Bandcamp Daily's Best Albums of 2017

Many thank yous for the listens and hope you enjoy the sauce!

Brooklynite Laetitia Tamko’s debut as Vagabon is a bold but vulnerable take on ‘90s indie rock. As with slightly-older contemporaries Hop Along and Waxahatchee (and, to a lesser extent, Mitski), Tamko’s music tends to be simple and immediate but her lyrics unspool like poems, creating an atmosphere at once intimate and alluringly difficult to grasp, whether it’s the mournful bash of “Minneapolis” or the aptly named “Cold Apartment.”

BUY VINYL & CD FROM FATHER/DAUGHTER RECORDS fatherdaughterrecords.bandcamp.com/album/infinite-worlds Within the songs of Laetitia Tamko there are infinite worlds: emotional spaces that grow wider with time, songs within songs that reveal themselves on each listen. Tamko is a multi-instrumentalist and a producer, recording since 2014 as Vagabon. On her forthcoming debut, Infinite Worlds, she hones her singular voice and vision with an unprecedented clarity. “I feel so small / my feet can barely touch the floor / on the bus where everybody is tall,” she sings softly and with caution, as she begin the album with “The Embers.” Driving punk drums pry her song open, exploding it into an anthem that pushes back at entitled people who make others feel tiny. “I’m just a small fish / and you’re a shark that hates everything,” she sings, repeating that line and over and over with strength and power. “I've been hiding in the smallest space / I am dying to go / this is not my home,” Tamko starts carefully on “Fear & Force,” before her finger-picked guitar playing gives way to slow-building synth claps and ethereal harmonies. “Mal á L'aise” is one of the album’s focal points, a five-minute meditation of ambient dream pop, featuring Tamko’s usage of samples; some are samples from a Steve Sobs song on which Tamko was featured, enticing the one writing collaboration of the album. “Mal á L'aise” means “discomfort” in French, Tamko’s first language, and throughout the song she works through different meanings of that word: social, cultural, physical. Infinite Worlds builds upon Tamko’s stripped-down demos that have been circulating online and throughout the independent music community for the past two years. Her Persian Garden cassette, released in 2014 via Miscreant Records, was a lo-fi collection where she embraced a first-thought best-thought approach, making songs that began with just her voice and guitar. But here, Tamko is a main performer of synths, keyboard, guitars, and drums, at times enlisting the work of session studio musicians. This had Tamko channeling the thoughtfulness of her lyricism into her arrangement and production as well. The result is a wide-ranging eight-song collection that’s pleasantly unclassifiable: hypnotic electronic collages, acoustic ballads, and bursts of bright punk sit side-by-side cohesively, all tied together by Tamko’s soaring voice. “I write a lot about places, archiving my memories in spaces that I used to be in, spaces I am currently in, or spaces I will eventually be in” she says. “Archiving different moments that I’ve been thinking about, have gone through. It’s not always autobiographical though. It could be about different situations I’ve seen people I love in. Or people I don’t know in. I think that comes a lot from being in different environments. Like growing up in Cameroon. There, we are happy with very little. Then moving here and seeing how the culture differs from where I’m from.” Tamko’s songs are embedded with her own story and personal history: growing up in Cameroon, her family’s move to New York and adjusting to culture shock. Her family left Cameroon just in time for her to begin high school in the states. She grew up around music and loved it, but finishing engineering school was a priority before music could start to feel like a real possibility. “When I was in Cameroon, my mom would have these ‘reunions’ which was just her friends coming over on Sundays,” she says. “There was a lot of music around me. Traditional West-African songs sung as group chants, hand drums and percussive instruments being played, etc.” To date, Tamko mostly listens to East and West African music nostalgic of her childhood, styles of music that influence her own in subtle ways. Infinite Worlds was recorded at Salvation Recording Co. in New Paltz, NY with engineer and co-producer Chris Daly. Tamko and Daly worked closely and tirelessly in his upstate NY studio through the winter into the spring of 2016. The album’s title references a book of poetry by Dana Ward called The Crisis of Infinite Worlds, a book Tamko found particularly inspiring during her recording process, but also very challenging to read: “I had to think critically while reading Dana Ward, it was exciting to be challenged in that way. While I was writing the album, it was a lot of me thinking critically about how to actualize my ideas, and the challenge of reaching proficiency in new instruments. It sort of mirrored my experience reading Dana Ward’s book. I found myself combing his writing over and over and over until I grabbed something from it.” And as she sat with her songs, she found more and more. “A lot of it is about finding a space for myself, whether it is physical, emotional, social” Tamko says. “It’s about finding that place where I feel most comfortable. And also finding that the confidence within myself can continue to grow. And finding what it takes for me to feel whole through making music.”

