Genre b(l)ending: An introduction to eclectic world of Crammed Discs in 20 records

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Maïa Vidal
Spaces
(2013)

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One of our most remarkable recent ‘discoveries’, the young American singer, songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist, filmmaker, and visual artist has recorded & completed 2 albums in years, and is evolving at breakneck speed. After a charming, very acoustic debut, she came up last year with “Spaces”, an album full of darker moods and interesting textures (check out “Bright”, which must include at least 12 overdubbed, processed autoharps…), and will soon be releasing her 3rd LP, a much more extrovert & electronic opus coproduced by Van Rivers (of Fever Ray, Glasser & Blonde Redhead fame).


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Yasmine Hamdan
Ya Nass
(2013)

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Yasmine is regarded as an underground icon in the Arab-speaking world, since the days of her band Soapkills, one of the first indie/electronic band to appear in the Middle East. After doing a project with producer Mirwais, she recorded this beautiful, elegant debut solo album (with Nouvelle Vague’s Marc Collin), a borderless stream of electro folk pop with spellbinding atmospheres, which gained her a growing fan base in the EU & US. Her striking appearance in Jim Jarmusch’s latest film (in which she’s singing onscreen) is far from having gone unnoticed.


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Juana Molina
Wed 21
(2013)

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I view Juana Molina as one of the most deeply original & fascinating artists around. We got to know each other during the course of the Congotronics vs Rockers project, in 2011, and a great friendly & musical connection was established. I was delighted when she joined the Crammed roster for her latest album —her first in 5 years. Wed 21 is full of mischievous, playful songs, beautifully arranged with the help of an expanded palette of instruments. Since then, we reissued her four previous albums (which had come out on Domino).


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Kasai Allstars
Beware the Fetish
(2014)

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“The other Congotronics band” has just released this 2nd album, which probes deeper into the band members’ respective repertoires, and seriously ups the trance-inducing factor… As their fans surely know, Kasai Allstars is a collective consisting of musicians from five different bands, originating from different ethnic groups (but all from the Kasai region in the Congo). Their music sounds more complex (but no less exciting) than Konono’s, with a broader array of instruments, wild textures & rhythms, and a collection of distinctive singers, each with his/her respective style and personality. They’ll hopefully come back to practise their witchcraft on European audiences on a select string of dates in 2015.


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Véronique Vincent & Aksak Maboul
Ex-Futur Album
(2014)

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We’ll close this list just like we’ve started it: with some of my own music. Another (unwitting) road map for the label’s later interests, this album was written and recorded by Honeymoon Killers vocalist Véronique and myself (with help from Vincent Kenis) during the label’s very early days, between 1980 and 1983. Although is was announced at the time in our catalogues, it was never completed. We were trying to do an electropop album incorporating typical Aksak Maboul-like excursions, but ended up believing that the result would be too strange for some and too pop for some others. So the tapes stayed on a shelf, until we resumed work on them a few months ago, and finally put out the album in Oct. 2014. The initial reactions are excellent, and they confirm our intuition: with its melodic, proto-techno pop songs infused with African guitars, Mid-Eastern ramblings and other musical non-sequiturs, Ex-Futur Album definitely makes much more sense now than it would have back then.