Tracks of the Week 02.03.24
The mood is often the first thing to come over on a Julia Holter song, a bristling and tenuous warmth or a soft-hued light which stays for a moment between glimmering, on...
Culturedarm’s Records of the Year for 2023
It’s an old saw by this point to suggest that while the livelihood of the average working musician has never been more perilous, the curious listener has at the same time never...
Tracks of the Week 12.08.23
In the fall of 2020 in the backyard of Chicali Outpost in Los Angeles, the drummer Daniel Villarreal was joined by the guitarist Jeff Parker and bassist Anna Butterss for the first...
Tracks of the Week 05.08.23
Following up on the limpid rhythms, percussive riffs and shifting tectonics of Diatom Ribbons, which saw Kris Davis explore the hidden world of unicellular microalgae in the company of such luminaries as...
Tracks of the Week 01.07.23
From its birth in the eighties the Brazilian genre of funk carioca cast a wide net, pulling from samba soul, Miami bass and Latin freestyle, the chanted vocals and hybrid rhythms of...
Tracks of the Week 06.05.23
With its lilting grooves and wry lyrics on a perennial hot-button issue, when Sun Ra and his Arkestra recorded ‘Nuclear War’ in 1982 the bandleader took the cut straight to Columbia Records,...
Tracks of the Week 15.04.23
From hyper-literate Oak Park the former National Youth Poet Laureate and fledgling songwriter Kara Jackson holds folk and country music in her thrall, cast through a captivating blend of brusque imagery, dolorous...
Tracks of the Week 01.10.22
Following sessions with Francisco Mela and William Parker for the Brooklyn-based jazz bastion 577 Records, the Tennessee transplant Zoh Amba turns closer to home on her searing and searching solo album Bhakti....
Tracks of the Week 16.04.22
Described as an experiment in immediacy, back in 2020 the Portland-based label Sahel Sounds doubled down on its commitment to the music of the Southern Sahara with its searing blend of psychedelic...