pilole 2024 febbraio/marzo

FEBBRAIO 2024	MARZO 2024
ERIKA DE CASIER "Still" The 33-year-old Danish singer, songwriter and producer built a cult following with her 2019 debut album Essentials, and built on that “cult” designation with 2021’s Sensational, her first for 4AD. Since then, she’s performed at some of the biggest festivals in the world, written for pop stars (NewJeans) and sung on hyped dance tracks (Mura Masa, Shygirl). She may have won a lot of new fans in the past three years, and a lot of high-profile collaborators (Dua Lipa, Blood Orange, Eartheater, etc.) but as this album’s title confirms, she’s the same old Erika de Casier. Still. [ file under: nu soul ]		DRY CLEANING "Boundary road rnacks and drinks - Sweet" Dry Cleaning’s first two EPs now remastered on one LP with original artwork and lyric sheet. Following two critically acclaimed John Parish-produced studio albums – New Long Leg (2021) and Stumpwork (2022) – South London’s Dry Cleaning take a moment to reflect on their journey and pay homage to their roots with the release of their first two EPs, now remastered and reissued together on one single vinyl that features the original artwork and lyric sheet. [ file under: post-punk ]
FRIKO "Where we've been, where we go from here" Adding to Chicago’s long lineage of forward-thinking indie rock, Friko transform each song into a moment of collective catharsis. On their full-length debut, vocalist/guitarist Niko Kapetan and drummer Bailey Minzenberger sustain the combustible energy of their break-out single Crimson To Chrome, merging elements of post-punk, chamber-pop and experimental rock, magnifying their music’s exhilarating power with a barrage of spirited ensemble vocals. Poetic, explosive, and sublimely raw in feeling. [ file under: alternative ]		FOUR TET "Three" Three is his 12th studio album as Four Tet. The first came out in 1999 when he was also a guitarist in UK post-rock band Fridge. Now based in the US, he ranges through a vast world of sounds in his music. Acoustic instruments coexist with computers and synthesisers. You can hear koras, dulcimers, gamelans, improvised jazz, junglism and techno. They’re underpinned by Hebden’s holistic sense of everything connecting and his skill at making the links. [ file under: electronica ]
KALI MALONE "All life long" Kali Malone's anticipated new album "All Life Long" is a collection of music for pipe organ, choir, and brass quintet composed by Kali Malone, 2020 - 2023. Choral music performed by Macadam Ensemble and conducted by Etienne Ferschaud at Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-L'Immaculée-Conception in Nantes. Brass quintet music performed by Anima Brass at The Bunker Studio in New York City. Organ music performed by Kali Malone and Stephen O’Malley on the historical meantone tempered pipe organs at Église Saint-François in Lausanne, Orgelpark in Amsterdam, and Malmö Konstmuseum in Sweden. [ file under: experimental ]		JULIA HOLTER "Something in the room she moves" “My heart is loud,” Julia Holter sings on her sixth album Something in the Room She Moves, following an inner pulse. The Los Angeles songwriter’s past work has often explored memory and dreamlike future, but her latest album resides more in presence: “There’s a corporeal focus, inspired by the complexity and transformability of our bodies,” Holter says. Her production choices and arrangements form a continuum of fretless electric bass pitches in counterpoint with gliding vocal melodies, while glissing Yamaha CS-60 lines entwine warm winds and reeds. “I was trying to create a world that’s fluid-sounding, waterlike, evoking the body’s internal sound world,” Holter says of her flowing harmonic universe. [ file under: alt pop ]
REAL ESTATE "Daniel" Real Estate’s sixth full-length album Daniel was recorded in an ebullient nine-day spree at RCA Studio A, in Nashville with GRAMMY-winning producer and songwriter Daniel Tashian (Kacey Musgraves). In 11 compulsively tuneful songs, they connect the uninhibited wonder of their earliest work with the earned perspective of adulthood. Several days into recording, all five members of Real Estate were discussing album titles when someone suggested “Daniel,” simply because it seemed funny to bestow a human name upon a record. Was it for Daniel Tashian? Maybe. [ file under: indie states ]		DEE C. LEE "Just something" The brand new album from Dee C. Lee - ‘Just Something’, out 22 March on Acid Jazz. It follows the incredible response to the new single ‘Walk Away’ and last year’s double-sider ‘Don’t Forget About Love’ / ‘Be There In The Morning’, marking the return of one of the UK’s most revered soul singers. Dee is known for her work with The Style Council, Wham!, Slam Slam and Animal Nightlife, and an illustrious solo career (including the Top 3 hit ‘See The Day’). ‘Just Something’ is her first new record since 1998, and her debut for Acid Jazz. [ file under: acid jazz ]
LAETITIA SADIER "Rooting for love" Laetitia issues a call to the traumatized civilizations of Earth: we’re urged to finally evolve past our countless millennia of suffering and alienation. Her songs score the complexities and harmonies within this directive: organ, guitar, bass, synth, trombone, vibraphone, live and programmed drums, and a vocal assembly of men and women billed as The Choir, working intricate chord/tempo/and dynamic changes, as Laetitia’s empathic presence leads the way. [ file under: dream pop ]		ADRIANNE LENKER "Bright future" On bright future, adrianne lenker, a songwriter known for turns of phrase and currents of rhyme, says it plainly, “you have my heart // i want it back.” documented with analog precision, what began as an experiment in collaboration, became proof adrianne’s heart did return, full to the brim, daring her into the unknown. This vinyl record is 100% analog-analog-analog (AAA). No digital process was used in the production of this sound recording. [ file under: alt folk ]
