The Quietus Albums Of The Year 2022

"I FEEL TRASHED"

"It’s a pop album, it’s a highly intricate sound art album and it’s a virtuoso psychedelic percussion album all in one. (...) But Pimpon’s real triumph isn’t the sonic diversity, it’s how it congeals into a coherent and singular world." - Daryl Worthington / The Quietus

Mitski wasn’t sure she’d ever make it to her sixth album. After the release of 2018’s standout and star-making record *Be the Cowboy*, she simply had nothing left to give. “I think I was just tired, and I felt like I needed a break and I couldn\'t do it anymore,” she tells Apple Music. “I just told everyone on my team that I just needed to stop it for a while. I think everyone could tell I was already at max capacity.” And so, in 2019, she withdrew. But if creating became painful, not doing it at all—eventually—felt even worse. “I was feeling a deep surge of regret because I was like, ‘Oh my god, what did I do?’” she says. “I let go of this career that I had worked so hard to get and I finally got, and I just left it all behind. I might have made the greatest mistake of my life.” Released two years after that self-imposed hiatus, *Laurel Hell* may mark Mitski’s official return, but she isn’t exactly all in. Darkness descends as she moves back into her own musical world (“Let’s step carefully into the dark/Once we’re in I’ll remember my way around” are this album’s first words), and it feels like she almost always has one eye on her escape route. Such melancholic tendencies shouldn’t come as a surprise: Mitski Miyawaki is an artist who has always delved deep into her experiences as she attempts to understand them—and help us understand our own. More unexpected, though, is the glittering, ’80s-inspired synth-pop she often embraces, from “The Only Heartbreaker”—whose opening drums throw back to a-ha’s “Take On Me,” and against which Mitski explores being the “bad guy” in a relationship—to the bouncy, cinematic “Should’ve Been Me” and the intense “Love Me More,” on which she cries out for affection, from a lover and from her audience, against racing synths. “I think at first, the songs were more straightforwardly rock or just more straightforwardly sad,” she recalls. “But as the pandemic progressed, \[frequent collaborator\] Patrick \[Hyland\] and I just stopped being able to stay in that sort of sad feeling. We really needed something that would make us dance, that would make us feel hopeful. We just couldn’t stand the idea of making another sad, dreary album.” This being a Mitski record, there are of course still moments of insular intensity, from “Everyone” to “Heat Lightning,” a brooding meditation on insomnia. And underneath all that protective pop, this is an album about darkness and endings—of relationships, possibly of her career. And by its finish, Mitski still isn’t promising to stick around. “I guess this is the end, I’ll have to learn to be somebody else,” she says on “I Guess,” before simply fading away on final track “That’s Our Lamp.”

We don’t typically look to pop albums to answer our cultural moment, let alone to meet the soul hunger left in the wake of global catastrophe. But occasionally, an artist proves the form more malleable and capacious than we knew. With Laurel Hell, Mitski cements her reputation as an artist in possession of such power - capable of using her talent to perform the alchemy that turns our most savage and alienated experiences into the very elixir that cures them. Her critically beloved last album, Be the Cowboy, built on the breakout acclaim of 2016’s Puberty 2 and launched her from cult favorite to indie star. She ascended amid a fever of national division, and the grind of touring and pitfalls of increased visibility influenced her music as much as her spirit. Like the mountain laurels for this new album is named, public perception, like the intoxicating prism of the internet, can offer an alluring façade that obscures a deadly trap—one that tightens the more you struggle. Exhausted by this warped mirror, and our addiction to false binaries, she began writing songs that stripped away the masks and revealed the complex and often contradictory realities behind them. She wrote many of these songs during or before 2018, while the album finished mixing in May 2021. It is the longest span of time Mitski has ever spent on a record, and a process that concluded amid a radically changed world. She recorded Laurel Hell with her longtime producer Patrick Hyland throughout the isolation of a global pandemic, during which some of the songs “slowly took on new forms and meanings, like seed to flower.” Sometimes it’s hard to see the change when you’re the agent of it, but for the lucky rest of us, Mitski has written a soundtrack for transformation, a map to the place where vulnerability and resilience, sorrow and delight, error and transcendence can all sit within our humanity, can all be seen as worthy of acknowledgment, and ultimately, love.

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.”

Nottingham has always been a melting pot for heavy music. For a small city, it has boasted more than its fair share of genre defining bands and artists, not to mention record labels. Bands cross-pollinate, form projects and offshoots and play one-off gigs that would result in lengthy careers and world tours if they had happened across the Atlantic. It has always been like that there. No big deal (but yet, a really big deal if you know). One such band/project/offshoot were Endless Grinning Skulls. Formed by guitarist Andy Morgan (also from Bloody Head, Army Of Flying Robots, Nadir and countless more), drummer Steve Charlesworth (Heresy, Wolves Of Greece, Meatfly, Geriatric Unit) and bassist Gords (Hard To Swallow, John Holmes, Geriatric Unit) in the early twenty-teens, they re-set the bar for the 3-piece hardcore band before (perhaps inevitably) burning out in 2018. Morgan and Charlesworth weren’t done though. They’d forged a bond in EGS and wanted to carry on playing together so - in a familiar Nottingham storyline - they recruited former Pitchshifter guitarist Stu Toolin on bass and Anmarie Spaziano (who you might know from running a famous burger joint) on vocals and formed Blind Eye. They knew Toolin was about to relocate to Portland, Oregon so they wrote and recorded an EP (released on Morgan’s own Viral Age Records). Quick-sharp. No messing about. And that – by rights – should have been that: over and out. New band please. However, the demo captured a rare intensity and vitality that more considered projects often fail to achieve. This was a band let loose, free from previous shackles and loving the noise they made. It seemed a shame to stop there.Recruiting Matt Grundy (a former bandmate of Morgan’s in both Nadir and Dead In The Woods) to the bass vacancy they went back to Stuck On A Name Studios in 2021 with Ian “Boulty” Boult at the helm again and delivered the album Decomposed. As well as their own self-created musical legacies, Decomposed recalls classic American hardcore like Bad Brains, Poison Idea and Jerry’s Kids or Japanese ragers like Paintbox, The Comes, Eiefits and Skizophrenia. But there’s also a healthy slug of classic UK and US punk and even a bit of Krautrock, psychedelia and Black Sabbath in there too. Let’s be honest, they’re all way too old to be slaves to the genre police anyway and we – the listeners - should all be thankful for that. Decomposed genuinely rocks out without losing one iota of the effervescent anger that made the demo such an essential listen. From the insistent, minimal opener Ready To Go Now via the unhinged thrash of Straw Man and the menace of the stomping Pero No Quieres, to the measured chugging and epic crescendo of closer Broken Star, this record is a fucking blast. Needle off, flip it back over, play it again. Your neighbours are loving it so much they’re banging on the walls to tell you. “I suppose the intention was to write high energy, catchy hardcore, with a nod to what has come before, but also to do our own thing,” explains Andy. “Lyrically, the album was written during the pandemic, and although it’s not ‘a pandemic album’, I think it deals with a lot of the feelings of loss, separation and isolation which resulted from it, as well as general anger and confusion at the state of the world. We’re just trying to make sense of it all really”

Active since 2006 with multiple projects, evolved in countless DIY or festival performances & putting out a handful of hardline releases, on their latest project 'Kleis' out in June via Gin&Platonic, the Saint-Etienne based musician and respected performer Amédée De Murcia alias 'Somaticae' examines the disturbing concept of dichotomy, fundamentally shaping the world around us. Being a follow-up to his noise, electronica and techno-oriented past releases via Brainstorm Lab, Lost Dogs ent. or In Paradisum, Kleis (meaning key in ancient greek) offers two iterations (the third is a cassette-only bonus) of an epic and raw, yet genuinely fluid sonic riddle. Composed and recorded during 2020 in Lyon, Kleis is a rebus encrypted with grubby drums, entangled irregularly like sonic tentacles of an octopus, unpredictably rolling on tossed with the cold streams of sharp noises. „The symbolism of the key has a double connotation since it has the power to open and close. It commands access to a place, inside a box, and to an acquaintance. Conversely, it can forbid this same access, so the key has both a role of initiation and discrimination,“ says Amédée.

