Bandcamp Daily's Best Albums of 2017

Since emerging onto the scene in 2014, Moses Sumney has ridden a wave of word-of-mouth praise, hushed recordings, and dynamic live performances. It's an organic, patient ascent all too rare in today's musical climate. In a voice both mellifluous and haunting, Sumney makes future music that transmogrifies classic tropes, like moon-colony choir reinterpretations of old jazz gems. His vocals narrate a personal journey through universal loneliness atop otherworldly compositional backdrops. Following the self-release of his debut cassette EP, Mid-City Island, and 2015's 7", Seeds/Pleas, Sumney has performed around the world alongside forebears like David Byrne, Karen O, Sufjan Stevens, Solange, James Blake and more. With his 2016 Lamentations EP, The California and Ghana-raised troubadour widened the spectrum of his heretofore "bedroom" music, incorporating songs that feature more elaborate production and evocative songwriting. Now his inspired ascent continues. His proper debut album, Aromanticism is a concept album about lovelessness as a sonic dreamscape. It seeks to interrogate the social constructions around romance. The debut will include the devastating, billowing synths of "Doomed,” which in a way serves as the album’s thesis statement, as well as new versions of standouts "Lonely World" and "Plastic.” It’s a deliberate, jaw-dropping statement that can leave you both enlightened and empty.

Planet Mu are very excited to announce Jlin's long awaited second album “Black Origami”. A percussion-led tour de force, it's a creation that seals her reputation as a unique producer with an exceptional ability to make riveting rhythmic music. “Black Origami” is driven by a deep creative thirst which she describes as “this driving feeling that I wanted to do something different, something that challenged me to my core. Black Origami for me, comes from letting go creatively, creating with no boundaries. The simple definition of origami is the art of folding and constructing paper into a beautiful, yet complex design. Composing music for me is like origami, only I'm replacing paper with sound. I chose to title the album "Black Origami" because like "Dark Energy" I still create from the beauty of darkness and blackness. The willingness to go into the hardest places within myself to create for me means that I can touch the Infinity.”  Spirituality and movement are both at the core of “Black Origami”, inspired largely by her ongoing collaborations with Indian dancer/movement artist Avril Stormy Unger whom she met and collaborated with at her debut performance for the Unsound festival – ”There is a fine line between me entertaining a person and my spirituality. Avril, who collaborates with me by means of dance, feels the exact same way. Movement played a great role in Black Origami. The track "Carbon 7" is very inspired by the way Avril moves and dances. Our rhythms are so in sync at times it kind of scares us. When there is something I can't quite figure out when it comes to my production, it’s like she senses it. Her response to me is always "You'll figure it out". Once I figure it out it's like time and space no longer exist.”  Similar time shifting/folding/disrupting effects can be heard throughout the record – especially on “Holy Child” an unlikely collaboration with minimalist legend William Basinski. She also collaborates again with Holly Herndon on “1%”, while Halcyon Veil producer Fawkes' voice is on “Calcination“ and Cape Town rapper Dope Saint Jude provides vocals for “Never Created, Never Destroyed“. Jlin will be touring extensively this year and is currently lining up appearances including Sonar festival. She also has plans to collaborate with acclaimed UK choreographer Wayne McGregor who played her music recently on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs and described her music as “quite rare and so exciting".

Pantheon of Me is SPELLLING's debut album

One of the more prevalent trends in \'10s indie rock is the resurgence of stuff that sounds like it came out in the ‘90s. Into this fray steps Charly Bliss, a playful fuzz-pop band whose first full-length nails the balance between tough and tender, smart and achingly bittersweet. “I cry all the time,” Eva Hendricks sings on the album-opening “Percolator,” her voice cracking like a lost Deal sister. “I think it’s cool I’m in touch with my feelings.”

The music of Seattle\'s Chastity Belt often feels like internal monologue: plainspoken but personal, lived-in but a little mysterious. Their third album explores scenes of romantic miscommunication (“What the Hell”) and self-doubt (“Stuck”) with hazy grace, mixing lyrical directness with fuzzy, often gorgeous washes of guitar. “Out of the fog and finally feeling fine,” Julia Shapiro sings on “Used to Spend.” “My doubts are all gone and I’m having a pretty good time/Feeling like a champ, but for how long?”

Phoebe Bridgers wrote her first song at age 11, spent her adolescence at open mic nights, and busked through her teenage years at farmers markets in her native Los Angeles. By age 20, she'd caught the ear of Ryan Adams, who listened to her perform her song "Killer" in his L.A. studio, inviting her to come back and record it there the next day. The session blossomed into the three-song ‘Killer’ EP, released to much acclaim on Adams’s Pax-Am label in 2015. In the two short years since, Bridgers has toured or played with Conor Oberst, Julien Baker, City and Colour, Violent Femmes, Mitski, Television and Blake Babies among others. On September 22nd, Phoebe Bridgers will release her debut full-length, Stranger In The Alps. From the weeping strings and Twin Peaks twangs of opening track Smoke Signals, to the simple heartbreak of Funeral and melancholic crescendo of Scott Street, Stranger in the Alps is a swooningly beautiful record with a gothic heart.

On Antisocialites, Alvvays dive back into the deep-end of reckless romance and altered dates. Ice cream truck jangle collides with prismatic noise pop while Molly Rankin's wit is refracted through crystalline surf counterpoint. Through thoughtful consideration in basement and abroad, the Toronto-based group has renewed its Scot-pop vows with a powerful new collection of manic emotional collage.

