We got jungle-hip-hop; gqom; various experimental electronic forms with jungle, dubstep & techno influences; international sound-art; Haitian-American folk; and cello!
LISTEN AGAIN as if your very life depends on it! Podcast here, stream on demand from FBi.
They Hate Change – Who Next [Jagjaguwar/Bandcamp]
They Hate Change – Screwface [godmode/Bandcamp]
They Hate Change – Coded Language (Interlude) [Jagjaguwar/Bandcamp]
Discovering the jungle-loving rap duo They Hate Change was one of the great moments of 2020. Dre and Vonne grew up in Florida’s Tampa Bay, and courtesy of the internet became immersed in UK club music, especially jungle & grime. Their rapping is as American as it comes, with Vonne’s gender fluidity an important part of the mix. Despite their non-conforming status, it was still surprising to find them signed to indie/experimental label Jagjaguwar last year, after EPs on smaller labels like godmode, but all power to them, and now we have their debut full length Finally, New, with their signature sound intact. Oh – and I can’t help think of a classic jungle/US hip-hop crossover with “Coded Language” (Krust & Saul Williams) but, like all with They Hate Change, it’s very much its own thing. Bigups!
Phelimuncasi – Wazini Ngo Qoh (prod DJ MP3) [Nyege Nyege Tapes/Bandcamp]
Phelimuncasi – Ngavele Ngagaxela (Prod by DJ Scoturn) [Nyege Nyege Tapes/Bandcamp]
Phelimuncasi – I don’t feel my legs (prod DJ Nhlekzin) [Nyege Nyege Tapes/Bandcamp]
More cause for celebration: A whole new album from Durban gqom crew Phelimuncasi, following 2020’s 2013-2019 collection. Here the beats come from various locals including frequent collaborator DJ Scoturn, some bouncy productions from DJ MP3, and newcomer DJ Nhlekzin as well, while the three members (two men and one woman) rap & sing in isiZulu and English. While gqom is thought of as a South African form of house music, it’s unique, and there are hints of UK funky, dancehall and African traditions in there, with deep bass and a minimalist aesthetic. Exciting stuff.
Slikback – SEQUENCE [Bandcamp]
Way up the coast in Kenya is Slikback, still pumping out at least one EP a month on his Bandcamp. May brings us almost junglist IDM with pop samples, while the third track is a rare near-ambient beauty.
x/o – Cyclone Scream [Precious Metals/Bandcamp]
x/o – Mirror Shard, Phoenix Down [Precious Metals/Bandcamp]
x/o – Chrysalis Wrath [Precious Metals/Bandcamp]
Proving that the jungle & trip-hop revival is in full swing is the debut album Chaos Butterfly from Vietnamese-Canadian producer x/o aka Veron Xio. Xio’s pop-inspired vocals appear (perhaps hyperpop? I couldn’t say), but often buried in glitchy production and breakbeats. The sweeping neon-rain of vaporwave synths inhabit these tracks, and the general approach is very ’20s rather than ’90s, but it’s still striking hearing those signature sounds here, and definitely worth giving a listen.
TSVI & Loraine James – Awaiting [AD 93/Bandcamp]
TSVI & Loraine James – Observe [AD 93/Bandcamp]
The juxtaposition of twinkly ambient, including piano, with jungle and rave beats is shared with the new duo release from London-based Italian TSVI (co-founder of percussive electronic label Nervous Horizon) and the always-brilliant Loraine James. Released by AD 93 – who’ve also released TSVI under his percussive house alias Anunaku, including a collab with our own DJ Plead – 053 surprises with choral samples as well as piano, veering between TSVI’s percussion and Loraine James’ IDM breaks. As great as you’d expect.
Air Max ’97 – Paroxysm ft. TSVI [DECISIONS/Bandcamp]
Air Max ’97 – Coriolis [DECISIONS/Bandcamp]
TSVI also gives us a nice segue into our next artist. In 2019, TSVI featured on a track from Australian (but also UK/Holland/New Zealand) experimental club hero Air Max ’97. The latest EP from Air Max, Coriolis, is also released on his DECISIONS Records, with precision-engineered beats syncopated just right.
Glass – Appointment Scheduling System [OOH-Sounds/Bandcamp]
Glass – crY (Klahrk Remix) [OOH-Sounds/Bandcamp]
Air Max ’97 is always near but never quite drum’n’bass, or dubstep, or garage… French duo Glass are somewhat breakcore-adjacent, definitely draw on jungle, and have a vaporwave hue to them. Last year they released crY on the eclectic OOH-Sounds, and it’s just been augmented – with a CD edition, no less – as crY Remixed. The original deconstructed jungle/IDM tracks are all there, along with a live cut and some choice remixes. UK IDMster Klahrk keeps things in place with mysterious sound design and sparse mashed amen breaks.