In sharply differing ways, thoughts of place and identity run through Fontaines D.C.’s music. Where 2019 debut *Dogrel* delivered a rich and raw portrait of the band’s home city, Dublin, 2020 follow-up *A Hero’s Death* was the sound of dislocation, a set of songs drawing on the introspection, exhaustion, and yearning of an anchorless life on the road. When the five-piece moved to London midway through the pandemic, the experiences of being outsiders in a new city, often facing xenophobia and prejudice, provided creative fuel for third album *Skinty Fia*. The music that emerged weaves folk, electronic, and melodic indie pop into their post-punk foundations, while contemplating Irishness and how it transforms in a different country. “That’s the lens through which all of the subjects that we explore are seen through anyway,” singer Grian Chatten tells Apple Music’s Matt Wilkinson. “There are definitely themes of jealousy, corruption, and stuff like that, but it’s all seen through the eyes of someone who’s at odds with their own identity, culturally speaking.” Recording the album after dark helped breed feelings of discomfort that Chatten says are “necessary to us,” and it continued a nocturnal schedule that had originally countered the claustrophobia of a locked-down city. “We wrote a lot of it at night as well,” says Chatten. “We went into the rehearsal space just as something different to do. When pubs and all that kind of thing were closed, it was a way of us feeling like the world was sort of open.” Here, Chatten and guitarist Carlos O’Connell talk us through a number of *Skinty Fia*’s key moments. **“In ár gCroíthe go deo”** Grian Chatten: “An Irish woman who lived in Coventry \[Margaret Keane\] passed away. Her family wanted the words ‘In ár gCroíthe go deo,’ which means ‘in our hearts forever,’ on her gravestone as a respectful and beautiful ode to her Irishness, but they weren’t allowed without an English translation. Essentially the Church of England decreed that it would be potentially seen as a political slogan. The Irish language is apparently, according to these people, an inflammatory thing in and of itself, which is a very base level of xenophobia. It’s a basic expression of a culture, is the language. If you’re considering that to be related to terrorism, which is what they’re implying, I think. That sounds like it’s something out of the ’70s, but this is two and a half years ago.” Carlos O’Connell: “About a year ago, it got turned around and \[the family\] won this case.” GC: “The family were made aware \[of the song\] and asked if they could listen to it. Apparently they really loved it, and they played it at the gravestone. So, that’s 100,000 Grammys worth of validation.” **“Big Shot”** CO: “When you’ve got used to living with what you have and then all these dreams happen to you, it’s always going to overshadow what you had before. The only impact that \[Fontaines’ success\] was having in my life was that it just made anything that I had before quite meaningless for a while, and I felt quite lost in that. That’s that lyric, ‘I traveled to space and found the moon too small’—it’s like, go up there and actually it’s smaller than the Earth.” GC: “We’ve all experienced it very differently and that’s made us grow in different ways. But that song just sounded like a very true expression of Carlos. Perhaps more honest than he always is with himself or other people. All the honesty was balled up into that tune.” **“Jackie Down the Line”** GC: “It’s an expression of misanthropy. And there’s toxicity there. There’s erosion of each other’s characters. It’s a very un-beneficial, unglamorous relationship that isn’t necessarily about two people. I like the idea of it being about Irishness, fighting to not be eroded as it exists in a different country. The name is Jackie because a Dubliner would be called, in a pejorative sense, a Jackeen by people from other parts of Ireland. That’s probably in reference to the Union Jack as well—it’s like the Pale \[an area of Ireland, including Dublin, that was under English governmental control during the late Middle Ages\]. So it’s this kind of mutation of Irishness or loss of Irishness as it exists, or fails to exist, in a different environment.” **“Roman Holiday”** GC: “The whole thing was colored by my experience in London. I moved to London to be with my fiancée, and as an Irish person living in London, as one of a gang of Irish people, there was that kind of searching energy, there was this excitement, there was a kind of adventure—but also this very, very tight-knit, rigorously upkept group energy. I think that’s what influenced the tune.” **“The Couple Across the Way”** GC: “I lived on Caledonian Road \[in North London\] and our gaff backed onto another house. There was a couple that lived there, they were probably mid-seventies, and they had really loud arguments. The kind of arguments where you’d see London on a map getting further, further away and hear the shout resounding. Something like *The Simpsons*. And the man would come out and take a big breath. He’d stand on his balcony and look left and right and exhale all the drama. And then he’d just turn around and go back in to his gaff to do the same thing the next day. The absurdity of that, of what we put ourselves through, to be in a relationship that causes you such daily pain, to just always turn around and go back in. I couldn’t really help but write about that physical mirror that was there. Am I seeing myself and my girlfriend in these two people, and vice versa? So I tried to tie it in to it being from both perspectives at some point.” **“Skinty Fia”** GC: “The line ‘There is a track beneath the wheel and it’s there ’til we die’ is about being your dad’s son. There are many ways in which we explore doom on this record. One of them is following in the footsteps of your ancestors, or your predecessors, no matter how immediate or far away they might have been. I’m interested in the inescapability of genetics, the idea that your fate is written. I do, on some level, believe in that. That is doom, even if your faith is leading you to a positive place. Freedom is probably the main pursuit of a lot of our music. I think that that is probably a link that ties all of the stuff that we’ve done together—autonomy.” **“I Love You”** GC: “It’s most ostensibly a love letter to Ireland, but has in it the corruption and the sadness and the grief with the ever-changing Dublin and Ireland. The reason that I wanted to call it ‘I Love You’ is because I found its cliché very attractive. It meant that there was a lot of work to be done in order to justify such a basic song and not have it be a clichéd tune. It’s a song with two heads, because you’ve got the slow, melodic verses that are a little bit more straightforward and then the lid is lifted off energetically. I think that the friction between those two things encapsulates the double-edged sword that is love.” **“Nabokov”** GC: “I think there’s a different arc to this album. The first two, I think, achieve a sense of happiness and hope halfway through, and end on a note of hope. I think this one does actually achieve hope halfway through—and then slides back into a hellish, doomy thing with the last track and stuff. I think that was probably one of the more conscious decisions that we made while making this album.”

"2020’s A Hero’s Death saw Fontaines D.C. land a #2 album in the UK, receive nominations at the GRAMMYs, BRITs and Ivor Novello Awards, and sell out London’s iconic Alexandra Palace. Now the band return with their third record in as many years: Skinty Fia. Used colloquially as an expletive, the title roughly translates from the Irish language into English as “the damnation of the deer”; the spelling crassly anglicized, and its meaning diluted through generations. Part bittersweet romance, part darkly political triumph - the songs ultimately form a long-distance love letter, one that laments an increasingly privatized culture in danger of going the way of the extinct Irish giant deer."

