With Deep States arriving in just a few days, Australian four piece Tropical Fuck Storm are previewing their third album with new single ‘Bumma Sanger’. The track comes with an accompanying video directed by Oscar O’Shea. Watch it below.
Deep States is out on August 20th through Joyful Noise.
There’s wonderful news from gifted and adventurous musician Maurice Louca, who has enthralled us long ago with his solo works and many other projects, including his trio The Dwarfs of East Agouza, multicultural collective Alif and bands like Bikya, Lekhfa and Karkhana. Following his magnificent Elephantine, which was one of our Album Picks of 2019, the composer and producer has announced the release of a new album entitled Saet El-Hazz (The Luck Hour). Louca explains the significance of the album title:
“‘The Luck Hour’ is a loose translation of ‘Saet El Hazz’ which is a coded saying we have in Egypt to refer to a good time, which usually includes a good deal of debauchery. When you mention that you have had a Saet Hazz, there are no questions asked; it is what it is and there is something about linking luck to decadence that resonates very much within me regarding the music of this record, and even if I can’t fully articulate it in words, the emotional register and drive behind this record and how it came to be, and the energy between us at the studio rehearsing and recording this record, is in a lot of ways to me a Saet Hazz (A Luck Hour).”
Consisting of six movements, Saet El-Hazz (The Luck Hour) draws on Arabic music, psychedelic folk, and free improv. The seed for the album sprouted from Louca’s wish to collaborate with Lebanese improvisational group “A” Trio. “They create a sonic cosmos of their own, and I had the idea and started composing music”, he explains, “the songs that I wanted to exist in this sonic world–at times harmoniously, other times clashing, and all the emotional and sonic ranges in between.”
Also crucial to the album was a commission from Mophradat Art Organization for Louca to compose and perform a music piece using instruments modified to play microtonally in the Arabic Maqam modes (scales), which led him to Istanbul to custom-make a guitar and to Indonesia. “I also ended up in Indonesia with a Gamelan maker, tuning a Serang (they caIl it the Indonesian Xylophone, a part of the family of Gamelan tuned percussion Instruments),” he comments “Since the Arabic Maqams use a lot of notes from the chromatic scale alongside the quarter tones, I ended up tuning it to a full chromatic scale plus certain quarter tones.”
We’ll have to wait until September 24th for the album to be out through Sub Rosa and Northern Spy but we can already hear the transcending lead single ‘Bidayat (Holocene). Take a listen now.
Next month Jack Ladder & The Dreamlanders are releasing a new album called Hijack!. The Australian composer and singer-songwriter, real name Tim Rogers, and The Dreamlanders, made up of Kirin J Callinan, Donny Benét, and Laurence Pike, have also enlisted the help of composer Sam Lipman to work on string arrangements. Marking his sixth studio album, Jack Ladder touches on the theme of staying and departing from a rehabilitation facility, after he spent some time in one. This is echoed in the two singles released recently, ‘Xmas in Rehab’ and ‘Leaving Eden’. The latter is offered with a video with painted animation by Anna-Wili Highfield. Here’s both.
Hijack! is out on September 10th through Endless Recordings
After sharing ‘Ker al Loch’, Yann Tiersen is giving us another tender and tantalizing taste from his upcoming album, Kerber, with a video for new single ‘Ker Yegu’. Like his previous albums, Kerber is ingrained with a sense of place, and is named after a chapel in a small village on the Breton island of Ushant where he lives. The video that accompanies ‘Ker Yegu’ opens a window into the life and the people of Ushant and was directed by Murat Gökmen. Watch it below and watch out for the release of Kerber on August 27th through Mute.
In other related news, Yann Tiersen has announced a worldwide tour, with dates in North America this November preceding several shows in Europe in early 2022.
For A Brief Moment We Could Smell The Flowers, the upcoming third album from drum-and-sax duo Run Logan Run, arrives next month. We had already heard the buoyant and boisterous lead single ‘Screaming With The Light On’ and now they are offering a heady new brew called ‘A Brief Moment’. “I think moments are all we ever have because the past is gone and the future never comes, so our lives are in reality just constant movement from one moment to the next,” the pair comments. “Except that this moment is recorded so you can keep going back to it.” Listen to ‘A Brief Moment’ again and again and make sure you grab the album when it’s out on September 17th through Worm Discs.
Photo: Matthew Chasney
Lamplighter is the second album from Gerycz/Powers/Rolin, the marvellous trio of musicians Jayson Gerycz, Jen Powers and Matthew Rolin. Mostly improvised, Lamplighter sounds and feels intimate, powerful, radiant and hypnotic, all at once. “It was almost entirely improvised,” Rolin said about the record, with Powers adding, “We talked about each piece for maybe thirty seconds to a minute before recording it.”
Lamplighter will see the light of day on September 3rd through American Dreams. Ahead of it, they are enticing us with ‘Rotations’, a blissful and bewildering track offered with an accompanying video made by Peter Shapiro. Watch it below.
