Bleep

Skee Mask returns with a surprise eighteen track album on mighty Munich institution Ilian Tape.

A mainstay on the label since he first shot on to the scene in 2014, it’s no hyperbole to state that Skee Mask just keeps getting better and better with each release he shares. Having ventured into a more widescreen, uptempo, multifaceted and altogether more timeless sound on 2018’s seminal Compro after a string of mostly techno-centric releases beforehand, Pool further develops this sound into a place of seemingly limitless potential.

Skee Mask's mastery transcends style and apparent tempo restrictions - notwithstanding the various beatless interludes, Pool flits between 130bpm up to 170bpm+ without ever settling into any tangibly recognisable genre templates. Opener ‘Nvivo’ is a kind of cosmic electro; ‘CZ3000 Dub’ is subby, melodic techno built around tubular bell jangles; ‘DJ Camo Bro’ sounds like Future Sound of London doing a footwork tune. These three are on the first plate alone. The only time Skee Mask’s orbit really comes close to the signature Ilian Tape sound is on ‘Breathing Method’, a killer slab of stepping, broken techno with percussive vocal snippets bouncing on top. The defining feature of Pool is its wildly adventurous spirit, take ‘Harrison Ford’ - a staggering technicolour beat in the LA mould, with a face melting hair metal guitar solo bedded in.

Yet another flawless release from the genius mind of Skee Mask. Pool is the sound of an artist doing absolutely whatever they like, traversing a multitude of realms and dimensions and excelling throughout.

Since 2015’s sophomore album “Choose Your Weapon”, Hiatus Kaiyote have been through hell and back. Their track record of fine releases and festival presence ground to a sudden halt. Given the Melbourne-born four piece’s predilection for spinning sultry golden-hour moods out of soul, R&B, jazz-funk and beatwise noodling, it wouldn’t have been a surprise if “Mood Valiant” never got made at all.

2018 saw the band reach a new level of cultural cachet, as unmistakable lead singer Nai Palm (Naomi Saalfield) released a solo LP and featured as a guest vocalist on Drake’s globe-dominating “Scorpion”. Then came the fall.

Saalfield, who lost her mother to breast cancer as a child, was diagnosed with the same condition. She went into remission the next year, but not before her pet and Hiatus Kaiyote’s unofficial touring fifth member, a parrot named after 20th century jazz great Charlie Parker, died. Hopes for a restful start to the 2020s were dashed as Australia lost its early handle on pandemic management, and went into a series of convulsing lockdowns it has not yet fully come out of.

So — how have the band come up with the best album of their career to date; released, presumably with no small irony, at the height of the Northern Hemisphere’s summer season? “Mood Valiant”’s clue is in the name: by drawing upon her mother’s decision to switch between a black and white career depending on her mood that day, Saalfield inverts the band’s streak of rough luck. The resultant music is a tribute to resistance in the face of crushing adversity.

Enlisting Brazil’s bossa nova cult hero Arthur Verocai to apply some classy orchestration and positive affirmations on lead single ‘Sun’ is a good way to go about signalling your creative and spiritual rebirth. Signing on with Brainfeeder isn’t a bad move, either — not least that Flying Lotus went through his own near-death experience only a few years ago. But the storm clouds are kept at bay. For most of the dozen songs here, Hiatus Kaiyote paints in brushstrokes of Rhodes piano, warm instrumentation, and steady percussion which has the capacity to explode at a moment’s notice.

This comes to pass: “Mood Valiant” pootles along with urbane fluidity until we get to the mid-album showstopper, ‘All The Words We Don’t Say’. The song’s immediacy, courtesy of a knotty bassline and nonlinear beats, mark this as an outlier, but it explodes forth with Nai Palm singing-scatting about tilling the land and being absorbed by someone else’s eyes. Put that side-by-side with her recording Curtis Mayfield covers from a hospital bed, and it’s not hard to see where the joy stems from.

“Mood Valiant” shines with irrepressible unity and a palpable cheer which feels all the more acute after the turmoil to even get to this point. As Saalfield told Pitchfork earlier this year, “after [the scare] I decided that I needed to prove to life that the offering I have is genuine. My only wish is to live and offer my experience of time and beauty.” Mission accomplished.

Normally, an artistic shift for a creator is signalled by a withdrawal from the rat race, a monkish retreat to a simpler environment where a mind can ponder the elusive creative progress. But for artist and producer Julie Campbell aka LoneLady, the jump from Manchester’s crumbling outskirts to set up a new studio in an 18th century shooting range in central London had the inverse effect. Despite the metropolitan bustle outside, her third album Former Things comes off as an LP of isolation; without backing band and without intrusion. Remarkably, it’s also LoneLady’s most unapologetically pop-minded release to date.

