DJ Mag's Top Albums of 2022

When Ahmed Ololade put out his *Ololade Asake* EP in February 2022, few people knew what to expect from an eclectic artist whose Olamide-assisted “Omo Ope” remix had announced his belated arrival to mainstream audiences. In the seven months between *Ololade Asake* and the release of this, his debut album, the Lagos-based artist scored further hits and seized control of the Afropop zeitgeist with his dizzying mix of street-inspired lyricism, signature chanted vocals, and a fascinating fusion of amapiano, hip-hop, and Fuji instrumentals. *Mr. Money With The Vibe* sees Asake lean into the larger-than-life persona that songs like “Sungba” and “PALAZZO” established. He details his new realities with swagger—contemplating romance, life, and his position in the game over beats delicately crafted by close creative ally Magicsticks. His flair for experimenting within the amapiano framework continues here as he loops the call-and-response pattern of classic Afrobeat over the log drums, sax, and piano on “Organise.” Elsewhere, he brings back a revamped version of blog-era favorite “Joha” and offers a soulful ode to the grind on “Nzaza.” Russ joins for a cautionary tale on “Reason,” and a blistering remix of “Sungba” sees Burna Boy make an appearance here—but the narrative of *Mr. Money With The Vibe* belongs to Asake alone as he continues to blaze a new path for street-pop.

Banu - TransSoundScapes LP South-east Turkey born DJ, sound artist and producer Banu uses music as a political tool. For her, the strong message carried through sound is a vehicle to express emotions as well as a means of fighting against oppression. Using participation, social design, ecology, feminist and queer theory to create multimedia installations with sound as a main element, Banu‘s practice is closer to contemporary art and activist spaces than the club realm. Banu‘s debut album TransSoundScapes is an exercise in female solidarity between her as a migrant woman and her sisters from the trans community, where an artist from one marginalised group is showing support towards her trans sisters, using her platform to help them amplify their voices and building a bridge towards a mutual understanding of femininity. Conceptually, TransSoundScapes comes in continuation of Banu‘s previous research-based work, using music as a positive tool for change while working with various marginalised communities. The album originated from the very real experience of being confronted with verbal harassment in Berlin on a daily basis, particularly aimed at her transfeminine friends and companions. As a queer woman of Turkish and Kurdish origin, Banu did not only observe the verbal aggression directed at her friends, but also understood most of the insults shouted in languages such as Arabic. Seeing how she got significantly more verbal violence directed at them when in company of trans people made a lasting impression on her, so she wanted to try and use her relative privilege to amplify transfeminine voices through her music. Coming from a very conservative family, making music has been her lifelong dream. It was the moment she had the opportunity to work with the iconic Arp 2600 synthesiser (a younger sibling to Eliane Radigue‘s infamous 2500 machine) that all her disparate interests came into place to create an empowering soundscape with the aid of analogue drum machines. TransSoundScapes has a very full, porous sound, where every element that comes into play sounds soft yet clear. Across the 7 tracks, Banu conjures pounding subterraneous bassy techno („Surgery“), slithering tentacular EBM („First Time“) and pulsating cavernous soundscapes („Harem“), where oversized dancefloor elements are woven with poetic spoken word passages, resulting in sensusous yet political anthems. Banu artfully merges loosely related genres such as techno, electro, dub and sound poems into a sound that is at once deeply personal and extremely compelling. All of the tracks are collaborative efforts, Banu seeing the process as an exchange of care and shared experiences, while integrating research into her writing process. The lyrics in „Transition (part 1+2)‘‘ are an adaptation of Sara Ahmed’s “Living a Feminist Life”, while „Surgery“ was born out of series of interviews with trans people, channeling the metallic sounds of a surgery room to refer to society‘s perception of transness as a medical condition. Tracks like „First Time feat. Patricia“, „Harem feat. Prince Emrah“ or „We feat. Aérea Negrot“ document her encounters with various trans women, centering their life experiences while also developing a deep dialogue through the process of making music together. The darkest and perhaps the most emblematic track is ‚‘Bianka (In Memory Of)‘‘, dedicated to the late Bianka Shigurova, a 22-year old Georgian actress found dead in her apartment. It was her Tbilisi photographer friend George Nebriedze who told her Bianka‘s tragic story, whose death is suspected to be an assasination due to transphobia. Banu chose one of Nebriedze‘s analogue photos of Bianka as the album‘s cover art.

Breaka - We Move Breaka’s come a long way since he first turned heads in 2018 with shivering bass anthem ‘Rory’s Theme’. After releasing further records on Holding Hands and other labels, he also kicked off his own eponymous label, and held down remix duties for Interplanetary Criminal and Kelly Lee Owens. Now, his musical curiosity gets the spotlight with self-released debut LP ‘We Move.’ Made on a laptop and midi keyboard during the winter of 20/21, the album clearly goes out to the club: singles ‘Mass Gathering’ and ‘Solaria’ earned attention from DJs like Anz, Call Super, and Om Unit, while also doing the rounds on NTS, Rinse FM, and the BBC, as well as featuring on BBC essential ‘Mix of the Year’ by Elkka. Tracks such as ‘Look Inside’ and ‘Solaria’ navigate themes of reflection and isolation, while numbers ‘We Move’, ‘Honeydrum’ and ‘Baile Steppa’ work genres like UK funky, trance, kuduro, and samba together into new forms. Whether considering the dance from a distance or toying with new ideas of what the dance can be, ‘We Move’ is a confident statement of intent, showcasing Breaka’s love for explorations across the electronic axis. Artwork comes courtesy of Breaka and Jake Elwes, with featured photography from Sophie Jouvenaar.

The second album from Melbourne’s Confidence Man is unapologetic in its love of ’90s rave and runway music. While their 2018 debut, *Confident Music for Confident People*, fizzed away like an electro-pop firework, *TILT* instead looks to vintage UK house music (“Holiday”) and warehouse raves for inspiration. Frontwoman Janet Planet is in playful form, slinking her way around the UK-garage-esque “Toy Boy” (“They say there’s seven wonders but my toy boy makes it eight/With a face like that there’s no conversation, with an ass like that there’s no hesitation”) and proving there’s substance to her swagger on “Woman” (“I’m a woman of many words, but words do not define me”). Though the quartet found creative inspiration in the studio from Gregg Alexander (New Radicals) and U2 producer Andy Barlow, Confidence Man self-produced *TILT*, pushing their euphoric dance-pop party to another level.

Daniel Avery's most ambitious and accomplished studio album to date, 'Ultra Truth', is out now on limited edition double white vinyl, CD and blue cassette. 'Ultra Truth' offers a very different listening experience to any of Daniel Avery’s previous records. It inhabits its own world of sound, a construct built in his Thames side studio with collaborative help from a host of friends: the production touch of Ghost Culture and Manni Dee, the vocals of HAAi, Jonnine Standish (HTRK), AK Paul and the voices of Marie Davidson, Kelly Lee Owens, Sherelle and James Massiah. “Ultra Truth finds me in a different place to where I’ve been before. My previous albums have all focused on the idea of music being an escape or a distraction from the world but that’s not the case this time. For me this album is about looking directly into the darkness, not running away from it. There’s a way through these times but it involves keeping the important people in your life close to you and navigating the noise together. This is an intentionally heavy and dense album, the hooks often hidden in dusty corners. I’m no longer dealing in a misty-eyed euphoria. Ultra Truth is a distorted fever dream of a record: riled, determined and alive.” In creating 'Ultra Truth', Daniel Avery went back to many of the things that had inspired him to first make music as a teenager - pensive, emotive records by Deftones, Portishead, Nick Cave or Mogwai, the exquisite darkness of David Lynch’s movies and - on tracks like Devotion and Higher - the thunderous energy of leftfield rave music. “I’m working with an entirely new world of sound on this record. Every single influence from the last decade spent on the road plays a part. Things that have been in the back of my mind forever, warped, distorted and pushed to a new place.”