We Jazz Reworks is an idea that repurposes some of the label’s output 10 albums at a time. That is, we invite producers whose music we love on board, and one by one, they tackle 10 albums worth of source material, of which they are free to use as much or as little as they choose. The series evolves chronologically, so this volume being number two, the source material is pulled from We Jazz LPs numbers 11 through 20. The artist has complete freedom. Volume 2 in the series happens with Carl Stone, a legendary figure in creative music. His career spans decades of unlimited musical innovation. Stone’s recent output on Unseen Worlds, the label who has also been instrumental in issuing some of his remarkable earlier work, ranks among the most original art of our time and renders notions such as ”genre” virtually meaningless. Here, We Jazz originals by Terkel Nørgaard, OK:KO, Jonah Parzen-Johnson and more are met here with a fresh sense of discovery, spun around and delivered ready for the turntable once again. Carl Stone says: ”It was wonderful that We Jazz gave me carte blanche to work with any materials from the set of ten releases in its catalog. This freedom to work with everything could have been a mixed blessing though, as it could be a challenge to try to deal with so much musical information. In the end I did what I almost always do: Let my intuition be my guide and to seize upon any musical items that seemed to fit into an overall approach.” ”To make a new piece I usually start with an extended period of what really is just playing, the way a child plays with toys. Experimentation without necessary expectation, leading to (hopefully) discovery of things of musical interest, then figuring out a way to craft and shape these into a structured piece of music. Each track uses a different approach, which I found along the way during this play period.” This conceptual approach becomes complete with the design, in which album graphics are treated in a similar fashion, reworking what’s there. This time around, the artwork is reinvented by Tuomo Parikka, a great friend of the We Jazz collective and a regular cover collage contributor for the We Jazz Magazine.

On “Tick Tock,” the second track on *Warm Chris*, Aldous Harding asks, “Now that you see me, what you gonna do? Wanted to see me.” The New Zealand singer-songwriter’s lyrics have always been veiled and poetically cryptic—and she’s made a point of not explaining the meaning behind any of it. But her fourth album feels assured and open in a way that makes you wonder whether the question is directed at an audience that\'s been wanting to learn more about this singular artist. There’s a lot to see here, and like a well-directed film, it benefits from multiple replays, with more nuances and hidden meanings uncovered on each listen. Across her four albums, you’ll notice a linear emotional evolution. Speaking to Apple Music in 2019 about her then-new album *Designer*, she said, “I felt freed up… I could feel a loosening of tension, a different way of expressing my thought processes.” The journey clearly continued. *Warm Chris* is as intimate and curious as ever, but it’s more grounded, more confident. If the tension was loosening on *Designer*, here, Harding has grown accustomed to the relaxed space and made herself at home. The album seems to deal primarily with connections and relationships. She reflects on a lost love during opener “Ennui” (“You’ve become my joy, you understand… Come back, come back and leave it in the right place”), hunts for faded excitement on “Fever” (“I still stare at you in the dark/Looking for that thrill in the nothing/You know my favorite place is the start”), comically complains on “Passion Babe” (“Well, you know I’m married, and I was bored out of my mind/Of all the ways to eat a cake, this one surely takes the knife… Passion must play, or passion won’t stay”), and accepts an ending on “Lawn” (“Then if you\'re not for me, guess I am not for you/I will enjoy the blue, I’m only confused with you”). On the whole, *Warm Chris* feels light and folksy, and the music is relatively simple—though not without its surprises. There are brass embellishments here, a psychedelic guitar solo there, even a brief foray into forlorn vintage blues on “Bubbles.” It leaves space for Harding’s voice to remain in the spotlight. Her vocal acrobatics are as strange and versatile as ever—she can shift from breathy, dramatically deep bass to ultra-fine, ultra-high falsetto in moments, sometimes for only a word at a time. She sounds innocent and paper-thin on the gentle “Lawn,” lively—and inflected with an unusual accent—on “Passion Babe.” Her delivery is so pronounced and hyperbolic on the heart-wrenching “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain” that it sounds like something out of a musical. And album closer “Leathery Whip” feels inspired by The Velvet Underground, complete with a deep Nico drawl (occasionally flipping to a Kate Bush-style nasal tone), backing harmonies, a jangling tambourine, and a cheeky refrain: “Here comes life with his leathery whip.”

An artist of rare calibre, Aldous Harding does more than sing; she conjures a singular intensity. The artist has announced details of Warm Chris new studio album, the follow-up to 2019’s acclaimed Designer. For Warm Chris, the Aotearoa New Zealand musician reunited with producer John Parish, continuing a professional partnership that began in 2017 and has forged pivotal bodies of work (2017’s Party and the aforementioned Designer). All ten tracks were recorded at Rockfield Studios in Wales, the album includes contributions from H. Hawkline, Seb Rochford, Gavin Fitzjohn, John and Hopey Parish and Jason Williamson (Sleaford Mods).

HELLS HEADBANGERS is proud to present CANDELABRUM's highly anticipated third album, Nocturnal Trance, on CD, LP and cassette formats. CANDELABRUM hail from Portugal, renown in the past decade for its polarizing raw black metal scene. The nameless mainman behind the band has been involved within that scene for many years, and even before his native scene found worldwide recognition. And even within that scene/idiom, CANDELABRUM stands alone, enigmatic and electric: his works are slavishly reverential of ancient black metal whilst simultaneously unorthodox. The band's two albums to date, 2016's Necrotelepathy and 2018's Portals, are equally astounding modern classics which emit a strangely shimmering quality amongst an explosion of emotive rawness. Both albums are immersive and mesmerizing experiences unto themselves. Wisely prizing quality over quantity, CANDELABRUM only emerge from the shadows when a new experience is fully formed and ready to curse/haunt/liberate the listener: at long last, Nocturnal Trance. Truly titled, this third album is a strident synthesis of its monolithic predecessors as well as form meeting content. Conceptually, Nocturnal Trance deals with the same theme of Necrotelepathy and Portals: death and the passage to a different plane, beyond. On those previous CANDELABRUM records, the figure on the front cover is always "moving" - crossing the passage, as it were - but this time, the mainman chose to clearly portray the passage from absolute darkness to an ominous monochromaticism: both a blinding light and a complete lack of it, going beyond darkness and back around to an absence of literally everything. Such transition poignantly plays out across the five component compositions comprising the 39-minute Nocturnal Trance. While no less raw than those predecessors - in fact, newcomers to CANDELABRUM will be stunned by such a soundfield - above and below those lysergic layers of the album betray a wealth of new(er) sensations, ones that encompass a respectably wider range of musical moments and emotions. Because indeed, CANDELABRUM is nothing if not emotive, which is all the more amazing given that the chosen canvas is resolutely RAW black metal. Likewise, that range also spans both ends of the spectrum, equally so from delirious dissonance to majestic melody, creating a contrast that paradoxically makes CANDELABRUM's monochromaticism somehow kaleidoscopic. Darkly uplifting, beautifully violent, Nocturnal Trance is everything its title promises it to be. Death is represented as a release, the liberation of the spirit to an unbounded state, and indeed is that what the brave listener will experience here: a triumph over time, space, and matter. As ever, CANDELABRUM hold the keys to the Beyond.