Quelle Chris fucks with himself. Most of the time. Honestly, it might depend on when and where you catch him. That’s to say that the Detroit representative is like the rest of us—surfing on waves of self-confidence, enduring periods of self-doubt, and searching for a sustainable balance. The primary difference between Quelle and us is that he’s supremely gifted at rapping and producing. He’s funnier too—in the way that the best comedians are deceptively complex and prone to bouts of melancholy. His new album, Being You is Great, I Wish I Could Be You More Often, is one of the most poignant, self-aware, and hilarious rap albums in recent memory. We should probably offer him some flowers, a case of expensive liquor, and cover the bill for the group therapy session. For the Mello Music Group release, Quelle assembled a veritable hip-hop Justice League: Roc Marciano, Homeboy Sandman, Denmark Vessey, Jean Grae, Elzhi, Cavalier, et. al. Then there’s the production, mostly handled by Quelle, but aided by crucial assists from MNDGSN, Iman Omari, Chris Keys, Swarvy, and Alchemist. Despite the preponderance of talent sharing the stage, the guests bend to the world that Quelle created. A darker shade of psychedelia, as if Madvillain gobbled anti-anxiety pills instead of psilocybin. Or maybe a fraternal drunken twin to Open Mike Eagle’s “Dark Comedy.” The title comes from a real-life discussion about the difficulties of consistency. How each of us are subject to both our own bad spirits and bursts of inspiration, those unavoidable Serotonin and dopamine peaks and valleys. Being You is Great is an attempt to catalog those moods. It’s about learning to love, or at least recognize, the best and worst of one’s self. It’s about loneliness and comfort. Learning to hate love and learning to love hate. Sequenced so that extreme confidence follows casual despair, the pendulum swings back and forth, mirroring our own emotions and validating something that Nietszche and Ray Bradbury once claimed: “we have art so we won’t die of truth.” If hip-hop is filled with everymen and superheroes, Quelle Chris has done something quietly radical. This record is almost too human—full of the sublte revelations that only come to you later in life, when you realize that heroes make plenty of errors, and anti-heroes often have merit. It’s not an exuberant celebration of human life, nor is it a politicized condemnation of what got us here. It’s a record with beats that will make you bob your head and tap your feet, and clever lyrics that will make you laugh and scrunch your face. But most of all, it’s a record with a tremendous reserve of empathy. Something that captures the wonder and madness of being human. Something relentlessly honest. Something great.

much love to my family, yall great. be great.

English producer Actress has always struck a brilliant balance between body and head, offering high-concept deconstructions of techno idioms without forgetting important stuff like the beat. His fifth album—a semi-surprise after having announced his retirement—goes further down his hazy, retro-futuristic rabbit hole, offering left-field takes on garage (“DANCING IN THE SMOKE”), electro (“RUNNER”), and straight-up house (“THERE’S AN ANGEL IN THE SHOWER,” “X22RME”). It respects conventions while stretching them to their limits.

Actress, real name Darren Jordan Cunningham, known to friends as DAZ, returns with a new album, now on Ninja Tune and a new music system called “AZD” (pronounced “Azid”), a chrome aspect journey into a parallel world. An artist who has always preferred to make music than to talk about it, in “AZD” he has achieved another remarkable landmark, one which is as resistant to interpretation as it is demanding of it. Following on from his previous albums, R.I.P, Splazsh and Hazyville, an epilogue poem attached to the press release for Ghettoville was construed by media, commentators and spectators that Cunningham had retired. This led him to conceptualise this mass of conclusion as the key to ‘Giving power back to identity.’ So a few pointers, or possible ways to think about “AZD”. The album is themed around chrome – both as a reflective surface to see the self in, and as something that carves luminous voids out of any colour and fine focuses white and black representing the perfect metaphor for the bleakness of life in the Metropolis as suggested by Anish Kapoors Cloud Gate. Another way to approach would be through the art of James Hampton and Rammellzee (who inspired “CYN,” which Cunningham also sees as a vision of New York in reverse…) – both of whom, though of different generations of the African-American slave diaspora, created art through “Sourcing castaway materials from their environment and reinterprating them into absolute majesty given from the fourth dimension.” There is also the career-long influence of the Detroit techno pioneers, something which becomes clear on this album “there is a contrast in the type of glow or reflection”. Alternatively, you could write your PhD thesis on Jung’s Shadow Theory and AZD: “Lots of ideas come from dreams, this isn’t new, but sometimes the conscious mind starts to meld into the universal consciousness through constellation tunnelling.” If that sounds too taxing then you could always fall back on Star Wars and, in particular, the Death Star: “It has a dark dystopian backdrop, with highly sophisticated technology, but it is fading into the ether, still holding on and emitting a powerful energy. The music remaking the embers, binding them together and pulling them apart again.” Alternatively, just listen. That “glow” Cunningham talks about makes this in some ways more immediate than previous Actress releases. Take lead single, “X22RME” (pronounced “Extreme”) which elegantly plays between the lines of Oriental classic rave and Balinese warehouse Techno machined in a Rotherhithe lock up welding the grooves into a seamless cracked joint. At the other end of the spectrum is “Faure in Chrome,” a byproduct or development from his collaboration with the London Contemporary Orchestra, in which he “repatterns” aspect of Faure’s Requiem into a piece which sounds like the very institution of classical music being encased in electronic ice and scanned through a high frequency bandwidth. In between are gems like “Runner,” a personal re-soundtracking of Blade Runner “its from the deleted Fade Runner scene where AZD in a Peckham Cafe realises his barber has over the years etched a faded scroll into his head using early 80s African synthpop as a vexing serum“, or “Falling Rizlas,” an alienated music-box ballad. It’s a remarkable piece of work, that harks back both to Actress’ previous productions and to earlier iterations of the (broadly conceived) “techno” project without being beholden to anything but Cunningham’s forward-facing, individual and disembodied vision. As if the record itself isn’t enough, Cunningham is currently preparing a new live show, to be debuted at as part of Convergence at Village Underground on March 24th. Presented as AZD, Cunningham says it “will be a test frame for linking circuits using various forms of language — Midi globalised language, Lyrical language, Tikal Graffiti code and various other Synthesiser language — to create one intelligent musical instrument called AZD, if successful it will produce the first translucent, non-soluble communication sound pill synergised through impressionistic interpretations of technological equipment. This is the music vitamin of the Metropolis.” The simplest you could say about “AZD” is that it’s art – the unique creation of a unique mind. There will be few more distinctive, brilliant or visionary suites of music released in 2017. Call him what you will, this is the year that Darren ‘Daz’ Cunningham - aka Actress, aka AZD – asserts more clearly than ever before his complete independence.

