Watch and dance to the new video for Konono N°1‘s ‘Yambadi Mama’, lifted from last year’s Konono No° 1 Meets Batida, their collaborative album with Angolan/Portuguese musician Batida aka Pedro Coquenão. Directed by Catarina Limão, the video is every bit as wildly colourful, groovy and hypnotic as the song.
Konono No° 1 Meets Batida is out now through Crammed Discs.
There’s a new EP on the way from Tokyo’s psychedelic five-piece Kikagaku Moyo, following last year’s album House In The Tall Grass. Entitled Stone Garden, the upcoming EP drops on April 21st through their own Guruguru Brain. Improvisation continues to be a key element of the band’s sound, who on Stone Garden adopt a more experimental approach than in their previously song-based effort, describes a press release. “This record enabled the band to experiment not only with instrumentation but also atonality and a playful approach to mixing.”
Kikagaku Moyo are teasing the EP with the first single from it, ‘In A Coil’, an hypnotic and exhilarating track embracing a myriad of influences from classical Indian music and Krautrock to traditional folk and 70s Rock. Take a listen now.
To celebrate the release of Stone Garden, Kikagaku Moyo are embarking on a North American tour in May, before returning to Europe this summer for several live dates, including a show in London at Moth Club on June 20th. Head over here to check out all their stops and other info.
Canadian post-rockers Do Make Say Think have been putting out incredible records with elements of experimental rock, prog, psych, jazz, punk, and electronica and intense and hypnotic live shows since the mid 90’s. But it’s been eight long years since the band put out their last album, 2009’s Other Truths. So we’re very pleased to learn that they will return this spring with a new album called Stubborn Persistent Illusions. The record is influenced by a short Bhuddist poem about boundlessness and recurrence, as the band explains:
“There is a hint of narrative on this album which is both vague and deliberate. The idea comes from an image in a Buddhist poem about working with a wild mind. The idea is that each song is a thought or daydream, independent but at the same time connected to the other thoughts through subconscious feelings. And although the thoughts come and go, the feelings return over and over throughout our lives. The suggestion in the poem is that when your mental chatter carries you away you don’t necessarily need to tie it down or shut it up; you can instead recognize thoughts as thoughts and let them play out. Eventually all concepts must return to perception, where they started. We should probably say again that this narrative is admittedly a bit wooly around the edges – we don’t pretend that every note has a special significance.”
Stubborn Persistent Illusions arrives on May 18th through Constellation but they are already offering a supreme treat, with not one but two tracks, ‘Bound’ ‘And Boundless’, magically bonded in this stream.
March is set to end on a very strong note, with The Evil Usses‘ new album Amateur Pro Wrestling dropping on March 31st through Stolen Body Records. The Bristol quartet had already enticed us with ‘Gambino‘, the first single taken from the album. They are doing it again, with the album’s second single ‘Pre Op Pop’ clearly making it one of this year’s highlights. The track comes with a kaleidoscopic video. Watch it now.
To celebrate the release of Amateur Pro Wrestling, The Evil Usses are embarking on an extensive UK tour, kicking off in Stroud on March 11th and including a show at London’s 93 Feet East on March15th. Known for the exhilarating energy of their performances, if you haven’t seen The Evil Usses live, you are missing out. Check out the full set of live dates below:
11/03/17 – The Prince Albert, Stroud
12/03/17 – The Bay Horse Inn, Totnes
15/03/17 – 93 Feet East, London
17/03/17 – Old Road Tavern, Chippenham
18/03/17 – Cliffs Margate, Cliftonville
19/03/17 – Royal Oak, Bath
22/03/17 – Texture, Manchester
24/03/17 – Sunbird Records, Darwen
25/03/17 – Kazimier Garden, Liverpool
26/03/17 – The Ale Stop, Buxton
31/03/17 – Bar Loco, New Castle
01/04/17 – Source, Carlisle
02/04/17 – The Jazz Bar, Edinburgh
28/04/17 – Dartington Estate, Totnes
29/04/17 – Sticky Mikes, Brighton
28/05/17 – Stroud Jazz Festival
11/08/17 – Celebration Days Festival (FR)
18/08/17 – ArcTanGent Festival
Gorillaz and Owiny Sigoma Band are some of the bands where Jesse Hackett shines, but the London producer, multi-instrumentalist and singer counts numerous other collaborations and projects under his belt and an old passion for traditional African music and European electronic compositions and soundtrack scores. His latest venture saw him travel to Uganda and join forces with multi-instrumentalist and singer Albert Ssempeke and singing legend Otim Alpha to form Ennanga Vision. Ennanga Vision is also the fruit of this union, a full-length album featuring “deconstructed royal-court music from the forgotten kingdoms of the Buganda, reconstructed electronic wedding music, fluorescent pink African pop, crunched 8-bit drum machines and a 10-foot long monster xylophone”, as the press release states.
Ennanga Vision arrives on June 2nd through Soundway Records but we can already and dance to the album’s first single ‘Otim’s War’. It comes with a fittingly joyful and infectious video. Here it is.
Tanya Tagaq‘s Retribution was one of our 15 Album Picks last year, an album to be treasured evermore, portraying and protesting environmental and human rights violations and abuse. Tagaq has unveiled a video for the album track ‘Ajaaja’, “a song that connects people across families and generations” as she put it herself. The video was directed by Light Echo Productions and you can watch it below.
Retribution is out now via Six Shooter.
