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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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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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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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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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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/

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Music

Lomelda – Hannah Sun

Hannah Sun is one of three tracks on the new Lomelda album – also titled Hannah – that are named after their creator, Hannah Reid. “It felt important to call it Hannah because it attached me and my person and my responsibility to the music” she said in a recent interview. Even without this exposition, there could be little doubt that these are deeply personal. intimate songs, and Hannah Sun drifts and shimmers like the last sunbeams of the day gently breaking through a canopy of softly shifting leaves.

https://lomelda.bandcamp.com/album/hannah

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KMRU – Why Are You Here

I am hungover AF today so here’s 15 minutes of ambient loveliness to help gently usher in your weekend. That’s all you’re getting. I’m going back to bed.

https://kmru.bandcamp.com

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Shawn Rudiman – Fighting the Flow

I’m pretty late to the party on this one as it came out back in June, but I just read a glowing review on Resident Advisor and I’m not obsessed. Fighting The Flow from his album Conduit is absolutely flawless, driving, relentless techno of the very highest order, with just enough fragments of melody to keep things interesting without detecting from its repetitive power. Honestly, play this loud and tell me you don’t want to take your top off, neck a pinger and charge off down the front.

https://soundcloud.com/shawn-rudiman

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Il Quadro di Troisi – Raggio Verde

Il Quadro di Troisi is a new project by Andrea Noce (Eva Geist) and Donato Scaramuzzi aka Donato Dozzy aka one of the greatest electronic producers of all time, and one half of Voices From The Lake, who are responsible for the best mix ever. If you’ve come here expecting stripped-back, hypnotic dub techno however, you’re in the wrong place. Il Quadro Di Troisi is inspired by the late Italian actor and director Massimo Troisi and looks to pay tribute tribute to Italian popular music over the decades, touching on Italo disco, synth pop and more, all of which are harnessed in Raggio Verde.

German label Raster will release full album 16 October digitally, and on vinyl and CD 13 November. Until then, bask in the nostalgic greatness of the Green Ray.

https://soundcloud.com/raster_artistic_platform

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Angel Olsen – [New Love] Cassette

Around the release of her debut album Half Way Home, I saw Angel Olsen perform to a couple of hundred people at a modest venue in Shepherd’s Bush. She was magnetically brilliant: flirting with some random guy in the front row, asking if anyone had any tequila and ploughing through what felt like pretty much every song she’d released up to that point.

Since then, obviously, she’s become huge, and every album since has been ramped up in terms of scope, production, energy and scale. It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed lots of it, but I’ve definitely missed the stripped-down heartbreak of songs like Safe In The Womb and Lonely Universe. So her latest release, Whole New Mess, which presents the stark original versions of tracks from 2019’s All Mirrors is about as up-my-street as it’s possible to be, and [New Love] Cassette is just one of many gems in which you can hear the ghost of the song it eventually became.

https://angelolsen.com