Songhoy Blues has always been about resistance. We started this group during a civil war, in the face of a music ban, to create something positive out of adversity. As long as we have music left in us and something to say, we'll keep fighting each day with music as our weapon, our songs as our resistance.

“The magnificent Moonchild… good work” – GILLES PETERSON “Love” – JILL SCOTT “Yet another stellar piece”– SAINT HERON “A beautiful mixture of jazz and R&B… the sound of LA these days” – JAMIE CULLUM ‘Voyager’ is the third full-length album from LA’s Moonchild, whose candid style of soul and new-school jazz has propelled them onto a swirling, emotionally charged journey of the heart. Since 2014 they have dedicated their time and energy into honing dreamlike and ethereal compositions which explore the intricacies of relationships with emotional nuance. The band cites influences like D’Angelo, Hiatus Kaiyote and J. Most as playing a key part in expanding the group's musical horizons which none more evident than on ‘Voyager’. Following two years after their widely-praised album ‘Please Rewind’, the album marks a new level of maturity in the band’s sound. Building on their trademark sound, the band brought in a harpist and string players to their usual line-up, enriching standout motifs; these range from the importance of making time for loved ones, to the feeling of waking up in the middle of the night and missing someone, to the deep bonds shared between mother and child. Since cementing themselves into the vibrant LA soul scene, Moonchild have released two albums and collaborated or toured with highly-respected names in the soul-jazz crowd including Stevie Wonder, Jill Scott, India.Arie, Leela James, The Internet (Odd Future’s Syd tha Kyd & Matt Martians) and more. Along the way, Moonchild have accumulated a host of iconic supporters from Robert Glasper and Laura Mvula to James Poyser, Jazzy Jeff, Jose James, 9th Wonder and Tyler, The Creator who have all shown love for the band. Since finishing the new album, the band are looking forward to announcing a string of tour dates across USA, Europe and Asia. “We feel like we progress and get better with each album and we’re really excited to put this out.” Andris enthuses.

Written & Produced by Charlotte Dos Santos "Watching You," "Cleo," & "Move On" Produced by Fredfades "Take It Slow" Produced by Charlotte Dos Santos & Fredfades Mixed by Justin Mathews "Watching You" & "Move On" Mixed by Deckdaddy Mastered by Kelly Hibbert at Almachrome Artwork by Gustavo Eandi Photography by Tiago Mena Abrantes Design & Layout by Tawfiq Mardini Executive Producers: Charlotte Dos Santos & Kenny / Fresh Selects FSX-024 © 2017 Fresh Selects.

While Spirit Adrift made many take notice with their debut album “Chained To Oblivion”, it is on “Curse Of Conception” their stellar second album, and first with new label 20 Buck Spin, that the band has taken a giant leap forward in songwriting prowess, production and confidence. From the Metallica / Priest like opening moments of ‘Earthbound’ to the epic closing of “Onward, Inward”, Spirit Adrift are aiming sky high with burning focus and peak vigor. The aforementioned ‘Earthbound’ is a standard bearer for album-opening songcraft, leading into the colossal title track, a grungy and twisting radio-ready crawler. ‘To Fly On Broken Wings’ & ‘Graveside Invocation’ continue to show that any of the eight tracks on ‘Curse Of Conception’ could stand as featured singles. Throughout the duration brick heavy riff assembly, somber southern atmospherics and grand melodies entwine flawlessly into perfect metallic majesty, exemplified succinctly and totally in the instrumental ‘Wakien’ for example. With a host of fantastic albums released by their contemporaries lately, Spirit Adrift has taken their craft to an ascendent new level on ‘Curse Of Conception’ earning their rightful place among the top tier of modern metal bands clawing their way above and beyond the underground scene. Now more than at any time metal has become the lifeblood of rock music and Spirit Adrift offer ‘Curse Of Conception’ as an embodiment of that perseverant vitality. Purchase CHAINED TO OBLIVION on CD and vinyl here: www.20buckspin.com/spiritadrift

