Watch the video for The Evil Usses’ new single ‘Pre Op Pop ‘

09 March 2017

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

Jesse Hackett’s latest project Ennanga Vision set to release eponymous album

08 March 2017

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.

<a href="http://ennangavision.bandcamp.com/album/ennanga-vision-2">Ennanga Vision by Ennanga Vision</a>

Tanya Tagaq shares video for ‘Ajaaja’

07 March 2017

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.

Juana Molina previews upcoming album with first single ‘Cosoco’

06 March 2017

Photo: Alejandro Ros

As we had recently mentioned, and much to our excitement, the ever wonderful and talented Argentinian artist Juana Molina is ready to follow her incredible 2013 album Wed 21, which was one of our 15 Album Picks of the Year. The upcoming album, Halo, sees Molina continue an experimental path. Its twelve tracks “abound with hypnotic rhythms which seem to draw their energy from immemorial rituals;”, describes the album’s accompanying blurb. “With timbral explorations and ever-changing soundscapes; with mysterious lyrics often touching on witchcraft, premonition and dreams, always used as metaphors for emotional states; with voices which sometimes move away from word and meaning to be reduced to abstract phonemes and onomatopoeia.”

Halo features contributions from her longtime band members Odin Schwartz and Diego Lopez de Arcaute, and Eduardo Bergallo, and also Deerhoof’s John Dieterich who appears in a couple of tracks. The album will see the light of day on May 5th via Crammed Discs and Molina had previously offered a marvellous teaser video. Now the bewitching ‘Cosoco’ has surfaced as the first single from Halo. We’ve been listening to it over and over again. Here it is.

Penguin Cafe return with new album The Imperfect Sea

03 March 2017

Photo: Alex Kozobolis

Penguin Cafe have announced their return, with a new album, The Imperfect Sea, arriving on May 5th through Erased Tapes. Arthur Jeffes started the ensemble in 2009, reviving and honouring the legacy of his late father’s Penguin Cafe Orchestra. The album takes its title from a saying by Simon Jeffes that “we wade in a sea of imperfections…”. Arthur explains:

“If there is a narrative to the album it’s coming to the acceptance of the imperfections in all aspects of life; moreover, the recognition that these imperfections and tiny randomnesses are in fact what make up the best parts”.

On The Imperfect Sea, Penguin Cafe delve into newer territories, offering a dance record played with acoustic instruments.

“For this album I wanted to effect a departure from where we’d been up to now. The idea was to create a musical world that would feel familiar to an audience more used to dance records but stay true to our own values. So we replaced electronic layers with real instruments: pads with real string sections, synths with heavily-effected pianos, and atmospheric analogue drones with real feedback loops ringing through a stone and a piano soundboard.”

Made up of mostly originals, the album also features covers of electronic works by Simian Mobile Disco and Kraftwerk, as well as a re-working of Simon’s ‘Now Nothing’.
The wonderful news comes paired with the first taste from the album, the magnificent ‘Cantorum’. Here it is.

Jessica Moss set to release debut solo album Pools Of Light this Spring

02 March 2017

Brilliant and ingenious violinist Jessica Moss is the latest artist to join the incredible cluster of stars orbiting our favourite Constellation. As a violinist, backing vocalist and co-composer, she is best know as a member of cult chamber-punk band Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and avant-klezmer group Black Ox Orkestar. Moss also has her hands on several other stellar projects, including records by Carla Bozulich’s Evangelista, Vic Chesnutt and BIG|BRAVE, to name but a few. Moss’s most recent venture performing solo work resulted in Pools Of Light, her first solo album due out this spring. Versatile and skilled, her approach to violin, as the label describes, “combines a natural technical fluidity, a recombinant command of folk, classical and modern idioms, and an adventurous exploration of signal-bending and analog effects that uniquely expand the spectrum of the violin as sound source”.
Pools Of Light resonates with themes of world injustices, social and environmental. Moss explains:

“As a solo performer, I feel an alignment with the transportive nature of storytelling tradition. My music is narrative, and I feel it’s subjects are already on everyone’s mind (climate change, refugee crisis, plastic garbage island floating in the sea…). My aim is to create a space where we can reflect on these things together. I prefer not to use too many words to relate; once the ideas are contextualized, conjuring images with sounds and melodies feels just as powerful to me and also more accessible in many ways. I don’t have an agenda, certainly not a solution, just a great sense of empathy and desire to be sharing space and experiences. I believe that having these transporting moments together can be both a balm and a way to receive energy to move forward, to engage.”

The mesmeric and compelling ‘Glaciers I (Pt I)’ is being offered as the first taste from Pools of Light, ahead of its release on May 5th. Listen to it below.

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