After lending his lusty baritone to the works of Lou Reed and Dylan Thomas on the jazzily contemplative Free and adopting the role of rapporteur alongside the Belgian violinist Catherine Graindorge, this week Iggy Pop plummily embraces his iconic role as the guy with no shirt who rocks as Every Loser features strung-out ballads and odes to his adopted city of Miami alongside scuzzier shreds like ‘Frenzy’ and the cheekily irreverant ‘Neo Punk’. Frankie Rose returns after six years with a fresh ethos and lush atmospherics as the Brooklyn-based independent stalwart unveils the quietly triumphant Love As Projection, and Westside Gunn adds an extra stomp to ‘Super Kick Party’, courtesy of Eastside Flip as the 10 cover star spits in front of the ‘Keep Buffalo A Secret’ mural on an early contender for music video of the year.
On Mundus the folklorist and spoken word poet Aaron Michael Frison, known mononymously as Coultrain, combines rattling snare drums with synthesizers which ring out like celestial choruses on an album which seamlessly blends elements of jazz, experimental hip hop, and avant-soul. The third album from Tokyo Ambient Collective reunites the composer and Anoice member Takahiro Kido, the versatile percussionist Kenji Azuma who specialises in the kalimba plus various types of handpan and steelpan drum, and Sami Elu who is described as the world’s only pixiechord player, a handmade wooden instrument comprised of piano strings and scrap materials including disposable chopsticks. For Glow in the Dark Moon, an album of shimmering improvisation, they are joined by the pianist Yuki Murata, the violinist and countertenor Keiji Takeda, and Maryse Dumas from Canada who sings while playing several kinds of flute and singing bowl.
From the heart of the tropical rainforest on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe along the Lézarde river to the town of Petit-Bourg, the Gwo Ka drummer and creole singer Moïse Polobi arrived during the depths of the pandemic to perform alongside his neighbour, the percussionist Klod Kiavué. In the audience that night was Valérie Malot, the artistic director of the 3D Family booking agency, who swiftly arranged to take Polobi into the recording studio. Inspired by his surrounds, the result renders the rhythmic improvisations of Gwo Ka music through a bristling and vibrant electroacoustic palette, with production handled from Dakar by the Mbongwana Star member Doctor L.
As Hourloupe, the duo of Frank Menchaca and Anar Badalov draw inspiration from a late-nineteenth-century newspaper society column for the cinders and pearls which make up Three Nights in the Wawayanda, the final release in a triptych of records exploring time, reality, and the natural world. A staggered treatise on ecological balance, cohabitation, and the submerged other told through steady spoken word poetry and the shifting spectres of their sonic soundscapes, on ‘Green Navy/Rain’ they imagine the masked faces and stone vertebrae of sailors whose ship has become one with the forest, moss-swept and lost long ago to a flood.
The vocalist Charmaine Lee, an expert in amplification, feedback, and distortion, collaborates with Biliana Voutchkova as the violinist completes a series of seven digital releases on Relative Pitch Records. Reaching a climax on ‘Black Illumination’, the guitarist Brandon Ross and his PENDULUM ensemble generate a sonic mandala in creative synergy with a canvas by the neo-symbolist abstract artist Ford Crull. The tenor saxophonist Christoph Irniger calls forth another marvel on the Zurich-based Intakt Records, the New York rapper MIKE flexes a newfound equanimity in the company of Jadasea, Sister Nancy, King Carter, and Klein, from Munich the producer Skee Mask issues a bumper batch of tracks hitherto unmastered, and Nicole Dollanganger wipes away the tears over mirrored memories of Mount Airy to complete the first roundup of 2023.
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Westside Gunn – ‘Super Kick Party’
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Iggy Pop – ‘Neo Punk’
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Polobi & the Gwo Ka Masters – ‘Kawmélito’
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Biliana Voutchkova & Charmaine Lee – ‘She was right, and I was wrong, otherwise a pretty normal day’
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Tokyo Ambient Collective – ‘delay’
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Nicole Dollanganger – ‘Bad Man’
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MIKE – ‘No Curse Lifted (rivers of love)’
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Skee Mask – ‘Steamer (Early Mix)’
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Brandon Ross – ‘Black Illumination’
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