Recording Nov 2019 by Manu Laffeach at Chaudelande Studio Mixage: Ernest Bergez Mastering vinyle et cutting : Daniel Krieger Mastering digital : Ernest Bergez Pressage : VinylRecordMakers Production : Standard In-Fi, Florence Giroud, Zamzamrec Texts: Florence Giroud & Raphaël Defour Julia Kremer for Kremer & Bergeret William Blake for Moments in love Special thanks to all the Chaudelande team, Arthur James, Le Point du jour Cherbourg, Le Réaume, Samuel Antonin, Lionel Catelan, Zamzamrec, Corentin, Jérôme Bouve and Joy, sunshine of my life Florence Giroud

Unique, strong, and sexy—that’s how Beyoncé wants you to feel while listening to *RENAISSANCE*. Crafted during the grips of the pandemic, her seventh solo album is a celebration of freedom and a complete immersion into house and dance that serves as the perfect sound bed for themes of liberation, release, self-assuredness, and unfiltered confidence across its 16 tracks. *RENAISSANCE* is playful and energetic in a way that captures that Friday-night, just-got-paid, anything-can-happen feeling, underscored by reiterated appeals to unyoke yourself from the weight of others’ expectations and revel in the totality of who you are. From the classic four-on-the-floor house moods of the Robin S.- and Big Freedia-sampling lead single “BREAK MY SOUL” to the Afro-tech of the Grace Jones- and Tems-assisted “MOVE” and the funky, rollerskating disco feeling of “CUFF IT,” this is a massive yet elegantly composed buffet of sound, richly packed with anthemic morsels that pull you in. There are soft moments here, too: “I know you can’t help but to be yourself around me,” she coos on “PLASTIC OFF THE SOFA,” the kind of warm, whispers-in-the-ear love song you’d expect to hear at a summer cookout—complete with an intricate interplay between vocals and guitar that gives Beyoncé a chance to showcase some incredible vocal dexterity. “CHURCH GIRL” fuses R&B, gospel, and hip-hop to tell a survivor’s story: “I\'m finally on the other side/I finally found the extra smiles/Swimming through the oceans of tears we cried.” An explicit celebration of Blackness, “COZY” is the mantra of a woman who has nothing to prove to anyone—“Comfortable in my skin/Cozy with who I am,” ” Beyoncé muses on the chorus. And on “PURE/HONEY,” Beyoncé immerses herself in ballroom culture, incorporating drag performance chants and a Kevin Aviance sample on the first half that give way to the disco-drenched second half, cementing the song as an immediate dance-floor favorite. It’s the perfect lead-in to the album closer “SUMMER RENAISSANCE,” which propels the dreamy escapist disco of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” even further into the future.

Building on the widespread acclaim of his 2020 Blue Note debut *Omega*, alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins delivers another momentous statement with his sophomore release, *The 7th Hand*. For the most part a showcase of the same incendiary quartet with pianist Micah Thomas, bassist Darryl Johns, and drummer Kweku Sumbry, this outing also includes a collaboration with another of Sumbry’s projects, the Farafina Kan Percussion Ensemble, on “Don’t Break,” and two tracks (including the radiant “Witness”) featuring flutist Elena Pinderhughes, known for her work with Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah. Wilkins envisioned this album as an interconnected suite, with episodes ranging from the tripwire rhythm of “Emanation” and the uptempo fury of “Lighthouse” to the hypnotic melodies of “Shadow” and “Fugitive Ritual, Selah.” The final track, lasting nearly a half hour, sends the quartet into a whole other zone of freely improvised, slowly building heat.

“I literally don’t take breaks,” ROSALÍA tells Apple Music. “I feel like, to work at a certain level, to get a certain result, you really need to sacrifice.” Judging by *MOTOMAMI*, her long-anticipated follow-up to 2018’s award-winning and critically acclaimed *EL MAL QUERER*, the mononymous Spanish singer clearly put in the work. “I almost feel like I disappear because I needed to,” she says of maintaining her process in the face of increased popularity and attention. “I needed to focus and put all my energy and get to the center to create.” At the same time, she found herself drawing energy from bustling locales like Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, all of which she credits with influencing the new album. Beyond any particular source of inspiration that may have driven the creation of *MOTOMAMI*, ROSALÍA’s come-up has been nothing short of inspiring. Her transition from critically acclaimed flamenco upstart to internationally renowned star—marked by creative collaborations with global tastemakers like Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish, and Oneohtrix Point Never, to name a few—has prompted an artistic metamorphosis. Her ability to navigate and dominate such a wide array of musical styles only raised expectations for her third full-length, but she resisted the idea of rushing things. “I didn’t want to make an album just because now it’s time to make an album,” she says, citing that several months were spent on mixing and visuals alone. “I don’t work like that.” Some three years after *EL MAL QUERER*, ROSALÍA’s return feels even more revolutionary than that radical breakout release. From the noisy-yet-referential leftfield reggaetón of “SAOKO” to the austere and *Yeezus*-reminiscent thump of “CHICKEN TERIYAKI,” *MOTOMAMI* makes the artist’s femme-forward modus operandi all the more clear. The point of view presented is sharp and political, but also permissive of playfulness and wit, a humanizing mix that makes the album her most personal yet. “I was like, I really want to find a way to allow my sense of humor to be present,” she says. “It’s almost like you try to do, like, a self-portrait of a moment of who you are, how you feel, the way you think.\" Things get deeper and more unexpected with the devilish-yet-austere electronic punk funk of the title track and the feverish “BIZCOCHITO.” But there are even more twists and turns within, like “HENTAI,” a bilingual torch song that charms and enraptures before giving way to machine-gun percussion. Add to that “LA FAMA,” her mystifying team-up with The Weeknd that fuses tropical Latin rhythms with avant-garde minimalism, and you end up with one of the most unique artistic statements of the decade so far.

Chicago rapper/producer Saba’s first full-length since 2018’s critically acclaimed *CARE FOR ME* looks existentially inward instead of projecting outward. Whereas its predecessor was often perceived through the lens of grief, with his cousin John Walt’s tragic death weighing considerably on the proceedings, his third album explodes such listener myopia with a thoughtful and thought-provoking expression of American Blackness. Though its title might suggest scarcity on a surface level, these 14 songs exude richness in their textures and complexity in their themes. “Stop That” imbues its gauzy trap beat with self-motivating logic, while “Come My Way” gets to reminiscing over a laidback R&B groove. His choice of collaborators demonstrates a carefully curated approach, with 6LACK and Smino bringing a sense of community to the funk-infused “Still” and fellow Chicago native G Herbo helping to unravel multigenerational programming on the gripping “Survivor’s Guilt.” The presence of hip-hop elder statesman Black Thought on the title track only serves to further validate Saba’s experiences, the connection implicitly showing solidarity with sentiments and values of the preceding songs.

On her expansive debut album, singer/songwriter/producer Hayden Silas Anhedönia introduces her alter ego Ethel Cain, a Southern anti-belle desperate to escape the smothering grip of familial trauma, Christianity, and the American dream. On *Preacher’s Daughter*, the Florida-reared conceptualist and recovered Southern Baptist finds a sense of freedom in darkness and depravity, spinning a seedy, sweeping, slowcore yarn of doomed love and patriarchal oppression with cinematic ambition. Cain allows the titular preacher the first word on droning opener “Family Tree (Intro),” then teases a little pop-star charm on the twangy “American Teenager,” before digging her teeth deep into sex, drugs, violence, and rock ‘n’ roll with the provocative pout of Lana Del Rey. She laments a lost love on the heartland heartbreaker “A House In Nebraska,” hitchhikes west on the sprawling Americana saga “Thoroughfare,” and spirals into Dante’s hell on the thunderous industrial nightmare “Ptolemaea.” Cain’s voice haunts and lingers like a heavy fog, long after she’s devoured by a cannibalistic lover—in a blaze of glam-metal guitar—on the album’s grandiose finale, “Strangers.”

