Childish Gambino – 3.15.20
Renaissance man Donald Glover returns with an album pointed wit, invention, and experiment that surpasses any previous LP. Best known, other than his appearances on film (Star Wars), TV an Saturday Night Live, for his song and the astonishingly powerful video for This Is America, this new work is packed with fascinating style mixes and ideas from the industrial hip-hop of Algorhythm (starts at 3min.00 below), a questioning of technology and civil liberties, to the bizarre grumblings and rap whisperings, distortions and African rhythms of Warlords (see 32.20), it's a strange journey, but one full anger, humour, skipping, angular rhythms, sounds and offbeat discoveries. Out on donaldgloverpresents.com.
Childish Gambino: 3.15.20
Låpsley - Through Water
Beautiful stillness, intelligent lyrics and icy clarity of voice mark this exquisite return LP after four-year gap by the English singer-songwriter Holly Lapsley Fletcher, who by acknowledgement has clearly influenced the delivery style of Billie Eilish. The songs Womxn and First, for example, exhibit a mature, smooth electro-pop, with a sensual crispness, dealing with such issues as female self-confidence. “I look, I breathe, I feel like a woman”. Sadness Is A Shade Of Blue is a typically fine track, and sums up the colour and feel of this clear, clean, cold water feel to the album. Out on XL Recordings.
Låpsley – Speaking Of The End
Roger and Brian Eno – Mixing Colours
Although they have worked together before in bits and pieces, this is the first full debut album by the Eno brothers, and it's apparently taken 15 years to get round to it. Roger, lesser known is a multi-instrumentalist, and his part is key - beautiful piano and a whole lot more shape landscapes of sound based variously on colours and landscapes, from Ultramarine and Burnt Umber to Desert Sand and Snow). Ice melting to lush meadows bathed in sunshine, and alongside the keyboards, there is a suite of electronica. Introverted and intimate, this is meeting of two great minds made of different, but similar hues. Out on Deutsche Grammophon.
Roger & Brian Eno – Celeste
Tony Allen & Hugh Masekela – Rejoice
Ten years ago two of Africa's greatest artists, who spent much time also working separately with the great Fela Kuti, finally got together and collaborated. The unfinished sessions languished in the tape vaults, and after Masekela's death in 2018, Allen and producer Nick Gold finally got round to working on the recordings to bring out this record, described as “a kind of South African-Nigerian swing-jazz stew”, featuring also Tom Herbert (Acoustic Ladyland / The Invisible), Joe Armon-Jones (Ezra Collective), Mutale Chashi (Kokoroko) and Steve Williamson. And rejoice we can as drums and trumpet duel gloriously. Out on World Circuit.
Tony Allen & Hugh Masekela - Jabulani (Rejoice, Here Comes Tony)
Baxter Dury – The Night Chancers
Dury's new album has style and sheen, plodding rhythms, a throbbing bass undercurrent, and rich string arrangements, saxophone along with female backing voices, but lyrically it is dark and seedy, projecting a character who roams the city night wiht a mind of the edge, a sort of east London Travis Bickle, edgy, paranoid, angry, but with a delivery that is profoundly uneasy and fascinating. I'm Not Your Dog to Slumlord, Saliva Hog to Sleep People, you can see and smell the piss, the booze, the sleaze and the black humour in Baxter's rich, deep voice, reminiscent, but definitely new and different to his dad's. Out on Heavenly.
Baxter Dury - Slumlord
Morrissey – I Am Not A Dog On A Chain
What a waste, as Ian Dury might say. Oh Morrissey. While there's a batch of memorable lines (he’s not lots that at least) and searing melodies, it is increasingly hard to enjoy the work of man from the artist. "I see no point in being nice," he says, in his own increasingly shrinking world. "Maybe I'll be skinned alive because of my views." While there's still dollop of droll humour, Moz is losing his subtlety too, his misanthropy having less gentle ambiguity that once gave it richness, and instead just going straight for the jugular on, for example, What Kind of People Live in These Houses? If it wasn't for Big Mouth saying all he does outside of music, this would be an averagely OK album from his overall output, but his politics and songs are harder to separate. Hold your nose though, and you might just still be able to enjoy it. Out on BMG.
Morrissey – I Am Not A Dog On A Chain
Jessie Reyez – Before Love Came to Kill Us
One of two Colombian connections this week, this is a debut by the 28-year-old Colombian-Canadian singer-songwriter from Toronto , whose voice is a little bit Ariana Grande, also squeaky with a little bit of grit, with that R&B power ballad leaning that appears very commercial, but has a curious, twisted dark side. The title track says it all too. Love in the dark indeed. Out on FMLY/Island Records.
Jessie Reyez – Love In The Dark
J Balvin – Colores
The Colombian reggae-rapper returns with his sixth album, and his now becoming an international megastar, bringing Nigerian Afrobeats artist Mr Eazi into the dancefloor Arcoíris, R&B jam Roho, and the bassy Negro. It's sexy stuff, the hooks and rhythms transcending language. Out on Universal Music Latino.
J Balvin - Amarillo
Matthew Tavares & Leland Whitty – Visions
A new collaborative album from BadBadNotGood co-founders is a partly-composed, partly-improvised suite of free-flowing music intended to be enjoyed as a complete body of work. Many moment of beauty here, from the piano of Eyes to the folk guitar, jazz sax and vocals of Blue, sounding a bit like a sun-drenched film soundtrack, to the free-flowing flute-rich Visions of You. Out on Mr Bongo.
Matthew Tavares & Leland Whitty - Explorations (Part 1)
XOROS – XOROS
Will Ward and Jack Wyllie of Portico Quartet / Szun Waves combine with a background in techno and dance music to create something that's more a sonic, sometime ambient exploration with dense textures, changing aural perspectives and a sense of perpetual transformation. A hark back to Tangerine Dream. Out on Truant Recordings.
XOROS - Futures
This week's selection is by The Landlord.
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