Archives: August 2020

Land Of Talk are back with their new album Indistinct Conversations, and an amazing new single “Footnotes”. This is the band’s first album since 2017’s Life After Youth, and features 11 tracks all written by Elizabeth Powell. She also produced and arranged the album with the help of bandmates Mark “Bucky” Wheaton (drums/keys) and Christopher McCarron (bass). The LP was recorded in a studio built by McCarron in Wheaton’s apartment basement.

As if Run The Jewels’ latest lyric video for “JU$T” isn’t already a trip, wait until you watch it with their new cannabis line in hand. The hip-hop duo’s new visual for the track “JU$T” — featuring Pharrell Williams and Zack de la Rocha — hit last week, and El-P and Killer Mike also announced the launch of their collaboration with the cannabis producer LEMONNADE.

The stop-motion, cut-and-paste visual was created by Pulse Films’ Winston Hacking, who says he “worked closely with Run The Jewels to create a satirical time-capsule of 2020 thus far, capturing the sentiment of their song using collage animation.”

“Drawing on the influence of Public Enemy’s classic ‘Shut ‘Em Down’ video, we combined cut up images from contemporary and historical events into a psychedelic protest vignette, a visual fuck you to systemic racism,” Hacking said.

The video would likely go over well with the new RTJ-branded cannabis strain, the appropriately titled “Ooh La La.”

Check out the latest video below and read about their cannabis line here. – READ MORE via SPIN

Sylvan Esso, the musical stylings of Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, are back with a new single. “Ferris Wheel” arrives off the tracklist from their third studio album Free Love, which is due out in full on September 25th via Loma Vista. “It’s a record about being increasingly terrified of the world around you and looking inward to remember all the times when loving other people seemed so easy, so that you can find your way back to that place,” the band wrote in a press statement.

Armed with a brigade of corkscrew synths and a hopscotch-ready hook, “Ferris Wheel” stays pretty faithful to the sound Meath and Sanborn have cultivated across their first two records. If that isn’t tempting enough, they seal the deal with a pan flute solo for the ages. Watch its equally vibrant, SuperCollider-directed video below.

UK convention-defying singer/songwriter Denai Moore has released her third album Modern Dread via Because Music, a unique blend of quixotic beats and introspective, sometimes harrowing songwriting which will undoubtedly stamp Moore as one of the most original talents we have around right now.

Modern Dread is an album that sees Moore exploring personal demons whilst also voicing her concerns for the world at large, a daring exercise in micro versus macro that pays off richly in what is a dazzling step forward in artistry. There are R’n’B influences, certainly, but alongside them stand a love for folk and soul, for Bon Iver, Feist and Solange, for Sufjan Stevens’sThe Age of Adz into the “richness” of Beyonce’sLemonade, for the fact that “Kanye never made the same record twice”, for the way that St Vincent “really reinvented the idea of being a lead guitarist.” And so to bracket Moore with any one particular scene seems naive – such of genre is crucial for a flourishing British music community.

Sneaks, the solo moniker of Washington, DC’s Eva Moolchan, has announced a new album,Happy Birthday. It’s due out on August 21 via Merge. In April, the Washington, D.C. spoken word/punk musician also shared a new song, “Mars in Virgo.” Listen to the song below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art.

Continuing the collaborative relationships from last year’s Highway Hypnosis (called “a patchwork of hip-hop, post-punk, rave, and more” by Pigeons & Planes) with mixing engineer Carlos Hernandez and legendary producer Jacknife Lee, Moolchan felt free to turn up the energy and explore more elaborate melodies than ever before. In “Mars in Virgo,” she chants, “I’ve changed a lot now I’m all grown and / I got to grow up some more / I have changed now I’m all grown up / Now I have to grow up some more.”

With astrological assertions alongside poetry filtered through a riot grrl spirit and set to thumping bass lines and infectious beats, Moolchan asks all of the questions but invites the listener to divine their own answers. Put on your headphones and let Sneaks lead you on an unforgettable journey of self-discovery that will keep you humming for days.

Afro-psychedelic soul legends, The Budos Band, announce their sixth studio album Long In The Tooth, along with a single of the same name via Daptone Records. Long In The Toothmarks the 20th anniversary of the band’s inception and 15 years since their eponymous 2005 full-length debut. Sounding as if Quentin Tarantino was the music supervisor for a Bond film, the title track locks the listener into an unshakable groove, with drums simmering between swells of horns as guitar snakes towards a resounding organ.

Long In The Tooth was recorded in just five days at Diamond Mine Studios in Queens, NY. The album is clearly a standout, a culmination of a 15-year journey by a band that has consistently carved its own distinct path through the grooves of history.  After one listen, you might expect a full orchestra behind the curtain, instead, you’ll find eight ruthless mavericks – Brian Profilio [drums], Daniel Foder [bass], Tom Brenneck [guitar], Mike Deller [organ], Jared Tankel [saxophone], Andrew Greene [trumpet], Dave Guy [trumpet], Rob Lombardo [bongos, congas]. While the band has maintained a timeless and unique style unaffected by musical trends, the signature Budos sound has been sampled by Panic! At The Disco, Black Eyed Peas, EARTHGANG and more.