Atsushi Izumi – Nos [Opal Tapes]
Anode – Multiplex [Anode Bandcamp]
Atsushi Izumi – 12G2 [Opal Tapes]
Between genres though this may be, Atsushi Izumi started off producing intense drum’n’bass, neurofunk by my reckoning, as Anode. Under his own name, he’s slowed things down a little, bass-heavy techno with dubstep inflections and occasional more open sounding sound-art. His new album for Opal Tapes, Houzan Archives, is a stunner from start to finish, techno sometimes with a drum’n’bass tinge. I can’t get enough of it.
Atom™ – Hartcode [Raster/Bandcamp]
Just a couple of weeks ago, Uwe Schmidt aka Atom™ released a four-track EP of mysterious quasi-ambient called Golden Real with little fanfare on his NN label. Now this Friday came the surprise release of Neuer Mensch (“New Human”) on CD & digital through the legendary glitch/minimal electronic label Raster. It follows his drill’n’bassy faux-idoru album <3 and various attached EP/singles, and it’s jittery minimal techno, evoking human-machine hybrids. Being Atom™, it’s genius in its own special way.
Michel Banabila – Toy Shop [Michel Banabila Bandcamp]
Michel Banabila – Map Symbols [Michel Banabila Bandcamp
Dutch musician Michel Banabila is a frequent visitor to these playlists, often in a very “fourth world” vein. You could hear his latest, Monochromes, through that stylistic pigeonhole, but I enjoyed how weirdly & rightly “Toy Shop” blended out of Atom™’s minimal techno, with its tumbling percussion. “Map Symbols” is ambient layers of pitch-shifted clarinet and watery field recordings, slightly uncomfortably discordant rather than peaceful. Excellent sound-art.
Adam Badí Donoval – Birdsong In The Car Park [The Trilogy Tapes/Bandcamp]
More excellent sound-art here from Adam Badí Donoval, whose Warm Winters Ltd has presented some beautiful music in the last couple of years (e.g. Martyna Basta, who appears on this album). On his debut album for The Trilogy Tapes, titled Sometimes Life Is Hard And So We SHould Help Each Other, Donoval blends field recordings and looped acoustic instrments with electronic treatments with highly varied intent, from the folktronica acoustic guitar cut-ups on this track to extended subaquatic looped pulses. Quite captivating.
Leyla McCalla – Le Bal est Fini [ANTI-/Bandcamp]
Leyla McCalla – Nan Fon Bwa [ANTI-/Bandcamp]
From Donoval to Leyla McCalla could be a change of pace, except that the acoustic guitar and field recordings are all in place here. McCalla is a brilliant Haitian-American musician who plays cello as well as guitar, banjo etc, and sings beautifully both in French-derived Haitian Creole and in English. Her first album set the words of African-American poet Langston Hughes to music, and the second followed the musical template of bluegrass and Haitian folk, often played with strummed and bowed cello, sometimes in more traditional settings. A more recent album moved into more of a blues setting, but Breaking The Thermometer, her first for the ANTI- label, takes her back to Haitian folk territory, with a suite of songs derived from her stage work Breaking The Thermometer To Hide The Fever. This work saw her researching Radio Haiti, and the tragic, criminal colonial history of her homeland, and samples from interviews on that radio station as well as field recordings are interspersed through the album. I couldn’t help also playing the lively opening track, an instrumental led by her cello, and a nice segue into our last two tracks.
Adrian Copeland – No Heat No Light [Lost Tribe Sound/Bandcamp]
Adrian Copeland – Heir to the Ember Sun [Lost Tribe Sound/Bandcamp]
Montréaler Adrian Copeland is best known under his Alder & Ash moniker, under which he plays his cello through various guitar pedals, looping riffs and melodies in doom/sludge/drone style. His new album If This Were My Body, once again via Lost Tribe Sound, comes out under his own name with good reason: the distortion pedals are dropped in favour of beautifully-recorded acoustic cello, plucked, bowed, tapped and knocked (with some tiny additions on piano in one track). There are some gorgeous passages as things crescendo and relent. There are shimmering tremolos, tumbling broken chords, strummed chords, plucked basslines, and some passionate upper register soloing at times. While there’s a lot of turmoil and sadness here, there are also surprisingly positive and peaceful tracks. A very satisfying, very successful album.
Listen again — ~205MB
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