“Often, for me,” Dan Snaith tells Apple Music, “the worst enemy of making music is thinking too much about it. I just *do* it, and what it is and why it is comes into focus later.” Doing, and making people dance, were the drivers for the Toronto producer’s first Daphni album since 2017’s *Joli Mai*. *Cherry* is a dazzlingly diverse set—there are bold expressions of house, techno, and disco here—with Snaith (who also releases music as Caribou and Manitoba) admitting it reflects the roller coaster of the early 2020s. “There are tracks on here that were made in the depths of the pandemic, when I was yearning for clubs to return and experiencing music collectively,” he says. “And there were tracks made as things started to reopen. I wanted something to play at my first DJ gigs and wondered what would connect people after so long away.” One of the record’s most striking characteristics is its directness. Tracks are relatively short—and cut deliciously to the chase. “They’re mostly without intros or outros,” Snaith says. “The music just careens between ideas and moods—as if under the control of a particularly mercurial DJ. I like that style of DJing anyway. Alternating between hypnosis—the same loop for a long time—and surprise. This album captures that, I hope.” Read on for Snaith’s track-by-track guide. **“Arrow”** “The loop that makes up this album is so simple but somehow alluring. It doesn’t need to do much of anything—it just needs you to keep staring at it. One of my favorite things about dance music is that, with the aid of repetition, small variations can seem momentous. I also like the idea that the album starts with no messing around—straight in at full speed—and then stands pretty much still throughout this track.” **“Cherry”** “This is one of the last tracks I made and, somehow, filled in a puzzle piece that I didn’t know was missing. As soon as I’d finished it, I knew that it was going to be a central track on the album. That twisting, turning synth line that’s both disorienting and compelling is like a musical ouroboros—the snake eating its own tail.” **“Always There”** “This is one of my favorite tracks to play out in my DJ sets, probably because it works when it shouldn’t. The textures in this track—the fast guitar lines, snaking reed instrument, and shakers—stand out immediately in a club, where people are used to dancing to drum machines and synthesizers. The arrangement makes you wait for things to drop a couple times, and often, when I play it in a club, I tease it out for much longer, so that the riff has been weaving in and out for a long time before it drops.” **“Crimson”** “I’m not much of a ‘gear’ person, but every so often, I come across a piece of equipment that sounds so fantastic and has so much character that it feels like it writes the music for you. The synthesizer playing the main blippy pattern here is an ARP 2600, and you can almost hear me moving the sliders on it as I try to lure the track to a climax.” **“Arp Blocks”** “The title here refers to the ARP 2600 that is the only instrument in this track. I don’t think I’ve ever released any music that is one live take of one instrument playing solo before. The ‘Blocks’ of the title refers to a piece of software that allowed me to control the 50-plus-year-old ARP synthesizer in a completely new way and get sounds out of it that would not have been previously possible, allowing the synth pattern to twist and turn and jump up and down to different harmonic registers.” **“Falling”** “People who know my music probably know that I have a hard time resisting a repeated hook—a mantra that takes on more meaning the more it’s repeated. This one could have stayed longer and been built out into a larger track, but to keep the pace fast, it sticks around for only a little over a minute before we’re on to something else.” **“Mania”** “A lot of the tracks on this album have a loose, playful feeling, and that really reflects how it was making them. Even though it’s just me in the studio, it’s still possible to capture that sense of jamming—putting one loop or sound together and then rushing to another piece of equipment and playing the first thing that comes to mind on it. This track came together pretty much in the order that you hear the elements being introduced into the track. There’s a point, halfway through, where the harmony changes and the track feels like it’s floating—that’s always a really nice moment when I play this out in a club.” **“Take Two”** “So much of my favorite dance music is about the search for a perfect loop—often a loop that harkens back to house music’s antecedent: disco. This track weaves a few different loops together. In fact, it started out as two different tracks that I realized, at some point, were in the same key, the same world—but hopefully sound like they could almost be the parts from a forgotten disco record. Music that almost sounds like a live band, but not quite.” **“Mona”** “I love techno that’s based around one repeated stab sound. The best of those tracks tend to last a long time and do very little other than roll along, using repetition as their central premise. This track sets up that way but is an example of how I decided to shift the focus of some of these tracks away from making arrangements that would be most effective in a club and stick to what’s most exciting on the album, where the shorter tracks mean that different sounds and vibes are flying by rapidly. Digital DJing means that it’s not hard to rearrange and extend the tracks you’re playing on the fly—when I play this track in a DJ set, it usually ends up being about twice the length it is here.” **“Clavicle”** “This track almost didn’t end up on the album. I’d put a version of it on my *Essential Mix* in 2020 and then mostly forgot about it. But just as I was assembling this album, a couple people asked me about it and if I was ever going to release it. I had finished all the other tracks on the album and was about to send the album off to have it mastered and just added this track in at the last minute. I’m glad I did!“ **“Cloudy”** “I grew up playing the piano as my main instrument. There was a time when I thought that I was going to try and make a living as a jazz pianist. I must have spent thousands and thousands of hours playing the piano when I was a kid—so much time that that familiarity will always be with me. The piano you hear on this track isn’t a real one—it’s a software emulation played on a controller keyboard—which is why I can warp it and give it the character that you hear, but feeling so at home with the sound of a piano is why I’ll always return to look for ideas there. There have been a bunch of people online asking what the piano sample is for this track, but it’s not a sample—it’s a loop that I played while noodling around in the studio.” **“Karplus”** “The word ‘Karplus’ refers to a delay effect named after Kevin Karplus and Alex Strong, where a short, pitched delay on a sound creates a note similar to the sound of a plucked string. I’m not sure whether what I’m doing with this track is really the Karplus-Strong effect though—it’s mostly just a drum loop through a phaser!” **“Amber”** “I love the big, chunky, awkward swing of this track. It’s a loop that always feels like it’s just about to topple over and collapse. When I first started going to clubs when I lived in Toronto, DJs from New York would come through town all the time, and when people like Masters at Work would play, people who could really dance would show up—not just people shuffling their feet and pumping their fists in the air like I, and most of us, do when we’re at a club. In my mind, this is the kind of loop that I can imagine getting the kind of reaction that I remember seeing from the dancers at those nights.” **“Fly Away”** “I’m always looking for those tracks that are like a breath of fresh air in a club—that, after hours of playing music with relentless, heavy kick drums, are melodic and euphoric. I made this track with that kind of feeling in mind, and it always has that kind of effect on the room when I’ve played it. People stop dancing and look around; they start whistling and shouting. It’s a great one to play at the end of the night, so why not at the end of an album?”

In many ways, *Est. 2003* has been nearly two decades in the making. *Ineffable*, from 2014, marked DJ Q’s arrival on Tom Lea’s Local Action label. But it also signaled the start of a new era for the Huddersfield-hailing producer, as he cast his gaze forward—toying with breezier house influences and heavier 2-step sounds, but still mixing in the sugar-rush vocal chops and slick ’n’ bouncy bass that’s become his hallmark. “Two thousand and three is when I started professionally as DJ Q,” Shollen Quarshie tells Apple Music. “It\'s the first time I properly made any sort of money from music, it’s the first time I got booked to play at a nightclub, and it’s the first time I got national radio play. It all happened in 2003. So, it just made sense because the journey started there. This is an album of music that is influenced by all the styles that I just love from being involved in the garage scene from when I started.” But this is far from a retrospective, and there are no rehashed ideas. It is all completely box-fresh. The bulk of the album was pieced together during lockdown, when there was nothing to do except lock himself away and produce. While that was going on, he was texting back and forth with Lea on “the perfect DJ Q record,” sharing tracks and ideas for a shifting music mood board. *Est. 2003* features many special guest artists, including Shola Ama, a singer responsible in large part for helping to shape garage’s more soulful inclinations in the 2000s. In contrast, it also features new-school talent Hans Glader (with three appearances from the San Francisco-hailing producer), bringing these generations together. That fusion of eras—putting different artists from different generations against each other and in new contexts—is another defining idea here. The only other unifying element is Q himself. Whether it’s the soulful house leanings, the chrome-covered, slippery basslines, or the juiced-up 4x4 garage, it’s disparate yet immediately, identifiably DJ Q. Here, he runs us through his album, track by track. **“Pipe Dreams” (feat. Hans Glader)** “This was the last song to come together for the album, but it made sense to be at the beginning, just because of how it sounds. Hans Glader is from \[San Francisco\], so we usually work over the internet. This is the third or fourth track we’ve done together, so we’re used to getting our vibe that way.” **“It’s You”** “This is me making the type of garage I love to listen to, heavily inspired by Todd Edwards. I started with the vocal jabs, sample jobs, and then the beats and bassline just came together.” **“Speedy Gs” (feat. Finn)** “This track is special. I’ve been a fan of Finn for as long as I can remember. We met through Tom \[Lea\] at \[London-based record label\] Local Action, and we’ve played a few sets together. What I’ve noticed about his vibe is he’s like me—he loves speed garage and bassline. He came over to my studio in Huddersfield, and we came up with this idea. It\'s funny: We got started three years ago, and only at the beginning of 2021, I reopened the project and finished it. And here it is. This is the only title we could have given it, really, and it’s very fitting that this sound is coming back around.” **“I Can\'t Stay” (feat. Shola Ama & Hans Glader)** “I’ve been a fan of Shola Ama from when she first started releasing music \[in the mid-’90s\]. She was one of a few singers at the time who always released garage remixes. And they used to go off! I’ve always been a fan of her vocals, and I’ve done remixes for her before, but we’ve never collaborated on original music before. This is another track where I felt that Hans would be able to add something unique and give it that little bit of an edge.” **“Sweet Day” (feat. Todd Edwards)** “I’ve been a fan of Todd’s for as long as I can remember. I’d been buying his vinyls and mixing his music for *years*. Way back in 2012, I did a mix: 80 minutes of Todd Edwards tracks. He saw it, and we connected that way. We’ve always spoken and shared music with each other, but after a show in LA, we ended up in the studio, vibing. After one track, which was banging, Todd said, ‘Let’s do something that doesn’t sound like me.’ So, we started this track. Everything down to the samples we picked, we made sure it was just a bit different from something Todd would normally put together by himself.” **“Love Me Like” (feat. Lily Mckenzie & Star.One)** “I’ve worked with Lily before. We’ve got quite a few tracks, actually, but with this one, she had the initial idea with Star.One. I got the track and the chords and added in my stamp to what was already a wickedly written song.” **“Thief in the Night” (feat. Hans Glader)** “We made this before I even knew I was doing an album. This is vibes. I woke up one day, heard this vocal sample, and I couldn’t get it out of my head! So, I laid it down, chopped it up a bit, added some chords, and a full intro. If I’d produced it by myself, it would’ve been a totally different track; it would’ve sounded like a typical DJ Q 4x4 bassline track, but I think Hans’ vibe took it to a different level. It doesn’t sound like a DJ Q record—it just sounds like something much more than that.” **“Heavy Like Lead” (feat. Sharda)** “Sharda is a producer that I’ve been a fan of for ages. He’s always had that 4x4 bassline influence in his sound, so it was more than obvious that we had to link up. I think we might have still been in lockdown when we started this—I remember playing the original idea in my sets coming out of lockdown. We were in a group chat: I would send in ideas, he would send in ideas, and we got it finished pretty quick, to be honest. It was that good.” **“Close Your Eyes”** “This is an ode to a good friend of mine, \[UK DJ and producer\] DJ Paleface. He had a track years ago, before I knew him personally, \[2000 single\] ‘Imagination,’ which had a full version of these vocals that I’ve chopped up. I used all of his vocals on that track and put my flip on it. This is a tribute to him because he’s a sick producer and a heavy influence, also.” **“I Couldn\'t See”** “I did a tutorial for a company called Play Virtuoso on how to make a bassline/garage track—and this is what I made for it. They run a subscription model, where you subscribe and receive master classes from a wide range of producers, DJs, radio hosts, just *anything* to do with dance music. Anyway, it’s such a vibe that I was playing it in \[live\] sets. At that time, the album was ‘done,’ but I felt like it needed this kind of vibe on the album.” **“All That I Could”** “The track that started this all off is the last track. And the track that ended it comes first. It’s a full-circle thing.This is me making the *perfect* DJ Q record. It’s got the hard drums, the basslines are in there, it’s got the garage skip, and the vocal chops and sample chops are on there as well. Everything’s in here. The vocals are what I started with. I heard an R&B track—it was in three-time by an American singer called Colette Lush. I grabbed the sample, made the track, and then just built it around those vocals.”

