At the pith or heart of Mourning Due, the latest album by the Oakland-born and Brooklyn-based emcee Nappy Nina, the spoken word poet and jazz visionary Moor Mother delivers a bravura verse which cuts a swathe through some of the most famous lines by Kanye, Tupac, and Biggie in the service of shifting space-time while giving voice to the equalising force of black women. Seeking to brighten her mood while reminiscing over complaisant smoke shops and green spaghetti, on ‘Stone Soup’ the grilled cheese-loving rapper laments the feeling of an empty belly, gesturing suggestively towards the folk tale on the theme of scheming and sharing on a record which boasts a slew of collaborators including Mavi, maassai, Nathan Bajar, Cavalier, OHMi, Stas Thee Boss, JusMoni, and Iojii. Jófríður Ákadóttir unravels a handkerchief heart, in an anthem for the codependent which serves as the lead single from Museum, while Kelela strives for a tougher love on the penultimate track to her stunning, sloshing, healing and mending, carnal and coupling, celebratory new album Raven.
With an appetite for deconstruction, the trio of Sana Nagano on violin and effects, Zachary Swanson on upright bass, and Sam Day Harmet on mandolin and electronics return for their second album on 577 Records as Astroturf Noise, blending a hyphenated understanding of American roots music with screeching improvisations and manipulated samples sourced from Tennessee, Wisconsin, and their home borough of Brooklyn. Describing his songs as like ‘overstuffed jelly jars, cracking so that the sweetness oozes out into unexpected shapes’, on the opener to 7s the Animal Collective frontman Avey Tare searches for those invisible darlings who might skulk in the shadows yet serve us all as guiding lights.
Part of the East African rap scene since 1999, hosting the popular Ugandan radio programme NewzBeat while alternating rhymes in Luganda, Luo, Kiswahili, and English, it was 2019 before Mc Yallah found international acclaim with the release of her debut on the Nyege Nyege Tapes offshoot Hakuna Kulala. Reuniting with the Berlin producer Debmaster, on the follow-up Yallah Beibe the artist gains a new lease of life through collaborations with the Japanese chiptune and gabber veteran Scotch Rolex and the Congolese club sensualist Chrisman, throwing kuduros and trap, qqom, cyber-rap, grime, and death metal into the blender starting with the stomping lead single ‘Sikwebela’. Meanwhile the Kampala outsider institute issues an expanded retrospective covering the early career of Jako Maron, the Réunion composer who continues his relentless examination of maloya and sega through the lens of old-school hip hop, dub, and contemporary beat-driven electronic music.
The Chilean techno prodigy Tomás Urquieta unleashes 32 bullets on his debut for TraTraTrax. Roxane Métayer summons the spirit of snails, oozing sap, and galaxies full of infinitesimal pebbles on her tactile and quietly transfixing album Perlée de sève, as the multidisciplinary artist wrings miniature worlds out of violin, woodwind, voice, and various effects pedals. Following the splintering earworms of Music For Four Guitars, the vaunted noisemaker Bill Orcutt performs another about-turn on an album of limpid acoustic solos, while from the Isle of Skye, the smallpipes player Brìghde Chaimbeul teams up with the saxophonist Colin Stetson for an exhilarating weave of trance-like drones and Celtic folk traditions. And the Swedish producer Toxe completes her first original score as part of PAN’s Entopia soundtrack series, accompanying the short film the story of leonora by Clemens Stumpf and Loïc Vandam, an almost Kafkaesque still narrative of abandonment, strange whooshing, synth sines and the subterranean depths which still abounds in birdsong, breathy sighs, garrulous chatter and celestial wonder.
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Astroturf Noise – ‘Tennessee Blazes’
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Avey Tare – ‘Invisible Darlings’
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MC YALLAH & Debmaster – ‘Sikwebela’
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Nappy Nina – ‘Stone Soup’ (feat. Moor Mother)
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Roxane Métayer – ‘Galets galactiques’
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Bill Orcutt – ‘The Life of Jesus’
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Brìghde Chaimbeul – ‘I Am Disposed of Mirth’
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Jako Maron – ‘Maloya valsé chok 1’
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