Author: The Predatory Wasp

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Music

Kizis – Kiss For The Valley

This came out back in March so may well be on your radar already, but I only just came across it after delving into the goldmine that is the Quietus’s best albums of the year so far list, which is highly recommended. Kiss for The Valley is one of 36(!) tracks on Kizis’s absolutely extraordinary album Tidibàbide / Turn, which seems to have flown under the radar a little, despite a fairly positive Pitchfork review. Honestly though, this sounds like nothing else I’ve heard this year, and deserves far greater acclaim than it looks likely to get. I’ve singled out Kiss For The Valley for special mention, not just because it takes a turn for the Sufjan-esque (choral choirs, falsetto, plaintive trumpets, etc.) about halfway through, but that it also sums up the raw energy and unpredictability of the entire LP. At three and a half hours, it’s not to be taken lightly, but it’s worth it.

https://tinangelrecords.bandcamp.com/album/tidib-bide-turn

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Music

Obongjayar X Sarz – Gone Girl

Taken from Nigerian artists Obongjayar and Sarz’s new collaborative EP Sweetness, Gone Girl is a perfect 80s r&b throwback, all velvety smooth vocals, churning bass and effervescent chords. That’s all I have to say: I’m off for a bubblebath.

https://orcd.co/sweetnessep

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Music

Shirley Collins – At Break of Day

At 86 years of age, Shirley Collins is still creating music brimming with life, vibrancy and hope. Her new EP Crowlink includes spoken-word poetry, ambient, glistening new-age synths and deep, earthy folk, dragging seemingly ancient tales into the present and creating something deeply personal and intimate yet entirely relatable and accessible. Crowlink is a thing of timeless, transportive beauty, and deserves your immediate attention.

https://shirleycollins.com

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Music

Quinton Barnes – Arouse

TPW favourite Quinton Barnes drops his latest single Arouse today, further establishing himself as an incredibly sexy and talented motherfucker. Haunting synths sit comfortably alongside his trademark hard-hitting drums and woozy flows – the entire thing is just fantastic and deserves to be listened to at an outrageously volume, preferably while receiving a massage.

https://quintonbarnes.bandcamp.com

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Music

Ora The Molecule – Helicopter

I’m back! Did you miss me? Didn’t even notice I was away? Well, I was – moving house since you asked. Yeah, it was pretty brutal. Boxes breeding boxes and all that. Anyway, here’s an absolute banger from Ora The Molecule’s new album Human Safari that you might not have heard yet by way of an apology. I won’t let it happen again.

https://orathemolecule.bandcamp.com

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Music

Lucy Gooch – Chained To A Woman

My obsession with anything that even vaguely evokes the 80s continues unabated, satiated generally today by Bristol-based artist Lucy Gooch’s beautiful EP Rain’s Break, and specifically by this track, with its sparse, crystalline synth lines and breathy vocals. Gooch said of the EP that she wanted to create something “with a dissonance and eeriness to it”, and those aims have absolutely been fulfilled, the resulting EP providing a brief but engrossing escape from the relentless grind of reality.

https://lucygooch.bandcamp.com/album/rains-break-ep

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Music

The War On Drugs – Living Proof

I’m a little conflicted about today’s post. On the one had, I love The War On Drugs, have listened to both Lost In The Dream and A Deeper Understanding relentlessly over the last few years, and an incredibly excited about their recently announced new album and European tour. All of that: great. Their new single however, I am not entirely convinced by. I’d even go so far as to say it was (whisper it) a bit boring and forgettable and fairly cliched? Note the question mark: I’m not even sure about my own opinion. What a sorry state of affairs. Anyway, here it is: make your own mind up.

https://www.thewarondrugs.net/

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Music

Yves Tumor – Crushed Velvet

I personally find Yves Tumor be to at their most compelling when they’re balancing visceral electronic experimentation with big, rocky hooks, either in a single track or across an entire albums worth of material; see: Safe In The Hands Of Love, in which you never quite know what’s lurking around the next corner. Their latest EP Asymptomatic World leans way further into the rockier of these two worlds, forgoing the crushed, fizzing synths in favour of prominent guitars and stadium-friendly vocals, so while it’s by no means my favourite release of theirs, it’s still comfortably better than pretty much everything else that came out last week.

https://yves-tumor.warp.net

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Music

Durand Jones & The Indications – The Way That I Do

The term “easy listening” has a fairly bad rep, and probably for good reason. It evokes mindlessly inoffensive music that seems to be almost wilfully devoid of character, and while I’m by no means arguing that Durand Jones & The Indication be reclassified into this vague sub-genre, one of the things I enjoy so much about their music is that it’s such an effortless pleasure to listen to. Latest single The Way I Do combines elements of funk, soul, disco and pop into an intoxicating blend that infects everything with its breezy, understated optimism, and I am fully here for everything it stands for.

https://durandjonesandtheindications.com

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Music

Lee Gamble – Hyperpassive

In September Lee Gamble brings his Flush Real Pharynx 2019-2021 album cycle to an end with A Million Pieces Of You, a seven-track LP that was written “in a time when the subjective experience of overload came to a halt, giving way to an overbearing sense of loss, burnout and a desperate need for hope,” which I’m guessing means Covid o’clock. Playing with rhythms and tones and switching effortlessly between wide-eyed optimism and almost overwhelming despair, Hyperpassive, then, seems like a fitting representation of the emotions many of us went through on an almost daily – if not hourly – basis in 2020 and beyond. Oh, and it’s also really good, just in case that wasn’t clear.

https://leegamble.bandcamp.com/album/a-million-pieces-of-you