Almost two decades since first adopting the name DJ Q, Local Action is proud to present Est. 2003, DJ Q’s first new album since 2014. Comprising 11 high-grade UK Garage tracks made both solo and in collaboration with his peers from either side of the Atlantic, Est. 2003 cements Q’s status as one of the UK's most important living artists, one whose musical DNA can be found in everything from contemporary UKG and pop to underground grime and bassline. Released on September 23, with new single ‘Sweet Day’ (feat. Todd Edwards) out today, Est. 2003 gets right to the essence of what makes Q so special. There’s no unnecessary concepts or narratives, no needless experimentation - it’s simply DJ Q, at the top of his game, flexing on everyone for a water-tight 36 minutes. Est. 2003 will be released digitally and as limited digipak CD edition, accompanied with a photo inlay.

Duval Timothy’s work sits in a mellow space between jazz, sound collage, ambient, and electronic music—the kind of thing you’d be more likely to hear in a museum installation than a club. Recorded between London, Duval’s hometown of Freetown, Sierra Leone, and a residency in Spoleto, Italy, *Meeting With a Judas Tree* is interesting, in part, for its ability to mix subtlety with a sense of almost continuous surprise, whether it’s the sudden plucking sounds in “Wood” or the way “Thunder” seems to bend and splinter in midair. It’s too engaging to be background music, but you’ll want it on for the same reasons you might pick up fresh flowers: it quietly brightens the room.

Recorded 2019 - 2022 Primarily recorded at my home studio in South London, Carrying Colour studio in Freetown, my old studio in Rotherhithe Old Police Station, and Casa Mahler in Spoleto. Recorded on different pianos, including an upright in Freetown that had lost the felt of its hammers due to the humidity creating a harpsichord-like sound as the raw wood struck the strings. Other prominent instruments featured are Moog Grandmother, double bass, electric guitar and Juno-G. Part of the piano recordings on 'Up' and 'Drift' were composed and recorded through April 2021, whilst I was an artist in residence at the Mahler & LeWitt Studios, Spoleto, for the 'Mahler, The Song of the Earth' project in partnership with Mahler Foundation. During the residency, I was studying and creating work in response to the life and work of Gustav Mahler, in particular 'Das Lied Von Der Erde' (The Song of the Earth) — a vast song cycle engaging with nature, forgiveness, friendship, and mortality themes. While making this record, I wanted to explore what the natural environment means personally. I went on many trips into nature to engage with plant life and natural materials. These included everyday strolls around South London, walks with my mum in the hills surrounding Bath (Up), hikes through Freetown, the hills of Spoleto, up line in Ghana and nature sanctuaries in Sierra Leone (Wood). I found incredible examples of nature in all of these contexts, which I felt personally close to. I made field recordings with my phone or Zoom recorder, documenting various birds, insects, monkeys, bats, plants, trees, stones and so on, which are all on the record.

All tracks produced by Justyna Banaszczyk Mastered by Rashad Becker Designed by Jon K & Eleni Tucker Edition of 300 copies housed in a deluxe screen printed sleeve by Yas at Small Press ------------------------------------ Boomkat Review: Hailing from Łódź, Poland, Justyna Banaszczyk aka FOQL was raised in the post-industrial decay of the city beloved by David Lynch for its abundant, knackered architecture (think ‘Eraserhead’, or run go check his warehouse photo studies). ‘Wehikuł’ translating to ‘Vehicle’, echoes its provenance and dark surreality across eight cuts of intricate post-techno pulses webbed with brooding synths that lend a fine new stripe of influence to MAL’s unpredictable ‘Rebel Music’ agenda, perfectly in step with its off-road vectors. soundsfoolish.com

7th October 2022, Hagan shares his long-awaited debut album Textures with previously unheard fusion single ‘Telha ft. Luedji Luna & Sango’ - a sun-kissed percussive track with lush vocals dancing over sparkling guitar riffs and broken beats - out now on Python Syndicate. A stunning debut that showcases Hagan’s carefully honed production skills - the product of a life in music - Textures is an homage to global sounds and influences, an expression of his journey of self-discovery and reflection on his British-Ghanaian heritage, and showcases his keen love for collaboration. Recorded between London and Accra, the project draws out a range of Afro-influenced sounds while listing the collaboration of emerging talents across the vibrant landscape of contemporary African music, Aymos, Bryte, Meron T, Ayeisha Raquel, Griffit Vigo and more. A bold step into Hagan’s Afrocentric sonic realm and creative vision.

Listen to the fourth album by Scotland-born, LA-based Ross Birchard and you’re liable to feel a little overwhelmed. Sugar rush or religious epiphany? The elation of a good roller coaster or the nausea that sets in when the ride loses control? Birchard likes it all, and by the fistful. Nearly a decade out from his public christening as a producer for Kanye West (“Mercy,” “Blood on the Leaves”) and half of the jock-jam festival phenomenon TNGHT (with Lunice), he’s become the kind of musician it seems like he wanted to be all along: bright, weird, funky, funny, and guided by an optimism so irrepressible you wonder if, deep down, he feels a little sad. “Stump” is the most beautiful music that didn’t make *Blade Runner*. “Bicstan” is Aphex Twin for a seven-year-old’s birthday party. He can balance tracks as abstract as “Kpipe” with ones as direct as “3 Sheets to the Wind,” and the soulful lag of American rap (“Redeem”) with the momentum of UK bass (“Rain Shadow,” “Is It Supposed”), not to mention whatever neon-halo hybrid “Behold” is. This is opera for people raised on anime. And as easy as it is to imagine listening in a big, sweaty room, he knows that most of us will end up taking it in alone on headphones—and he wants us to have fun.

An entry in an ongoing series of full-length releases from Stay True Sounds, the Kid Fonque-founded boutique label known for introducing new voices in South Africa’s deep house scene, *Altair* showcases the dynamism of Eastern Cape-born Hypaphonik. His percussion-blazing productions are rich; in crafting this soulful deep house offering with traces of Afrotech, Hypaphonik (Siyalo Tonya) employs electric guitars and keyboards which are immersed in a wellspring of damp pads and refined synth layers. This careful assemblage of sounds creates a conducive environment for Bamtho Imbongi’s Xhosa poetry on “Ndoyiswe”, and Kali Mija and Offkey’s alluring vocals on the multilayered production on “Lutar”, some of the few vocal songs on ALTAIR. For the larger part of the album, songs are kept bare but have enough presence to stand alone. Named after one of the brightest stars in the night sky, Hypaphonik’s debut is a step forward in the stellar evolution of a producer who promises to be around for a a while.