Erupt offer up five fiery tracks on Left To Rot. Treading the blurry lines between extreme punk and extreme metal, Left To Rot is a cacophony in all the right ways. Fast as, heavy as, nasty as. Featuring members of Sheer Mag, Geld and Gutter Gods - Erupt brings its own molten explosions to the surface. These burnt offerings are recommended for fans of Sodom, Celtic Frost, Iron Age, Warthog, Mindsnare and the other hordes of apocalypse old and new. For orders outside of Australasia - visit Static Shock Records (UK) for cheaper shipping.

For Hyperdub founder Kode9, aka Scotland-born, London-based producer Steve Goodman, dance music and futuristic philosophy are inextricable, and their bond appears especially tight on *Escapology*, his first album since 2015’s *Nothing*. The LP serves as the soundtrack to Goodman’s evolving multimedia project *Astro-Darien*, a science-fiction narrative about British colonialism, Scotland’s history in the slave trade, and the future of space travel. Though those themes may not be immediately apparent in the music itself, there’s no mistaking the avant-garde nature of Goodman’s off-world fantasies. Where Kode9 has historically danced on the fringes of styles like dubstep and UK funky, here he largely leaves the club behind, teasing flickering stretches of footwork-inspired rhythms (“The Break Up,” “Angle of Re-Entry”) and then letting them dissolve in glistening pools of beatless, atonal synths. Rather than causing whiplash, though, these unexpected transitions only draw you deeper into the album’s labyrinthine dimensions, bringing Goodman’s imaginary world vividly to life.

‘Escapology’ - Kode9's first album since 2015's ‘Nothing’ – is the first audio document of a wider project, Astro-Darien, ongoing since last year. His most ambitious work yet as a multi-disciplinary artist, ‘Escapology’ is the soundtrack album to the sonic fiction Astro-Darien, which will be released in October on Hyperdub’s sub-label Flatlines. The music reconfigures Astro-Darien's tense, off-world atmospheres into slices of high definition, asymmetric club rhythms, woven through thrilling sound design and vertiginous sonics. ‘Escapology’ is just one entry point into of the Astro-Darien universe, which had begun to surface in 2021 as a two-week audiovisual installation on the main dance floor at club space Corsica Studios in South London, and as a multi-channel diffusion on the 50 speaker Acousmonium at the invitation of INA-GRM in Paris, the institution founded in 1951 by the musique concrète pioneer Pierre Schaeffer, composer Pierre Henry and the engineer Jacques Poullin.

“Since 2014 we have been releasing albums under the death’s dynamic shroud name in pairs or as individuals, but Darklife is the strongest representation of our combined sensibilities, shifting from heavy electronic dance music to bubblegum pop, from gentle ballads to harsh digital abstractions; it is an outpouring of ideas and acts as a new beginning for the group. Much of the album is about the nature of love as a metaphor for our individual philosophies sparking and melding in the music, examining love as a social construct, or as the fabric of the universe, or as not existing at all. As our debut for 100% Electronica, Darklife can also be seen as a bridge between the underground tape and electronic scene of the 2010s into the dance and pop world the label has been shepherding.” -death’s dynamic shroud CRITICAL RECEPTION 8/10 -The Needle Drop “On a new double album, the experimental collective continues its journey from vaporwave toward fractured, maximalist pop music… Darklife documents DDS’s humanity emerging from their once purely digital world. While it still features the internet-damaged sample manipulation that has become their trademark, it also incorporates more original production, instrumentation, and vocals than previous releases.” -Pitchfork "A dizzying, idea-packed journey into fractured maximalist pop from Death's Dynamic Shroud." -Bandcamp "...Tech Honors, James Webster, and Keith Rankin of Orange Milk Records are in fine form with the new project, which demonstrates a poppier development since their niche beginnings on tracks like "Fall For Me," "Neon Memories," and "Judgement Bolt." -FADER “Stunningly beautiful” -The Needle Drop on ‘Messe de E-102 during NMF The Needle Drop: Best Tracks of the Week in Weekly Track Roundup: 4/17/22" “Messe de E-102” is a spooky electro-pop thriller brimming with tension and triumph." -What's Good on ‘Messe de E-102’ "It’s a bear that death’s dynamic shroud have wrestled with for years and consistently come out on top with adventurous triumphs like 'Neon Memories.'" -FADER on Neon Memories 10 songs you need in your life this week: 4/18/22 "...indie-pop track that evolves into a massive electronic behemoth... there’s never been a better time to be a fan of Death’s Dynamic Shroud." -Lyrical Lemonade on Neon Memories “...Fucking awesome…” -The Needle Drop on ‘Judgment Bolt’ during NMF “‘Judgment Bolt’ continues the search for untraditional dancefloor bangers, channeling Skrillex and the digital miasma of classic vaporwave.” -THE FADER on ‘Judgment Bolt’ “…a pixelated, dancefloor-shaking blur of digitized beats, trippy orchestral passages and mutated vocals that stoke excitement for the full-length to come.” -Columbus Alive on ‘Judgment Bolt’

„My recording techniques all boil down to one thing – intuition. I do not use expensive or highly sensitive equipment nor do I employ special techniques. On the contrary, I believe that the information regarding a space or an object can be recorded well enough on an average device. My personal guideline when recording sound is the positioning of myself as the listening medium, active and with the intention of establishing a connection that is sometimes intellectual, sometimes conceptual, and sometimes phenomenological.” - Manja Ristić, in an interview for Kulturpunkt.hr It is to the detriment of our understanding of musicality that we mostly measure it by the capacity to produce, and much less by the capacity to receive some sort of acoustic information or event. The virtuosity of listening, of understanding the sonic situation and its potential, is, however, that which defines one's capacity to interact – with other musicians, with the audience, and with the environment. This could also be taken to mean that an ethical act is implied in the situation of listening – the decision to relate, to be attentive to, to actively position oneself in relation to what is heard. Rarely is this capacity so thoroughly pronounced and ethically conscious as in the case of Manja Ristić, the Belgrade-born and Royal Academy of Music-schooled musician, composer, sound and multimedia artist (the list could go on), who currently lives on the island of Korčula in the Croatian part of the Adriatic. Ristić’s recent, field recording-based work, is indeed all about attentiveness, most of all towards the environment and the acoustic traces of the endangered ecological layers of her old-new Mediterranean surroundings. With that in mind, it is indeed no wonder that her newest album draws from Milton’s Paradise Lost, which could easily be the anti-slogan of the endangered Croatian coast, eaten up by the pressures of touristification and the usurpation and privatization of once common space. More precisely, the album is inspired by one of the fifty Gustave Doré illustrations of Milton’s epic, Him, fast sleeping, soon he found, In labyrinth of many a round, self-rolled, from which it draws its title. The verses and the scene are from Book IX, and depict the moment Satan inhabits the Serpent, the beginning of his subversion of God’s autocratic rule, as some interpretations would have it. For Ristić, the actual Paradise she introduces us to is in a state of imbalance – the idyllic soundscapes of her island surroundings overlain with sonic anxiety, such as on the album’s first track, The Flies, with its unrelenting, nervous buzzing evoking the ominous Biblical entity of Beelzebub, or The Lord of the Flies. The next track, Whales, which beautifully utilizes archival whale recordings, could also be taken to establish an intertextual relation to Milton through Melville, whose Moby Dick was strongly influenced by Paradise Lost. The middle track of the album, dedicated to the Croatian-American painter and muralist Maksimilijan Vanka, uses to great, unsettling effect what to my ears sounds like a buried hydrophone, a technique often employed by Ristić in her work, giving us a rough, grinding impression of water beating the pebbles over a high-pitched drone. But perhaps the most ominous, pessimistic image is painted in The Flag Pole, in which the symbol of revolutionary victory (I’m thinking of the Yugoslav modernist Tin Ujević and his proto-avant-garde sonnet Farewell from 1914) becomes a source of terrifying sonic unease, as we are listening to the incessant sound of its rope hitting the metal pole. However, with Dlana Night comes relief – the drones become airier, calmer; there is a distant notion of people, dogs, everyday life, all shrouded in the calming sound of the crickets on the island of Silba. Ristić, ultimately, serves us some hope on this wonderful new album, showing us that something has been lost, but that something can also be gained through the thoughtful attention with which she listens to the world around her.