The Wire - ‘Jazz Album of the year’ Bandcamp - The Best Albums of 2017 (All Genres - #18) Bandcamp - ’The Best Jazz Albums of 2017’ Bandcamp - ‘Editors Favourite Albums of 2017’ (Marcus J Moore) The Vinyl Factory - ‘Top 50 albums of 2017 (all genres) #15’ Stereogum - ‘The Best Jazz Albums of 2017’ (#2) The Bird Is The Worm - ‘Album Of The Year’ Contemporary Jazz Club - ‘Best Jazz Albums Of 2017’ Treblezine - ‘Best Jazz Albums Of 2017’ “..Gilles Peterson will be all over this..” - The Quietus “…let Ahmed take you on a beautiful journey of forward-thinking jazz compositions.” - Twistedsoul “its potent mix of post-bop lyricism and modern fusion soundscaping makes connections with both head and heart.” - Dave Sumner, Bandcamp “Even if you’re not familiar or terribly interested in jazz, Ahmed’s music deserves your attention, and she’ll most likely make you second guess your thoughts on jazz.” - Headphone Nation Bahraini-British performer, Yazz Ahmed, is transforming what jazz means in 2017. This trumpet and flugelhorn-playing artist has worked with Radiohead and These New Puritans, experiments with electronic effects, and combines sounds from her shared heritage to author a new narrative for the genre. Part of the new wave of artists credited with stirring up the sound, including Kamasi Washington, Yussef Kamaal, Sons of Kemet and The Comet is Coming, Yazz Ahmed is thrilled by the possibilities of making something new. “I feel like I’m a part of modernising jazz and connecting it with audiences today,” Yazz says. “It’s exciting.” Her new album ‘La Saboteuse’ is a deep exploration of both her British and Bahraini roots. Ably assisted by musicians including Lewis Wright on vibraphone, MOBO-winning new jazz kingpin Shabaka Hutchings on bass clarinet and Naadia Sherriff on Fender Rhodes keyboard, it’s composed of undulating rhythms, Middle Eastern melody and Yazz’s sonorous trumpet lines. The record sounds like the passage of a desert caravan, bathed in moonlight. The theme of ‘La Saboteuse’ is the sense of self-doubt that Yazz feels when she is creating, personified in a female saboteur, an anti-muse that spurs her into action. “Giving ‘her’ a name has really helped me to identify those negative voices we all get,” she says. “I know what it is and I know how to combat it.” ‘La Saboteuse’ will be released in four chapters incrementally, unravelling the story, before the full version is available. Each chapter has its own cover, with beautiful illustrations by Bristol artist Sophie Bass. “I feel really touched, nobody’s created art from my music before, it’s really special,” Yazz says. Yazz spent her early childhood in Bahrain, her paternal homeland, before moving to London with her English mother at the age of nine. There, she became fascinated by her grandfather’s trumpet playing, and vowed to learn the instrument herself. “My grandfather, my mum’s dad, was a trumpet player, and I was quite taken by him, inspired. I wanted to learn the trumpet at school.” Jazz became her chosen form of expression, because “I loved the spirit of the music, the freedom. There’s a lot of joy, mystery. I connected with it”. Yazz’s sound is unique. Her take on jazz weaves in Arabic melodies to evocative, cinematic effect. “I love the sounds of Arabic music. The traditional folk singing is so heartfelt, elemental and passionate. I absorbed it as a child, but only in the past few years has it come to the surface in my playing and writing. I want to embrace my culture and my British jazz heritage, the music my grandfather played to me.” Jazz has traditionally been a male-dominated sphere, though Yazz is challenging that notion. To start with she found it a hindrance, but has been empowered by a new wave of women musicians. “There are more female jazz musicians and attitudes are changing,” she says. “People see that women can play just as well as the men. But there are still areas that haven’t caught up with the rest of society. It’s getting better, but we can do more.” Future-facing and fascinating, Yazz Ahmed is part of a glimmering new constellation in the jazz firmament. And her next project is destined to take her further into the stars. “I’m planning to write a piece inspired by the ever-changing structures of the universe,” she concludes.