For over a decade, Nika Roza Danilova has been recording music as Zola Jesus. She’s been on Sacred Bones Records for most of that time, and Okovi marks her reunion with the label. Fittingly, the 11 electronics-driven songs on Okovi share musical DNA with her early work on Sacred Bones. The music was written in pure catharsis, and as a result, the sonics are heavy, dark, and exploratory. In addition to the contributions of Danilova’s longtime live bandmate Alex DeGroot, producer/musician WIFE, cellist/noise-maker Shannon Kennedy from Pedestrian Deposit, and percussionist Ted Byrnes all helped build Okovi’s textural universe. With Okovi, Zola Jesus has crafted a profound meditation on loss and reconciliation that stands tall alongside the major works of its genre. The album speaks of tragedy with great wisdom and clarity. Its songs plumb dark depths, but they reflect light as well. ARTIST STATEMENT: Last year, I moved back to the woods in Wisconsin where I was raised. I built a little house just steps away from where my dilapidated childhood tree fort is slowly recombining into earth.  Okovi was fed by this return to roots and several very personal traumas. While writing Okovi, I endured people very close to me trying to die, and others trying desperately not to. Meanwhile, I was fighting through a haze so thick I wasn’t sure I’d find my way to the other side. Death, in all of its masks, has been encircling everyone I love, and with it the questions of legacy, worth, and will. Okovi is a Slavic word for shackles. We’re all shackled to something—to life, to death, to bodies, to minds, to illness, to people, to birthright, to duty. Each of us born with a unique debt, and we have until we die to pay it back.  Without this cost, what gives us the right to live? And moreover, what gives us the right to die? Are we really even free to choose? This album is a deeply personal snapshot of loss, reconciliation, and a sympathy for the chains that keep us all grounded to the unforgiving laws of nature. To bring it to life, I decided to enlist the help of Alex DeGroot, who has been the only constant in my live band and helped mix the Stridulum EP back in 2010. It will be released on Sacred Bones, the closest group of people I’ll ever have to blood-bound family.

Atlanta, GA trio Omni charges out of the gate in 2016, stunning everyone within earshot with their debut longplayer, "Deluxe"; a dizzyingly refreshing amalgam of wiry post-punk jitters & a dash of zen cool. "Multi-task" is their latest offering & all signs point to the coveted goal of "next level". Guitarist Frankie Broyles (ex-Balkans/Deerhunter) & bassist/vocalist Philip Frobos (Carnivores) crafted "Deluxe"s eleven tracks in their practice space with friend & engineer Nathaniel Higgins. They returned to Higgins for "Multi-task", recording basic drum tracks at Higgins' home studio & overdubbing bass, guitar, vocals & more during two separate trips to a remote cabin in the woods near Vienna, Georgia. "Multi-task" is a more musically adventurous step forward for the band, keeping the frantic, fleet-fingered fingerpicking of Broyles' guitar work & Frobos' dead-cool delivery while expanding their musical palette & to include whispers of post-Roxy glam & Postcard Records pop. "Multi-task" balances the band’s trademark off-kilter & unconventional jams with an elegance not found in many of their contemporaries, Omni pulls it off with grace & style, still whirring on their minimalist funk-fused agit-pop while creating an album that is awash in the excitement of new love, or fleeting attraction - a journey from that dizzying buzz of first date pheromones found twirling on the dance floor to the cab ride cool-down to home (or wherever.)

On her sophomore album, Japanese Breakfast\'s Michelle Zauner seeks grounding in an unlikely place: outer space. Her evocative metaphors and hefty subject matter find lightness in shimmery, spacey electronics, most potently on the expansive, krautrock-like opener \"Diving Woman.\" She deals with femininity and sexuality in synth-pop reveries like \"Road Head\" and the Auto-Tune-enhanced \"Machinist,\" and cuts deep into trauma (\"The Body Is a Blade\") and grief (\"Till Death\") by finding comfort in ‘90s indie guitar pop, fluttering keyboards, and gentle wafts of mournful horns.

