Tag: album

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Yaya Bey – Forty Days

Yaya Bey’s new album Fidelity is a companion piece to last year’s do it afraid. Where the previous record was framed by grief, Fidelity pushes further, examining how that grief is processed and centres on what Bey describes as the “Three Deaths”: personal loss following her father’s passing, the erosion of community through displacement and fragmentation, and a wider loss of innocence tied to cultural and societal shifts. Built around a light, disco-funk rhythm “Forty Days” is a stand-out moment: a meditation on transition and mourning and drawing on the belief of a 40-day passage into the ancestral realm.

https://yayabey.bandcamp.com/album/fidelity

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Samba Jean-Baptiste – Fatale

+3 is somewhat of a shift for Samba Jean-Baptiste, still hazy and inward-looking but with more shape than his debut, leaning into blurred guitars, soft-focus vocals and loose, drifting arrangements and pulling from the same orbit as artists like Dean Blunt or Frank Ocean. There’s definitely a bit of drift over the album’s running time, but when it connects, as on Fatale, it hits real hard.

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Appleblim – Globule

Occasionally ambient can suffer from a distinct lack of low-end, making it feel almost entirely weightless. Often that’s the point: who doesn’t like drifting away from the world to a higher plane from time to time. Appleblim’s new album for quiet details, Liminal Tides, for all its soft synth washes and ephemeral moments, is anchored by the kind of heft you’d expect from one of bass music’s most celebrated artists, and is all the more impactful as a result.

https://quietdetails.bandcamp.com/album/liminal-tides

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Discovery Zone, John Moods – The Reason

Usually when couples break up, they don’t decide to write an album together. But in this case, I’m very glad JJ Weihl aka Discovery Zone and John Moods did exactly that. Dreaming for Miles is a collection of songs that were written over the past ten years or so and recorded between their basement practice space and at their home in Berlin. After spending over a decade living together and playing music together, their lives pulled them in different directions, but during the process of separation, they decided to make a final record together. The result is reflective, often deeply sad, but also somewhat hopeful; a beautiful, poignant distillation of two singular artists saying goodbye to one another.

https://mansionsandmillions.bandcamp.com/album/dreaming-for-miles

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Xylitol – Chromophoria

Xylitol aka producer and DJ Catherine Backhouse shifts up the refinement and musical breadth for her second album Blumenfantasie, which landed earlier this month on Planet Mu. Blumenfantasie draws heavily on the work of Sarajevo-born minimal synth composer Miaux, whom she recognises as “a kindred spirit in terms of her directness and melancholy, as well as her lightness of touch”, rolling through immersive jungle workouts with the occasional dip into beatless ambience.

https://xylitol.bandcamp.com/album/blumenfantasie

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Snail Mail – Agony Freak

Some slightly uncharacteristic (for this blog) jangly indie for you today courtesy of Snail Mail from her new album Ricochet. Not sure if it’s due to the fact that it’s Friday and the end of a pretty hectic week, but it’s been making me smile all morning.  “Misery feels safe to write about because I am good at it,” she says, “but I’m not bathing in my own agony anymore.” Quite. And “agony” especially feels far removed from these effervescent songs, on the surface at least.

https://snailmail.bandcamp.com/album/ricochet

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More Eaze – distance

more eaze is the moniker of Brooklyn-based composer, orchestrator, and multi-instrumentalist, mari rubio, and her new album sentence structure in the country is a collection of compositions across ambient and experimental pop, each beautifully realised, self-contained worlds, with influences stretching from country to jazz. The album’s compositions evolved over a number of years, with each updated version informed by both the context of rubio’s performances and the musicians she chose to create them with.

https://moreeaze.bandcamp.com/album/sentence-structure-in-the-country

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Mammo – 4.1

Sometimes all you need to start the day right is a nice, fried slice of deep, dubby house; so here’s Mammo serving up the goods. Taken from his new album Lateral which clocks in at an intimidating 99 minutes, but is well worth your time if you’re into stripped back techno, sketchy ambient and a few things in between.

https://mammoworks.bandcamp.com/album/lateral

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Armina Ederra – You’re My

Arima Ederra for Image magazine, October 2022. Photographed at Teo Halm's studio in Los Angeles, CA. Creative direction by Emi Farai, Simone Niamani Thompson.

Arima Ederra is a Los Angeles–based singer, songwriter and visual artist whose work blends alternative R&B, folk and indie pop into a soft-edged, emotionally detailed sound. Born in Atlanta to Ethiopian parents and raised in Las Vegas, her music draws on East African influences alongside jazz, soul and contemporary songwriting. Her new album, A Rush To Nowhere, moves through various genres and influences, some channelled more effectively than others; however the soul/country/pop/r&b blend of You’re My is a clear standout.

https://www.arimaederra.com/

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Beth Gibbon – Sunday Morning

HELP(2) is a new collaborative album inspired by the landmark 1995 release ‘HELP’, bringing together an impressive array of artist in support of War Child’s vital work delivering immediate aid, education, specialist mental health support, and protection to children affected by conflict around the world. HELP(2) carries forward the spirit of the original ‘HELP’ album and was brought to life under the stewardship of acclaimed producer James Ford as executive producer. The list of artists involved is too extensive to list here, but includes this gem of a cover of The Velvet Underground’s Sunday Morning from Portishead’s Beth Gibbon.

https://warchildrecords.bandcamp.com/album/help-2