Welsh producer/vocalist Kelly Lee Owens released her ultra-personal second album, *Inner Song*, in August 2020, in the thick of the pandemic. With any plans to tour the record scuttled, that winter she managed to decamp from her London home to Oslo—just before borders were closing again—for some uninterrupted studio time. Much like *Inner Song*’s rather short 35-day gestation, after a month of work with Norwegian avant-garde/noise producer Lasse Marhaug, Owens emerged with *LP.8*, her most experimental, liberating record yet. On her previous full-lengths—this is actually her third, not her eighth—Owens alternated between deep, plodding techno tracks and moody synth compositions, over which her lithe vocals floated effortlessly. But on *LP.8*, the contrasts—between the earthly and the ethereal—are felt more deeply. The opener, “Release,” plays like a lost Chris & Cosey cut, its crunchy precision finding that sweet spot between industrial and early techno. On the New Age-y “Anadlu,” “S.O (2),”and “Olga,” hints of Enya’s influence shine through, but the songs’ gauzy atmospheres are often counterweighted by brooding undertones. “Nana Piano” is a melancholy solo piano sketch, unfettered except for some gentle birdsong in the background. But the closing “Sonic 8” is Owens at her most direct and visceral: She channels all sorts of frustrations while intoning, “This is a wake-up call/This is an emergency” over a beat so skeletal and abrasive that it sounds like a frayed wire swinging dangerously close to the bathtub.

Born out of a series of studio sessions, LP.8 was created with no preconceptions or expectations: an unbridled exploration into the creative subconscious. After releasing her sophomore album Inner Song in the midst of the pandemic, Kelly Lee Owens was faced with the sudden realisation that her world tour could no longer go ahead. Keen to make use of this untapped creative energy, she made the spontaneous decision to go to Oslo instead. There was no overarching plan, it was simply a change of scenery and a chance for some undisturbed studio time. It just so happened that her flight from London was the last before borders were closed once again. The blank page project was underway. Arriving to snowglobe conditions and sub-zero temperatures, she began spending time in the studio with esteemed avant-noise artist Lasse Marhaug. Together, they envisioned making music somewhere in between Throbbing Gristle and Enya, artists who have had an enduring impact on Kelly’s creative being. In doing so, they paired tough, industrial sounds with ethereal Celtic mysticism, creating music that ebbs and flows between tension and release. One month later, Kelly called her label to tell them she had created something of an outlier, her ‘eighth album’. Lasse Marhaug is known for hundreds of avant-noise releases, previously working with the likes of Merzbow, Sunn O))) and Jenny Hval, for whom he produced her acclaimed albums Apocalypse, Girl, Blood Bitch and The Practice Of Love. A label mate of Kelly’s, Marhaug has recorded for Smalltown Supersound since 1997. Welsh electronic artist Kelly Lee Owens released her eponymous debut album in 2017 and followed this up with 2020’s Inner Song. She has collaborated with Björk, St. Vincent and John Cale. In April, she returns with LP.8.

“‘Do the wrong thing’ is my thing,” TJ “Lil Silva” Carter tells Apple Music. “Because everyone thinks, ‘Oh, we\'ve got to use this bassline, or do that sound.’ But actually, we should all strive to be in the now. What feels good, *right now*?” More than a decade on from his teen emergence in the UK’s Funky House scene, Lil Silva’s genre-bending odyssey lands here: a debut LP hosting a vigorous bout between ego and self-doubt. “It\'s all self work,” he says. \"But that’s important, because how much time do you want to invest in yourself? What do you want to unlock in your brain that you haven’t? How much are you worth?\" These questions arose for the producer, singer, songwriter and DJ throughout the course of deep meditation and Theta healing (an energy healing technique and spiritual philosophy), and lay central to his ongoing exploration of the self. *Yesterday Is Heavy* crafts a moving elegy that explores feelings of alienation (“Backwards”), raw emotion (“Another Sketch”) and disjointedness (“Still”) experienced throughout lockdown, and remedied in rich, experimental textures that draw on the sincerity of Silva’s bluesy vocals and arrangement style, plus some eclectic collaborations (including standout moments with Sampha and Little Dragon). “I’ve always been skeptical about being genre specific,” he says. \"I’ve always known that Lil Silva is going to be a sound. Yes, I’ve been influenced by Timberland, Pharrell, and even the early grime era of Davince, Plastician, Jon E Cash, Wiley. All have defining sounds. But I wasn’t listening to music for about two years when making this album. I was only going back in my archive, and bringing out what hadn’t seen the light of day.” Here, Lil Silva talks us through the 12 expansive tracks of his debut album, track by track. **“Another Sketch”** “I’m constantly inspired by the changing state of water. The idea that something can be, in real time, one thing, in the past something else, and in the future have a different existence, state or body. This song is about heritage, and moments in time, whether that’s in the past, present or future. So it’s about family, also.” **“Be Cool” (with Little Dragon)** “I started writing this song with \[producer and multi-instrumentalist\] Mansur Brown. He’s dangerous to be in a studio with because in between trying to finish a song, he\'ll play something crazy, I think we made five songs that day. His \[guitar\] playing is insane, and the way he\'s got his pedal game is a joke. He was playing this groove, and I done this whole beat around it. And after I wrote this song, I sent it over and \[Little Dragon’s\] Yukimi \[Nagano\] loved it. It really related to her, and she also added in a few things. I’d done some remix work with Little Dragon before, but we’d been itching to get a song of our own together.” **“Vera (Judah Speaks)”** “This track picks up from the tempo of the intro. I started with the drums off the top, working with \[producer\] Duncan Laurence, we did “Deja Vu” \[on 2016 EP *Jimi*\] together, and working with peope that I consider family on this album just felt right. We created this orchestral feel and had strings played by \[composer and arranger\] Sally Herbert. I’ve always known I’d have some strings on my album—and that goes back to my early tracks like \[2008 single\] “Seasons”, with the brass influence, I’m just pulling from that.” **“Leave It” (with Charlotte Day Wilson)** “This is a message about celebrating what’s right in front of you. There’s no need to worry, or at least don’t worry for *too* long. The clouds of doubts that hover over, in life, and sometimes in love feel like you’ll never move out of. But, however grey and however challenging, there’s a way to get through it. It’s too easy to get caught up in everything around you. **“September”** “There was a lot raw emotion in this. I was definitely feeling a lot of grit in that day, and it all came out in ‘September’. I was with James Vincent McMorrow and Benji B, and we’d clipped through this sample, and Benji played it for me at the perfect time. I was like: ‘Wow, I\'ve never really put samples on my song before like this.’ So, it was paying homage to it I guess. James is dope, really dynamic, and always comes up with these crazy interesting melody trips. And Benji has done *a lot*. He’s the perfect guy to have in the room, for his energy, and knowledge of music, to radio, and fashion. It wouldn\'t have felt right if I didn\'t have the \[club brand\] Deviation family in-and-out of this, to bounce the energy off, because my music\'s gone from the club to here, and he\'s been a massive part of that.” **“To The Floor” (with BADBADNOTGOOD)** “It\'s in the title, man. Just get to it, basically. With BADBADNOTGOOD, we had this unconventional arrangement and it was about just pocketing those grooves, and the funk. This was one of the five, myself and Mansur had done, but I was like, man, this could definitely have an extra bit of funk—there\'s a groove that could be interesting here. So I played the idea to BADBADNOTGOOD, and they came through with: drums, guitar, and even some flutes!” **“Backwards” (with Sampha)** “This song touches on the feeling of alienation and constantly venting in the matrix you find yourself in, whatever that may be. Restricted and feeling guilty to move forward, constantly going backwards mentally; I guess the song is about being in a never ending cycle and the heaviness that can bring.” **“What If? (with Skiifall)”** “I really channeled inspiration from our roots on this record. You can hear the reggae, bashment and grime influence weave in and out. This track is about the course we find ourselves on, without even thinking. It’s about the huge role that love and family plays in our lives, but staying grounded and never forgetting what got us here.” **“Colours”** “I was coming into the studio shoot for about four or five days, I kept singing, ‘There\'s colours, colorus, colours’… it\'s like, why is this bugging me? It\'s every day, saying the same thing. It just kept trickling through my brain. And I made that into this beautiful soul thing, and eventually I switched it up. This bassline you could say comes from grime—but grime is in me. I used to be in \[Bedford grime collective\] Macabre Unit back in the day.” **“About Us” (with Elmiene)** “It was good for me to get back into my archive, it was like a massive soundboard for myself with sounds and work I could take. Across this process when I would have a block, I would just dig in my archive, as you would, it\'s almost like I\'m going to remix one of my tracks that no one knows about this. It\'s all there.” **“Still” (with Sampha & Ghetts)** “We were all in the room jamming for around 30 minutes. And as I’ve dissected this beat—everyone behind me, they all loved this bassline. But I didn\'t like it. Just how familiar, or how close to familiar it was, so I flipped it and found the right bass. Then Sampha dropped the first line, and I knew he had to repeat it. It\'s so honest, man, it\'s just like, ‘Fuck, I *still* got all this shit to do’. And he just kept on flowing. And that was the thing: If it feels good to me now, we\'re going to do it *now*. This shit was lighting me up. Because if it\'s not lighting you up, why are you doing it?” **“Ends Now” (with serpentwithfeet)** “So we’re back to Mansur’s crazy licks. I breathed a vocal on this, and asked Serpent’ to try some vocals on it, and he fell in love. He just got it. Then he\'s taking my lyrics and putting them in places to sustain his vocal in moments, and pocket it differently. He’s also not trying to do the conventional thing, it’s all about what feels good.”

