The Predatory Wasp
Toro Y Moi isn’t adverse to popping up on as a featured artist on hip-hop tracks, but he rarely, if ever, actually raps. Should we count last year’s drawled verse on Blood Orange’s Dark & Handsome? No, we should not. He nails it here though, beefing up his usually relaxed considerably in order to cut through the glossy production and keep pace with MadeInTYO. All in all: a banger.
1Luv (Roll The Credits) arrives right at the end of Curren$y & Harry Fraud’s latest collaborative album, The Director’s Cut. Barely clocking in over two minutes, it’s almost more of an afterthought than a proper track – a super chill rolling groove, occasional strummed guitar and incredibly relaxed flows – but there’s something utterly hypnotic about it. Every time it comes one I have to flip it right back to the start. If only it was three times longer.
Vatican Shadow has something of a penchant for long, enigmatic track titles – personal favourite: Boxes Were Wired to Batteries Then Loaded into a Brown Toyota Cargo Truck – so while Rehearsing For The Attack is positively breezy as far as names go, it’s an undoubted highlight from a catalogue that’s both extremely extensive and reliably excellent. Taken from this his latest LP Persian Pillars of the Gasoline Era (see?), it has the effect of being incredibly calming, despite the at times unnerving clanks and scrapes emerging from the glassy darkness.
Records like this are the exact reason I wanted to start this blog: an artist I had never previously heard of, making absolutely incredible music that – so far at least – isn’t quite the attention it deserves. Anjimile Chithambo wrote much of the album from which In Your Eyes is taken while in treatment for drug and alcohol abuse, while also “living more fully as a nonbinary trans person”. The press release goes on to make Sufjan Stevens comparisons, which is usually pretty dangerous ground on which to tread, but in this case is absolutely on-point, and there are also echoes of Tracy Chapman in much of Giver Taker, both vocally and in the quiet rage that underpins some of the songs.
There are so many moment of brilliance in the album, but In Your Eyes gets my particular stamp of approval for being one of the best songs I’ve heard all year.
Formerly known artistically as Youth Lagoon, Trevor Powers has now released two records under his own name, the latest being Capricorn: a sketchy, at times deeply paranoid and at others almost naively beautiful instrumental collection of songs. There’s a tapestraic quality to the album, which is peppered with field recordings and warped, hushed and time-stretched synths, halfway between Blood Orange and The Caretaker. Album closer 2166 is like the entire album compressed into a single track: a poignant piano line, ominous bass notes and something that was probably a vocal once upon a time before it was processed almost beyond all recognition. It’s a really impressive body of work, from an artist that seems to be doing it exactly the way they want.
This is the first time I’ve had the opportunity to feature Blood Orange aka Devonte Hynes aka probably my favourite artist of the last five years on this blog. What’s he playing at?? It’s absolutely outrageous that he’s been starving us of new material for this long. Here he’s teamed up with South Korean 박혜진 Park Hye Jin – who recently released her second EP – on a sad banger, the music video for which is a first-person meander through the damp and deserted back streets of New York. Welcome back guys: you have been missed.
Canadian synth-pop for you today courtesy of Le Couleur, who released their third LP Concorde last week. It’s an album inspired by the rise and fall of the aircraft of the same name – punctuated at one point by the sound of an engine exploding: a stark reminder of the Air France tragedy in 2000 that left no survivors. Singer and keyboardist Laurence Giroux-Do told Âught last month that the band “were fascinated by the Concorde: its symbolism, its sexy look, its crash”. Comme une fin du monde itself is a slow-burner, gradually building to an intense, disorientating climax.
Jouska is an Oslo-based duo making R&B-inflected electronica, or electronic-tinged R&B; whichever rolls off your tongue more easily. They recently released their debut album, Everything Is Good, from which Lemon Twigs is taken, and which touches on a range of themes, some overtly political, some intensely personal. Lemon Twigs itself is wonderful, the melancholic yet relative bombast of the production magnifying the raw, intimate pain of the lyrical content.
The latest in an ever-increasing and very welcome tide of singles from his upcoming album The Ascension, this is vintage Sufjan from the very first bar. Haunting pads and those brittle electronic drums that he’s been playing around with ever since the early A Sun Came-era weirdness, now honed and refined. Music video is great too. Maybe 2020 will turn out to be ok after all.
Chicago’s Sam Prekop is a singer and guitarist in The Sea and Cake – a jazz-inflected indie band that have released 11 studio albums since 1994 – and also puts out his own, highly varied, solo material. The New Last is taken from his latest album, Comma, arguably his most immersive body of work to date: a collection of instrumental electronica that ranges from the meditative to neon-flecked psychedelia. The New Last itself is gorgeous: all brightly glimmering tones and warm pads that softly wrap themselves around you.
The Predatory Wasp 