Bandcamp is waiving its fees on all sales through the website today (May 1), so the Quietus shared a buyer's guide to some of their favourite music from the last month that you can buy - Shabazz Palaces, Menzi, Oranssi Pazuzu, Aisha Orazbayeva, among others. Brooklyn Vegan recommends 10 new metal albums - Barishi, Ulcerate, Fluisteraars - as well as 10 lesser known classics.
Saharan desert rock quintet Tamikrest is "advocating for both unity and diversity in wonderfully dulcet tones" on their newest album 'Tamotaït', PopMatters argues. "Their music here has sonic overtones of hope, resilience, and reflection", PM adds, while withholding "the substance and soul, the meaning, the skill, the familiarity of rock and roll meshed with the distinct vocal timbres and melodic lines that have since become iconic of Kel Tamasheq life".
"Performing a curious blend of stoner rock, psych, and extreme metal, Elephant Tree focus treacle-thick riffs and dense sludge grooves into chilled odysseys. In doing so they retain the focus and drive of metal whilst embracing the floaty warmth of psych" - The Quietus writes in review of London band's new album. "Elephant Tree feel like a total refresh, smart and savvy, delivering a charmingly wonky version of the tropes that make the [stoner rock] genre so likeable".
"'Pray for Paris' is one of the best albums to come out of the Griselda camp so far, good enough to help you forgive the obnoxiousness and make you understand why the crew now have a cultural cachet that rap legends are dying to be attached to" - Pitchfork says in a review of Westside Gunn's new album 'Pray For Paris'. Westside explained in the GQ interview what's the connection this album has with fashion and Kanye West.
"'Negro' is a collision course of Black punk experimentation, intersecting between jazz and rap. It's a gripping listen: The album revolves around Black anguish, as Siifu raps about police corruption and community rage" - MTV says about Pink Siifu's new album. "Black frustration needs to be heard. It’s OK to be angry. There’s a lot of stuff going on. This album is controlled chaos” - Pink Siifu himself explained. Pitchfork goes further in defining it - "the album siphons the repressed ire of Black America... It is a bracing record that is at once crushing and liberating", but, "the point is not the wrath but the bond shared by those expressing it".
"The most uniquely stirring pop music in recent memory" - Stereogum writes in a review of Colombian-Canadian singer Lido Pimienta's new album, which also mixes folk genres with modern and orchestral production. Songs at 'Miss Colombia' "brilliantly deconstruct and reimagine the country’s signature sounds" with "powerfully original music, refracting the cultures that formed her through the prism of her own inspiration". Pimienta described the album as "a cynical love letter to Colombia", a stand taken after a mishap at the 2015 Miss Universe when the name of Miss Colombia was read as the winner when actually it was Miss Philipines who won.
"The mutant jazz six-piece’s new record is the album of tomorrow, a real cold bath of a disc... One of the most fun and instantly gratifying albums of the year" - the Quietus writes in a review of Melt Yourself Down's new album '100% Yes'. Plenty of it in there: "swaggering and sweltering pop tunes", "virtuistic sax", "beefy drums", "highly danceable", "purest of escapist experiences ", "the most joyful"...
"Gentle and intelligent, humble and wholly kind-hearted" - NME writes in a review of English folk singer's new album, written to her imaginary daughter. Alexis Petridis chose it for his Album of the week describing it as "alternately intimate, sneering and sad, and lavished with gorgeous melodies". It's Stereogum's Album of the week as well, they love the atmosphere of it - "sounds like she’s sitting just a few feet away from you in a room, playing her guitar and seeing where her mind will wander next. It sounds like a giant exhalation".
A great text on Pitchfork about why we need to listen to new music, especially now: "The world will keep spinning and culture must move with it, even if we are staid and static in our homes... The choice to listen to new music prioritizes, if for one listen only, the artist over you. It is an emotional risk to live for a moment in the abyss of someone else’s world.... It also appears that we are in the most impressionable era in generations... Don’t let history be recursively defined by a feedback loop. Steer into the skid, pour the fear and dread leaking through your roof into something unfamiliar, because it could be the new artifact that exclusively defines this moment for you".
he Quietus made a selection of the best psychedelic and noise rock for the month of April, and two albums stand out from the already good bunch. The first one is Human Impact's self-titled debut, an industrial noise record made by the members of Unsane, Swans and Cop Shoot Cop. Apart from the name of the month award, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs win the doom-stoner-psych-rock album of the month award.