naafi.bandcamp.com/album/desire-path Master: Imaabs Arte: Asma - 'Alas, this flat image wins my love, as I behold it. But I cannot press my arms around the form I see' (2021) cortesía de Deli Gallery N.A.A.F.I ® 2022

Rather than a set of songs, think of Colombian-born, Berlin-based artist Lucrecia Dalt’s eighth album, *¡Ay!*, as a room cast in sound: smokey, low-lit, seductive but vaguely threatening; a place where fantasy and reality meet in deep, inky shadow. Dalt’s takes on the bolero, son, ranchera, and merengue that form the romantic spine of Latin pop are genuine enough to feel folkloric and off-kilter enough to conjure the art and experimental music she’s known for—a contrast that pulls *¡Ay!* along on its hovering, dreamlike course. Squint and you can imagine hearing “Dicen” in a dusty bar somewhere or swaying to “La Desmesura” or “Bochinche.” But like the great exotica artists of the ’50s, Dalt teeters between the foreign and the comforting so gracefully, you don’t recognize how strange she is until you’re in her pocket. *¡Ay!* is lounge music for the beyond.

Lucrecia Dalt channels sensory echoes of growing up in Colombia on her new album ¡Ay!, where the sound and syncopation of tropical music encounter adventurous impulse, lush instrumentation, and metaphysical sci-fi meditations in an exclamation of liminal delight. In sound and spirit, ¡Ay! is a heliacal exploration of native place and environmental tuning, where Dalt reverses the spell of temporal containment. Through the spiraling tendencies of time and topography, Lucrecia has arrived where she began.

On *Respect the Come Up*, Manchester’s Meekz resurfaces with the fascinating duality that has marked his high-flying breakthrough—combining sharp-witted observation with a master class in blocking out the world around you. “I don’t think people understand or even notice that a lot of this stuff is for me,” he tells Apple Music. “It’s selfish, but a lot of this is for me to reflect on, and yeah, other people do seem to like it. But *Respect the Come Up* is to remind myself, ‘Get the fuck up.’ Along with the people that I might have inspired, I want to make sure I stay aware of how I’ve been blessed. And to remind myself that it’s never over, so you should never cheat the grind.” The 2020 mixtape *Can’t Stop Won’t Stop* occupied a much darker world—arriving on the back of jail time and subsequent self-work—and also broke down the enigma of the masked Gorton rapper. Here, he embraces the moments of progression that have followed with forensic self-examination: “Hope you didn’t think I’d panic/I’ve seen the ship sinking, it’s been Titanic/But I just think gigantic,’ he raps on “Instagram Caption.” “The whole tape reminisces and reflects on the past, present, and future. That’s why I’m looking \[on the mixtape cover\] in all directions with eyes to all of that,” he says. “There’s songs for the past \[‘Hustler\'s Ambition’\] and songs with a message for the future, thinking about kids \[‘Patience’\] and others that fall into all of the categories. I understand how that’s hard to understand, but that’s just me.” Below, he takes us through the story of *Respect the Come Up*, track by track. **“Say Less”** “I don’t need to be online. I don’t even really need to do interviews. I just say less. This is that freestyle-slash-‘Respect the Come Up’ vibe here, that core Meekz \[sound\].” **“Respect the Come Up”** “This song means so much to me. I’m taking you through the motions here. I’m talking to the inner me, like, ‘Meekz, you’ve come a long way, and you should pat yourself on the back.’ That’s why I repeat it so many times: ‘respect the come up’ for real. And I know, musically, it’s not *that* amazing, but I bet it hits you right in the chest. This is the alarm clock for the Meekz Manny army.” **“Fresh Out the Bank” \[Meekz & Dave\]** “The angels had me lit that night \[in the studio\]. I hit a pocket that I’m not sure I could hit again, even if I tried. My voice did some crazy shit that night. I’d been rapping for seven days straight, going crazy, and I thought, ‘You know what? Let’s not even rap on these n\*\*\*\*s right now. Let me give some melodies.’ \[Dave\] and I were in the studio for almost a week, turning up. Some of the guys came through and, eventually, ended up a full party in there: 10, 20 of us, all dancing to this track as it’s being made.” **“Don’t Like Drill”** “Actually, I say, ‘I don’t like drill much’ because I do like it—just not *that* much. Would you like drill \[music\] if you could rap like me, you know what I mean? Furthermore, I don’t like the fact that it’s killing my people. Let’s just go with that one.” **“More Money”** “This is the ‘get money’ anthem of the mixtape. I’m just trying new things out with my vocals, finding new flows, and also switching up \[my style of\] beat.” **“Hustler’s Ambition”** “Of all the elements I tap into \[on this mixtape\], this song falls into each of them. I’m reminiscing on the past but still thinking on the present and future, all at once.” **“Patience”** “As I get older, I realize the benefit of allowing things to season and marinate. Things take time sometimes and need a bit more love and soul poured into it—that’s the general idea here. And over the years, that same patience is just something that I’ve learned to develop.” **“Take Losses”** “I think everyone’s taken a loss and had to bounce back, and it just feels better when you win eventually. When you come from the bottom, everything tastes better when you get it out of the mud. And lastly, those losses are where you learn from the most. These are all well-known facts—I’m just reflecting on them here.” **“Killin’ Off”** “The mandem named this one. I just laid down the track. We didn’t have a name for it at first, actually. And I should probably also explain, in Manchester terms, ‘killing off’ means, yeah, ‘I made a killing off’...whatever. Not killing something off. It’s just our terminology, but the world’s going to have to get to know sooner or later.” **“Instagram Caption”** “I was out in Essex, in the mansion we rented. Indoor pool, outdoor pool, basketball court, and I had the family over, feeling like Frank Lucas up in there. And I recorded this at 5 o’clock in the morning. The producer was falling asleep, ready for bed. Told him to stay up and hit them buttons. Some people that were asleep in the room woke up at some point, and I still carried on with the freestyle—one take, from top to bottom.”

Underground to overground. Forest to metropolis. North Africa and South Africa, meeting up, digging down, finding gold in the seams. Here, at the intersection of club floor and ritual, of electronics and ceremony, are worlds both ancient and modern. Otherworlds, where inhibitions fall away, dancers shakedown and trance takes you out there, and far away. This is Archeology – the astounding debut album from Montparnasse Musique. Wrapped in striking visuals and released on Real World Records, Archeology finds the live rhythms of traditional and urban Africa meeting the programmed beats of modern Johannesburg. It’s a distinctive sound: wild, nuanced, pan-African.

In genre terms, the electronic duo ODESZA occupies a bit of a gray area: not quite dance music (too dense and cinematic for the club), but not quite pop or indie, either. Some have labeled the group’s sound “chill-bass,” which, though clunky, appropriately captures their hybrid sound—a mix of heady, meditative soundscapes (chirpy samples, airy chimes, and synths that almost sound like they’re breathing) with the explosive glitz and drama of main-stage EDM. Over the past decade, Harrison Mills and Clayton Knight leaned hard into this niche and built a cult following, becoming the sort of rare electronic act that can carry a packed amphitheater. (Their shows have fireworks, drum lines, drone shows, and trippy visuals, all soundtracked by sweeping, emotional songs meant to take you on a journey.) Their ambitious fourth album *The Last Goodbye* doubles down on that maximalism, with guest stars (Ólafur Arnalds, Låpsley, The Knocks), vintage samples (Bettye LaVette’s soulful 1965 single “Let Me Down Easy” inspired the title track), and enough skittering dance-floor texture to tip each track into rave-able turf. Yet despite their danceable shape and percussive muscle, these songs are introspective at their core. The driving techno-pop cut “Wide Awake” featuring Charlie Houston is lonely and melancholic, with lyrics about standing alone at a party submerged in your own emotions (“I hate the way it hurts breathing/Thought that I could put these feelings aside,” she sings). That comforting combination of loneliness and togetherness—a hallmark of live music, and dance music in particular—could be the centerpiece for *The Last Goodbye* and the ODESZA experience as a whole: Nostalgic, yearning, sentimental songs about getting lost in your own feelings can be soothing with 20,000 strangers dancing by your side.