A mainstay of the Chicago jazz scene and an active recent addition to the New York scene, Jaimie Branch is an avant-garde trumpeter known for her “ghostly sounds," says The New York Times, and for "sucker punching" crowds straight from the jump off, says Time Out. Her classical training and “unique voice capable of transforming every ensemble of which she is a part” (Jazz Right Now) has contributed to a wide range of projects not only in jazz but also punk, noise, indie rock, electronic and hip-hop. Branch’s work as a composer and a producer, as well as a sideman for the likes of William Parker, Matana Roberts, TV on the Radio and Spoon, is all on display in her debut record Fly or Die – a dynamic 35-minute ride that dares listeners to open their minds to music that knows no genre, no gender, no limits. “It’s a true joy to listen to Jaimie Branch’s Fly or Die. Jaimie’s masterful trumpet playing sits at the helm of this gorgeous record, richly supported by a stellar cast of musicians, and upheld by strong and provocative composition.” – Sarah Neufeld (Arcade Fire) "Super out tunes that continually open new doors to strange, sweet, and psychedelic grooves. Band is constantly cracking some ancient alien code here. Seamless and effortless compositions from Branch. An absolute “must jam” for anyone interested in the future of mind expansion." – Ryley Walker “Fly or Die Fleet footed solar cry Breath of a neon dragon Stomping Whaling Kryptonite Delicate as thin ice on the rim of a red rose petal Shatters all Fresh as the beginning after the end of the world Sonic sowing New clay Pot of gold Die or Fly You choose” – Rob Mazurek In January of 2016, Jaimie Branch launched a monthly free jazz series with a new ensemble at Brooklyn’s now debunked Manhattan Inn. Sharing the first night of her series with a trio on tour from Chicago (Nick Mazzarella, Anton Hatwich and Frank Rosaly), the trumpeter Branch assembled a quartet to match: cellist Tomeka Reid, bassist Jason Ajemian, and drummer Chad Taylor. Between visitors and expats, it was a night of performers exclusively from The Windy City. “I wanted New York to hear what Chicago sounds like,” says Branch. Though the format that first night was free, by the time International Anthem family returned to New York to record her in June, Branch had refined her improvised melodies into a suite of themes for to be played by that same quartet. Engineers David Allen & Dave Vettraino recorded the band over an afternoon at Branch’s sister Kate’s apartment in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Branch post-produced those recordings, added overdubs, blended in live takes, cut and stitched the music into its final structure at Vettraino’s home studio in Chicago in July. The finishing touch was her totally bizarre, totally brilliant commissioning of acoustic guitar overdubs by Chicago friend Matt Schneider (Moon Bros). His brief classical plucking of strings, the epilogue in “…back at the ranch,” perfectly caps the dynamic manic-depressive journey in true Jaimie Branch fashion. She's making light of a heavy situation. Regardless of a relatively prolific and consistent decade-plus career performing, composing and collaborating with a lengthy list of jazz world notables, this album is Jaimie Branch's first final work as a leader. Over a dozen friends from Chicago to New York came together under her direction to bring it into being, and the genuine depth of character present in every element makes it well worth the wait. A categorical movement of courageous ascent, Fly or Die conveys a lifetime of experience in a singular suite.

Pallbearer’s third album stretches the Arkansas outfit’s brand of doom metal to mountainous new heights. More polished—but no less punishing—than *Sorrow and Extinction* or *Foundations of Burden*, *Heartless* is a gleaming bulldozer of a record, shifting effortlessly from the operatic melancholy of “Cruel Road” to “A Plea for Understanding,” which blows out the spacey grandeur of Pink Floyd to nearly 13 minutes.

