pilole 2021 febbraio/marzo

FEBBRAIO 2021	MARZO 2021
BEAUTIFY JUNKYARDS "Cosmorama" The fourth album for the Lisbon based band and their second on Ghost Box following on from The Invisible World of Beautify Junkyards in 2018. Joining the band as writing and performing collaborators on Cosmorama are: Nina Miranda (of Smoke City) on vocals on the title track and on Reverie and Parangolé, Alison Bryce of NYC’s Lake Ruth on vocals on Deep Green and classical & contemporary harpist Eduardo Raon on A Garden by the Sea and The Fountain. [ file under: folktronica ]		A WINGED VICTORY FOR THE SULLEN "Invisible cities" A Winged Victory for the Sullen, the collaboration between Adam Wiltzie & Dustin O'Halloran, release their 2021 album ‘Invisible Cities’, the stunning score to the critically acclaimed theatre production directed by London Olympics ceremony video designer Leo Warner. Released on their own Artificial Pinearch Manufacturing label, the album comes as part of an agreement with A Winged Victory for the Sullen’s current label, Ninja Tune. [ file under: modern classical ]
BLACK COUNTRY, NEW ROAD "For the first time" Black Country, New Road return today with the news of their signing to Ninja Tune, who will release their much-anticipated debut album For the first time on February 5th 2021. Featuring six new songs including reinterpretations of early tracks Sunglasses and Athens, France, For the first time is a sonic time capsule that somehow manages to bottle the past, the present and the future. [ file under: post-rock ]		FLOATING POINTS, PHAROAH SANDERS & THE LSO "Promises" Even when he was a DJ fashioning beats in a techno club in Berlin, Sam Shepherd, aka Floating Points, wasn’t afraid to drop the needle on 20 continuous minutes of spiritual jazz, courtesy of the 1977 song, “Harvest Time” by Pharoah Sanders. Now, the 34-year-old composer-producer and son of a vicar has joined forces with Sanders, the 80-year-old saxophonist and last direct musical heir to John Coltrane’s spiritual legacy, for Promises. A continuous 46-minute opus of luminous beauty spread over nine movements, Promises is composed for saxophone, keyboards, electronics, and 29 string players from the London Symphony Orchestra. [ file under: a love supreme ]
FLEET FOXES "Shore" Today, on the Autumnal Equinox, Fleet Foxes released their fourth studio album Shore at 6:31 am PT/9:31 am ET. The bright and hopeful album, released via Anti-. Shore was recorded before and during quarantine in Hudson (NY), Paris, Los Angeles, Long Island City and New York City from September 2018 until September 2020 with the help of recording and production engineer Beatriz Artola. [ file under: indie folk ]		VALERIE JUNE "The moon and stars: prescriptions for dreamers" The latest full-length from Valerie June, The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers emerged from a long-awaited revelation on the part of the Tennessee-bred singer/songwriter. Produced by June and Jack Splash (Kendrick Lamar, Alicia Keys, John Legend), the album achieves that transcendent effect thanks in no small part to the splendor of its sound, an exquisitely composed tapestry of folk, soul, gospel, country, blues, psychedelia, and time-bending symphonic pop. [ file under: alternative soul ]
KAKI KING "Modern yesterdays" Internationally renowned guitarist and composer Kaki King joins the Cantaloupe Music family with her latest album, Modern Yesterdays. Co-produced with sound designer Chloe Alexandra Thompson and recording engineer Arjan Miranda, it's her first full-length studio project since the 2015 release of The Neck Is A Bridge to the Body (“bursting with masterclass talent,” as reviewed in PopMatters), and her first to be recorded almost entirely on acoustic guitar. [ file under: acoustic guitar ]		LAKE STREET DIVE "Obviously" Composed of drummer Mike Calabrese, bassist Bridget Kearney, vocalist Rachael Price, and trumpet-wielding guitarist Mike “McDuck” Olson, Lake Street Dive encompasses a myriad of possibilities within its members’ collective experiences, and the resultant music is a vivid, largely acoustic, groove-driven strain of indie-pop. “It seems the only limitation we have,” Kearney explains, “ is that we try to make music that we would like listening to.” [ file under: alt pop ]
MOGWAI "As the love continues" 2021 release. Mogwai have advanced without a plan since they were teenagers, there have been no secretive meetings to work out the master plan. It is rare to hear a band that has been going for this long, and have this many albums behind them - ten records in and still no disappointments or mistaken creative left turns. As The Love Continues was originally planned to be recorded in America, but the pandemic led to a relocation to Worcestershire, with producer Dave Fridmann separated by an ocean but appearing like an Orwellian oppressor over the sessions. [ file under: alt post-rock ]		LOST HORIZONS "In quiet moments" In 2017, Simon Raymonde and Richie Thomas had both abstained from making music for 20 years until they united as Lost Horizons and released a stunning debut album, Ojalá - the Spanish word for hopefully or God willing. Lost Horizons’ melancholy-delia also feels buoyed aloft by airy currents, informed in part by Raymonde and Thomas’ former respective bands: the legendary Cocteau Twins and Dif Juz. Their former bands were labelmates on 4AD in the mid-80s, which is how they first met. [ file under: 4AD sounds ]
