Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 12 June 2020.
Muzz is the new project of Paul Banks (Interpol), Josh Kaufman (producer/multi-
The album was written, arranged and performed by all three band members.
Jay Watson – one of Australia’s most prolific songwriters – adds to his extensive catalogue with Out In The World. It’s the latest installment and fifth release in as little as six years for his side-side project GUM. He’s also shared the animation-claymation video for ‘Airwalkin”. Watson is still devoting his time to ongoing commitments with Tame Impala and Pond, but has managed to keep GUM humming along. Out In The World navigates musical genres in typical GUM fashion, from glitzy DIY-pop and electronica to psych-rock.
After a remarkable two-year run that saw them earn a no. 1 album and Grammy Award nomination, Larkin Poe are back with Self Made Man (out now). Once again taking the producer reins and releasing on their own Tricki-Woo Records label, Self Made Man follows the band’s fourth studio album, Venom & Faith. The new record sees the multi-instrumentalist sister duo Rebecca and Megan Lovell pushing their music towards unexplored terrain. From the power-pop, through Chicago blues and spirituals, the album is ambitious in both its sound and its resolutely welcoming mission.
The new album from trumpeter and composer Ambrose Akinmusire is on the tender spot of every calloused moment. The arresting new quartet album presents 11 new original compositions featuring Akinmusire’s long-time bandmates pianist Sam Harris, bassist Harish Raghavan, and drummer Justin Brown. During his 15-year career, Ambrose Akinmusire has paradoxically situated himself in both the center and the periphery of jazz, most recently emerging in classical and hip hop circles. He’s on a perpetual quest for new paradigms, masterfully weaving inspiration from other genres, arts, and life in general into compositions that are as poetic and graceful as they are bold and unflinching. His unorthodox approach to sound and composition make him a regular on critics polls and have earned him earned him grants and commissions from the Doris Duke Foundation, the MAP Fund, the Kennedy Center. The album — his fifth for Blue Note Records — is available now, and will have a vinyl release on August 28.
Melbourne’s Jade Imagine return with a new EP, You Remind Me of Something I Lost. Following the band’s acclaimed 2019 debut album Basic Love, You Remind Me of Something I Lost is a collection of sparse, introspective tracks typical of Jade Imagine’s signature mix of art-rock, pop and new wave. The EP is the end of one era and the start of another, a collection of songs that soundtrack movement through nature, urban anxiety, and the intense push and pull between these two environments. Questions of home, nature, nurture and creativity abound, and Jade Imagine find solace in moments of reflection.
On her new release Inbal Segev teams with the London Philharmonic Orchestra to perform Elgar’s emotive Cello Concerto coupled with DANCE, an inspiring new work by Grammy-nominated English composer Anna Clyne that was commissioned by Inbal. Marin Alsop conducts the LPO. DANCE is a five-movement concerto inspired by the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi. The piece combines cultures that include Clyne’s Irish-English family, Polish-Jewish ancestry and Segev’s Israeli-American heritage. The idea to record DANCE alongside Elgar’s Cello Concerto is timely: the two works were composed exactly 100 years apart. Elgar’s Cello Concerto, written in the wake of World War I, is deeply reflective. Clyne’s DANCE is optimistic and forward-looking. And Segev’s recording of these two cello concertos is timeless.
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David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television