Pallbearer’s third album, Heartless, is an inspired collection of monumental rock music. The band offers a complex sonic architecture that weaves together the spacious exploratory elements of classic prog, the raw anthemics of 90’s alt-rock, and stretches of black-lit proto-metal. Lyrics about mortality, life, and love are set to sharp melodies and pristine three-part harmonies. Vocalist and guitarist Brett Campbell has always been a strong, assured singer, and on Heartless, his work’s especially stunning. This may in part be due to the immediacy of the lyrics. Written by Campbell and bassist/secondary vocalist Joseph D Rowland, the words have moved from the metaphysical to something more grounded. As the group explains: “Instead of staring into to the void—both above and within—Heartless concentrates its power on a grim reality. Our lives, our homes and our world are all plumbing the depths of utter darkness, as we seek to find any shred of hope we can." Pallbearer emerged from Little Rock, Arkansas in 2012 with a stunning debut full-length, Sorrow and Extinction. The record, which played like a seamless 49-minute doom movement, melded pitch-perfect vintage sounds with a triumphant modern sensibility that made songs about death and loss feel joyfully ecstatic. Pallbearer possessed what many other newer metal groups didn't: perfect guitar tone, classic hooks, and a singer who could actually sing. For their 2014 followup, Foundations of Burden, the band worked with legendary Bay Area producer Billy Anderson (Sleep, Swans, Neurosis) for an expansive album that was musically tighter and especially adventurous. Armed with a more technical drummer, Mark Lierly, Foundations feels like it was built for larger shared spaces—you could imagine these songs ringing off the walls of a stadium. It was a hint of things to come. While the debut earned the band a Best New Music nod from Pitchfork and rightly landed the band on year-end lists at places like SPIN and NPR, along with the usual metal publications, Foundations of Burden charted on the Billboard Top 100 and earned the band album of the year from Decibel and spots on year-end lists for NPR and Rolling Stone. Returning to where it all began, the quartet recorded their third full-length, Heartless on their own in Arkansas, and it’s grander in scope, showcasing a natural progression that melds higher technicality and more ambitious structures with their most immediate hooks to date. The collection, which follows the 3-song Fear & Fury EP from earlier this year, was captured entirely on analog tape at Fellowship Hall Sound in Little Rock this past summer and then mixed by Joe Barresi (Queens of the Stone Age, Tool, Melvins, Soundgarden). From the gloriously complex, sky-lit opener “I Saw the End” to the earth-shaking (and heartbreaking) 13-minute closer “A Plea for Understanding,” the entire group puts forth the full realization of their vision: More than a doom band, Pallbearer is a rock group with a singular songwriting talent and emotional capacity. Heartless finds the group putting forth their strongest individual efforts to date: Campbell and Rowland, along with guitarist/vocalist Devin Holt and drummer Mark Lierly, turn in peak marathon performances. Both Campbell and Rowland also handle synthesizers alongside their normal duties, and there are plenty of gently strummed acoustic guitars amid the crunchy electric ones, adding a moody, ethereal spareness to the towering metal. The almost 12-minute “Dancing in Madness” opens with dark post-rock ambience and moves toward emotional blues before exploding into a sludgy psychedelic anthem. A number of the seven songs feature a humid rock swagger. By fusing their widest musical palette to date, Pallbearer make the kind of heavy rock (the heavy moments are *heavy*) that will appeal to diehards, but could also find the group crossing over into newer territories and fanbases. After having helped revitalize doom metal, it almost feels like they’ve gone and set their sights on rock and roll itself. Which doesn’t seem at all impossible on the back of a record like Heartless.

Even in the increasingly crowded field of electronic music, Kelly Lee Owens’ debut album arrives as a wonderful surprise. An album that bridges the gaps between cavernous techno, spectral pop, and krautrock’s mechanical pulse, 'Kelly Lee Owens' brims with exploratory wonder, establishing a personal aesthetic that is as beguiling as it is thrillingly familiar.

While folktonica innovator Juana Molina has always explored unease, even her longtime fans may be surprised by the all-consuming darkness of *Halo*. Gone are the gorgeous acoustic melodies and gently humming rhythms, replaced by abstract swirls of skittering beats and electronic drones that rumble with dread. Her trademark vocal experiments remain, but they’ve grown ominous. She pitch-shifts herself into an unearthly choir on “Sin Dones,” and layers ghostly harmonies over the rattling groove of “In the Lassa.” Despite its forbidding surface, *Halo* also flickers with moments of fleeting beauty, and the slippery hooks are captivating in their strangeness. Lock into its eerie pulse, and it’s another bewitching trip.

The Comet Is Coming, signaling an end to life as we know it, heralding the dawn of a new age. In the inevitable physical destruction of the planet, a space is created where all notions of political, social and economic hierarchy will be at once obliterated and transcended.

Lando Chill’s new album, “The Boy Who Spoke To The Wind,” is a personal tribute to self actualization, spiritual acceptance and social activism. About the title, Lando says, “The wind is one’s soul. It represents the human spirit and the earth.” Lando Chill is a warrior-poet, a man with one ear to mother nature and one to the plight of humankind. Lando wants to bring the issues of political freedom, police brutality and giving a voice to marginalized communities to the national conversation. Inspired by the Paulo Coelho book, “The Alchemist,” Lando’s new album is about transformation, personally and spiritually. While working on the project, Lando gained a new perspective. He learned that having answers isn’t enough. Musically, this album is a movement forward from his previous work. Collaborating with producer Lasso, bassist Chris Pierce, as well as other key session musicians, the music is unique and intimate. The album harmonizes the internal and external in a cathartic symphony. The instrumentation is unlike anything else, sprawling from classic lo-fi hiphop to high production scoring. The album is as reminiscent of James Blake and Bon Iver as it is of Frank Ocean or Kendrick Lamar. “All is one and one is all. When you speak to your soul, you speak to the world. You speak through love and that’s how you transform.” -Lando Chill

After a year of extensive touring in support of 2015’s The Agent Intellect, Protomartyr returned to their practice space in a former optician's office in Southwest Detroit. Inspired by The Raincoats' Odyshape, Mica Levi's orchestral compositions, and a recent collaboration with post-punk legends The Pop Group, for Rough Trade's 40th anniversary, the band began writing new music that artfully expanded on everything they’d recorded up until that point. The result is Relatives In Descent, Protomartyr's fourth full-length and Domino debut. Though not a concept album, it presents twelve variations on a theme: the unknowable nature of truth, and the existential dread that often accompanies that unknowing. This, at a moment when disinformation and garbled newspeak have become a daily reality.

