Gorillaz – Song Machine Season One: Strange Timez
Strange times indeed and few 'bands' reflect the oddball, bits-and-pieces nature of sewn-together music across the virtual world than Damon Albarn and his cartoon co, with even more guests than on the album Plastic Beach. This time in includes Elton John singing about death and 'meeting on the other side' on The Pink Phantom, The Cure's Robert Smith on the title track like a bemused out-of-space god looking at Earth with confusion, to echoes of The Caterpillar, as well as more material with St Vincent, Skepta, Octavian, Georgia, Slaves and Slowthai (on the stomping ska Specials-inspired Momentary Bliss) and Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Among more standouts is the catchy Désolé with Fatoumata Diawara, as well as a clear ode to New Order on the track Aires with of course Peter Hook on bass. It's a mixed bag of wondrous ideas and throwaway fun, but also great melodies and rather moving existential melancholy from Albarn's distinctive voice, most likely all inspired by the unreal nature of 2020. Out on Parlophone.
Gorillaz – Strange Timez ft Robert Smith
Open Mike Eagle – Anime, Trauma and Divorce
A real gem of a fifth album by the American hip hop artist and comedian is packed with clever humour and quick-witted intelligence, parodying all kinds of ego, image consciousness, health issues, and hip hop styles themselves from Death Parade to Headass (Idiot Shinji) to Spiderman Superpants, The Edge of New Clothes, Wtf Is Self Care, inverted perspectives (Everything Ends Last Year, or the darkly comic shock at The Black Mirror Episode in reference to TV series 'shoulda come with a content warning ... it looked like us!' ), rhythm changes and gentle, sensitive pauses, lounge-y, funk and other stranger sounds. Something to saviour for the wordplay and unfolding references on each listen. Out on Auto Reverse.
Open Mike Eagle – Death Parade
Dorian Electra – My Agenda
A follow-up to last year's very full-on debut, Flamboyant, the gender fluid American returns with a mix of punk, hardcore and electro-pop with oodles of autotune and attitude. The music isn't always enjoyable but Dorian's presence is fairly electrifying, full of pain, anger, and edge, from opener F The World to the title track with guests Pussy Riot and Village People), the eccentric Gentleman, the homophobia-themed Ram It Down to the poppier, but still caustically body-conscious Barbie Boy. Provocative, challenging, but never dull. Self-released.
Dorian Electra – Sorry Bro (I Love You)
beabadoobee – Fake It Flowers
Debut full album from London's Filipino-born Briton Beatrice Laus, another young bedroom singer-songwriter, has a heavy leaning towards slow 90s rock indie, and she’s previously released a Pavement-influenced rockstar aspiration melancholy song, I Wish I Was Stephen Malkmus, There's a slacker and grunge feel throughout, although this LP has perhaps more polish in production than some of her earlier output and now perhaps loses a little DIY edge. Other songs worth checking out are Sorry, and Worth It, in which she delivers like a breathy Avril Lavigne. Joy, vulnerability, heartbreak and more, it's a decent indie solo debut. Out on Dirty Hit.
beabadoobee - Care
Autechre – SIGN
A welcome surprise full-length LP, after their last five-part album in 2016, Elseq 1-5, as well as their NTS Sessions 1-4 boxset in 2018, by the original Rochdale electronic pioneers and Warp Records stalwarts Rob Brown and Sean Booth, returning with wondrous titles of strange abstraction, and music of synthetic textures, dark atmosphere, gurgles, crashes, drones, beeps, beats and keyboard surges, all within their own vocabulary. And in between all that, strangely alluring, melodies emerge throughout the album, with memorable tracks such as F7, si00, au14, and the transcendent closing number, r cazt. Out on Warp Records.
Autrechre – au14
Kevin Morby – Sundowner
A cross between a modern-day Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, this is the sixth album by the American singer-songwriter - declamatory, profound, moving and often very beautiful, mixing electric and acoustic guitar with his strong, sensitive, clear vocal delivery. The running theme is to put Middle American twilight into sound, and highlights include Campfire, the title track, Valley, Velvet Highway, the passionate, higher octane Wander, and the undisputedly unambiguous title, Don't Underestimate Midwest American Sun. Out on Dead Oceans
Kevin Morby – Don't Underestimate Midwest American Sun
Delmer Darion – Morning Pageants
This potent album for the electronic duo of Oliver Jack and Tom Lenton, West Midlands-born and North London-based, and centres around the theme of the Devil and his demise, inspired by the line “The death of Satan was a tragedy for the imagination” from Wallace Stevens’ poem Esthétique du Mal. It's a fascinating, eccentric work, more like a soundtrack if anything, with a huge range of sounds and atmospheres, animal and outdoor noises, from the delicate opener Recto 290 to the slow build beats, piano and jazz feel of the closing track Television, with the understated vocals of Genevieve Dawson, as well as Darkening, Wildering, Narrowing, and St Louis. Dark, ambient, alluringly unusual. Out on Practise Music.
Delmer Darion – Television ft. Genevieve Dawson
Young Knives – Barbarians
After a seven-year absence, and finally released in September the brothers brothers Henry Dartnall and The House of Lords return with an album inspired by John Gray’s 2002 radical work of philosophy, Straw Dogs, not the one that inspired Sam Peckinpah's famous 1971 film starring Dustin Hoffman, but one that also challenges our view of the human condition and explores ultra violence. It's a challenging new sound too, a real departure from the cheeky, youthful clear-voiced wit of the previous numbers such as She's Attracted To or The Decision from Voices of Animals and Men, now their style has more in common with Killing Joke. Sheep Tick, especially if you see the video, is a disturbing, powerful mixture of punk and electronica, Swarm swirls with an off-key menace, and Society for Cutting Up Men has echoes of a sneering John Lydon in his Public Image Limited era. Different, daring, disturbing, powerful. Out on Gadzook.
Young Knives – Sheep Tick
Snowdrops – Volutes
An eerily beautiful and mesmerising project featuring the ondes Martenot, the proto-synth insrument invented by First World War radio operator and cellist Maurice Martenot where the pitch of several radio oscillators is controlled by moving the right hand with metal ring on finger over an electrical ribbon, with "theremin-like" tones modified by the left hand. Strasbourg-based pianist Christine Ott is also a specialist in this instrument, and this Snowdrops is is her electro-acoustic duo with Mathieu Gabry, joined here by violin, cello, piano, Mellotron and the viola of Anne Irène-Kempf. Gorgeous, expressive and exquisite, especially the track Ultraviolet, but throughout, such as Éloge De L'Errance, Inception, Odysseus, and the warbling Trapezian Fields. Out on Injazero Records and available via Bandcamp.
Snowdrops – Trapezian Fields
This week's selection is by The Landlord.
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