From the foothills of Melbourne by way of London’s windswept alleys and terraced streets, Laila Sakini stretches out on the endless highway with a borrowed guitar, smeared samples, whinnying saxophone and bare-bones bass clarinet. Charli XCX enlists Christine and the Queens and Caroline Polachek for a downbeat paean to new wave. And conceiving her record as a public manifestation of the self-storage unit, on her debut for Ghostly International the Los Angeles artist Hanu Vu dumps emotional baggage and mines both the sacred and the mundane, while taking deep dives into the cluttered and half-forgotten genres of disco, art pop, and garage rock.
In the middle of their first major European tour, the wedding band Etran de L’Aïr welcome listeners to the desert metropolis of Agadez as they prepare their latest flurry of no-fret, psychedelic Saharan rock. Backxwash shreds the pages of Zambian folklore as her guttural howls summon the ghost of Rosemary. Marta Del Grandi blends eastern rhythmic influences and ancestral vocal utterances on her first for Fire Records. And Margo Cilker and Trace Mountains take winding paths through Americana on carefully crafted albums of shifting country and folk.
Renée Reed splits tongues on an extended play of French covers and English-language originals, the funky house fanatic Fiyahdred and Hyperdub producer Cooly G take thick stabs at the louche jazz and juddering basslines of amapiano, and serpentwithfeet follows up his romantic sophomore album DEACON with odes to friendship and long afternoons on the porch. Arca fuses songs of surrender and seduction while paying tribute to the humble Venezuelan friction drum. Terrace Martin shares collaborations with everyone from Kendrick Lamar and Cordae to Leon Bridges and Robert Glasper, while Sea Oleena, Dlina Volny, Nick Malkin, and Mira Calix complete the tracks of the week.
Playlists: Spotify · Apple Music · YouTube
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Laila Sakini – ‘La Macchina (The Car Drive)’
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Arca – ‘Prada/Rakata’
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Charli XCX – ‘New Shapes’ (feat. Christine and the Queens & Caroline Polachek)
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Margo Cilker – ‘Barbed Wire (Belly Crawl)’
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Terrace Martin – ‘Sick of Cryin” (feat. Leon Bridges & D Smoke)
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Cooly G – ‘We Can Find Love Too’ (feat. Ruth Brown)
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Backxwash – ‘Rosemary’s Revenge’
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Dlina Volny – ‘Do It’
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serpentwithfeet – ‘Fellowship (Remix)’ (feat. Ambré & Alex Isley)
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Marta Del Grandi – ‘Somebody New’
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Mira Calix – ‘like Jenga (only it reaches all the way to the sky and it’s made of knives)’
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