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TRACKS: See the video for Femi Kuti’s ‘Pà Pá Pà’ and hear Made Kuti’s ‘Your Enemy’ ahead of February’s twin albums
AFROBEAT founding father and steely political activist Fela Kuti gifted us a wondrous back catalogue investigating jazz, funk, hiphop, rock, traditional Nigerian musics, so much more, before passing in 1997. Of course, he also gifted us his son, Femi; and in turn Femi’s gifted us his son, Made, to continue that legacy and take it …
SEE: Arlo Parks – ‘Caroline’: extra UK dates for next summer
MAY WE talk of one of the artists to properly keep an eye on in ’21? We may? Excellent. Arlo Parks grew up in South-West London, a self-confessed tomboy, super-sensitive, who sums her teenage self up as “a black kid who can’t dance for shit, listens to emo music and currently has a crush on …
SEE: CAMERA announce their February album with the feedback motorik of ‘Kartoffelstampf’
NOW ENTERING their second decade as a band, Berlin’s CAMERA are pushing, to borrow the phrase of Ken Kesey, furthur; deeper. They’re poised to release their fifth studio set, Prosthuman, on Bureau B in February; a news bulletin they’re firing at you point-blank with the first single drop and accompanying video, “Kartoffelstampf”, which you can …
SEE: Juanita Stein – ‘Reckoning’; seven UK dates from May
TORCH-songtress Juanita Stein, who released her third album of rootsy songcraft for Nude, Snapshot, in late October, has released a video for the dark, rousing drama of “Reckoning” and announced a seven-date tour for May ’21. The video, embedded down below, follows Juanita on a bike ride through southern France. It was self-filmed in the …
SEE: The Underground Youth – ‘A Sorrowful Race’; tenth album in March
BORN in the musical fires of Manchester, currently resident in Berlin, it’s fair to say that there’s a decent dose of proper musical heritage, maybe a little darkness, a willingness to party and explore the edges, in the DNA of The Underground Youth. The band, led by Craig Dyer and also comprised of his wife …
NEWS: experimental composer and Cocteaus collaborator Harold Budd reported to have passed, aged 84
SAD NEWS this evening as reports began to circulate across social media that the poet, avant-garde composer and pianist Harold Budd, a progenitor of the modern ambient piano style, has died at the age of 84. Budd was born in May 1936 in Los Angeles, but was raised in Victorville, in the Mojave desert. He …
TRACK: A Winged Victory For the Sullen – ‘Desires Are Already Memories’: O’Halloran and Wiltzie return
THAT glorious combination of Stars of the Lid and The Dead Texan’s amniotic drone sustain voyager, Adam Wiltzie, and modern piano composer, Dustin O’Halloran, who ply their seductive trade as A Winged Victory For the Sullen, have announced a new album, Invisible Cities, to be released come the end of February next year. (The 26th …
TRACK: Ariel Pink – ‘She’s Gone’: garage-punk cover announces next reissue cycle
LA’S hallucinatory pop explorer Ariel Pink is revving up for the next phase of his reissue programme, delving right back to the beginning of Haunted Graffiti days with the third and fourth instalments of Ariel Archives. The reissue programme for Mexican Summer will see cycles 3 and 4 hit the world on January 29th next year. …
SEE: Osees’ roarin’ live take on ‘Gelatinous Cube’; Dwyer’s boys announce live stream
OSEES – the band who Marc Riley called the “best live band in the world”, and he was so on the money – have released footage of a live take of “Gelatinous Cube”, from Big Sur, with the strict instructions: meant to be listened to loud on speakers. Watch and you know they’re absolutely on …
SEE: The Departure Lounge – ‘Mercury In Retrograde’: indie prodigals return on Michael Head’s label
SEVENTEEN long years away; but you can’t keep a decent indie songsmith gone forever. You may well recall the graceful indie of the Departure Lounge; they released two sweet and underappreciated albums for Bella Union, 2001’s Jetlag Dreams and Too Late To Die Young a year later. You may be even longer in the indie …