ODESZA announces their fourth album: ‘The Last Goodbye’ which will be released July 22 via Foreign Family Collective/Ninja Tune. Symphonic, vast, and emotionally stirring, ‘The Last Goodbye’ is set to be the GRAMMY-nominated duo’s most ambitious album to date. A project rife with brightness and emotion, nostalgic yet rooted in the present, it serves as a sweeping sonic experience that speaks to themes of connection, reminiscence and the impact we impart on one another. It’s a vivid celebration of the people and moments that have left fingerprints on our existence, echoing throughout the record. As the duo’s most personal record to date, it’s a brilliant collection which looks to interweave the past and the present in a euphoric way. “Over the past few years we’ve been able to reflect on who we are, what it means to do what we do, and in the end, who we are doing this for,” said ODESZA about the forthcoming album. “We became focused and inspired by the impact our families and friends have imprinted on us, and how we want to continue to echo that out as we move through this life. We found comfort in the fact that those who we love stay with us, that they become intrinsically part of us, in a way.” In tandem, the latest single of the project “Love Letter (feat. The Knocks)”, is out now – a dynamic, emotive vocal refrain that serves as a personal proclamation, speeding amongst curtains of orchestral synths. The track joins previous singles “The Last Goodbye (feat. Bettye LaVette)" and “Better Now (feat. MARO)” to showcase an initial taste of the breadth of the record, which Mills & Knight masterfully thread together – to create this expansive, yet seamless cohesion found on the forthcoming full-length LP. “This song has had a wild ride!” said The Knocks about “Love Letter”. “It was originally started about 5 years ago and went through many versions before ODESZA took it to its final form. We always knew there was something really special about it. It was one of those ideas we kept coming back to and being frustrated by because we knew it was amazing but we couldn't get it totally right. This new version blew our minds and we felt like it had finally found its rightful home. The rest is history.” ODESZA added “The Knocks sent us an incredible demo that we were immediately drawn to. Once we started writing for the new record we rediscovered the song and felt like it embodied much of the sound we were looking for. Over the next couple of months we worked to develop the track to its current form. Inspired by the late 90’s and early 2000’s electronic scene, we went about trying to craft something that felt both timeless and modern.” In addition to The Knocks, Bettye LaVette & MARO, ‘The Last Goodbye’ will also feature collaborators Låpsley, Ólafur Arnolds, Julianna Barwick, Izzy Bizu, & Charlie Houston. This batch of collabs follows high profile previous musical partnerships with Leon Bridges, Little Dragon, Regina Spektor, RY X and more. Recently, ODESZA announced “The Return” – their first live shows in three years, which will aptly take place at their hometown Seattle’s Pledge Climate Arena for a sold-out three night run (July 29th – 31st). “The Last Goodbye” (feat. Bettye LaVette) and “Better Now” (feat. MARO) dropped earlier this year to acclaim from Billboard who called the former, “a sleek, propulsive stunner” and the NY Times who said it “brings some Slavic melancholy to four-on-the-floor dance music, samples the most heart-rending phrases of LaVette’s vocals and stretches out the anguish, proving again how classic the song remains”. The release a few weeks later of “Better Now” led Dancing Astronaut to proclaim “while there was no question about it before, we’re truly in ODESZA season”.

Silky-smooth vocals and alt-R&B jams ignite an assured debut LP.

In 1990 Ronald Lee Trent Jr. was the teenage creator of Altered States – a raw, futuristic techno-not-techno anthem, which in retrospect was something of a stylistic anomaly for the young artist. Across subsequent years, with time spent in Chicago, New York and Detroit, came the development of his signature sound, and renown as a world class purveyor of deep, soul infused house/garage. This story has already been told, and on casual inspection, the well-worn platitude ‘house music legend’ is an old shoe that still fits. However, in fact, he’s actually so much more, and has been for quite a while. A genuine musician, songwriter, and ‘producer’ in the proper, old-school sense, the artist today has more in common with Quincy Jones than he does your average journeyman DJ track-hack. To those in the know, these broader skills haven’t gone unnoticed, which is why on the highly collaborative, career-topping new LP ‘What Do The Stars Say To You’, it took little persuasion to recruit serious star power. Brazilian royalty Ivan Conti and Alex Malheriros from Azymuth, violin maestro Jean Luc Ponty, ambient hero Gigi Masin, hype band Khruangbin and more performed, whilst NY cornerstone François K provided mastering duties. At various points Ron himself played drums, percussion, keys, synths, piano, guitar and electronics. Harking back to the 70s and 80s boom in adventurous, luxurious albums, WDTSSTY is a love letter to the longplayer, where rich musicality and a liquid smooth, silky flow make seemingly odd genre bedfellows acquiesce harmoniously. Each song its own high-fidelity odyssey, Trent incorporated a broad range of live instruments and electronics into a sophisticated, euphonic whole. Described by him as being “designed for harmonising with spirit, urban life and nature”, this is aural soul food, gently easing you into balmy nights, where everything is alright. Originally wanting to be an architect, Trent’s views his approach to collaboration and music in general as having the same principles. A firm believer in the nourishing qualities of sound, he sees direct parallels between the two disciplines, being as the purpose of good architecture is to improve quality of life. “With WARM, through sound design, I built frameworks for the musicians, who furnished and occupied these structures beautifully, which was a big compliment for me”, he comments. The conditions required for a good collab are more than simply structural though, as Trent expounds, “I’m a huge fan of everyone on the record, especially Jean Luc and Azymuth, who’re part of my DNA. Each track was made with that guest in mind – for example, when I started writing ‘Sphere’, I immediately thought ‘this IS Ponty’. I played the keys in his style, and did a guide violin solo using a synth, which he then re-did, amazingly. ‘Cool Water’ is based around Azymuth themes, so when I sent it to Ivan, he could immediately see himself in the piece; He got what I was going for straight away. For ‘Melt Into You’ I hit up Alex on Instagram, sent him the track, he liked it, and within 24 hours he’d sent back six different bass passes!” “Conversely, Admira began with a sketch sent by Gigi and became something combining Jon Hassell-esque chords and the feel of ‘Aquamarine’ by Carlos Santana, which links back to Masin’s recurrent nautical theme”, he adds. With community, history and the need for racial equality never far from Ron’s mind, ‘Flos Potentia’ translates from Spanish as flower power, but rather than promoting some hippy idyll, instead it refers to plants which drove the slave trade: tobacco, sugar and cotton. Joined by Khruangbin, together they propel Dinosaur L, Hi-Tension and afrobeat into an ethereal, clear-skyed stratosphere. Aside from these esteemed guests, other key influences cited by Trent include ‘Gigolos Get Lonely Too’ by Prince, ‘Beyond’ by Herb Alpert, David Mancuso, Jan Hammer, Tangerine Dream, The Cars, Trevor Horn, Alan Parsons Project and pre-Kraftwerk incarnation Organization. A multitude of others are audible too, including George Bension, Vangelis, Loose Ends, Maze, Flora Purim, Weather Report, Atmosphere, Grace Jones, James Mason and Brass Construction Vinyl Tracklist Includes download codes for the François Kervorkian Continuous Mix and full unmixed tracks as MP3 / FLAC / WAV A1. Cool Water feat. Ivan Conti (Azymuth) and Lars Bartkuhn A2. Cycle of Many A3. Admira feat. Gigi Masin A4. Flowers feat. Venecia A5. Melt into you feat. Alex Malheiros (Azymuth) B1. Flos Potentia (Sugar, Cotton, Tabacco) feat. Khruangbin B2. Sphere feat. Jean-Luc Ponty B3. WARM B4. On my way home B5. What do the stars say to you CD Tracklist 01 Melt into you feat. Alex Malheiros (Azymuth) 02 Cool Water feat. Ivan Conti (Azymuth) and Lars Bartkuhn 03 Flos Potentia (Sugar, Cotton, Tabacco) feat. Khruangbin 04 The ride 05 Cycle of Many 06 In the summer when we were young 07 Flowers feat. Venecia 08 Sphere feat. Jean-Luc Ponty 09 Admira feat. Gigi Masin 10 Endless Love 11 Rocking You 12 WARM 13 On my way home 14 What do the stars say to you 15 Cool Water Interlude

