It’s now been three years since SOPHIE tragically passed away, and as a great way to remember her legacy is listen to this set she did back in 2014 in Los Angeles. It’s literally perfection, and you can still hear the impact she made on music today.
The Fox is Black
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I love me a mix, especially when an artist truly does something unique and totally out-of-the-box. Enter DJ Python, who’s musical style has been described as “futuristic reggaeton” who comes out of nowhere with the most eclectic mix of 2024, and maybe, ever?! The range of this mix is unheard of. He describes it as “60-plus edited songs and unreleased stuff from friends and myself” but this literally spans nearly ever genre you can imagine. I can’t stop listening to this, and the ending, my god, it’s maybe one of the most magical things I’ve ever heard. I hope you enjoy it!
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I think Kim Gordon is one of the coolest people alive. If you’re unfamiliar, she is well-known for being part of iconic rock band Sonic Youth, and since then, has gone on to be a writer, a painter, fashion designer, model, etc. 40 years alter and she’s still making some of the hardest music out there. Her previous record No Home Record sounded like an amalgamation of electronic, hip-hop, and rock, creating a noisy mashup that is both hard to listen to and totally entrancing.
Yesterday she announced her new record, The Collective, along with a music video for the song “BYE BYE.” The video stars her daughter Coco Gordon Moore as a mysterious teen on the run from unknown forces. The track continues Gordon’s electronic noise rock sound, messy and glitchy and great. Excited to see what she’s cooked up on 8 March.
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One of my favorite albums of 2023 came from Purelink, made up of Chicago musicians Akeem Asani, Tommy Paslaski, and Ben Paulson. Their album Signs was an instant classic in the world of ambient music, featuring the most luscious looping patterns, an album meant to be heard on repeat. Most recently they released an hour and a half long mix for Resident Advisor, which RA describes as “intricately textured downtempo, dub techno and even UK garage, all cut through with a floaty, almost drowsy quality, with plenty of exclusives and unreleased cuts from the likes of Nick León, James K, Downstairs J and more. It highlights Purelink’s position as a bridger of worlds, sounds and tempos.”
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We need to talk about André 3000 and his new album, New Blue Sun. Interviews starting ramping up last week about the album, with André saying, “there’s no bars,” that he won’t be rapping on the album. This is paired with the fact that he’s been seen wandering around the literal globe with a massive flute in tow. Clearly this record was going to be something different.
From my perspective, it’s an ambient, new age, world music endeavor. It sounds like echoes of Alice Coltrane and Laraaji, Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Green, like a warm afternoon laying in the sun. To really help me understand this record, it was actually the Pitchfork review that gave me the most insight. I knew he had worked with some of the folks from Leaving Records, who I came across in the last couple months, but it sounds like it was truly a jam record, for lack of a better term. And I think it’s that variety of artits and sounds that really make this record something special.
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Combining the forces of acclaimed director Paul Thomas Anderson with musical royalty of The Smile (Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood Radiohead, plus drummer Tom Skinner) and you know you’ll get something great. They collaborated on the video for the song “Wall of Eyes,” the title track to the EP of the same name that’s being released 26 January, 2024.
From my perspective, this feels like a good old fashioned music video, which I love. It’s beautifully shot, a lot of mystery and nuance into the meaning, or maybe it doesn’t mean anything and it’s just lovely to look at? Either way, I enjoyed both the song and the video immensely.
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This came across my TikTok over the weekend I thought It was too beautiful not to share. FKJ, aka French Kiwi Juice, is a French multi-instrumentalist who creates music that’s that I would describe as a jazz-flecked with electronic touches. At a recent performance at Red Rock in Colorado, he performed his track “Ylang Ylang” along with these stunning visuals. If you were able to bottle up a memory, I think it might end up looking (and soudning) something like this.
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One of my go-to waking up in the morning, soothing ambient chillness records has been the new record from Purelink called Signs. I tend to put albums on repeat, listening to them over and over to get a better sense of the overall narrative, and this one works great for that.
“Distilled from extended compositions prepared and performed across 2022 in Chicago, Kansas City, New York, and Los Angeles, Signs captures their chemistry at its most liquid and immaterial, mapped in mutating systems of glitch, glass, rhythm, and space. It’s music alternately subdued and subterranean, elevated and remote, attuned to the flickering sentience of outer spheres.”The other thing I’ll point out is the cover art by Ezra Miller (not that one) who has created what I would describe as a serene bathhouse vibe. This really comes to life in the video below for the track “4k Murmurs” where these inky washes of movement come to life, reminiscent of delftware plates, sumi ink, and weather patterns or fishes swimming in schools.
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I first heard of Eartheater thanks to Kyle as he would play her singles throughout the day, her music and harmonies throbbing through the apartment. Now, her new album Powders is out and it’s such a fascinating evolution of her sound. For me, it’s somewhere between 90s pop and trip hop, with distinctive bass lines, floating strings, hints of acoustic guitar, and electronic drum beats that feel familiar in a comfortable way. Hints of Morcheeba meets Massive Attack, perhaps. Her distinctive vocal styling though makes this all her own, creating a beautiful sound that’s underpinned by a dark eeriness.
I would highly recommend the single “Pure Smile Snake Venom” as well as and “Face in the Moon” to listen to first if you’re curious. And yes, there is a cover of System of the Down’s “Chop Suey” on the record, but I’ve gotta say, it’s not for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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The Mount Kimbie guys, Kai Campos and Dom Maker, are always doing interesting work, and post-lockdown, it seems like they’ve been really on a roll. Their classic album, Cold Spring Fault Less Youth, was released a decade ago now, and featured an iconic pairing with then 21 year old Archie Marshall, aka King Krule. The two tracks he guested on were two of my personal favorites, raw with emotion and unparalleled in sound.
Now, the guys have reunited on a new track titled “Boxing” which sees their explorations in sound continue to develop and grow. It feels a bit more like the King Krule universe, ending in a field of sound that’s more akin to Mount Kimbie. The track is only on sale through Bandcamp until this Thursday, 21 September, so grab it while you can.
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I somehow missed that James Blake was set to release his seventh album, Playing Robots into Heaven, this Friday, September 8th. From what I’ve read, it’s a return to his early releases, think his CMYK EP from back in 2010, which contains one of his very best tracks, “CMYK.”
So far there have been two music videos, one for the song “Big Hammer” which has a heist-themed music video. Bu the latest release is for the title track, which as you’ll see below, is moody AF. Director Thibaut Grevet did an incredible job on building out a wild looking world for this track, with Blake playing a kind of Sisyphean role, the weight of the music on his shoulders, or that he’s leading a procession of robots into heaven? Either way, what I’ve heard from the album so far is very weird and very different from his last few releases, very excited for this one.
