Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 12 April 2024.
I’M DOING IT AGAIN BABY! is the eagerly anticipated sophomore album from Norway-born, and Oslo-based singer-songwriter, girl in red. This 10-song album chronicles the artist’s last two and a half years with honesty and wit, and a willingness to play around with her music. With I’M DOING IT AGAIN BABY!, girl in red is building her music into something “more ambitious, and more exciting, and more idea-driven.” Exploring themes like confidence, criticism, self-esteem, and vulnerability, girl in red produced the album with frequent collaborator Matias Tellez.
All Gist is the new LP from James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg. The duo’s third album of instrumental guitar recordings pushes their sinuous compositions into labyrinthine new shapes, interlocking and interlocutory, supported by a cast of stellar collaborators. Interwoven among the dazzling original pieces is a fascinating array of covers, ranging from traditional Breton dance tunes to a deconstruction of Neneh Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance.”
Suite italienne is the brainchild of violinist Jonian Ilias Kadesha and the Swiss ensemble CHAARTS Chamber Artists. With Italy as the common thread through each of the three works, the riotous programme includes the premiere recording of Sollima’s TYCHE, a violin concerto that was composed specifically for Jonian. Echoing Jonian and Sollima’s mixed roots, the work absorbs musical ideas from different sources and, as the title suggests, reflects on the Greek goddess of fate, or the Italian equivalent Fortuna, and the ambivalence of life itself. The title work, Suite italienne from Stravinsky’s ballet Pulcinella , is performed here in an arrangement for string orchestra, harpsichord and violin; its playful style calls to mind the Commedia dell’arte. Vivaldi’s ‘Il Grosso Mogul’ concerto, likely named after one of the largest diamonds to have ever existed, completes the programme and finds in Jonian one of its most flamboyant champions.
Grace Cummings’ albym Ramona is a work of raw truth rendered in its most beautiful form. In a departure from the self-produced approach of her 2019 debut Refuge Cove and its 2022 follow-up Storm Queen—the Melbourne-based artist worked with producer Jonathan Wilson (Angel Olsen, Father John Misty, Margo Price) at his Topanga Canyon studio to dream up a lavishly orchestrated sound that fully accommodates the depth and scope of her vocal prowess. With its visceral reflection on grief and self-destruction and emotional violence, Ramona brings a stunning new grandeur to Cummings’ music while refusing to soften or temper its humanity.
After putting down the saxophone, the instrument he has become synonymous with, Shabaka Hutchings returns with his first full length album under his own name. Expanding off the meditative 2022 EP Afrikan Culture, his new album Perceive its beauty, Acknowledge its Grace is a deeply moving suite of primarily instrumental music.
Nia Archives is the star at the forefront of the latest era of jungle. Since her emergence in 2020, her collagist soundscapes have helped bring the sound to a new generation of clubgoers (though fair warning: don’t call her a “revivalist” – she’s the first to point out that the scene never went away). So when it comes to talk of the 24-year-old producer, DJ, singer and songwriter’s much-anticipated debut album, the odds are you’re thinking of a full-length record of weightless jungle tracks with basslines so intense they’ll leave your ears ringing – hence the title, Silence is Loud.
Naarm/Melbourne-based folk chameleon Jess Ribeiro (she/her) has unveiled her highly anticipated fourth album Summer of Love. Featuring the singles ‘Summer of Love’, ‘Everything Is Now’, ‘Jump The Gun’ and focus track ‘Maybe If I Wore Sunglasses Inside I Won’t Feel Tired’, Summer of Love traverses love, loss and healing with a masterful intimacy that holds you close from the very first listen. Summer of Love is out everywhere now on Poison City Records. In support of the album, Jess will be heading out on tour for this May, June and July. The tour includes the previously announced Friendship Tour co-headline with Leah Senior.
Other reviews you might enjoy:
- Jess Ribeiro – album and tour
- New music round-up (for w/e 11 August 2023)
- New music round-up (for w/e 1 November 2024)
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television
