South-African experimental pop artist Desire Marea performed a virtual concert with a host of first time collaborators. They performed gorgeous live renditions from Desire Marea's this year debut 'Desire', making them mesmerizing, jazzy, and atmospheric.
"Lyric Jones uses her art as a balm to soothe the sting of systemic oppression and finds confidence in her ability to rap anyone under the table" - Pitchfork wrote in the review of California rapper's breakthrough project 'Closer Than They Appear'. Here - "her sincerity and musical range are her greatest weapons".
New hip-hop project Small Bills is made of New York rapper Elucid (one half of another new hip-hop duo Armand Hammer), and Detroit multi-instrumentalist/producer The Lasso. Also on their debut album 'Don't Play it Straight' are Moor Mother, Fielded, Nosaj, .k, Koncept Jackson, and billy woods. Brooklyn Vegan compares the album to the awesome Armand Hammer debut 'Shrines', but adds "this album is also a beast of its own. It's overall more psychedelic and more chaotic. It has less warm, soulful production than 'Shrines' and more sputtering electronics".
"An absorbing modern shoegaze classic" - Louder writes in review of 'The Great Dismal', adding the new Nothing record is "an intense and unflinching album which embraces life’s chaotic absurdity and weighs heavily long after its final riffs fade to black". Dark singer/songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle and crushingly heavy sludge metal band Thou "feed off each other in a way where they create something none of them could have done on their own" - Brooklyn Vegan writes about their collaborative new album 'May Our Chambers Be Full'.
Greek prog-sludge metal band Kevel picks up pieces of death metal, black metal, and post-metal to make the "ultimate, tumultuous majesty" on their album 'Mutatis Mutandis', Invisible Oranges writes. Dusted magazine goes deeper into the concept - "Kevel articulates an engaging, challenging riff, and then works it, allowing the musical statement to build its own significance". Listen to the powerful and raw album on Bandcamp.
Four young women living in Moscow released 'We Are', a "direct, even brutally blunt, yet invested with a considerable emotional hinterland", the Quietus says in a review of debut album by Lucidvox. These Muscovites "sound like news from nowhere" and although they sing in Russian, the Q hears "a fair warning of awful things to come. But how sweetly they coat the message".
The Quietus made a great collection of the latest French music, going from hip-hop and chansons, to French and North African folk, as well as power techno. There's also a band of children, Les Loustics, with members aged 7, 9, and 12. Listen to the October mix - here.
Ten years after he made it, Jay Electronica released his album 'Act II: The Patents of Nobility (The Turn)' last week (cause it leaked), which Pitchfork describes now as a "nearly an all-time classic LP, the kind of record that celebrates an art form while simultaneously pushing it forward". The P branded it "Best new music" and gave it grade 8,7.
"Shamir’s music makes the listener want to wake up. Listening to it is like being shaken awake, blinds thrown open... This music is wildly fun to listen to" - Consequence of Sound writes in a review of Shamir's self-titled album. NME says it's "hugely focused, each song short and sharp and coated in precise production". Under the Radar rightfully says ''Shamir' is a pop album... Succinct. Catchy. Honest".
"It crosses barriers between indie/art rock, post-hardcore/emo, abrasive noise-rap, R&B, dance beats, bedroom folk, and more" - Brooklyn Vegan says about Bartees Strange's 'Live Forever' - "one of those debut albums that truly brings something new to the musical table, and it also very much seems like it's only the beginning". It's Stereogum's Album of the week because "it’s rare to hear someone have so much presence right out of the gate, but Strange owns every decision that he makes... 'Live Forever' is a testament to the power of taking chances in order to make great art".