Experimental electronic producer Yves Tumor turned, slightly, into "bold, loud art rock" on his newest album, but, Brooklyn Vegan argues, it stays "an experimental record even during its poppiest moments... it never relies on obvious, cheap tricks and it always earns the 'art' or 'avant-' prefix". The Quietus writes highly of it as well: "On 'Heaven To A Tortured Mind', Tumor harnesses his relentless curiosity to test the boundaries of rock and noise – and reinvents what we expect from both in the process". Stereogum hears "kaleidoscopic rock and soul anthems" on "his most approachable work by far, a move to the middle that never sounds like a compromise". Exclaim says it is "the sound of all of pop history", Alexis Petridis likes the unpredictability of it, and The Skinny emphasizes the message "that there's always calmness to be found amid chaos".
"Incredibly rich, offering something different on every listen... It reminds us that sometimes things must fall apart for better things to emerge - Atwood Magazine says in a review of Sea Wolf's new album. Alex Brown Church has made a full album, but saw the songs as disjointed, so he discarded them, and made a new one - 'Through a Dark Wood' - "masterful illustrations of vulnerability and adversity affirm grief as a step towards growth", PopMatters says in its review. Listen to the album at Bandcamp.
"'Clockdust' is anchored by the singer-songwriter's cracked, idiosyncratic, and quintessentially English vocal tones – somewhere between the windswept warble of Robert Wyatt and weathered late-period David Bowie" - PopMatters says in a review of "hauntological, cultish strain of psychedelic folk pastoral" album. "It's catchy, carefully crafted, and tastefully arranged", PM adds.
WuW is a French band of two brothers playing progressive post-metal, somewhere in the third angle of the Alcest-White Ward triangle. Quite post-metal and dramatic, with songs spanning 12 minutes, but also modern with a touch of saxophone and melancholy. Rich, fulfilling and relaxing metal, a product of brotherly love.
Guardian calls it "the best album of the year so far" with songs "genuinely good enough to be compared with peak Dylan" (gave it 5 of 5 stars. Pitchfork tagged it Best new music because "'Saint Cloud' is all lilacs and creek beds, Memphis skylines and Manhattan subways, love and sobriety, the sound of a cherished songwriter thawing out under the sun" (grade 8,7). Consequence of Sound calls it "incredibly authentic" (gives it A-).
"'3.15.20' is visionary, funny, confounding, complex and simple, super easy on the ears, full of bangers, without once seeming brattish or self-obsessed or, ever, stupid. It weaves a hyper-potent magic spell, as Glover lazes around like a goon, then casually unwraps proverbial, sensual and social truth-bombs for the ages" - the Quietus says in a review of Childish Gambino's new album.
London band Sorry took several years to define their sound and made it - quite undefinable. "Their official debut, '925', bears all the characteristics of hungry, wandering minds not tied to pre-established structures" - Stereogum writes in a review, and adds - "in approach and nature, '925' could only come from kids raised on the internet: run-on sentences, half-thoughts, a tendency to take a bit of everything and throw it together in unexpected and idiosyncratic ways". Generally, Sorry are "still a rock band, it’s just that they make a rock music that doesn’t follow contemporary context or logic. Theirs is an artier strain that is broken down and rebuilt over and over, constantly bristling against the confines of the form... This is the sound of rifling through debris, and the strange new things you can build with what’s worth saving".
"Drymala's cello and DiPietro's guitar and hammered lap steel borrow elements of instrumental folk with a slight classical influence. But they never seem to tip their hand. The music is warm and inviting" - PopMatters writes about the new album by the Brooklyn duo. With 18 minutes in total, this is the shortest record recommended here, and one coming in at just the right moment - "social distancing is on everyone's mind as people all over the world are looking for ways to find peace and hope. This gorgeous new album may be able to offer some of the calm many of us are seeking".
Despite its dark mood, explicit sexual themes, and tense mood, 'Less is Moor' by Zebra Katz is still pop music, well, at least how great pop music in 2020 should sound like. It's the debut album by Jamaican-American artist and producer, spanning territories from smooth r'n'b do drum'n'bass, with a tendency towards clubs (small, dark, in basements, sexually fluid) and dancing. So, at the edges od pop music, then.
"As with most rock music that sounds truly youthful, 'Melee' doesn’t invent new forms so much as connect bands once separated by subtle genre classification" - Pitchfork writes in a review of the debut album by Dogleg, and compares them to At the Drive-In, ...Trail of Dead, Cloud Nothings and Japandroids. Dogleg are video-games fans, which transforms into their music as an interest "in sheer, rejuvenating physical pleasure of controlling a lifelike version of yourself capable of jumping higher, punching faster, and sustaining more damage than any human could".