Shygirl toyed with simply self-titling her debut album, but *Nymph* felt far more evocative—and fitting. “A nymph is an alluring character but also an ambiguous one,” the artist and DJ, whose real name is Blane Muise, tells Apple Music. “You don’t quite know what they’re about, so you can project onto them a little bit of what you want.” Co-written with collaborators including Mura Masa, BloodPop®, and longtime producer Sega Bodega, it’s an album that defies categorization, its stunning, shape-shifting tracks blending everything from rap and UK garage to folktronica and Eurodance. Along the way, it reveals fascinating new layers to the South London singer, rapper, and songwriter. While *Nymph* contains moments that match the “bravado” (her word) of earlier EPs *Cruel Practice* and *ALIAS*, Shygirl says this album is “ultimately the story of my relationship with vulnerability.” As ever, sensuality is central, but she resists the “sex-positive” label. “With a track like ‘Shlut,’ I’m not saying my desire is good or bad,” she says. “I’m just saying it’s authentically who I am.” Read on as Shygirl guides us through her beguiling debut album, one song at a time. **“Woe”** “This song is me acclimatizing to the audience’s presence and how vocal they are. Sometimes it’s annoying to have all these other voices \[around you\] when you’re trying to figure out your own. But then, on the flip of that, isn’t it nice that people actually want something from you? I often do that: give myself space to express some frustration or an emotion, then look at it in different ways. Sometimes I do that with sensitivity, and sometimes I’m just taking the piss out of myself. Like, ‘OK now, just get over it.’” **“Come For Me”** “For me, this song is a conversation between myself and \[producer\] Arca because we hadn’t met in person when we made it. She would send me little sketches of beats, then I would respond with vocal melodies. Working on this track was one of the first times I was experimenting with vocal production on Logic, manipulating my voice and stuff. It was really daunting to send ideas over to Arca because she’s such an amazing producer. But she was so responsive, and that was really empowering for me.” **“Shlut”** “I said to Sega \[Bodega\], ‘I want to use more guitar.’ I love that style of music, more folky stuff, because I used to listen to Keane and Florence + the Machine in my younger days. So, that’s definitely an undercurrent influence here, but the beat is a horse galloping. The horse was a very prevalent idea when I was making this album because it’s this powerful animal that is oftentimes in a domestic setting being controlled by someone. At the same time, there’s an element of choice in that relationship because the horse could easily not be tamed. I love that and relate to it a lot.” **“Little Bit”** “I have to give Sega credit for the beat. The way I work, mostly, is in the same room \[as my collaborators\], and we start from scratch. When most producers send me beats, I’m not inspired by them. But when Sega plays me stuff, I’m like ‘Wait, no—can I have that?’ I think because we started working together in 2015, he can probably anticipate what I want now. I never imagined hearing myself on a beat like this. It reminds me of a 50 Cent beat, which takes me back to my childhood. So, even the way I’m rapping here is nostalgic. I’m being playful and inserting myself into a sonic narrative that I didn’t think I would occupy.” **“Firefly”** “I started this song with Sega and \[producer\] Kingdom at a studio in LA, but then Sega had to leave for some reason. I was feeling a bit childish because I was like, ‘What’s more important than being in this room right now?’ So, then, with just me and Kingdom, I was like, ‘If I was going to make an R&B-style song, this is what it would sound like.’ I’d been listening to a lot of Janet Jackson, and I’d just watched her documentary. But really, I was kind of just taking the piss as I started freestyling the melodies. I really like being a bit flippant with melodies and not being too formulaic.” **“Coochie (a bedtime story)”** “The title is a Madonna reference. When I was shooting a Burberry campaign last year, her song ‘Bedtime Story’ was playing on repeat. It became the soundtrack to this moment where I was acclimatizing to a space \[in my career\] that was bigger than I had anticipated. I started writing this song at an Airbnb in Brighton with Sega and \[co-writers\] Cosha, Mura Masa, and Karma Kid. We were up super late one evening, and I was just sitting there, humming to myself. And I was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to have a cute song about coochie?’ Growing up as a girl, there’s not even a cute word for \[your vagina\]. Everything is so sexualized or anatomical. I was like, ‘I need to make this cute song that I would have liked to hear when I was younger.’” **“Heaven”** “This track is quite experimental. The production started quite garage-y, but then it got weird fast. And then we reworked it again because I wanted it to sound sweet. I was thinking about when I broke up with my ex-boyfriend; there were moments where I was like, ‘Can we just forget everything and get back together?’ Obviously, you can’t just forget everything—it’s childish to want to erase those parts, but I can have that space in my music. In some moments, my ex was my peace and my place of absolute escape. And that’s what I equated to heaven at that point.” **“Nike”** “This is me revisiting my childhood, being that teenager at the back of the bus. It started when \[co-writer\] Oscar Scheller played me this recording he’d made of girls talking on the bus, and in the original production, we even had that \[chatter\] in there. You know when a girl is talking and saying nothing but also saying everything? I was that person! My friends used to ask me for advice about stuff I had no experience in, and I would dish it out with such vim. I thought it would be funny to dip back into that space on this track and be playful with it. Because no matter how sensitive I get, there is always this part of me with real bravado.” **“Poison”** “I love Eurodance music. When I DJ, it’s what I play the most. I just find it really fun and sexy and flirtatious, and I relate to the upfront lyrics. Some of my audience probably isn’t as familiar with my musical references here, such as Cascada and Inna, so it’s fun to introduce them to that sound a little bit. And I love that we found a real accordion player to play on the track. I really enjoy the tone and texture that you can get from using a real instrument.” **“Honey”** “I made this track predominantly with \[producer\] Vegyn. It came out of a real jam session where we had music playing in the room, and I was speaking on the mic over it. You get the texture of that as the song starts. There’s a lot of feedback that reminds me of The Cardigans and stuff with that ’90s electronica vibe. For me, this track is all about sensualness. I had this idea of being in an orgasmic experience that keeps on intensifying, so I wanted to replicate that sonically. That’s why I’m repeating myself a lot and why the melody tends to rearrange just a little bit as I rearrange the order of the words as well.” **“Missin u”** “This song is about me being annoyed at my ex-boyfriend. We’d broken up like six times, and we weren’t even together at this point, and I was just being really petulant about that. I write poems when I’m feeling any intensity of emotion, and so I wrote this poem where I was just really dismissive of the whole situation. Then, when I was in the studio with Sega, I put the poem to the beat he was working on. I wanted this track to feel a bit disruptive at the end of the album. Because no matter how sensitive I get, there is also this sharper energy to me and my approach to lyrics.” **“Wildfire”** “This track has a very Joshua Tree title because I wrote it with Noah Goldstein at his house there. I was imagining looking across a bonfire at someone I don’t even know but kind of fancy and seeing the fire reflecting in their eyes. I romanticize situations a lot in this way, so this song is really me riffing off that idea. It’s main-character syndrome, I guess! I don’t really like closed beginnings and endings. If I was to write a story, I would always give myself space for it to continue, and I think ‘Wildfire’ does that a little bit. That’s why it’s the final track.”

Steve Queralt, bass player of pioneering shoegazers RIDE, and the writer and film-maker MIchael Smith have joined forces for a stunning four-track EP, released on Bytes in October. Over Steve’s exceptional electronic soundscapes, Michael provides spoken-word vocals in his lulling Hartlepool tones, distilling excerpts from his new book to fit with the music. The duo were introduced by Joe Clay from Bytes during lockdown, when Steve revealed that he was looking for vocalists to work with on some music he was putting together. Joe had met Michael when he collaborated with the late, great Andrew Weatherall, who composed a soundtrack to accompany Michael reading melancholic musings from his 2013 novel, Unreal City. Joe felt that Michael could be the perfect foil for Steve and after an experiment on Vespertina, a track that had previously featured sample dialogue from Penélope Cruz, they realised they had something special and decided to work on a full release together - four tracks in the classic RIDE EP format. “Michael’s voice has so much depth and character and I love his eye-rolling, withering view of the world,” Steve reveals. “The subject matter seemed to glue itself effortlessly to the music as if we’d been together writing in a studio working towards some grand concept.” “Whatever Steve sent me just seemed to fit where my head was at,” Michael adds. “Slowly but surely, in those days when time seemed like a strange, amorphous smudge, the tracks emerged, with us working at a distance, sending them back and forth, refining them, getting them right.” The results are nothing short of sensational, with the music ranging from the euphoric post-rock of Vespertina (which features Steve’s bandmate Loz Colbert on drums), to the propulsive dystopian electronica of Glitches; the weird psychedelic dub of Chaldean Oracle to the haunting Boards of Canada-esque ambience of In a Wonderland, which features Michael’s five-year-old son reading a Lewis Carroll poem as a kind of “chorus”. For Steve, the EP represents finding his own voice musically away from the band he has been an integral part of for so many years. “It’s about being able to make decisions about sounds, direction and arrangements,” Steve explains. “Knowing how the final version will sound and having the final say without making compromises.” Throughout, Michael’s beautifully crafted words compel and beguile, his thoughts on moving away from London to a seaside retreat and the anxiety of returning to the capital and his old Soho haunts again, musing on what London had become while he was away. “We’ve sleepwalked into the wrong England, so new it looks like the future, a future no one wants: it looks like the end of the world…”