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.

"Appears to have emerged out of something deep, timeless, and possibly mineral" – The Quietus "A kind of psychedelic hypnosis which fully immerses you in its sound" – Louder than war "The most distant reaches of what can conceivably be called folk music." – Folk Radio UK

"One of the UK’s most brilliant and boundary-pushing electronic producers." – The Guardian "A map of James’ own complicated emotional terrain, one in which signposts of Eastman’s work reappear like symbols in a dream." – Pitchfork Celebrated UK producer Loraine James joins Phantom Limb for breathtaking homage to vital NYC composer Julius Eastman, reinterpreting, reimagining and responding to key works for a brand new album. In 1990, the composer Julius Eastman quietly passed away, out of the spotlight, a young man. By his death substance-addicted, homeless and broke, he was unforgivably overlooked in his lifetime. Still, the legacy of creative work he leaves is far more befitting to celebration than destitution. Only a portion of his music remains - a deeply regrettable sidenote to an already heartbreaking story - but this work represents a glorious and beautifully hued depiction of a composer totally in step with any modern great we could name. Phantom Limb are long-term fans of both Eastman and Loraine James. Using their rare, fortuitous connection with Julius’ surviving brother Gerry, the label began this new project in summer 2021, hoping to continue the current tide of efforts to reinstate Eastman’s rightful place in 20th-century composition. Loraine was offered a zip drive of Eastman originals (courtesy of Gerry Eastman), Renee Levine-Packer & Mary Jane Leach’s illuminating biography Gay Guerilla (University of Rochester Press, 2015), and transcribed MIDI stems (courtesy of Phantom Limb A&R James Vella), and the resulting album Building Something Beautiful For Me carries the Eastman torch with finesse and sensitivity. Loraine employs samples, melodic motifs, themes and imagery, and inspiration from Eastman’s canon, slicing, editing, pulling apart and playing samples like instruments to craft a stunning album that venerates Eastman’s genius while adhering to her own. Speaking in similar tongues as young, gay, Black, independent creatives in a challenging environment, the two musicians are bound closely together, despite a six-year gap between their lives ever intersecting. James includes the original Eastman title in many of her tracks, appending the source material in parentheses to mark the lineage of the work - a clear, traceable thread from the heavenly to the sublime. In keeping with key Eastman codes, Phantom Limb engaged Black creatives to complete the record, including acclaimed designer Dennis McInnes for the album packaging, which is inspired by Eastman’s marginalia on his own (surviving) manuscript pages: “we sought to visually convey the complexity of what we may see as beautiful, how beauty is misunderstood and often lies beneath the surface.”

The most jarring part about listening to the London band black midi isn’t how much musical ground they cover—post-punk, progressive rock, breakneck jazz, cabaret—but the fact that they cover it all at once. A quasi-concept album that seems to have something to do with war (“Welcome to Hell,” “27 Questions”), or at least the violence men do more generally (“Sugar/Tzu,” “Dangerous Liaisons”), *Hellfire* isn’t an easy listen. But it’s funny (main character: Tristan Bongo), beautiful, at least in a garish, misanthropic way (the Neil Diamond bombast of “The Defence”), and so obviously playful in its intelligence that you just want to let it run over you. The first listen feels like being yelled at in a language you don’t understand. By the third, you’ll be yelling with them.

black midi’s new album Hellfire will be released on 15th July. Hellfire builds on the melodic and harmonic elements of Cavalcade, while expanding the brutality and intensity of their debut, Schlagenheim. It is their most thematically cohesive and intentional album yet.

A collection of eight vignettes constructed via a patchwork sampling process. Out now on Good Morning Tapes. "Sanguine but just the right side of soporific, the vibe dials up echoes of classic balearic bliss crossed with early Terre Thaemlitz in its sound sensitive soulfulness and warmth, washing over yr skin and mind with a classicist balm that’s perfectly in chime with the season. Jazz drums, lissom guitar and synth-flute streaks conjure bright blue skies and cirrus streaks in ‘Dawn Song’, while ‘Two Ones’ doubles the tempo on a swaying ambient jungle flex that also perfuses the hazier hues of ‘Ambergris (Blue)’ and dances around the links between deep house, ambient and D&B like Terre Thaemlitz’s ambient beauty ‘Tranquilliser’ (1994) in the lilting congas of ‘Asp’, caressing strums of ‘Lisle’, and the piano-led ambient blues of ‘Sunchoke. The last gasp of summer, right here." -Boomkat Cassette copies available via the Good Morning Tapes bandcamp: goodmorningtapes.bandcamp.com/merch/gi-gi-sunchoke-cassette-album GMT054

Multidisciplinary Afrofuturist artist Nwando Ebizie announces the forthcoming release of her highly-anticipated debut album ‘The Swan’, via Matthew Herbert’s label Accidental Records, on 22nd July 2022, including a special cassette tape release. This genre-breaking album is a work of sonic fiction into the imagined world of a matriarchal community, unfolding like a time-bending ethnographic account of found sound and footage that is at once both ancient and futuristic. The project brings together Nwando’s left-field electronic experiments, cross-border musical influences, radical live art practices, and interests in Black Atlantic ritual cultures and speculative fiction. Alongside the long-awaited album release, Nwando has been invited to curate a weekend of Black Fabulation at the Southbank Centre in London as part of the "Summer: In The Black Fantastic" season from 22-24 July. The events are an opportunity for participants to experience ‘The Swan’ over three days via a “constellation that makes up my lens of the world”. Nwando will open the gates to ritual cultures of the Black Atlantic, exploring experimental performances, guided visualisations, dance, and live music, before finally resting and resetting. Nwando says: “I want to feature those who, like myself, fall between the cracks of artforms. Because the global minority mode of artform doesn’t satisfy. It clings to gods that I don’t recognise, to boundaries and borders that don’t allow for expansion.” Released on 22 July, Nwando’s debut album The Swan follows on from the dizzyingly experimental heights of 2021 singles, I Seduce, and The Swan, the latter of which was chosen by Gazelle Twin as her ‘favourite song of 2021’ and was featured on Tom Ravenscroft’s BBC 6 Music’s NYE show and BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction NYE show. In addition, Nwando was also nominated for an Ivor Novello Composer award. Nwando now announces the release of the new single ‘Myrrha’ (13 July), which she describes as “a lament. A song of sufferance, of metamorphosis. Change is painful, and Transformation is essential.” Floating along atop the Yanvalou rhythm, with a marching band interceding, Myrrha features samples by Tom Richards made on his analogue DIY synths, and saxophones by regular collaborator and the album’s co-producer Hugh Jones. Having previously released left-field pop and electronic music under Lady Vendredi (her blaxploitation pop alter-ego), Nwando carves out a bold new Afrofuturist exploration in The Swan, her first album release under her own name Nwando Ebizie. Later this year, Nwando will tour The Swan with a live performance, supported by Battersea Arts Centre, through the Foyle Foundation.