Recorded by Jack Shirley at The Atomic Garden Mixed and Mastered by Jack Shirley Vinyl and CDs by Father Daughter Records

With the first song of his 2014 masterpiece, Dark Comedy, Open Mike Eagle reintroduced himself by defining his style: “I’m bad at sarcasm so I work in absurdity.” On that album, Mike deconstructed our overstimulated and over-surveilled society with ease and caustic wit. But what do you do when the world warps and bends into a shape so absurd that it can no longer be exaggerated? Brick Body Kids Still Daydream is a searingly political record for systolic political times. It chronicles the life cycle of the Robert Taylor Homes, a housing project on the South side of Chicago that was demolished completely ten years ago. Families that had lived under the same roof for three generations were forced to scatter, condemned by bureaucrats and faceless cranes and public indifference. Mike Eagle brings the Robert Taylor Homes back to life--literally, with arms and eyes and a head like the dome of a stadium--and fights until the last brick is made to crumble. As always, Mike slips in and out of various grey areas; on the opener “legendary iron hood,” he raps, “you think it's all good, but it's really a gradient.” The nostalgia (“95 radios”) is a little bit painful, the triumph (“hymnal”) comes through painstaking, incremental work. Everything needs to be earned, even the radio signals that are picked up through tinfoil wrapped on children's hands. The thesis becomes fully formed on “brick body complex,” where the hook is a towering statement of identity: “Don't call me ‘nigga,’ or ‘rapper,’ my motherfucking name is Michael Eagle.” But this is not a departure from the man-as-building conceit--the flesh and blood and brick and mortar are inextricable. In case there was any ambiguity about the political and cultural forces that lead to the Robert Taylor Homes’ eventual destruction, Brick Body Kids Still Daydream ends with perhaps the most powerful song of Mike Eagle’s catalog to date. “my auntie’s building” is a tour de force. “They say America fights fair,” he raps. “But they won't demolish your timeshare.” This is the point: the decay and eventual destruction of public housing--and of the physical lives of Black Americans generally--has been normalized in a way that should be grotesquely absurd. “They blew up my auntie’s building / Put out her great-grandchildren / Who else in America deserves to have that feeling? / Where else in America will they blow up your village?” Production comes courtesy of Exile, Toy Light, Andrew Broder, Illingsworth, DJ Nobody, Kenny Segal, Caleb Stone, Lo-Phi, Elos, and Has-Lo, who produces and guests on “95 radios.” “hymnal” also features a superb turn from Sammus, who maintains the same rhyme scheme throughout her defiant verse. As grave as the album’s stakes are, it's still anchored by Mike Eagle’s irrepressible sense of humor. (His live comedy show, The New Negroes, is upcoming via Comedy Central.) “no selling” is a hilarious take on practiced indifference, and “TLDR” bridges the economic gap with withering wit: “If you was rich and ‘bout to be broke, I can coach you / ‘Cause I can show you how to kill a roach with a boat shoe.” Eagle has earned rave reviews in Pitchfork, the LA Weekly, and wherever brilliant, avant-garde rap is appreciated. Brick Body Kids Still Daydream is his most overtly political work to date, and puts to use all the dazzling technical skills he's perfected over more than a decade at the forefront of rap’s underground. In chaotic and increasingly fractured times, it has a few crucial things to bring to your attention.

I TELL YOU TODAY YOU SHALL BE WITH ME IN PARADISE

ORDER A PHYSICAL COPY HERE: www.pwelverumandsun.com P.W. ELVERUM & SUN box 1561 Anacortes, Wash. U.S.A. 98221 WRITTEN AND RECORDED August 31st to Dec. 6th, 2016 in the same room where Geneviève died, using mostly her instruments, her guitar, her bass, her pick, her amp, her old family accordion, writing the words on her paper, looking out the same window. Why share this much? Why open up like this? Why tell you, stranger, about these personal moments, the devastation and the hanging love? Our little family bubble was so sacred for so long. We carefully held it behind a curtain of privacy when we’d go out and do our art and music selves, too special to share, especially in our hyper-shared imbalanced times. Then we had a baby and this barrier felt even more important. (I still don’t want to tell you our daughter’s name.) Then in May 2015 they told us Geneviève had a surprise bad cancer, advanced pancreatic, and the ground opened up. What matters now? we thought. Then on July 9th 2016 she died at home and I belonged to nobody anymore. My internal moments felt like public property. The idea that I could have a self or personal preferences or songs eroded down into an absurd old idea leftover from a more self-indulgent time before I was a hospital-driver, a caregiver, a child-raiser, a griever. I am open now, and these songs poured out quickly in the fall, watching the days grey over and watching the neighbors across the alley tear down and rebuild their house. I make these songs and put them out into the world just to multiply my voice saying that I love her. I want it known. "Death Is Real" could be the name of this album. These cold mechanics of sickness and loss are real and inescapable, and can bring an alienating, detached sharpness. But it is not the thing I want to remember. A crow did look at me. There is an echo of Geneviève that still rings, a reminder of the love and infinity beneath all of this obliteration. That’s why. - Phil Elverum Dec. 11th, 2016 Anacortes