The taut, acerbic skronk of Campbell’s Telecaster still scrapes Former Things with embellishments of no-wave sensibilities, but a new-found fascination with hardware, drum machines and synthesisers opens a whole new realm of possibility for the musician. ‘(There Is) No Logic’ leads the LP with a sequencer-laced, alt-disco flare, akin to an art-pop era Scritti Politti track, propelled with endless forward motion by a wiry funk spirit. The detail of each pin-sharp sample, crisp-dried digitised snare hit and squelching bass drop invokes an industrial electro edge to the likes of ‘Threats’ and ‘Terminal Ground’, as Campbell’s soul-via-punk vocal delivery brings to mind nothing less than the natural charisma of Prince and David Bowie.

Former Things boldly updates the forgotten sonics of 1980s art-pop, and LoneLady shows exactly how to make them sound brand new again.

Made during the most disquieting moments of the pandemic, “Icons” sees dexterous percussionist Eli Keszler evoke the mood of watching raindrops slide down the window while gazing out at a deserted city that might never be coming back as before. It’s a modern retelling of fourth world jazz — or, perhaps, no world at all. And now, an expanded multi-sensory edition of “Icons” is available for the first time.

Keszler’s presence as a drummer-in-demand alongside some of the most celebrated experimental electronic musicians of recent times (Oneohtrix Point Never, Jandek, Laurel Halo, Helm, Rashad Becker, et al) has established a template for what we might expect from his own solo output. “Icons” wrong-foots these expectations adroitly.

With a new album more or less ready to go at the start of 2020, the New Yorker scrapped his plans, dial down his typically frantic performance style, and explore a long-held ambition to make a tribute to solitude. “Icons” transmits an eerie absence throughout. The palette isn’t cold, rather the opposite; this is a supple and inviting record to nestle inside, and you’d be mistaken for thinking you’d stumbled into a jazz bar at 3am in places. Yet Keszler makes the theme of loss intractable from the music. Leia Jospé’s photography on “Icons”’ cover, and video accompaniment to ‘The Accident’, train in on solitary figures in the city that ostensibly never sleeps and stops moving.

Baroque harmonies, half-heard choirs and gently tumbling kalimbas ricochet off empty stairwells and streets. It’s often unclear where Keszler’s field recordings of pandemic-hit NYC end, and his meld of synth swells and pitched percussion begin. Whether undergirded with faltering slo-mo beats or faintly-detectable church bells, the entire atmosphere is humid and rich, curlicues of fog and steam coiling up toward the sky. A few of Keszler’s contemporaries have tapped into this lambent moodstate before, particularly Daniel Martin-McCormick’s latter day recordings as Relaxer, but Keszler’s access to, and utilisation of, a wide range of instruments sets “Icons” apart.

On top of all this, Keszler is launching a complimentary scented candle with boutique fragrance designers Joya Studio, capturing the smell of Chinatown where “Icons” was laid down. As for the energy of Chinatown circa 2020? You can hear that in every note.

Loraine James follows up 2020’s Nothing EP with Reflection, her second full length for UK institution Hyperdub. Written during the lockdown summer of 2020, it explores themes of isolation, introspection and hope across eleven tracks.

Technicolour, futuristic pop productions meld with R&B, drill and bass spectrum elements; a sonic exploration of contemporary black and queer narratives. For the Hyperdub collectors the crunchy eskibeat of ‘Self Doubt’ will no doubt be a welcome trip, with more wistful melancholic moments to be found on spoken word lament ‘Reflection’ and the Baths collaboration ‘On The Lake Outside’.

There’s a backbone of club pressure throughout too, with ‘Let’s Go’ and the skippy 2-step of ‘Simple Stuff’ primed to be deadly on a big soundsystem. There’s a sweetly skewed pop sensibility ingrained throughout the album, which shines through on leftfield cloud rap opener ‘Built To Last’ with Xzavier Stone, and the heads down UK hip hop of ‘Black Ting’ with Le3 Black.

‘Running Like That’ with Eden Samara takes it a level up - a slice of weighty, future rnb which is surely set to be a crossover success. However even in those brighter and more accessible moments of clarity, there’s a discordance and turbulence just one step behind it. The beats prang and shuffle, synth notes warp out of shape, bass stabs licked with snarling distortion. This is an electric and stunningly ambitious album, built on real feeling.

Every release by LA producer Madlib has seemed like a wildly successful litmus test for the versatility of beat-making. With esoteric electronic maestro Kieran Hebden aka Four Tet working some magic behind the scenes, Sound Ancestors might just prove to be Madlib’s most accomplished release to date; a heady iteration of past experiments renewed by his insatiable hunger to move beyond the times.

