Categories
Music

Apollo Brown & Che Noir feat. Black Thought – Hustle Don’t Give

The opening bars on Hustle Don’t Give – “Raisin’ Hell, but the shit that I’m rhymin’ was Heaven-sent / Went broke and bounced back, I’ve been grindin’ out ever since” – perfectly sum up the vibe on most of As God Intended, the album it’s taken from: confident, defiant and by turns humble and elegantly self-aggrandising. the Roots’ Black Thought delivers a typically thoughtful verse and both his and Che Noir’s vocals shine through the sample-heavy, soaring production like hazy sunbeams glinting off rolling waves.

https://apollobrown360.bandcamp.com/album/as-god-intended

Categories
Music

Shifted – Hard Matter

After the dissolution of his drum & bass group Commix, Guy Brewer relocated to Berlin, started to experiment with techno and established his, at first anonymous, Shifted alias. His productions as Shifted have always leaned more towards the dark than the light, but the intensity has really been ramped up over the last couple of releases, ultimately culminating in Hard Matter, which is, by anyone’s standards, an absolute panic-inducing nightmare of a track. But in a good way.

https://avianstore.bandcamp.com

Categories
Music

Summer Walker – My Affection feat. PARTYNEXTDOOR

Downtempo R&B jams galore on Summer Walker’s new EP Life On Earth, from which this collab with PARTYNEXTDOOR stands out, largely due to the production which sits in a very sweet spot between melancholic gloom and hopeful longing. Vocals from both are perfectly on-point, resulting in a finely balanced and affecting portrait of a relationship under strain.

https://www.summerwalkermusic.com/

Categories
Music

Jadu Heart – Walk The Line

Jadu Heart are a UK duo who I first came across via last year’s excellent Melt Away LP, with Zorah Come Home making an especially lasting impression, sitting somewhere between Jai Paul and Little Dragon. Walk The Line is one of a series of singles they’ve been releasing this year, and which seem to be moving further from their electronic roots towards more fully-fledged songs and lush production. It’s a really catchy, haunting record, and a proper duet – which I really think we could use more of in modern music.

https://www.jaduheart.com

Categories
Music

Young Galaxy – Seeing Eye Dog

Rolling it back to 2018 today and a record I don’t think got enough attention at the time. Seeing Eye Dog is the second track on Young Galaxy’s album Down Time, which along with the equally brilliant Under My Wing completes an outrageously strong opening pair. Young Galaxy announced an indefinite hiatus not long after the release of this album, although recently have resurfaced on a couple of collabs with Euro Berlin and Amsterdam Cosm, but Seeing Eye Dog is a fine place to start with their extensive back catalogue.

https://www.facebook.com/younggalaxy

Categories
Music

Julianna Barwick – Oh, Memory feat. Mary Lattimore

Julianna Barwick's new album, Nepenthe, comes out August 20.

I’ve loved pretty much everything Julianna Barwick has done over the past decade, so waking up to a new album of hers today was a very welcome surprise. Healing Is A Miracle is everything I’d hoped it would be: immersive, soothing, emotional, fragile, beautiful. Oh, Memory is an early highlight, and further cements my yearning for live shows come back in some form really soon, as if I don’t have the opportunity to listen to this in a church or similarly reverential venue I’m going to be very disappointed.

https://juliannabarwick.com

Categories
Music

SAULT – Wildfires

Even on an album as brilliant as SAULT’s debut Untitled (Black Is), Wildfires stands out. Like much of the LP it focusses on the theme of police oppression towards the black community, with lyrics like “Take off your badge / We all know it was murder” striking a tone somewhere between pleading and resignedly furious. It’s a remarkably affecting track, and even more remarkably they’re giving away the entire album free on their website, or if you’re really feeling it you can get a CD or double vinyl on Bandcamp.

https://www.sault.global

Categories
Music

Phenomenal Handclap Band – Do What You Like

I feel like it’s all been a bit serious on the TPW recently, so here’s a dose of carefree funk for you courtesy of Phenomenal Handclap Band, and a track that came out a couple of months ago on their album PHB via the always excellent Toy Tonics label. There’s a definite channelling of Chic, especially towards the back of the track, but that’s no bad thing, and the spoken-word bridge and semi-chanted chorus are both wonderfully retro and unashamedly positive: a beaming grin of a record and one that will be on repeat for some time to come.

https://toytonics.bandcamp.com/album/phb-2

Categories
Music

ELSZ – Your Rage Is Necessary, Pt. I

One of my favourite tracks of 2018 was ELSZ’s Are You Ok?: a tight, soulful gem with warm vocals and even warmer Rhodes-y chords that makes everything feel brighter, calmer. Listening to Your Rage Is Necessary, Part. I it’s difficult to believe it’s the same artist, so complete is its departure from that carefree record in pretty much every aspect. Turbulent, seething, loosely structured and utterly mesmerising, one would expect this is a single from their forthcoming LP, which will be “dedicated to victims and survivors of gender violence”. On the basis of this at least, we’re in for something quite extraordinary.

https://www.elszmusic.com

Categories
Music

Special Request – Family Doggo

Special Request’s Spectral Frequency came out last week on R&S, and is very much an EP of two halves. The title track is pretty much what you’d expect from a ‘typical’ Special Request record – taught jungle breaks and vocal stabs – with the second track Inverse Request an interesting experiment in filtering out all the low end: a sketchy rave transmission from another galaxy. It’s the second two tracks where it really comes to life though, and Family Doggo is a warm analog hug of a track, all reverb-heavy hats and hazily shimmering pads, which is exactly what I need right now.

https://special-request.bandcamp.com