Violinist and vocalist, Sudan Archives writes, plays, and produces her own music. Drawing inspiration from Sudanese fiddlers, she is self-taught on the violin, and her unique songs also fold in elements of R&B, and experimental electronic music. Sudan Archives grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she "messed around with instruments in the house" and took up violin in the fourth grade, eventually teaching herself how to play the instrument by ear. When she discovered the violin playing style of Northeast Africa, her eyes opened to the possibilities of the instrument. "The way they played it was different from classical music. I resonated with the style, and I was like, 'Maybe I can use this style with electronic music,'" she says. This fusing of folk music and electronic production was the turning point for Sudan. "I started mixing my violin into beats,” she says, “It wasn't complicated — I'd just sing straight into the iPad." She honed her at-home style after moving to Los Angeles aged 19 to study music technology, and after a chance encounter at a Low End Theory party with Stones Throw A&R and Leaving Records owner Matthewdavid, she signed with Stones Throw. At the very start of her musical career, she's already won plaudits from the likes of the New York Times and Pitchfork, and played live at experimental festival Moogfest. Her EP Sudan Archives is an extraordinary debut statement from a singular artist. Over six tracks, Sudan Archives layers harmonies, violin figures and ethereal vocals, grounding them all with the hip-hop beats.

Tracing the musical heritage of the Caribbean, Zara McFarlane explores her interconnected vision of the diaspora. On Arise, Zara McFarlane returns to a buoyant UK jazz scene with a head-turning third album. Exploring the musical possibilities of British-Jamaican identity, it’s a cultural exchange that’s born of London’s current musical climate. Released on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings, it sees her working with much-feted drummer and producer Moses Boyd. Both rose through London’s Tomorrow’s Warriors programme, a finishing school for many young vanguards of the live, ascendant jazz scene springing up across the UK capital. Sharing Caribbean family heritages, it’s a product of their joint exploration of the meeting points between jazz and the rhythms of Jamaica; reggae, Kumina, calypso and nyabinghi, shaded with hints of the psychedelic. Zara’s breakthrough 2012 track, a jazz cover of Junior Murvin’s ‘Police and Thieves’, provided a jumping off point to further explore the blurred, colourful territory in between jazz and roots-reggae. Covering Nora Dean’s ‘Peace Begins Within’, she breathes a syncopated groove into a soulful, reggae classic. A beautifully poised version of the Congos’ Fisherman teases out the poignant lyrical content of the 1977 classic. Meanwhile new, original compositions from Zara, like ‘Fussin' and Fightin’’ and ‘Freedom Chain’, combine a deep, reverberating bass with a steady-stepping roots rhythm. Album opener ‘Ode To Kumina’ touches on the kumina tradition brought to Jamaica by indentured labourers from The Congo in the later part of the 19th Century. Part of Zara’s deeper research into her Caribbean heritage, it alludes to a deep-rooted culture encompassing music, dance and religion. Similarly, ‘Silhouette’ arose from that same research; in this case, however, it was about how records and documents often get lost in Jamaica. “It kind of came out of the idea of black history and blackness and feeling like you're trying to find yourself,” she explains. “Trying to be proud of your history and who you are. And never forgetting the things that brought you to where you are.” Alongside drummer Moses Boyd on production, the album features a stellar line up of some of the key players on the London scene Binker Golding on tenor sax, Peter Edwards on piano, Shirley Tetteh on guitar, Nathaniel Cross on Trombone and an unusually restrained turn on Clarinet from Shabaka Hutchings. Shared between all of them is a tendency to find the common points between different musical ilks: from US hard bop jazz, to dub and London-rooted hybrids and permutations, the band on Arise reflect the musical diversity of their home. Boosted by new platforms, like East London showcase Church of Sound and a newly-refreshed Jazz Café, the record surfs the momentum currently propelling jazz-influenced music in the UK. For Zara, Jamaica’s musical legacy is deeply intertwined with her sense of the place itself. Spending whole summers in the hills of Jamaica, it’s the sounds and smells which she most vividly associates with her stays there. In particular the local sound systems which were an everyday feature of the local area; be it in shops or bars, each of the small local shacks would have a sound system where they’d play music through the day and evening. “From where my nan used to live, in Cauldwell there's a sound system almost opposite her house,” she says. “So you feel this boom of the bass, and then all the smells of the hills and the greenery of Hanover. When you land in Jamaica and you go to walk off of the plane, the heat and the smells hit you and it feels like home away from home for me. When I hear Jamaican music, these are the senses that come.”

who told you to think??!!?!?!?! is about boundaries and permissions. the artist creating their own license to ill. what it means to answer a call that never comes. the process of flaw turned idiosyncrasy turned style. that old transmutation spell, the happening as one perfects tricks and in turn masters magic. to set the elenchus upon itself, to begin a poet and end a rapper agency that is what makes the rapper an exceptional artist, beyond a poet. in years gone rappers once focused on getting Free who told you to think??!!?!?!?! is a return to form. -RF

We’ve been anticipating *I Love You Like a Brother* since the Melbourne singer/songwriter’s 2016 *B-Grade University* EP. Her style of rumbling indie pop, combined with clever turns of phrase and glass-half-empty outlook, is irresistible and addictive. The opening trio kicks like a mule: “Every Day’s the Weekend,” “I Love You Like a Brother,” and “Perth Traumatic Stress Disorder” are clattering and cleansing indie perfection. Lahey expands her sound palette on “Let’s Call It a Day” and “Awkward Exchange,” but retains the catchy “woah-ohs” and lines like, “Who knew this turnaround would be so quick/But I figured it out/You’re just a bit of a dick.”

