Published on
June 14, 2024
Category
Features
Essential weekend listening.
This week’s rundown is by contributors Annabelle Van Dort, Emily Hill and James Hammond.
John Grant
The Art of the Lie
(Bella Union)
On his sixth solo album, Reykjavík-based master of experimental pop John Grant remains confessional, crafting an intoxicatingly melodramatic record, rich with ornate arrangements and groovy synthesised sounds. Written in response to the Trump presidency, Grant’s meditations on the darkening state of the world today are accompanied by a trio of songs that look unflinchingly at his childhood traumas (“Father”, “Mother and Son”, and “Daddy”). Despite the raw and heavy themes, The Art of The Lie is buoyed by ambitious and inspired production choices.–AVD
Master Wilburn Burchette
Music of the Godhead for Supernatural Meditation
(RVNG INTL)
This week finds Numero Group returning their focus to the outliers of New-age music and bringing forth a couple of LPs from ‘mail-order mystic’ Master Wilburn Burchette. Building his own ‘IMPRO’ guitar and channelling a love of the occult into a host of electronica-infused compositions between 1971-77, Music of the Godhead for Supernatural Meditation is an aural oddity that was produced to work alongside Burchette’s mail-order “Psychic Meditation Course”. Surviving Burchette’s eventual abandonment and burning of all things related to his musical pursuits, his eccentric and questing approach to sound cascades its way through these tracks with a liberal application of tremolo, slap-back echo and synth swells.–JH
Azu Tiwaline, Forest Drive West
Fluids in Motion EP
(Livity Sound Recordings)
Azu Tiwaline teams up with fellow Livity Sound label alumni Forest Drive West for Fluids In Motion, an EP that has been 3 years in the making and is indeed well worth the wait. Bringing together their similar stylistic palette whilst balancing their distinct signature sounds, Fluids in Motion was written and produced between Tunisia and the UK. Exploring a variety of rhythms and tempos, balancing space and more complicated musical patterns, it seems sonically destined to be heard on a club soundsystem.–EH
Upsammy
Germ in a Population of Buildings
(PAN)
Lowkey re-up and physical iteration of Upsammy’s sophomore album, Germ In A Population Of Buildings, lands this week via the PAN imprint. Just over a year after the album’s initial release the music still has a resounding powerful impact, demonstrating the Amsterdam-based DJ’s highly refined approach to IDM and dub techno with intricate layers and an emphasis on percussion. If you didn’t hear it the first time, around get your hands on this stunning body of work that grows with depth upon every listen.–EH
Kneecap
Fine Art
(Heavenly)
Belfast hip-hop trio Kneecap joins forces with Toddla T on their full-length debut, producing a riotous conceptual record centred around an imaginary community boozer, The Rutz. Provocative and brimming with lyrical wit, Fine Art is a bilingual blast of an album, shifting between English and Gaeilge Uladh at rapid-fire speed. The basslines are heavy and the production is inventive: from the stuttering garage beats (“Love Making”) to the hypnagogic pipe sample on “Drug Dealin Pagans”— Fine Art is undoubtedly one of the best hip-hop albums of the year so far.–AVD
Norio Maeda
Rock Communication Yagibushi
(Wewantsounds)
An international reissue for this fusion rarity that was originally released in 1970 on Teichuku Records. Reinterpreting a host of traditional Japanese folk songs into a free-flowing vocabulary of jazz, funk and rock, with Rock Communication Yagibushi Norio Maeda avoids the pitfalls of this potentially unwieldy mix with some finely tuned arrangement skills. A pleasing set of instrumentals that combine rock guitar licks with some suave interplay on brass, keys and percussion.–JH
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