Irish singer-songwriter made her album 'Birthmarks' while heavily pregnant, using field recordings, synths, cello, and saxophone to create "an eerie, crackling record" with "substance", Brooklyn Vegan says. The Irish Times hears Woods venturing "further down the rabbit hole of experimentation, resulting in challenging but thought-provoking sonic soundscapes". Treble likes it the most: "Woods has fleshed out her ghostly, gothic folk into something bigger and heavier, informed as much by noise and industrial music as darkwave or neofolk... At times these feel less like songs, more like visceral, primal experiences".
"Their music contains elements of math rock, krautrock, free jazz, minimalism" - PopMatters introduces Horse Lords, a "infinitely curious" band who "found a way to make these intricate, puzzle-like compositions soar with an electrified intensity that's uniquely engaging". 'The Common Task' is, PM says, "meticulous and complex, but also undeniably joyous and celebratory... For all of the cacophony, odd tunings, and unusually chosen paths, the way that the band gets into such an airtight groove is a pure joy to hear".
An amazing interview in the Quietus with Egyptian poet Abdullah Miniawy and German electronic band Carl Gari about their collaborative album 'The Act Of Falling From The 8th Floor', about personal fear and struggle to reach freedom. Miniawy had to leave Kairo, settling in France and the group now operates between Paris and Munich, recording in a remote house in Neunburg vorm Wald, a town nestled in the Bavarian forest. When they started, Carl Gari played minimalistic techno instrumentals, when Miniawy joined them they grew increasingly abstract, skirting the edges of deconstructed club sounds and into sections of pure ambience to prop up Miniawy’s dramatic readings. Amazing stuff...
"What 'Every Bad' really sounds like is the sea, churning then soothing, a constant battle between birth and destruction" - Stereogum says, poetically, about their latest Album of the week choice. Sonically, the Brighton band leans "in a bunch of different directions - straight-up indie, dream-pop, heaving ’90s alt-rock, the moodier edges of Britpop", but what it comes down to is a portrait of "the condition of being young and trying to locate something stable inside, some clarity about your own identity and dreams".
"For much of her career, U.S. Girls has been an exploration of female violence and rage. 'Heavy Light' lives in that period of emptiness that comes after" - Pitchfork says about their latest Best new music choice. "So much of being alive is an exercise in denying the existence of personal trauma. Collective trauma, Remy seems to suggest, is the reason for the fracturing of our society" the P concludes about the experimental pop record.
"UK hip-hop and albums bemoaning the current state of things are two crowded markets: 'The Long Goodbye' is potent, original and timely enough to stand out in both" - Alexis Petridis argues in favor of his latest album of the week choice, a great record lyrically. Telegraph declares Riz Ahmed a "master rapper" for his "angry, funny, clever and, at times, swaggeringly brutal examination of a national identity crisis", whereas the NME likes the sonic side of the album - "the high-tempo, energetic sounds throughout match Ahmed’s razor-sharp lyrics and fast-paced rhymes".
"One of the richer, more abstract, more discursive rap albums in recent memory" - Stereogum says about their newest choice for Album of the week, R.A.P. Ferreira's debut under his real name (Rory Allen Philip), co-produced by The Jefferson Park Boys. The beats are slightly leftfield - full of live instrumentation with murmuring bass, idle guitar flutters, occasional bursts of horn, and jazz as an obvious inspiration. His raps are more "slam poetry than straight-up rap. The songs unfurl on their own schedule. They’re never too long, but you’re also never quite sure which direction they’ll twist in next". In lyrics, R.A.P. is interested in playing games with language, like - “preaching the rhyming word is absurd as pledging allegiance before reading terms of service agreement”. So, an unusual album, but not too much.
English singer-songwriter lost the electro feel on his third album, borrowing this time "from English folksong, baroque pop, and piano balladry", Pitchfork says in a review. The P describes the album as "more dream than recollection", and "his richest, a loose tapestry of memories both painful and cherished". DIY magazine hears "a stunningly-harmonious musical journey filled with nostalgia".
Danish musician Amalie Bruun chose Myrkur (Icelandic for "darkness") as her stage name, and the color persists on her new album 'Folkesange' where she reworked traditional Scandinavian songs. It's "modern versions" of songs played, all by her, on mandolas, lyres and a nyckelharpa, resulting in "dense, intense folk".
"'Suddenly' is drenched in wonderful melodies – behind the bedroom-bound sonic boffin image, Snaith is a really good songwriter – and packed with moments more obviously pop-facing than anything previously released" - Guardian's Alexis Petridis writes about Caribou's new album (gave it 5 of 5 stars). He especially likes the way Dan Snaith sings - "You don’t realise how accustomed your ears have become to Auto-Tuned perfection until you hear someone who actually sounds like a human being rather than a cyborg programmed to perform vocal calisthenics: it hits you emotionally in a way that melismatic feats of strength and endurance simply don’t". Listen to the album in full at Bandcamp.
