Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 15 November 2024.
King Stingray are back with their highly anticipated sophomore album For The Dreams. The melodically rich second LP – as with their debut – is a joyous celebration of life and the planet on which we live that oozes optimism from its every note.
Vocalist, producer and multimedia artist Stranger Cat has shared the resilient, self-produced sophomore album Slow Jam Love Letters To My Body In Pieces (out everywhere now). The resonant, expansive album, produced from bed while recovering from a serious accident, allowed the artist to feel it all. Putting the pieces of her body back together, both physically and emotionally, produced a collection of work that required careful reflection and complete surrender.
Alisa Weilerstein and Inon Barnatan present Brahms‘ two Cello Sonatas, alongside their arrangement of his Violin Sonata in G Major on the cello. This Brahms portrait is a logical next step after the duo’s acclaimed interpretation of Beethoven’s complete Cello Sonatas, released in 2022. While Beethoven’s sonatas reveal the gradual ascendancy of the cello as the proper solo instrument over the piano, Brahms opens a new chapter in the history of the cello sonata, realizing a glorious marriage of equals between the two instruments. This congenial relationship between cello and piano is further enhanced by Weilerstein and Barnatan, whose musical partnership (in addition to their thriving solo careers) has been a stable factor over the years.
New York-born Alvin Queen was a prodigy on the drums. He was mentored by Elvin Jones, who called him his “son,” he sat in with John Coltrane at Birdland when he was twelve. He has performed and worked with Jack McDuff, Illinois Jacquet, Dizzy Gillespie, Jay McShann, Chico Hamilton, Art Farmer, Kenny Barron and many others. His new album, The Jazzcup Cafe Blues (recorded live in Germany) is out now.
Recollection – Jacob Long’s fourth full-length LP for the Kranky label – sees the artist otherwise known as Earthen Sea expand his repertoire to an almost full reimagining, taking to the now longstanding Earthen Sea moniker from the fresh incarnation as a “piano trio”, rather than a solo production effort. Though we gather this might not genuinely be the case, all it took was a simple shift in self-imagining to fashion a completely different take on a still so far meditative sound. Here elements were chopped and resampled, then layered with bass, drums, percussion and additional keys; the result is a fusion of live band acoustics and downtempo loops, sculpted into nine smoke-and-mirror dubs of fractured jazz, soft-focus noir and trip hop dust.
Step into an extraordinary psychedelic and soulful experience with Adrian Younge presents Linear Labs: Sao Paulo: a compilation of new songs showcasing the musical brilliance of Adrian Younge with artists from around the world. Essentially, the album features one unreleased song from an array of forthcoming albums Younge has produced for Linear Labs, including Something About April III, the tertiary installment of Younge’s masterwork trilogy, and a new blaxploitation adventure from hip hop legend Snoop Dogg, entitled Don’t Cry For the Devil.
Vlad Holiday has always had to romanticize darkness in order to make it palatable. The down-tempo, lo-fi rock artist had to flee Romania as a child, then finding a home in New York City and now in Nashville; the influence of feeling like an outsider is across all he creates. After releasing music for years, Holiday never envisioned himself wanting to release a full-length album. But as he worked on the songs that now build his debut album, My Favorite Drug, the threads that held a larger story together couldn’t be ignored.
Other reviews you might enjoy:
- New music round-up (for w/e 8 July 2022)
- New music round-up (for w/e 28 January 2022)
- New music round-up (for w/e 18 August 2023)
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television