NADINE SHAH "Filthy underneath" A lot has happened since Nadine Shah last put out an album – 2020’s ‘Kitchen Sink’ - both in terms of world affairs and Nadine’s own life. Nearly four years on, ‘Filthy Underneath’ is a different beast, but it’s fair to say that it’s at least as good. This is an album inextricably linked to the context during which it was created: a suicide attempt; the end of her marriage; her role in caring for her mother, who was terminally ill with cancer. While grieving, she listened to Iranian pop icon Googoosh, Indian singer Asha Puthli, and, as she puts it “shitloads” of glam rock. [ file under: alternative ]		MILDLIFE "Chorus" “Chorus is about a coming together of disparate elements. Not in some sort of utopian aesthetic where everything works perfectly, but in the natural flow and state of things,” shares the band’s Jim Rindfleish. “It’s about cosmic compatibility and chemistry: what makes things work? Not just what makes the band work, but what makes good music, art or love? It’s the rhythm of nature”. [ file under: cosmic fusion disco ]
MAYA SHENFELD "Under the sun" Maya Shenfeld’s expansive, kaleidoscopic music is as illuminating as it is exquisite. Classically trained, Shenfeld has fast grown into one of contemporary music’s most exciting, vital voices. Every aspect of her dazzling, multifaceted output interrogates the way we experience the world around us - be it solo microtonal explorations, site-specific installations or commissions for leading New Music ensembles. Shenfeld’s 2022 debut album In Free Fall established the composer as a potent force in new music. [ file under: ambient electro ]		NOOR MOTHER "The great bailout" How do you engage the stunning, evocative, haunting gift that is Moor Mother’s latest album The Great Bailout? Only by following the trail of verbal and sonic poetry delivered. Only by letting Moor Mother and her co-conspiring collaborators – Lonnie Holley, Mary Lattimore, Alya Al Sultani, Kyle Kidd and more - “people who have their own path of positivity and connectedness,” be the tour guide. The Great Bailout is Moor Mother aka Camae Ayewa’s ninth studio album and third with ANTI- Records. Called “the poet laureate of the apocalypse,” by Pitchfork, Ayewa’s music contains multitudes of instruments, voices and cacophony that take on themes of Afrofuturism and collective memory with the forebearers of jazz, hip hop and beat poetry in mind. [ file under: afro futurism ]
TIGA & HUDSON MOHAWKE "L'ecstacy" The creative partnership between Tiga & Hudson Mohawke expresses a mutual love of “hardcore romance,” a liminal state where the bounds between euphoria, melancholy and the raw power of friendship disintegrate completely. Recorded in Los Angeles from 2019-2023, these commonalities ebbed and flowed through various recording sessions, culminating in their debut album - L’Ecstacy. [ file under: electronica ]		SEAN ONO LENNON "Asterisms" Released on John Zorn’s Tzadik Records, with Devin Hoff, Yuka C. Honda, Michael Leonhart, João Nogueira, Mauro Refosco, Ches Smith, Johnny Mathar, Sean Ono Lennon. The music is powerful, trippy, and intensely imaginative, blending rock, electronics, jazz, and more into an exciting new musical soundscape. With driving rhythms and a brilliant sense of orchestration, this album is sure to surprise and delight. [ file under: ambient sounds ]
TOECHTER "Epic wonder" toechter is an all-female trio operating from Berlin. toechter’s 2nd full-length album »Epic Wonder« sees its classically trained members blend elegant string arrangements with ethereal indie pop and delicate rhythms. Katrine Grarup Elbo, Lisa Marie Vogel and Marie-Claire Schlameus exclusively use analogue sound sources (such as violin, viola, cello, and their voices), which were then electronically processed. Named after the Greek god of the wind, toechters 2022 album »Zephyr« exhaled deeply with concurrently invigorating and confusing sounds. »Epic Wonder«, their second album, was created in the spring and summer of 2023. [ file under: modern classical ]		WAXAHATCHEE "Tigers blood" Katie Crutchfield’s sixth album refines the breezy country of her 2020 breakthrough Saint Cloud and finds her as compelled by the complexities of life as its eases. [ file under: americana ]
RAFAEL TORAL "Spectral evolutionPearlies" After a two-decade interlude, Jim O’Rourke’s Moikai returns with Spectral Evolution, a major new work by Rafael Toral. Making his name in the mid-1990s with influential guitar drone platters like "Sound Mind Sound Body" and "Wave Field" (both reissued by Drag City in recent years), Toral has never been one to rest on his laurels repeating his past glories. In the early years of the 21st century, Toral laid the guitar aside, along with the focus on extended tones that had defined much of his music until that point. [ file under: drones ]		YARD ACT "Where's my utopia?" Second album syndrome must be particularly daunting for Yard Act following their genre-defining debut. Initially met with both acclaim and accusations of ripping off The Fall, they became the face of modern post-punk with their quick wit and political lyrics. On ‘Where’s My Utopia?’, Yard Act are ready to begin a whole new chapter. With the help of Gorillaz’s Remi Kabaka Jr, they lean more heavily into the experimental elements of retro hip-hop and disco. What remains unchanged is their sense of humour, referring to themselves as “post-punk’s latest poster boys” who “ride on the coattails of the dead” on ‘We Make Hits’. [ file under: post-punk ]