Review: Lady Wray delivers a powerful two-sider here as she hooks up with Grammy-nominated producer Leon Michels of Clairo and El Michels Affair for another single as they put the final touches to her upcoming album. The A-side, 'Be A Witness,' features Nicole's soaring vocals gliding over deep drum machines and Nick Movshon's funky bass which makes it a smooth mid-tempo groove about destined love and good vibes. On the flip, 'Best For Us' explores love, commitment and perseverance with lush synths and harmonies floating over Homer Steinweiss' tight drumming. They provide the perfect setting for Lady Wray's standout voice and get us excited for the full length.
Review: When Marie Davidson announced last year that she would be, "retiring from club music", many wondered what she'd do next. Renegade Breakdown, her first album recorded with a full band (L'Oeuil Nu), answers that question. It sees the Canadian artist and her new collaborators deliver suitably arresting, personal and ear-catching songs built on mixing and matching a surprisingly wide variety of musical inspirations, from Blondie, classic disco and mutilated heavy metal guitars, to Kraftwerk, Billie Holliday, Fleetwood Mac and Daft Punk. It's a big shift for the previously highly experimental artist, but thanks to her skill as both a a producer and performer, one that works magnificently well.
Wesley's Theory (feat George Clinton & Thundercat)
For Free? (interlude)
King Kunta
Institutionalized (feat Bilal, Anna Wise & Snoop Dogg)
These Walls (feat Bilal, Anna Wise & Snoop Dogg)
U
Alright
For Sale? (interlude)
Momma
Hood Politics
How Much A Dollar Cost (feat James Fauntleroy & Ronald Isley)
Complexion (A Zulu Love) (feat Rapsody)
The Blacker The Berry
You Ain't Gotta Lie (Momma Said)
I
Mortal Man
Review: Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly, the Compton-based rapper's first album since 2012's major label debut, Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, has been receiving rave reviews. In truth, it's not hard to see why. Imaginative, soulful, and blessed with the looseness of live performance (a result of the use of jazz-minded live players as much as anything else), it sounds like the kind of album that may one day be hailed as a hip-hop classic. Sure, there are big name guests - Dre, Snoop, George Clinton and Thundercat included - but the focus remains on Lamar's distinctive flow and almost cinematic tales of life on L.A's streets. Given the quality of his lyrics, that's no bad thing.
Review: With the tragic, untimely passing of lead vocalist Chester Bennington in 2017, it naturally appeared to be the end for nu-metal/alt rock juggernauts Linkin Park, until recently shocking their fans with the confirmed news that Dead Sara vocalist Emily Armstrong would be taking Bennington's place, while new drummer Colin Brittain would step in to replace Rob Bourdain who decided not to join the reformation. Serving as the follow up to 2017's pop focused One More Light, the band's upcoming eight full-length LP From Zero takes its title from their original early day name Xero whilst highlighting this newly defined creative origin the members have found themselves cornered into, bearing clear signs of a desire to celebrate their nu-metal beginnings without undoing the decades worth of progression they have accomplished since. With 11 tracks and just over a half-hour runtime, it's evident the project appears to be prioritising brevity and a succinct introduction to this new era without losing site of what sonically drew their legions of fans to them in the first place. It's a brave, delicate time for Linkin Park with From Zero championed as the heralding of this new chapter, aiming to hopefully bridge and appease listeners from all spectrums of their back catalogue.
Review: While punk imprint-turned-electro and bass outfit Bunker Records specialises in 'dark electronic music for mutants' (as they put it), the Den Haag-based imprint is not averse to offering up oddball excursions and releases that are formidably hard to pigeonhole. We perhaps shouldn't be too surprised, then, to find them offering up a first label outing from Lunatika, a trap and drill rapper from the Hague whose Split Second Origins Part 1 LP is restlessly brilliant and impossible to describe. His raps - sometimes doused in auto-tune - are a constant, as is a lo-fi sound that pushes booming basslines and lo-fi beats to the fore. Bolted onto this framework are nods to mutant hip-hop, chopped and screwed R&B, dub, UK bass and his beloved drill and trap.
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