer exists in stark contrast to those later projects; it’s the closest we’ll likely ever get to the band’s collective inner child. Slapdash recording and compressed, gloomy walls of feedback, such as those heard on ‘I Forgot’, are tempered by comparatively purer-sounding flutes, as if traversing both urban cacophonies and mountaintop calms at the same time. Sudden jolts and cuts testify that this is a reissue lifted from tape; further joys include the reverse-voicy experimental piece ‘Transistor’ and the mega DC-biased mutterings of Sollenberger’s vocals on ‘Earth And Sky’.

JIJ

Polypores – Praedormitium (Castles In Space)

Another week, another Polypores album. So prolific is Preston’s Stephen James Buckley you wouldn’t be half surprised if he did managed an album a week. Such is the quality of his modular missives few would be disappointed if he did.

In the real world this is his first outing since ‘Infinite Interiors’ last August on Woodford Halse. It is also the third part of a trilogy he’s record for Castles In Space. Picking up from 2019’s ‘Flora’ and 2020’s ‘Azure’, which explored earth and water, this one, says Buckley, concerns itself with ether.

“I felt that I should pursue the themes of the previous two by exploring an imaginal place – and decided that the place between wakefulness and sleep was an ideal location,” he explains.

Praedormitium – one of the many words used to describe woozy hypnagogic states – comes resplendent in suitably trippy artwork from go-to illustrator Nick Taylor who has provided artwork for the whole trilogy.

As you’d expect from Polypores, the music doesn’t disappoint. Across 12 dream-laden tracks, Buckley taps right into the subconscious world that lurks between asleep and awake. Warm music box plinks and plonks rub up against melodic squalls on ‘Growing Crystals’, the restless ‘Kaleidoscope’ tosses and turns before eventually snuggling up, while ‘Loss Of Ego Boundaries’ twangs away like Eno’s ‘Apollo’. Closer ‘And Slowly Open Your Eyes’ kindly brings you back into the real world with a sweet melody tapped out on rich Rhodes-like keys as reality shimmers back into view.

The wonderful world of Polypores strikes again.

NM

Sanguisasugabogg – Homicidal Ecstasy (Century Media)

Columbus, Ohio based brutal death metal revivalists, Sanguisasugabogg (say that ten times fast), caved the scene’s skull open with their oppressive, hideous debut, Tortured Whole, in 2021.

Combining the trudging heft of 90’s indebted early Cannibal Corpse (vocalist Devin Swank even bears strong resemblance to the inhuman gutturals of that band’s original frontman Chris Barnes), with a more modern beatdown hardcore slant, yet conjuring the grotesque atmosphere of the much-maligned porngrind genre of the mid-noughties (Torsofuck, anyone?), led to a concoction as filthy and unpleasant as it sounds on paper or typeface.

Their much-anticipated sophomore effort, Homicidal Ecstasy, plays on all of the strengths of its predecessor with artistic finesse and complex, groove-laden compositions, which appear seemingly at odds with the chaotic malevolence and disgusting anecdotes of nauseating clarity.

Taking song-titles into account, from the opening slam-death chugs of, ‘Black Market Vasectomy’, it becomes clear that poetic licence is stretched well beyond the confines of taste. ‘Face Ripped Off’ (featuring Jesus Piece vocalist Aaron Heard), ‘Hungry For Your Insides’, and, ‘Necrosexual Deviant’, may inspire exhausted sighs and brain-scanning eyerolls, but once ignoring the instinct to judge a death-metal track by its absurd title, the sheer brutal force and controlled dexterity of the group comes into full focus. The sudden battering ram blast beats that careen midway through the sludging bedlam of, ‘Testicular Rot’, are an unwelcoming fusion, toying with the track’s pre-established time signatures in a manner only pulled off by musicians of seasoned ability (or those who have zero idea what they’re doing).

With lyricism fully rooted in the depraved psychosphere of murder, gore and narcotics, and a sonic make-up that refuses to offer even a modicum of respite from its gruelling, audible punishment, Sanguisasugabogg (which is a combination of the Latin term for “leech” and our own colloquial phrase for the toilet) are not for the faint-hearted or sensitive-minded. This is ugly, despicable, punishing death metal, twisting modern brutality with classic genre tropes, and stakes an early claim for extreme metal album of 2023.

ZB

This week’s reviewers: Jude Iago James, Neil Mason, Zach Buggy, Oli Warwick.