Category: Music

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Music

Trevor Power – 2166

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.

https://trevorpowers.bandcamp.com

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Music

Blood Orange & 박혜진 Park Hye Jin – CALL ME (Freestyle)

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.

https://bloodorange.net/

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Music

Le Couleur – Comme une fin du monde

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.

https://lecouleurmusic.bandcamp.com/

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Music

Jouska – Lemon Twigs

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.

http://eddamusic.no/jouska-2/

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Music

Sufjan Stevens – Sugar

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.

https://sufjan.com

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Music

Sam Prekop – The New Last

Sam Prekop, longtime vocalist for The Sea

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.

https://samprekop.bandcamp.com

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Music

Songhoy Blues – Barre

Mali’s Songhoy Blues are reliably relentless in both the quality and positivity of their music, and Barre is no exception, even though it deals with some fairly serious subject matter. Taken from their forthcoming album due out in October, ‘barre’ roughly translates to ‘change’, and the song was written to inspire the youth of their Mali homeland to get involved and help change their corrupt and oppressive political system.

https://songhoyblues.com

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Music

Lafawndah – Don’t Despair

Lafawndah is such an outrageously talented individual that it was always going to be interesting to see how she musically followed 2019’s breakthrough debut Ancestor Boy. I’m not sure many expected an album inspired by a trilogy of fantasy novels, but here we are. I haven’t read the Broken Earth books but research suggests they are almost unremittingly bleak. That would certainly explain Don’t Despair, which I assume is an ironic title as the entire track seems to be doing its level best to make you do just that. Lafawndah’s crystalline vocal is the focus, with skeletal percussion and screeching synths adding to the paranoid landscape.

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Music

Boo Tell – Alone

Described by the label 2 B Real – a new label from electronic artist Finn and established imprint Local Action – as “languid and loopy, dreamy and aimless”, it’s about the most succinct and accurate release hypes I’ve ever read. Alone is 6+ minutes of hazy, sun-bleached beats, shimmering pads and a relentless vocal which might potentially get a little irritating if it wasn’t so lovely. I’m assuming Boo Tell is an alias of Finn: if so, battered straw hats off to him as it’s fantastic.

https://2-b-real.bandcamp.com

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Music

Hannah Georgas – Pray It Away

The theme of Pray It Away – which concerns a battle with Hannah Georgas’ own conservative family about same-sex marriage – is serious and weighty, but the record is anything but. Poignant, yes, but also light and delicate, as if she’s delivering the song floating high above the unfolding scene below. Perhaps that’s my own projection of detachment, having never been through anything similar with my own family, but she certainly seems to have found some resolution. Regardless, it’s a wonderful song, taken from her excellent new album All That Emotion, which I very much recommend checking out.

http://www.hannahgeorgas.com/