Ever since 2013, when Sons of Kemet saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings first leaped onstage to join synth-and-drums duo Soccer96 in a spontaneous explosion of pure groove, the three musicians have been honing their gale-force attack. Dubbed The Comet Is Coming, the trio—Hutchings, drummer Max Hallett, and synth player Dan Leavers—first laid out its double-barreled jazz-dance fusion on 2016’s *Channel the Spirits*, then gave free rein to more psychedelic urges on 2019’s *Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery* and *The Afterlife*, which followed six months later. With *Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam*, The Comet Is Coming delivers its biggest, most expansive record yet. Part of that might stem from recording at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios, where the three musicians tracked four days of improv sessions that Hallett and Leavers subsequently reworked into these 11 powerhouse jams. In contrast to the previous two albums’ star-gazing tendencies, *Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam* unleashes a focused blast of energy with the opening “CODE,” with Hutchings meting out stabbing arpeggios over the rhythm section’s heads-down stomp. They expand their range with every track. “TECHNICOLOUR” is a slinky detour into liquid funk, and “LUCID DREAMER” drifts on a cloud of ambient soul; album highlight “PYRAMIDS” taps the tunnel-vision intensity of early-2000s techno. “ATOMIC WAVE DANCE” is another big one, with spiky sax riffs set against jagged arpeggios and a driving 4/4 beat, while on “AFTERMATH,” they pursue krautrock down an almost ambient path. And listeners pining for the last albums’ offworld vibes will find an escape pod in the form of “ANGEL OF DARKNESS,” an unrestrained journey to their cosmic-jazz limits. The Comet Is Coming has never sounded tighter—or freer—than they do here.

Releasing your debut album is the realization of a dream for any burgeoning artist. But for TSHA, *Capricorn Sun* sees not one but two dreams come true. “I’d always dreamt of having goats on my album cover,” she tells Apple Music. “I’m a Capricorn, so they’re my spirit animal, and they’re hardy, hardworking but playful, fun and interesting too, which is something I’ve always related to.” Following a run of EPs which saw TSHA become one of UK dance music’s most talked-about producers and claimed fans from Bonobo to Pete Tong (who recruited her as a mentor for his online DJ Academy), the London producer here defines and expands her music all at the same time. “It’s really eclectic in terms of the sounds I’m using,” she explains. “And I’m playing around with different tempos and delving into breaks and other sounds I haven’t explored much before. Overall it’s quite melancholic and there’s some darker moments than my previous work, but it’s optimistic and euphoric at the same time too.” Here, TSHA talks us through the album, track by track. **“Galdem (Intro)”** “During the lockdown, myself and my friend \[UK producer\] Effy really supported each other through what was a tough time and were sending voice notes back and forth to each other all day. I thought using one of those was a really nice way to open the album. Musically, it’s got the emotive piano chords and emotionally opens the whole album up.” **“The Light”** “This is a really simple track and was made at a time when I was feeling hopeful and positive for the future. It’s just the piano and a vocal sample, and calling it ‘The Light’ reflects where I was at mentally.” **“OnlyL” (feat. Nimmo)** “I love Nimmo, so it was great to work with them on this track. They have very different voices but they just marry together perfectly. There’s definitely a touch of ’90s rave euphoria here.” **“Water” (feat. Oumou Sangaré)** “I made this song just before the pandemic kicked off. I eventually managed to get the last flight out of the US, but before that, I’d been able to go into the BMG archive and found this vocal sample from Oumou Sangaré which I really love. I love the tone and the emotion in the voice. I couldn’t clear the sample at the time or I would have released it earlier, but I’m so glad people finally get to hear it.” **“Dancing in the Shadows” (feat. Clementine Douglas)** “Clementine has been on so many great dance tracks in the last few years, and she’s a real go-getter and is constantly writing top lines and sending them out to people. She sent me an a cappella and I just thought, ‘Wow, this is so beautiful.’ Usually I work on a track and then look for a vocal, but I worked the other way round with this. I wanted a bit of an early-2000s Ibiza vibe to it, and I’d also started to explore using breaks more in my music by then, so you can hear that influence too.” **“Giving Up” (feat. Mafro)** “Mafro’s my fiancé and also a successful music producer and artist in his own right. This was made during the lockdown in winter 2021 and it coincided with us being a bit disjointed because we were stuck in the house and couldn’t get away from each other. It was a tough time and I think that’s reflected in the music, but working on music together actually helped us out. It’s a melancholy track, and you can hear the frustration in it too.” **“Anxious Mind” (feat. Clementine Douglas)** “I wrote this at a time when I was suffering a lot of anxiety and it felt really heightened, so the track ended up sounding quite dark. I was also playing around with different tempos, and this is written at 140 beats per minute, which is the fastest I’ve written at. But it has that half-time sound so doesn’t strike you as being particularly fast at first.” **“Time”** “This is my favorite track on the whole album. We had moved to Tottenham and I got a studio there, so it was really nice to get out of the house and have my own space to work on music. That’s where I wrote this, and I was feeling really good about myself and happy at the time, so it’s got a lighter feel. I wrote it at 105 beats per minute, which is a really slow tempo for me.” **“Power”** “This track amalgamates a lot of old-school sounds with new sounds. There’s a great drum break on it, and then there’s a sample from a track called ‘I’m the One’ by the ’80s Brit-funk band Direct Drive. It’s a real dance-floor song and brings a lot of sounds I Iove together.” **“Running”** “Although it sounds nothing like them, I was quite influenced by Pink Floyd for ‘Running.’ I’d been listening to them a lot and there’s a psychedelic sensibility which kind of seeped into my brain and came out on some of the tracks. It’s a simple track really; the guitar riff is the main motif, and there’s a vocal sample in there too.” **“Sister”** “‘Sister’ was on my *Flowers* EP and is about me finding out I had a sister I didn’t know about, later in life. I wanted to include it on the album too because it’s a song I feel really good about and a lot of people got in touch with me saying how much it helped them over the past few years. I’m really attached to the song, and I’m glad other people are too.” **“Nala (Outro)”** “This track’s inspired by my dog, Nala. She’s my little studio friend, and I just look at her and feel inspired to write. She’s small and super loving, and I just wanted to dedicate something to her.”

TSHA returns to Ninja Tune with her long-awaited debut album ‘Capricorn Sun’, set for release on Friday 7th October 2022. Recorded over the past two years, the record delivers on the promise of her previous EP’s and Singles with 12 tracks that perfectly encapsulate the emotive blend of underground electronic and hook-laden pop sensibilities that have led to her being one of the most talked about new artists of the past few years. From gracing the front cover of high-profile magazines, appearing on numerous billboards, being included in flagship playlists and programmes by multiple streaming services and being placed on countless ‘best of’ & ‘one to watch’ lists, alongside high-praise from across the music press and radio – TSHA shows no sign of slowing down in 2022. The album follows her recent compilation for the revered ‘fabric presents’ series and an immense touring schedule that has seen her booked for over 100 shows across 2021/22, including opening for Disclosure at their two Alexandra Palace shows, performing to 40,000 fans across the West Coast of America with Bob Moses, a run of North American shows with Flume — including a stop at Colorado’s iconic Red Rocks Amphitheatre — a festival run that includes a set at this year’s Glastonbury and an ongoing residency at Ibiza’s DC-10 for Circoloco to name just a few. ‘Capricorn Sun’ is both a statement of where she is right now as an artist and producer, but also a reflection of time she spent writing and recording the album, and the impact of global events, familial upheaval and personal struggles during that period. Lead single “Giving Up” — released today and arguably the most ‘peak time’ moment on the record — features TSHA’s partner Mafro, and was written during a period of strain between the couple (“I feel like that track is a manifestation of our frustrations at the time”). As you move through the album’s remaining tracks there are noticeable shifts across moods and emotions - ranging from the more upbeat and positive “The Light” and “OnlyL” through to moodier cuts like “Anxious Mind” — a personal highlight of TSHA’s — and the brooding “Dancing In The Shadows”, both of which feature vocalist Clementine Douglas. Other tracks hold significance for particular points in TSHA’s life, such as the previously released single “Sister”, written during lockdown after finding out she had an older half sister via her estranged father, and “Water” which picks up on TSHA’s love of the Malian Griot singing traditions (as evidenced on previous single “Demba ft. Trio De Kali”) and features Grammy-winning vocalist Oumou Sangaré. As a Capricorn herself, TSHA was initially drawn to the tales of ancient Greek mythology that told of a creature with the body of a goat and tail of a fish, hinting at the dual nature of the sign and the idea of having two distinct sides to a personality. “I like to identify with some of the positive characteristics of a Capricorn: the hardiness and the work ethic… but also the sensitivity,” she explains. “Naming the album ‘Capricorn Sun’ was a good way of saying ‘this is me’”. It’s a theme that carries through the album’s creative and artwork, which features several pygmy goats that are “a visual representation of the different parts of me, like the songs on the album represent different parts of me,” says TSHA. ‘Capricorn Sun’ is out on LP/CD & Digitally on 7th October 2022.