Japanese Breakfast's 'Soft Sounds From Another Planet' is less of a concept album about space exploration so much as it is a mood board come to life. Over the course of 12 tracks, Michelle Zauner explores a sonic landscape of her own design, one that's big enough to contain her influences. There are songs on this album that recall the pathos of Roy Orbison’s ballads, while others could soundtrack a cinematic drive down one of Blade Runner's endless skyways. Zauner's voice is capacious; one moment she's serenading the past, the next she's robotically narrating a love story over sleek monochrome, her lyrics more pointed and personal than ever before. While 'Psychopomp' was a genre-spanning introduction to Japanese Breakfast, this visionary sophomore album launches the project to new heights.

Ariel Pink is one of those artists who doesn’t change their style so much as drill deeper into it with every album. Retreating from the studio sound of his recent breakthroughs into the murk of his early recordings (see 2004’s classic *The Doldrums*), *Dedicated to Bobby Jameson* is a strange, phantasmagoric experience, by turns creepy (“Santa’s in the Closet”), pretty (“Feels Like Heaven”), and something unsettlingly in-between (“Do Yourself a Favor”). As always, Pink loves a weird joke, but the prevailing mood is one of loss—of hearing something fade away in haunting real time.

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All the Way is a collection of radical re-workings of traditional and jazz standards such as “All the Way”, “You Don't Know What Love Is”, and “The Thrill Is Gone” (made famous by Chet Baker). It also includes a solo piano interpretation of Thelonious Monk's “Round Midnight”, and live voice and piano interpretations of the American traditional “O Death” and the country song, “Pardon Me I've Got Someone to Kill”. The album includes both electric live performances (recorded in Paris, Copenhagen, and East Sussex) and studio recordings made in San Diego, CA.

HAUSMO 55 - CD / CS / DIG drip mental was written, performed, recorded, produced, & designed by angel marcloid, except: subconscious pilsen relics pt. 2 features saree nyxi on i love yous. relevant shambala texts features megan lloyd on acoustic guitar & vocals. the graying of the crocs features gel set on beats, synth, & vocals, it also features daniel downing jr., raymond cummings, derek setzer, shea stevenson, & oliver aubry on the kush tip. busy beaver lunch break features carrie vinarsky offering apologies. spirit spit features breakfast on spoken word, computers, cd player, & internets. at the pig well features good willsmith on drones. at the pig well pt 2 features forced into femininity on vocals & effects. ? features cameron “sexy sax cam” black on the sexy sax. live photograph by jacob seaton (edits by angel). front cover 3d render by daniel euphrat/918 (tiny edit by angel). fire-toolz logo concept by christophe “lord of the logos” szpajdel. mastering by patrick klem @ klem sound.

…speaking of air and darkness, "Born on a Gangster Star" came into the world in a big damn hurry, like nightfall on an island. You can see it happening, but then again it’s so gradual that the next thing you know—it’s dark. Imbued with the energy and ideas from all the creative embers floating in the atmosphere like fireflies, Shabazz Palaces recorded this entire album over the course of two weeks with Blood in Seattle. New gear and new equipment disintegrated comfort zones into dust and a new path appeared in the rubble. Herein the Palaceer continues the tale of Quazars, a sentient being from somewhere else, an observer sent here to Amurderca to chronicle and explore as a musical emissary. What he finds in our world is a cutthroat place, a landscape where someone like him could never quite feel comfortable amidst all the brutality and alternative facts and death masquerading as connectivity. Inspired by days on end spent in the waves—water and light, both—of Southern California, the work came to the Palaceer in a flash, like being picked up by something and carried. Always dribbling with his head up, he can see what’s going on around him and react to it, rather than starting in a certain direction and hoping to achieve something upon arrival. What’s good?—the kids ask. What does it even mean, and what does it even matter? Who is behind these choices? We are all of us sitting under a waterfall of all. this. shit. But it’s the excess that is casting us into ruts. The Palaceer stays away from the fleeting and the superficial nonessential. Stay away from your device—your phantom limb—and stay away from your image—your phantom self; that is his decree. Considering the motions behind the things you like to consume artistically, rather than just the way something looks or sounds, and thinking in layers, and trying to be more considerate and not so self-oriented—this is his medicine for combat. "Born on a Gangster Star" flirts with a pop sensibility, but through the prism of Shabazz Palaces’s fire and fury. For the Palaceer, that sense is all about how the groove is moving, and the supernatural telepathy that occurs amongst his cohort. Appearing here, in body or in spirit, are Julian Casablancas, Thundercat, Darrius Willrich, Gamble and Huff, Loud Eyes Lou, Thaddillac, Ahmir, Jon Kirby, Sunny Levine, and Blood. The story belongs to Quazarz, but the air and darkness belong to us. And so we shine a light on the fake.

