The Young Mothers return with third album Better If You Let It

19 November 2024

Photo: Malwina Witkowska

The Young Mothers, the project led by Norwegian born bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, are back with their third album, six years on from the release of Morose. Entitled Better If You Let It, the new album arrives on February 21st through Sonic Trasmissions, and unlike previous records, is a group effort, with all members sharing writing credits.

Alongside the album announcement, the six-piece unveiled today the title track, which serves as an enthralling taste. Of the track, trumpet player Jawwaad Taylor comments:

“Better if you let if is a song that came together in the typical way TYM’s work. It is a song that pulls from the things going on in the world at large and the culture the band has developed over many years of working together. The song aims to take the listener on a journey that begins in the way it ends.
Jason Jackson brought the band a whimsical ballad that the band immediately embraced. Later Jawwad sampled and deconstructed Jason’s original tune turning it into what you the listener hears in its final form.
It is both a tribute to a very special time when the Great American song book was being formed and a time when producers were digging through what had become old records that where being repurposed to create brand new songs for the world to enjoy. Hence, the song beginning where it ends. With Jason Jackson’s original tune and morphing into it’s final form.
Begins where it ends.
We THE YOUNG MOTHERS hope this aids you in your listening pleasure!!”

‘Better If You Let It’ is a song that strikes upon first listen. Here it is.

Eilis Frawley to release debut LP, Fall Forward, in March; shares title track

16 November 2024

Photo: Adriessa Oliveira de Souza

Fall Forward is the debut album from Australian drummer and percussionist Eilis Frawley, now based in Berlin, having spent time living in Seoul. A classically trained percussionist, her urge to explore creative paths and play has led her to stints in various groups including Laura Lee & The Jettes, Party Fears and I Drew Blank’ and she now plays with her own bands Kara Delik (Turkish post punk) and Restless (noisy punk). Frawley has also put out several singles and two EPs, but Fall Forward marks the first album under her own name. With influences from pop, jazz and krautrock, the upcoming album “is a unique cosmos of sound – innovative, clever and always stylistically confident”, as the press release describes, “and the result is an energetic, profound, light-hearted and extraordinary record.”

Ahead of its release on March 7th through Sinnbus, Frawley is offering a first glimpse into it with the title track now streaming with an accompanying animated video made by Emma Taggart.

Yazz Ahmed announces fourth studio album, A Paradise In The Hold, and shares title track

15 November 2024

Yazz Ahmed is one of the most remarkable jazz trumpet player and composer of her generation and new music from her is always great news. Following 2019’s Polyhymnia, the British-Bahraini celebrated musician has announced its much anticipated follow-up, A Paradise In The Hold. On it, Ahmed draws inspiration from traditional music and childhood memories of Bahrain, and her compositions are even more deeply entwined with her dual heritage than before. “A thread in my work has been searching for, establishing and, now, finally embracing and celebrating my cultural identity,” Ahmed says. “If my first album, 2011’s Finding My Way Home, represents the first steps on this path then with A Paradise In The Hold, I’ve arrived at a deeper understanding of how my British and Bahraini heritage can co-exist, in personal as well as musical terms.”

Writing for voice for the first time, she found inspiration in Bahraini wedding poems and the yearning songs of the pearl divers to write lyrics, and collaborated with a brilliant cast of singers including Brigitte Beraha, Natacha Atlas, Randolph Matthews and Alba Nacinovich.

Through this exploration into her heritage, and employing a rich tapestry of musical influences, the forthcoming A Paradise In The Hold stands as a powerful tribute to the beauty of Bahraini culture. “It’s another step in my evolution of making music,” says Ahmed. “There’s so much beauty in Bahraini music. I hope this album gives people a flavour of how vibrant its culture is.”

A Paradise In The Hold will see the light of day on February 28th through Night Time Stories and ahead of it Ahmed is enticing us with the magnificent and spellbinding title track, clocking in at 10 minutes. The single comes with an accompanying video made by Charlie Campion and Iman Ahmed. Watch it below.

Matt McBane teases upcoming solo album, Buoy, with lead single ‘Eleven Eleven’

14 November 2024

Composer, electronic musician, and violinist Matt McBane has announced the release of a new album. Entitled Buoy, it follows his widely acclaimed Bathymetry, released in 2022, and is both his first electronic album and first solo album. A record of patterns and ambience for synthesizers and violin that sees him play an array of analog synthesizers (modular and fixed), violin, piano and bass guitar, Buoy sprouted from a 2020 performance at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust curated by Laurie Anderson and Arto Lindsay. While Buoy reveals a new facet of McBane’s work, it expands the foundation laid by his previous music, “the patterns and processes of classical minimalism, the sonic manipulation of electronic music, the elemental qualities of fiddle music, emotional nuance, cinematic space, counterpoint, atmosphere”, as the press release describes, “all filtered through the voltages of his synthesizers.”

We’ll have to wait until February 28th for Buoy to be out through Gradient Music but we can already hear the immersively gorgeous and engrossing ‘Eleven Eleven’, which serves as a perfect introduction to the album.

Jean-Claude Vannier shares new track ‘Comme les enfants savent aimer’

13 November 2024

Following the tender and heartfelt ‘Perdue dans la cité (Lost in the city)’, phenomenal French musician, composer and arranger Jean-Claude Vannier has shared a second charming single called ‘Comme les enfants savent aimer’. The track is lifted from his upcoming Jean-Claude Vannier et son orchestre de mandolines (Jean Claude Vannier and his mandolin orchestra), an album created as the soundtrack to a non-existent silent film. Speaking about the track, Vannier said:

“When I was a child, my parents often took us to dinner at the restaurant in Parc Montsouris. There was a bandstand by the lake, with a few mandolins playing fashionable tunes, and the moon was shimmering on the surface of the water, where an enigmatic boat was moored.
I would have loved to have gone with the waves, with the mandolines.
Later, I spent many a night lying in the boat, dreaming of this music of love.
All these memories led me to record this album with my mandolinist friend, Vincent Beer Demande.”

Jean-Claude Vannier et son orchestre de mandolines is out on February 14th through Ipecac. Now listen to ‘Comme les enfants savent aimer (How children know to love)’.

Don Kapot to release new Remedy EP this Friday; UK tour dates approaching

13 November 2024

Don Kapot blew our minds last year with I Love Tempo, an intoxicating opus of an album that made it to our Album Picks of the Year. We’re excited to know that Giotis Damianidis (bass), Viktor Perdieus (baritone saxophone) and Jakob Warmenbol (drums), who make up the Brussels trio, are rolling out new music this Friday, in the form of an EP titled Remedy. Featuring three tracks, Remedy “showcase[s] Don Kapot’s love of using a wide range of instruments including bass, drums and tenor saxophone, evolving their sound into a solid complex rhythmic wave against a Death Grips-style hip-hop backdrop and demented samples”. The upcoming EP is also the first in a series of three EPs they will be releasing over the coming months.

For a taste of what’s on offer, listen to the entrancing and galvanizing opening track ‘Bascule’, and nab the EP when it drops on November 15th through W.E.R.F. Records.

In other related good news, Don Kapot are hitting the road next week for a string of UK shows. Check all their stops below:

19.11 – Bristol – The Elmer’s Arms
20.11 – Birmingham – Pan Pan
21.11 – Newcastle – Cobalt Studios
23.11 – Falmouth – The Cornish Bank
25.11 – London – New Cross Inn
26.11 – Hull – The New Adelphi Club