New Music Friday!

I don’t know what to make of the new Bloc Party. I was really excited for it, and just hoped it got a bit of the magic back with the lineup change and everything. There are some good songs on here, but it didn’t fully connect with me. It’s just nowhere close to what I loved about their first two records - which is unfair, I know. But those two albums are so incredible, and since then it’s just been a slow decline.

I don’t think this is the bottom of their catalog at all. When it works, it’s just fun, but it’s not super deep (even though I get the impression that sometimes it thinks it is). When the album has moments to breathe with tempo changes I kinda like it best. Because there’s still a nice atmosphere to it. I definitely can hear that they are trying to recapture those guitar styles from the early albums, but that’s not enough to make it work.


When I have time, I’m still planning on checking out:

Kelly Lee Owens
Tomberlin
Caroline Spence
 
LP.8 by KLO is a bit of an outlier but it is nonetheless a beautifully crafted abstract electronic piece of art! Almost completely gone are the dream pop sensibilities of Inner Song replaced by layers of ambient sound and dark industrial aesthetics. Furthermore, on her third album, you'll quickly notice there's far less vocals, but I believe that was intentional, in order to create a more isolating effect, as this was written during the height of the pandemic. Droning repetitiveness and shimering synths are at the forefront here, and as a result you have an ethereal album that ebbs and flows between desolation and optimism. Highlight for me is S.O(2)!
 
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I'm all up in the Norah Jones Come Away With Me Deluxe Material. Slew of alternate editions, demos, and unreleased tracks. It's impossible to argue the right choices weren't made for the original but it's more clear she had a different direction she could've gone in with this set - a bit less intense, focused, some whimsy.

So much new stuff today overall though. I'll have to get a lot of that queued on up

Edit: Those first sessions demos of the tracks that made the album....wooooooooooo. Now for that deluxe vinyl set to drop in price a ton...
 
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Hollywood said:
LP.8 by KLO is a bit of an outlier but it is nonetheless a beautifully crafted abstract electronic piece of art! Almost completely gone are the dream pop sensibilities of Inner Song replaced by layers of ambient sound and dark industrial aesthetics. Furthermore, on our third album, you'll quickly notice there's far less vocals, but I believe that was intentional, in order to create a more isolating effect, as this was written during the height of the pandemic. Droning repetitiveness and shimering synths are at the forefront here, and as a result you have an ethereal album that ebbs and flows between desolation and optimism. Highlight for me is S.O(2)!
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Lovely write-up!
Doubtful it'll squeeze into my top picks for the month, but this really is a gorgeous beast of an album.
 


For WEMA, collaboration is a state of mind. The five-piece collective – consisting of Tanzanian multi-instrumentalist Msafiri Zawose, producer Photay and Penya members Magnus P.I, Lilli Elina and Jimmy le Messurier – is an artistic pursuit founded on community; a space in which to harness the transformative power of connection. Translated from Swahili, ‘wema’ means kindness and benevolence – virtues that lie at the core of the project, and are reflected in the group’s world-embracing approach to music. “WEMA is a state of gratitude and belief, without sorrow or grief. It’s about giving your entire heart,” Msafiri declares.

The self-titled album is an intoxicating, dancefloor-indebted blend of traditional Tanzanian music, Afro-Latin rhythms and experimental electronic music, with the majority of lyrics sung in Swahili and Spanish. It’s a smorgasbord of sounds, moods and textures that call on the very ethos of the band; the pursuit of cohesion and togetherness in a fractured world. Through this lens, WEMA is a near-spiritual listen, invoking the sacred sounds of their global influences. The tape-delayed vocal samples and sparse industrial clangs of Kande are reminiscent of the kind of deconstructed beats you might find in a closing club set. Bendir Bendir’s pointillist soundscapes are juxtaposed with a warm chorus of Msafiri’s layered harmonies. Msafiri Jam Pt 2, with its uptempo percussion and atmospheric background noise, features the undulating hornwork of groundbreaking Afro-Cuban trumpeter Yelfris Valdes. There’s a palpable optimism running through WEMA; it’s raw, unfiltered music that is as danceable as it is soul-stirring.
 
I took a pass on this for RSD because they usually stay readily available at my local after the fact and I hope that holds true this time because this is even better than I thought or hoped it would be!

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If you saw Girlpool and were like "I've heard Girlpool before"...listen to the new one. Sound is entirely different and darker and really fascinating I'm going through it now and like, if you know it's Girlpool it makes sense but I never would've guessed.
 
Hollywood said:
LP.8 by KLO is a bit of an outlier but it is nonetheless a beautifully crafted abstract electronic piece of art! Almost completely gone are the dream pop sensibilities of Inner Song replaced by layers of ambient sound and dark industrial aesthetics. Furthermore, on her third album, you'll quickly notice there's far less vocals, but I believe that was intentional, in order to create a more isolating effect, as this was written during the height of the pandemic. Droning repetitiveness and shimering synths are at the forefront here, and as a result you have an ethereal album that ebbs and flows between desolation and optimism. Highlight for me is S.O(2)!
Click to expand...
Interesting. I pre-ordered the album on Bandcamp because I loved Inner Song so much. I went from Bloc Party to this this morning and whoa what a mood change. I was not ready for that kind of isolated dread so early in the morning. I’ll return to it later. I wonder how much it’ll grip me considering the change in atmosphere.


Edit: weirdly Inner Song for me felt like this weird escape away from the height of the pandemic. If this one had come out then I think I would have felt worse. I’m more on board with difficult things these days, but this time two, even one, year ago? No way.
 
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