American Rituals collects the recordings of Cheri Knight made during the fertile, DIY movement that flowered around Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington in the early eighties. With access to the college’s multitrack recording studios, a lending library of instruments, and an unbridled spirit of experimentation, Cheri and her collaborators created ecstatic amalgamations of minimalism, art rock, and vocal technique that illuminate a rich Pacific Northwest counterpoint to the parallel New Music scenes of downtown New York and San Francisco. Restored and remastered from original tape sources by Josh Bonati, the vinyl edition includes comprehensive liner notes by Steve Peters.

“This is the evolution of badness.” In 2018, Digga D became one of the first British musicians to be handed a Criminal Behaviour Order controlling his output. Trapped in a cycle of prison time and staccato output, it seemed the Ladbroke Grove drill MC might not realise his considerable potential. Then 2021’s *Made In The Pyrex* mixtape arrived, with its explicit nods to Los Angeles gang culture and 2000s’ US rap trends. It underlined his prodigious ability, while also announcing his considerable ambitions “Before I blew up, all that I knew was London,” he tells Apple Music. “Now I know there’s much more to do out here in the world.” Is *Noughty By Nature*, then, a bid for US domination? It certainly pays its dues to Digga’s biggest American idol. “I was born in 2000, I’m a noughties baby and I grew up listening to 50 Cent,” he says. “I felt like I needed to show that.” He does so pretty emphatically: retooling three of the New Yorker’s memorable anthems. Liverpool talent Still Brickin hops on for “Pump 101”’s wild braggadocio (sampling G-Unit’s “Stunt 101”), Digga lines up queries over a striking sample of “21 Questions” on “Hold You Down”, while he taps Bronx spitter B-Lovee for scattergun drill flows (the “Best Friend”-sampling “What You Reckon). But it’s when Digga embraces home that he’s arguably most compelling. “Intro” charts his personal history—taking in early neglect, juvenile felonies and the pain of loss—and connects the dots between his troubled start to the scandals that have checked his professional progress. There are clear shots at rap rivals, but this tape makes it clear Digga knows who his worst enemy is—and how he’s battling against past mistakes. “This is the evolution of badness,” he tells Apple Music. \"I’m showing it from the start, playing with toys, then getting older, starting to smoke and getting into more. Right up to Digga with the mic \[today\], staying out of trouble. I’m showing everything in my nature, so you’ll get the full picture.” Below, Digga D talks us through his third mixtape. **“Intro”** “The disclaimer at the start of this track is to put you in a different mind space on this tape. I want you to feel me—what I’m saying and where I’m coming from.” **“Alter Ego”** “I wanna say, firstly, this is all fiction. It’s based on characters that you could say are different versions of me. Over the years I’ve had a few \[nicknames\], but these days my friends just call me Digga.” **“Load Up”** “I was 30 songs deep when I came up with this, still recording and stacking them up. In general, I prefer making these songs to others that have a more commercial sound. It’s way more fun and easier to get creative with the ad-libs.” **“Stuck In The Mud”** “I set this concept up around school play. It’s where the title comes from: the popular playground game. If you’ve seen my videos, then you’ll know I like to run with whole visual themes and get creative, if I was to shoot one for this track, obviously, we’re taking it back to the playground.” **“Pump 101” \[feat. Still Brickin\]** “I asked \[British producer\] AaronOrAge specifically to sample the \[“Stunt 101”\] beat—just to see what I could do on it. I’ve been listening to 50 Cent from a young age, about four or five years old, so this has been on my mind for some time. Still Brickin is a good friend, who just happens to rap, and I really like listening to him.” **“Hold It Down”** “I dropped a freestyle on \[50 Cent’s 2003 single\] “21 Questions”, in 2018. I put it out on Instagram, so you could say this idea has kinda been around for a while. And on this tape: I decided the time was right to fully turn it into a song.” **“What You Reckon” \[feat B-Lovee\]** “Firstly, I rate B-Lovee’s music. And after meeting him: I can say I rock with him as a person, too. There’s a YouTuber \[in New York\] called Crooklyn—this was all down to him. He records reactions to videos and freestyles on his page, so I sent him this track, when I was out in New York, like, ‘I *really* need B-Lovee on this. Could you make it happen?’ And he done his ting, rapid! He put us on a FaceTime \[call\] together, and we did the rest. So big up Crooklyn.” **“Main Road”** “I had fun with this one. The song usually starts in my head and builds from there. I start humming, or freestyling, just to find a flow, then I run with it. I really like the punchline scheme I threw in for the second verse here, I’m letting it be known that I’ve still got it.” **“Secret” \[feat. Internet Money, Rack5, Dodgy & Horrid1\]** “I wouldn’t say these are my worst secrets \[on the track\]. It’s only music, so it’s nothing for me to put this out. Trust me, there’s deeper stuff that definitely doesn’t need to be out there. I’m only telling the calm secrets on this track.” **“G Lock” \[feat Moneybagg Yo\]** “I didn’t actually get in the studio with Moneybagg, like I did with Hotboii \[for “Rambo”\], so this one was a different vibe, but still fun to do. I definitely want to visit the West \[Coast\], and also \[Washington\] D.C., on my next trip out there. It’s where the White House is, I guess. But Atlanta is where I picked up the best vibes—they’re hustlers there. They think of something to do, and stick to it. They *really* get money, so you can’t sit around and not get some out there.” **“Statement”** “I know a lot of people won’t like some of the things I say on here. But I don’t really care. I’ll say what I want. You get me? This is my statement. That’s it.” **“Addicted”** “I made this song in 2009. I was in jail, writing things down, and this is how it ended out. It’s addictive, right? In my head: I’m talking to just the one person. But, honestly, my mind usually goes wherever it wants.” **“Attention”** “I was just asking a few questions on this track, to be honest. I’m always curious. I wanna know why guys are upset with me, because I don’t really know. But I know that they’re seeking more attention.” “Rambo” \[feat. Hotboii\] “This is produced by my boy Itchy at \[creative consultancy and independent record label Groundworks. I mean, you’re always going to be one of the greatest if you’re under them, they’re right in everyone’s faces, and I feel like they’re the best team that’s out right now. And they’re also my friends. You have to have that \[relationship\] or you won’t get any realness.” **“Why” \[feat. AJ Tracey\]** “I made this with AJ on the same day that we also made \[2021 single\] “Bringing It Back”. We started off punching in bars, going four by four \[lines\], and you know AJ is a beast in the booth, so we cooked this one quickly.” **“Let It Go” \[feat. Maverick Sabre\]** “I like telling stories. My mind travels to different places and helps me write out songs like this one. But when we were recording, \[British producer and songwriter\] Jake Gosling was telling me: ‘Sing, man! Sing!’ And before you know it, I’m in the studio, singing away. I know I can’t sing, right? But I can still try!”