For Akaila. Irreversible Entanglements are a liberation-oriented free jazz collective formed in early 2015 by saxophonist Keir Neuringer, poet Camae Ayewa (a.k.a. Moor Mother) and bassist Luke Stewart, who came together to perform at a Musicians Against Police Brutality event organized after the slaying of Akai Gurley by the NYPD. Months later the group added trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and drummer Tcheser Holmes (a duo who also performed at the MAPB event) for a single day of recording at Seizure’s Palace in Brooklyn, and the full quintet’s first time playing together was captured for this debut. In four relentless bouts of inspired fire music the instrumentalists explore and elaborate compositional ideas drawn from their deep individual studies of free jazz improvisation, but the tone of each piece is driven decisively by Ayewa’s searing poetic narrations of Black trauma, survival and power. The message is the undeniable essence of the music. Though free jazz with voice is an uncommon approach in the modern day landscape of the genre, the spirit and subject the band channels and explores represent a return to a central tenant of the sound as it was founded – to be a vehicle for Black liberation. As creative and adventurous as any recording of contemporary avant-garde jazz but offering listeners no abstractions to hide behind, this is music that both honors and defies tradition, speaking to the present while insisting on the future. Irreversible Entanglements is the first collaborative split release by International Anthem & Don Giovanni Records, a partnership aimed to amplify this potent music and pertinent message to the widest possible audience.

After spending years as a major presence in Brooklyn’s thriving music scene, Frankie Rose relocated to her familial home of Los Angeles for 18 months with the intention of establishing yet another moment in her storied indie rock métier. Gradually, she found herself short on sleep, funds and optimism. "I moved to LA, drama ensued and I ended up on a catering truck. I was like, how can this be my life after being a touring musician and living off of music. I had really lost my way and I thought I was totally done." Through sleepless nights of listening to broadcaster Art Bell’s paranormal-themed archives, Frankie’s thoughts had turned to "who am I, I’m not cut out for this business, it’s not for me." She continues, "I was literally in my room in L.A., not knowing how I was going to get out. But out of it all, I just decided to keep making music, because it is what I love and what I do – regardless of the outcome." Towards the end of her time spent in Los Angeles, Frankie reached out to Jorge Elbrecht (Tamaryn, Gang Gang Dance, Violens) and began sketching what became the basic outline of what felt like a new album. Then, rather fortuitously, Frankie ended up back in Brooklyn with the realization that "in the end, I’m on my own. I have to do these things on my own." The months that ensued meant basically working with no budget and finding ways to record in-between days. This time enabled Frankie to experiment musically with a variety of people that ultimately changed the way she worked. "I got a lot of input from people like Dave Harrington (Darkside), who was helpful reconstructing the songs, adding dynamics and changing up the rhythms." The result of this existential odyssey is "Cage Tropical," Frankie’s 4th album. It is awash with vintage synths, painterly effects pedals, upside down atmosphere and reverberating vocals. It evokes a new wave paranormality of sorts that drifts beyond the songs themselves. "My references aren’t just music," says Frankie, "I love old sci-fi. They Live is one of my favorite movies ever, same with Suspiria. 80’s sci-fi movies with a John Carpenter soundtrack, with silly synths – that makes it into my file, to the point that I’ll write lyrics incorporating that kind of stuff. It’s in there." Beginning with the shimmery, cinematic and percussive sparkling of the album’s opening track "Love in Rockets," the song’s refrain of "a wheel, a wheel of wasting my life: a wheel, a wheel of wasting my time" immediately alludes to those darker circumstances that led to the creative origins of "Cage Tropical.""It’s all essentially based on what happened to me in Los Angeles and then a return to Brooklyn," says Frankie. "Misery turned into something good. The whole record to me is a redemption record and it is the most positive one I’ve made" "I feel like I am finally free from worrying about an outcome. I don’t care. I already lost everything. I already had the worst-case scenario. When that happens, you do become free. In the end, it’s about me rescuing myself via having this record."

All songs written/recorded by Nnamdi Ogbonnaya Mastered By Dave Downham Artwork By Vanessa Barajas Released on Sooper Records and Father/Daughter Records Buy DROOL on CD from Father / Daughter Records: www.fatherdaughterrecords.com/products/584405-nnamdi-ogbonnaya-drool

In an industry that favors niche branding and subgenre packaging, Palberta is a difficult band to place. Their music is free and uninhibited in a way that makes it all their own. Often, Palberta songs are marked with a child-like communication -- chants and lullabies are met with snarling tantrums, while their instruments coo and careen towards an often abrupt finish. Their playful approach to writing produces work that is hyper-emotional -- as jarring as it is soothing and as loopy as it is sinister. Palbetra was formed when Lily Konigsberg, Anina Ivry-Block, and Nina Ryser met while attending Bard College. They honed their sound in basements across the Hudson valley, and quickly gained a reputation for their brazen and feverish live shows. Through prolific touring and recording, they have developed a dedicated nation-wide following without the aid of a major label. Outside of the band, the three of them actively pursue solo endeavors, with Palberta serving as a culminating force - a band driven by uncompromising personality. "Bye Bye Berta" is their seventh release and their most sonicly expansive release yet. Recorded by frequent collaborator Paco Cathcart at a library in Roxbury, Connecticut, the record features contributions from artists in their community.