This week Lotic marks her impending debut on Houndstooth with squelching beats and limpid siren calls, hollowing out the heart of the club. On the single ‘Come Unto Me’, the Berlin-based producer explores the permeability of bloodlines and conjures subterranean worlds while tackling the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. The Copenhagen composer and violist Astrid Sonne constructs a vaulting architecture out of choral music, while the lapping vocal loops of Cucina Povera arrive in glossolalic Finnish by way of snowswept Glasgow.
The Manchester experimentalist aya issues disembodied footwork in the company of Iceboy Violet, the Nashville folk satirist Darrin Bradbury dredges up memories of beautiful days, and the classically trained New Yorker John Forté places trust in the process alongside Spills, Five, and Miss Brittany Reese. Through lashings of autotune and gospel, Penelope Antena offers a unique take on Americana, while Laurel Halo remixes the centrepiece of the upcoming album Cracks by the saxophonist Bendik Giske.
Scattered by the pandemic, Li Yilei sifts twelve tone poems out of analogue synthesizers, field recordings, and string instruments from the violin to guqin. The agile soprano of the double bassist Carmen Q. Rothwell stretches out over two sides of romantic stasis and heartrending grief. Ballaké Sissoko reclaims intimacy through his subtle mastery of the kora, James McMurtry unspools treacherous road stories, and tracks by Mach-Hommy, Big Mali, d’Eon, Dua Saleh, G Perico, and Equiknoxx round out the best of the week.
Playlists: Spotify · Apple Music · YouTube
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Carmen Q. Rothwell – ‘Nowhere’
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Equiknoxx – ‘Urban Snare Cypher’
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Mach-Hommy – ‘No Blood No Sweat’
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aya – ‘Emley lights us moor’ (feat. Iceboy Violet)
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Astrid Sonne – ‘Fields of Grass’
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Darrin Bradbury – ‘Those Beautiful Days’
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John Forté – ‘Ready on the One’ (feat. Spills, Five, and Miss Brittany Reese)
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Bendik Giske – ‘Cruising (Laurel Halo Remix)’
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Big Mali – ‘Good N Ugly’
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Ballaké Sissoko – ‘Simbo Salaba’
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G Perico – ‘5 Freeway’
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