With their first album in seven years, Bay Area death-metal titans Autopsy continue the gore-splattered comeback run they began with 2011’s *Macabre Eternal*. This time, the classic lineup of vocalist/drummer Chris Reifert and guitarists Danny Coralles and Eric Cutler are joined by new bassist Greg Wilkinson (also of Brainoil), who signed on in 2021. “What’s Greg bringing to the table?” Reifert asks, repeating Apple Music’s question. “A lot of liquor, so there’s that. But he’s also adding some cool dimensions to the songs and coming up with some really creative basslines. He’s just a cool person to have around, too.” On *Morbidity Triumphant*, Reifert returns to the fertile lyrical ground of early Autopsy staples like 1989’s *Severed Survival*, writing songs inspired by ’80s horror movies, serial killers, and bizarre cults of his own creation. Below, he comments on each track. **“Stab the Brain”** “We wanted to start off with something right out of the gate that just laid into things. We wanted to immediately stab your brain musically. Lyrically, it’s about a cult ritual where a woman is standing over a coffin spread-legged and squirts a baby out into the coffin and then stabs it in the brain. So, that part’s pretty literal. Things get nonsensical from there—all of a sudden, she’s like a dead queen that everyone needs to worship.” **“Final Frost”** “The end of the world is a popular theme in metal because the apocalypse is always fun to talk about. But rather than the Earth going up in a scorching ball of flame or something like that, it slowly freezes, and everyone gradually turns into frozen statues. I tried to pick interesting words that fit together well, that aren’t just like, ‘You’ve been hacked in half’ or whatever. Everything’s been done, so you’ve got to do better these days. Greg wrote the riff to that song. That was his contribution to the album, and he did a hell of a job.” **“The Voracious One”** “There’s two songs on this album that harken back to my favorite scenes from horror movies or horror stories from the olden days. I just had a rare moment of horror reflection, I guess. For some reason, I thought about that story from the first *Creepshow*, whether it’s from the movie or the book—‘The Crate.’ We used to write about horror stuff more back in the old days, on *Severed Survival* and stuff, but now we hardly ever do it anymore. But fuck, there’s no rules here. Musically, it’s a slower kind of shambling, stoner-y thing.” **“Born in Blood”** “Lyrically, this doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot. It’s just blood and guts and gruesomeness and all things slimy and squishy and nasty. It\'s not a cohesive story, but I did steal the title from a line in the new *Dexter* season, so that kind of stood out. Musically, this is pretty old-school death metal, to use that tired old chestnut of a term. It’s pretty straightforward, but it’s a lot of fun.” **“Flesh Strewn Temple”** “This is a Danny song—he wrote most of the riffs for the record. Lyrically, it’s another cult reference, this time about a modern-day human sacrifice cult. I imagine it exists in some remote place in the world that no one goes to and that has no access to technology or anything like that. One of those places that’s frozen in time but still exists in 2022. And there’s flesh strewn everywhere, pretty much.” **“Tapestry of Scars”** “That one is about someone who’s super into self-harm—cutting and scarring and all that—but in an artistic way. Not even because they’re trying to make up for something wrong with their life or whatever—or maybe that’s completely what it’s about. Either way, they’re obsessed with turning their entire body into one giant scab or cut or sore or scar or whatever. The object is to have nothing unscarred, from head to toe—not even a millimeter. So, you’re a walking tapestry or scars, basically.” **“Knife Slice, Axe Chop”** “This is another rare moment of reflection. I’m usually not a looking-back person. But I thought it’d be cool to do a song about watching horror movies back when we were obsessed with finding the goriest, splatter-iest, bloodiest movies. Just go to the video store, rent a pile of movies, and watch them over and over. You’re rewinding your favorite scenes, like, ‘Did you see that head fly across the street?’ I think the video we did for this one perfectly captured that essence.” **“Skin by Skin”** “That one is about someone that preys on people who are vulnerable. They meet people in the street and say, ‘Hey, I’ll take you home and make you safe and give you food and shelter.’ And then, when it’s too late to get out, they notice everything in the entire house is made of human skin sewn together: faces, legs, hands, feet, torsos—you name it. I’m talking the ceiling, the floor, the walls, everything. And guess what? This person that just got suckered into the house is the next piece.” **“Maggots in the Mirror”** “Here’s another one where I was thinking about a scene from an old horror movie. I don’t know why I thought of it, but I had a flashback to the scene in *Poltergeist* where the dude is looking in the mirror and, next thing you know, he’s ripping his face off and shit. Kind of a classic scene. So, that was the inspiration for that one. One of my favorite lines in the song is, ‘Your face is a worm farm.’ I prefer not to reference old movies anymore, but once in a while, you’ve just got to fucking go for it.” **“Slaughterer of Souls”** “This is another one that’s not really about anything in particular. It’s just a matter of putting cool words together in cool structures. There’s no storyline. Looking back at the lyrics, it just seems like a kind of weird psychosis that I can’t explain. I was alerted to the At The Gates album *Slaughter of the Soul*, but this is just different enough to not worry about it. Plus, we’re not calling our album that. Plus, At The Gates is cool, so it’s not a terrible thing to be mentioned with.” **“Your Eyes Will Turn to Dust”** “Again, there’s no storyline on this one. It’s just a title that sounded cool and kind of scary. It’s just words strung together in a way that I thought was cool. And it’s fun to read. Even if it wasn’t set to music, it’s something I can trip out on reading.”

THE LONG-AWAITED FULL-LENGTH RETURN OF THE US DEATH METAL PIONEERS FOR A NEW BOUT OF SUPREME SICKNESS. “Absolutely brilliant. "Morbidity Triumphant" is definitely one of the year's best death metal albums” - Blabbermouth Since first bursting onto the death metal scene with the now genre classic ‘Severed Survival’ back in 1989, and following up with the equally revered ‘Mental Funeral’ album, the influential US quartet has carved an unwavering legacy over three decades as masters and purveyors of the vile sides of the extreme metal spectrum. And now, Autopsy marks its reinvigorated return, presenting the first new full-length studio opus since 2014’s ‘Tourniquets, Hacksaws and Graves’ with ‘Morbidity Triumphant’; a savage offering of brutal death, showing the US legends still have an unbridled hunger for the sadistic, never reluctant to step beyond the threshold of decency. ‘Morbidity Triumphant’, the band’s eighth album, is truly a dark delight for seasoned and new listeners alike, with a raw organic sound perfectly encapsulating what makes Autopsy so distinguishable among its peers, for what could easily be considered one of its strongest offerings to date. The driving force of Autopsy as ever is the virtuoso guitar pairing of Eric Cutler and Danny Coralles, effortlessly trading off their schizophrenic leads and switching from all-out death metal madness to groove-laden heavy doom, with unmistakable drum/vocal legend Chris Reifert being master of proceedings, spewing his own infinitely creative maniacal musings. ‘Morbidity Triumphant’ also notably marks the first album to feature new bassist Greg Wilkinson, currently also seen in Static Abyss along with Chris. ‘Morbidity Triumphant’ was recorded at Opus Studios, with long-associated engineer Adam Munoz at the helm. Mastering was completed by Ken Lee. The cover artwork appears courtesy of Wes Benscoter (Slayer, Bloodbath), with a new work of twisted and sinister genius. Autopsy will be supporting ‘Morbidity Triumphant’ with a series of dates throughout the remainder of 2022.