JDO

17 th May 2019, Mello Music Group The cover art of Seba Kaapstad’s second LP Thina exemplifies the collage context of the band themselves – an international neo-soul outfit primarily rocking the cradles of Africa and Germany but now bursting onto the growing stage of our shrinking world. The geometric jazz shapes and electronic wavelengths are soothed into place by the ancient beauty in the vocals, creating a turning spirograph of influences that flash and dance like moir é patterns around the band’s vital energy. Glorious sunlight strobing through old trees as you fly by in a locomotive train. The title track Thina tessellates clicking polyrhythms over descending, blue-tinged piano runs like an LA Beat Scene number, recalling wunderkinds Georgia Anne Muldrow and Jameszoo on release date mate Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label. Zoe Modiga’s fluid transition from Zulu to English and back is restorative in its seamless ease and ably manages to communicate on both fronts e...

Single (Heavenly Recordings, 12 th   April 2019) This is Australia’s Mildlife flexing their holistic muscle and making you move. Each arpeggiated solo overlapping and outstretching a hand to find its sonic counterpart in the mix, all of them collapsing into the locomotive 21 st Century rhythm bed. Each element circles the drain of the rhythm section’s reducing simplicity, laying down a disco groove that’s taken up sporadically by the synths and pipes. The melodic motifs layer up in the middle section recalling Joe Zawinul and Phil Spector in the way they coax the band into a polyrhythmic frenzy and mingling ‘til every nook is filled with oscillating, harmonious sound. In a live setting this modern jazz model of duality – steadily breathing samples and walking bass creating solid ground for each member to fire off tangentially – creates a prismatic atmosphere that’s lit live venues for outfits from The Comet is Coming   to BadBadNotGood; and Mildlife do it so we...

Single (15th May 2019 - Rough Trade) Ahead of a series of London dates Jarvis Cocker has released work from his new project JARV IS. Revelling in the kind of sashaying film noir soundscape he’s best known for Cocker’s lyrics cast us back to the big bang ( or maybe a small bang, actually, more of a pop ) and recall his early triumphs like I Spy and F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E . in their puerile prodding and acerbic, wry glance at the minute and massive. But it’s from an advanced perspective; singing an Anthem for Doomed Everything in the trenches of obsolescence. The careening downhill cacophony mirroring the accelerating hurtle towards extinction and the backing vocals’ call and response whip the atmosphere into an accelerating storm of percussive, electronic and human noise. Cocker teeters atop a rubble mountain of apocalyptic imagery; master and surveyor of the wastes. The beat is an insistent response to the question of the title, humming and pumping like a piston s...

3 rd Single from Seasons (EP) (Parlohone, 17 th May 2019) House of Pharaohs are a London six rapper squad with a coterie of designers, producers and managers in their orbit holding down all the creative control and ownership of their own material. After receiving attention from industry taste-makers like Frank Ocean and the general online press for the post-genre album Real Faces in 2017, the South London sextet have been at work installing a creative process documented in this EP’s accompanying mini-doc Only The House . And it pays off on this single and EP 2008 is the 3 rd single Seasons, all put together with Balham super-producer Nyge , who’s worked with contemporary successes like Section Boyz and AJ Tracey. This track more than any other on the EP sees the team hold the balance of their vying influences and personalities while maintaining raw energy for the duration. It’s a low key banger that surfs casual across a rolling wave of pulsing synths. The int...

Single (Monster Entertainment Group, 9 th May 2019) If 2019 holds but one promise of pure joy, and it looks these days like that may prove to be the case, it will surely be Henry Lau ’s comeback; heralded recently by the release of Untitled Love Song. A typically frank and soulful confession, rendered in sugar and moulded into the simple pop theatrics of Randy Newman or Harry Nilsson – this swooning K-pop ballad shows a maturity in the young maestro. My first introduction to these irresistible jams was with 2016’s Runnin’ – a pristine bop of near-perfect production and glistening disco dreaminess – and if that beautiful single was Henry immersed in the global explosion of K-pop that has delivered us the monstrous BTS revolution then Untitled Love Song is him coming up to breathe the air in his own right. Still possessing an uncanny and instinctive feel for all those pop moments half-remembered from your mum’s cassette tape collection ; the 29 year old has found a mor...

First single from Ignorance is Bliss (Boy Better Know, 31 st May 2019) First of two singles dropped prior to the release of Ignorance is Bliss at the end of the month, Bullet From a Gun sees Skepta at his contemplative best. The beat (co-produced with Ragz Originale ) swoops and snaps like a melancholy trap house laptop start-up and the flow is somewhere between Method Man and Mobb Deep - bouncing effortlessly around syllables and then hammering each rhyme with battle rap clarity. It’s an older and wiser Adenuga brother on display here – on album’s like Black Listed the in the feelings cuts felt like gaps in the track list, the playful simplicity out of whack with the heavy emotional material revealing the rappers age at the time. Between now and then the development is something to behold, he’s still bigging up his family, his ends and himself but Skepta’s flirtation with American hip hop and R&B has eased any awkwardness into a more pre-possessing confidence. ...

