Search results: Intuition

Review: Always brimming with partystarting energy, Brooklyn Funk Essentials' motto "funk is what you make it" has carried them for three decades. Coming up in Brooklyn and finding a local fanbase for their electricity on the big smoke's live stage, said electricity later translated to a deluge of full-length LPs showing off the best way to represent funk in the present day. Intuition is their latest album, released by fellow fun-lovers Doraodo. Reflecting a recent line-up change (Alison Limerick and Desmond Foster now pairing up on lead vocals) this project is boundlessly bouncy and confident, spanning bog-standard freak funk to headsier nods to styles like bossa nova and dub.

Review: The Surgeon of the Nightsky Restores Dead Things by the Power of Sound, to give its full title, is one of the less talked-about Jon Hassell albums, but it's just as worthy of celebration. The Fourth World pioneer and raga trumpeter had established his fundamental sound by the late 80s, and this album works so brilliantly as a demonstration of that sound in action. Hassell's distinctive treated trumpet remains the central focus, while undulating rhythms and atmospheres unfurl around it as we're quickly buffeted away to strange and distant places. The mood Hassell captured on his finest works is a rare and unique thing - intense and subtle, ominous and calming, mysterious and yet so immediately appealing.

Review: At one with nature and evolution - while challenging reductionist ideas like survival of the fittest - the artist known as Davina Adeosun-Bright, aka. Muva Of Earth, here presents her latest album on Brownswood, Align With Nature's Intelligence. A spiritual jazz opus full of confidence, it instantly recalls the historic trace of Alice Coltrane, Lonnie Liston Smith or Pharoah Sanders, as we hear the Muva effortlessly command every instrument at her disposal - from harp to voice - while staking impassioned claims to her femininity, ancestry and empowerment. Sonically, it's implied that the only way to achieve an "evolved thinking" is through a return to source, and that's done using seemingly endless beds of twinkly jazz shimmer, which form the backbone for progressive double bass, vocal and drum-brushed wildouts.

Review: Lizard Label is a brand new American imprint that kicks off with the aim to "be that sunbathed rock, the artist to be the sun and the listener to be that lizard" and provide warm sounds to pock you in the moment. The first release is a notable one from Chicago-based artist Wav Fuzz who offers up a true electronic odyssey across six tracks on Sensing. These are sub-aquatic techno excursions, electro workouts and deeply immersive dubbed-out soundscapes for maximum cathartic impact. All the music is finely crafted which makes us all the more intrigued about who is behind this low-key alias.