IIII+IIII, pronounced “Edgy-Og-Beh” is the title of the nine song debut album from Puerto Rico’s critically acclaimed electronic ensemble, ÌFÉ. Headed by San Juan based African American Otura Mun, himself a Babalawo or high priest in the Yoruban religion, ÌFÉ has captured the imagination and ears of the international community since releasing its first two singles, 3 Mujeres (Iború Iboya Ibosheshé) and House of Love (Ogbe Yekun). Now, following successful European and North American tours, ÌFÉ releases its first full length musical offering, a 45 minute opening ceremony that seems equal parts blessing, adoration, and manifesto. From its opening track to its closing prayer the album conveys a deep sense of spiritual intent, a sureness in its voice and purpose that is both brave and bold while maintaining the vulnerability and unsureness that the most intimate and honest of conversations always require. It’s been clear from the beginning that ÌFÉ is in a space uniquely its own.From the way in which the music is conceived, a live electronic performance, no programming, to its component parts, Cuban Rumba, Sacred Yoruba praise songs, Jamaican Dancehall, and American R&B, to the way it moves seamlessly from English to Spanish to Yoruba, the music is willfully out of genre, yet focused and clear in a way that makes its newness seem rare, compelling. Serene and floating at times, determined, erotic, and raw at others, the music is as improbable as it is natural, a youthful knowing sound, aware of the weight of its voice, the ground that’s been traveled, and the urgency and uncompromising fierceness needed to meet the day.

If "Nothing Valley" were a real place, it’d be mossy, verdant, and a little bit strange. Melkbelly, formed by vets of Chicago’s experimental and DIY scene champions, organized noise and thoughtful freneticism on its debut full-length, "Nothing Valley," fusing dreamy vocal lines and cantankerous guitar racket. Its songs clang and bang in stripped-down production that highlights the band’s sharp edges; multi-faceted slabs of sound serve harmonious, immediate songs. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that the band members’ tastes run obscure--The Hecks, Lightning Bolt, and jazz drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and, as they tell us, “bands and musicians that draw on a sense of adventure." The quartet’s membership overlaps with several Chicago noise and experimental bands and art collectives. An efficient one-day recording session resulted in Melkbelly’s first EP, 2014's "Pennsylvania," which opened the door to touring and opening slots for Speedy Ortiz, Magik Markers and Built to Spill, and led to The Chicago Reader calling Melkbelly “one of the most exciting new sounds out of Chicago.” Next, Melkbelly got back to writing and working, recording a pair of 7-inches with Dave Vettraino at Chicago’s Public House where it had made its first recordings ever for Public House’s Digital Singles Series and a Public House compilation tape. The sessions gave the band a chance to deepen its collaboration with Vettraino. Miranda writes most of Melkbelly’s tunes on guitar and brings them to the band who puts them through the ringer, where they morph into a Melkbelly arrangement. Often, however, the band will take a guitar riff or two from an open jam recorded at practice and spin it into a song. "Nothing Valley" was recorded in early 2016 in Vettraino’s basement studio to 8-track analog tape. Fresh off a West Coast tour, the band let the hours on the road and missed art tourism opportunities at Spiral Jetty shape the songs as well as the recording process itself, writing half the album material in the studio. "Nothing Valley" breezes gust fresh and forcefully.

“You’re all that I want,” Makthaverskan’s Maja Milner sings with audible ache on “Vienna,” setting a yearning tone for the Swedish dream-pop band’s third album. But if Milner is consumed by despair, her band is drunk on adrenaline. On *III*, broken hearts are soothed by vapor-trailed guitar jangle and pulse-pounding rhythms that whip past in a blur, pushing anthems like “In My Dreams” to blissful peaks while infecting comedown ballads like “To Say It as It Is” with a sense of ecstatic restlessness.