ARLO PARKS "Collapsed in sunbeams" Highly anticipated debut from 2020 breakthrough artist, London-based musician and poet Arlo Parks Speaking about her LP, Arlo says "My album is a series of vignettes and intimate portraits surrounding my adolescence and the people that shaped it. It is rooted in storytelling and nostalgia - I want it to feel both universal and hyper specific." [ file under: alternative r.&b. ]		MADLIB "Sound ancestors" Kieren Hebden: “I was listening to some of his new beats and studio sessions when I had the idea that it would be great to hear some of these ideas made into a Madlib solo album ... arranged into tracks that could all flow together in an album designed to be listened to start to finish ... we decided to work on this together with him sending me tracks, loops, ideas and experiments that I would arrange, edit, manipulate and combine. I was sent hundreds of pieces of music over a couple of years.” [ file under: hip hop & four tet ]
MASHA QRELLA "Woanders" Die Berliner Musikerin Masha Qrella begann als Bassistin von instrumentalen Postrock-Bands. Dennoch spielen Worte auf ihrem neuen Album eine große Rolle. Qrella hat Texte des früh verstorbenen DDR-Schriftstellers Thomas Brasch vertont. „Woanders“ ist aber weit mehr als eine Hommage an Thomas Brasch. [ file under: alternative indie ]		NUBIYAN TWIST "Freedom fables" "Freedom Fables reflects on the power of narratives. Each vocalist on this record explores their own memoirs, a freedom of expression underpinning our belief that music is the ultimate narrative for unity," explains Tom Excell. “The record references a lot of music that we all loved during our formative years; you can hear touches of broken beat, blunted hip hop, highlife, Latin, jazz and UK soul running through the tracks." [ file under: afro acid jazz ]
RHYE "Home" Home is the fourth studio album by Canadian artist Milosh, under his project Rhye. It was released under Loma Vista Recordings. Reviewing the album for Pitchfork, Zach Schonfield gave the album a highly positive review, stating: "Rhye leader Michael Milosh remains king of the most respectable horny music possible. His new album testifies to those talents without calling too much attention to itself." [ file under: neo soul ]		STR4TA "Aspects" Gilles Peterson has partnered with Jean-Paul “Bluey” Maunick to reinvigorate the loose, protean energy of the early-80s Brit-funk scene. Long-time friends and collaborators, STR4TA sees them mine new musical possibilities out of that shared formative era. It was through Maunick’s band, Incognito, one of the essential groups of an oft-overlooked, vital pocket of Black British musical history, that they first connected. On Aspects, he and Peterson revisit that important period and the spirit that guided it: self-taught, DIY vitality, and a raucous energy built on live performance. [ file under: jazz funk ]
TASH SULTANA "Terra firma" "I’m just being and experiencing and loving and trying to be better at everything I do – trying to be kinder, trying to speak nicer, think nicer, play better, sing better, organise better and that just applied across to the music side of things and that became Terra Firma. Terra Firma is a projection of my earth, my universe, so it’s the story of how I’ve gotten to being 25." (Sultana) [ file under: alternative down under ]		TOWA TEI "LP" Towa Tei has a brand new album titled "LP" about to be released on March 3! In terms of original albums, it succeeds EMO (2017). "LP" includes recent singles Magic and Birthday (both released in advance on 7") and features many guest musicians such as Hosono Haruomi, Takahashi Yukihiro, Hana, Shimizu Hirotaka, Sunahara Yoshinori, Iga Wataru, Mori Shunji (Natural Calamity), Ino Hidefumi, and Kashif. The artwork is by Gokita Tomoo. The album was mixed by Goh Hotoda and mastered by Sunahara Yoshinori. [ file under: club pop ]
WEATHER STATION "Ignorance" Ignorance, the new album by the The Weather Station, begins enigmatically; a hissing hi hat, a stuttering drum beat. A full minute passes before the entry of Tamara Lindeman’s voice, gentle, conversational, intoning; “I never believed in the robber”. A jagged music builds, with stabbing strings, saxophone, and several layers of percussion, and the song undulates through five minutes of growing tension, seesawing between just two chords. [ file under: indie pop ]		JANE WEAVER "Flock" The album features an untested new fusion of seemingly unrelated compounds fused into an eco-friendly hum; pop music for post-new-normal times. Created from elements that should never date, its pop music reinvented. Still prevalent are the cosmic sounds, but ‘Flock’ is a natural rebellion to the recent releases which sees her decidedly move away from conceptual roots in favour of writing pop music. Produced on a complicated diet of bygone Lebanese torch songs, 1980's Russian Aerobics records and Australian Punk. [ file under: alternative pop ]