After her six-year hiatus, the record feels comforting, with the US singer and producer’s distinctively silky vocals threaded around minimalist instrumentals that draw on those she initially gained underground acclaim for. Downtempo R&B and expansive ambient moments flow into soft-focus breaks and slow, syncopated beats. APĪ tribute to Black contributions to dance music, Kelela’s latest LP is a rich tapestry of atmospheric club sounds, with each track delicately woven into the next in a mix format. The sense that it is music made by an artist with not just a fantastic voice, but an identity of their own, is impressively inescapable. Soulful pop music that’s commercial enough to have mainstream appeal, but doesn’t equate commercial mainstream appeal with being boring – or indeed looking over your shoulder at what everyone else is doing and imitating it – the Scottish singer’s debut stirs influences that are variously lo-fi, retro and left-field into a hazily appealing whole, rich in killer songs. But the Portuguese duo, AKA Luan Bellussi and Pedro Tavares, have tons of their own distinguishing character, too: a great Panda Bear feature on Aftershow, a nod to the overheated percussion showcased by their country’s great Príncipe Discos label on Young Mix and an unimaginably soothing, Ogmios-worthy spoken-word account of the morning after on Waking Up After a Night Out: you didn’t know you needed “hangover ASMR”, but trust me. AP Império Pacífico – Clubs HitĬlubs Hit is precisely the sort of bleary, chilly Balearic sunset music that you might otherwise find on Swedish label Studio Barnhus. Imagine This Is a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities is the kind of album that seems to fill the room regardless of the volume you play it at – but it’s original, absorbing and transportive with it. Like Fuck Buttons’ 2009 masterpiece Tarot Sport, James Holden’s fourth album is kaleidoscopic electronica – audibly informed by dance music rather than dance music per se – that operates at a needles-in-the-red level of intensity. James Holden – Imagine This Is a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities
Fuse melds elegantly careworn reflections on mortality, Sunday clubbing, lost lives and the bitter divisions in public discourse with music inspired by dubstep, post-dubstep, lo-fi house and garage. Not just an entirely unexpected return after 24 years – a return to peak form that doesn’t simply seek to warm over past glories, but moves forward, reflecting the changes in dance music since Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt last made an album together.
Better still, the concept here was: “What would Aphex Twin do with a chamber ensemble and a church organ?” LS Everything But the Girl – Fuse (I only came to love it more when I learned that it was a concept album about “a retired dentist who wrote elegant minimalist jazz circa 1970”.) Where that album was breezy and balmy, the follow-up is powerfully sad, with deep woodwinds leading furrowed, circular melodies – not a million miles from a much darker take on Alabaster DePlume’s breakout album To Cy & Lee. Photograph: Pat Martin Brendan Eder Ensemble – TherapyĮder is a Los Angeles-based jazz composer and film scorer (including for Ari Aster) whose last album, Cape Cod Cottage, I discovered purely on the basis of the lovely painting on its cover. Laura SnapesĬaptivating smoothie … Eddie Chacon.
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And those flute solos … Read the full review. However close the focus, it’s never less than captivating. Sometimes it saunters (Comes and Goes), sometimes it struts (Holy Hell, with its killer drums), sometimes it skews spiritual (The Morning Sun). BBT Eddie Chacon – SundownĪn uplifting musical renaissance continues: after 2020’s Pleasure, Joy and Happiness rescued the Would I Lie to You smoothie from the annals of one-hit wonders, Sundown refined that album’s sultry R&B into an even more spectral proposition.
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And there are dark moments of self-doubt, such as the fantastical 10-minute piano ballad Turbines/Pigs, plus references to their back catalogue and themselves: “BCNR, friends for ever!” It’s more musical theatre than indie rock, done by a troupe with no comparison in their scene.
There are softboi romances and a multi-part story about woodland creatures, but, hearteningly, the band sell the whimsy without a shred of irony. Live albums can feel like addendums for fans only, but this one has drama and heft: the sound of a band regrouping around a completely new set of songs after their frontman quit. Black Country, New Road – Live at Bush Hall