A quietly afrofuturist cadence is weaved throughout this LP, as Madlib twists tribal drumming rhythms, funk rock, dub-inflected vocals and electronic music much in the way that J Dilla approached his Donuts swansong. The result makes for some outstanding examples of Madlib’s finest grooves getting the breathing space they truly deserve. ‘Loose Goose’ is a showcase of his playful best, as a circular horn jaunt gets down and dirty with ghostly backing vocals and an expertly placed snippet of Snoop Dogg’s eternal catchphrase: “fo shizzle dizzle”. Meanwhile, ‘Road Of The Lonely Ones’ and Madlib’s touching tribute ‘Two for 2 - For Dilla’ come off as tenderly melancholic odes despite their funk-filled, slipstream-smooth boom bap energy.

Sound Ancestors is Madlib through and through, as you’ve always known him; constantly innovating. Backed by the arrangements of enigmatic force Keiran Hebden - a future classic no doubt.

The 21st century has proven to be a time of great reflection, which has led to a mass culture catching up with what was once criminally overlooked. Pauline Anna Strom was just such a formidable force, curiously excluded from the new age conversation, which tended to skew towards a given ‘canon’ of male composers. The planets began to realign with the release of 2017’s Trans-Millenia Music, an anthology LP that placed the deeply-felt inner visions of Strom’s synthesist innovations back through the public’s ears. Audiences were dazzled, while many of Strom’s followers since her prolific period between 1982 and 1988, were finally validated.

This is Strom's first LP in over three decades. Crafted in the long-lease San Francisco flat she occupied with her many machines and two pet iguanas, Little Soulstice and Ms Huff, Angel Tears in Sunlight is a remarkable album of searching intimacy, in tune with a wider cosmos of new age possibility. Shades of ambient, ‘fourth world’ hybridity burst with colour on the gently propulsive hand percussion and kalimba of ‘The Pulsation’ and ‘Equatorial Sunrise’. ‘Marking Time’, with its constant arpeggiated choral pad circularity, treads territories between the electronic and the organic in a quantum-leaping recollection of the atavistic as well as the avatar, sounding as urgent and modern as anything made by Holly Herndon, Jlin or Vessel. As is her pioneering style, Strom’s remembrance of our oldest instruments and customs is bestowed a forward-facing momentum once more.

A work of striking singularity and steadfast vision, Angel Tears in Sunlight is a reminder to the world that Pauline Anna Strom was a true original. A portion of the proceeds from the LP will benefit The International Iguana Foundation. Rest in peace Pauline Anna Strom.

“Promises” was anointed pretty much straight out the gate as a masterpiece. Some bristled at the rush to canonise a record while it was still cooling on the windowsill, but let’s be real here: a new album from legendary 80-year-old musician Pharoah Sanders qualifies for merit alone. Hearing one of the greatest saxophonists on this or any other planet turn in a transcendental performance, patiently pacing before breaking loose with expressive freedom, is all the more a pleasure.

Patience is the operative word to keep in mind when listening to “Promises”. By all accounts it took a while for Floating Points, aka Sam Shepherd, to convince Sanders to break his interregnum in the first place. While Sanders obviously does not require Shepherd to validate his art, perhaps he needed a younger foil to procure a late-career work of this scope. Although he remains a fixture on the touring circuit, when you tally his output in the 21st century, you don’t exactly need extra hands to count the number of albums Sanders has released. If you discount live recordings, you don’t even need your second.

With one foot still in the enduringly colossal deep-digging DJ scene — see how any combination of FloPo, Four Tet, Mafalda, Antal et al sell out auditoriums within seconds — Shepherd has matured into a dependable album-artist in his own right. He has form working as a foil to elder statesmen, evinced early into his career by a set of fabulous collaborations with James Holden and now-departed gnawa master Maâlem Mahmoud Guinia. No matter where he travels in the future, the duty of care afforded to Sanders is surely a lock to be part of Shepherd’s all-time highlight reel.

The album is anchored around a recurring seven-note leitmotif, and certainly doesn’t elide a gradual build-up. The first two of “Promises”’ nine movements are sparsely populated, which feels as if you’ve walked into a show ahead of time, as the supporting players are wiggling in their chairs and Sanders is readying himself with soft, low tones. Slowly Sanders begins to speak up — literally for a spell on ‘Movement 4’ — as the London Symphony Orchestra arcs and winds around his cyclical exhalations. By the album’s second half the intensity has demonstrably ramped up, as Sanders goes for broke and Shepherd hammers down on the organ. The dams have broken and the effect is riveting.

It’s hard not to think about the Coltranes while listening to “Promises”. For one, Luaka Bop (founded by David Byrne and curated predominantly by Yale Evelev) released the sumptuous Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda compilation “World Spirituality Classics 1” in 2017, embellishing a knack for beautiful archival work which was already established by bringing Tim Maia and William Onyeabor to wider audiences. And then there’s the fact that Pharoah Sanders is one of the last living musicians who played alongside both Alice and John, plus Don Cherry, Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, and many more besides.

Sanders’ performance of air and fire here is sure to spark ideas and inspiration amongst jazz’s vibrant new generation. It makes “Promises” not just a link to the past, but a bridge to the future.