Single (Partisan Records, 7 th May 2019) Since Joy as an Act of Resistance gained dominant status over 2018 hardcore positive punks Idles have been catapulted into the stratosphere. Their fiercely jubilant brand of honest hope has turned back a tide of apathy and disaffectedness for young listeners washed out in reverb and superficiality. But in a single-use plastic world of 24 hour news cycles and social media attention spans the follow-up is always gonna be tricky. Wisely then, Idles have taken a break from touring to drop a 3 minute pipe bomb; showing the growing dexterity of their performances while sticking to the analogue punk syncopation of American greats like Fugazi in the sing-song drawl of Gogol Bordello . The guitars cut through the mix like Husker Du and punch holes in each other or any spare beat of silence until the song boils over into crushing power chords and the kind of righteous football chant war crying that have become hallmarks of their wildly...

From ‘ What’s On Your Mind’ (EP) (Young Poet Records, May 3 rd 2019) As Wooze , Jamie She and Theo Spark have been ably warping a vibrant, psych-blues sound into insistent yuppy pop melodies and art rock statement singles for less than two years; but they’re dangerous. Like HMLTD and Pwr Bttm there’s a strong feeling of reclamation in the material they’ve put out – it’s hard to say when rock music and guitars were stolen by the jocks (looking at you Bruce Springsteen) but under the muscle it bleeds nail polish and eyeliner still. The boisterous Brixton pansori bring their airy, quintessentially English vocal harmonies to bear over wonky, sassy riffs and once again deliver a barn burner. Perhaps most impressive on this cut is Wooze’s ability to carry off levity and camp humour in the lyrics, echoing perennial English odd-rockers like Vivian Stanshall , while encompassing such a breadth of influences in the sounds. There’s the overdriven quirky bombast of the verses which r...

Second single from ‘Journey to Center’ (Terrible Records, June 21 st 2019) With disarmingly melodramatic vocals and life-affirming pop, Australian Kirin J. Callinan mastered the delicate art of bad taste on 2017’s Bravado, easily one of the year’s best records. Little wonder then that Callinan’s latest singles are building to a covers album of all things. The accusations of indulgence and bone idleness that righteously plagued The Spaghetti Incident , the recent Teal Album and Urban Renewal – The Songs of Phil Collins are there for all to see. But this is Kirin J. Callinan ; an apex musical predator. After ripping Youtube a new art hole with his stunning video and performance for The Whole of the Moon, this second single is like a long, hot shower for Spectral Display's 80s-soaked minimalist krautrock opera (releasing new material in 2019 after 36 years out, kids). With production from François   Tétaz - whose treatment of acoustic instrumentation with Gotye ...

First single from upcoming album ‘ The Book of Traps and Lessons’ (Fiction Records, June 14 th 2019) Ubiquitously acclaimed poet, novelist, playwright, rapper (etc.) Kate Tempest is back; working on her upcoming album with the legendary Rick Rubin she’s seeking to build on a trajectory that has seen her nominated for Best Female at the Brits and two Mercury Prizes. This literary polymath pens rhymes that challenge the very nature of poetry in our age and new track Firesmoke is no departure from that. There is however a sensitivity and openness that come with the millstone of experience which she manages to wear without slipping into vulnerability. Imbuing subtle production and personal subject matter with real wild, elemental language Tempest creates duality like John Milton or John Donne but admits the all-too-human savage reality of Bukowski or Dickinson . Lines like “ Your body is a home to rare Gods/I kneel at their temple/I’m blown to bits” go from transcenden...

26h May 2019 Enter The Jungle Records Ezra Collective have been at the vanguard of London’s jazz scene for a few years now, alongside acts like Sons of Kemet, Comet is Coming, Nubya Garcia and Oscar Jerome are carving out a space for gritty, pan-global jazz that draws heavily on the cultural milieu of the City of London. Already with one of Gilles Peterson’s esteemed worldwide awards under their belt You Can’t Steal My Joy is remarkably their first LP. And despite an indelible footprint of tradition the pace and force of the Collective’s stomp is undeniably London , evidenced on the first cut: a slinky, neo-soul interpretation of a Sun Ra tune ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dokLwszdUgY ). Catching that unifying spirit of the Arkestra with spacious, live production and holding down a city street boom bap in the rhythm section. The performances gradually open up, half submerged synth and horn flourishes susurrating from every corner of the mix as they feel their way in. ...