Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 26 August 2022.
The central mysteries of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s ninth studio album, Let’s Turn It Into Sound, have to do with perception, expression, and communication: How can we communicate when spoken language is inadequate? How do we understand what it is we’re feeling? How do we translate our experience of the world into something that someone else can understand? For Smith, a self-described “feeler,” the answers are inspired by compound words in non-English languages, translation, sculptural fashion, dance, butoh, wushu shaolin, and other forms of sensory and somatic experience. Just like fashion uses lines, shapes, colors, textures, and silhouettes to communicate on a sensual level separate from the conscious mind, Let’s Turn it Into Sound strives to use sound to communicate what words alone cannot.
In many ways Kumoyo Island represents the culmination of a journey for Kikagaku Moyo. While their decade-long career can be summarized as a series of kaleidoscopic explorations through lands and dimensions far and near, there’s a strong intention in each of their works to take the listener to a particular place, however real or abstract they may be. In that sense, the title and cover art for the band’s fifth and final album draws you into a magical mass of land surrounded by water — but the couch suggests that Kumoyo Island may not be a fleeting stop, but rather a place of respite, where one could pause and take it all in.
TCQ (The Cookers Quintet) is a Canadian jazz group, with a sound firmly rooted in the ‘60s hard bop movement. The core members each bring their own unique qualities to the band’s sound. Saxophonist Ryan Oliver’s fat, full tenor tone might bring to mind heavyweight Dexter Gordon, but it’s blended with sophistication and subtlety. Oliver shares the front line with Tim Hamel, a trumpet player that can bring a hot, uptempo number to a boil and then carry a ballad with lyricism and beauty minutes later. The rock solid foundation of all of this is bassist Alex Coleman, who’s clearly grounded in the Ray Brown/Paul Chambers school of keeping the bass steady and swinging. During the fall of 2021, while on tour in the west coast of Canada with Bernie Senensky (Piano), and Joe Poole (Drums), the group performed a brand new set of original compositions to live audiences which subsequently became the 8-track studio album, The Path.
L.A. Mood’s debut album A Print Out of the Sun is out now on Cheersquad Records and Tapes. L.A. Mood is the solo project of Melbourne based multi-instrumentalist and producer Dave Mudie. He’s the full-time drummer for Courtney Barnett, and has played in upwards of 40 other bands and counting – for him, touring down-time means burying himself in studio projects and playing local gigs. Most recently Mudie played drums on Jess Ribeiro’s latest album, recorded Jade Imagine’s debut and played on releases from Gumboot, Super American Eagle (alongside Brent DeBoer of The Dandy Warhols), Cannon, Baby Blue & Evan Dando (The Lemonheads).
The new album Jurowski Conducts Stravinsky features one of today’s most sought-after conductors, Vladimir Jurowski, who was appointed Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2007. Igor Stravinsky was a master of evocative composition, and these three works performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski showcase his incredible versatility of style, and feature one of his most colourful and wide-ranging scores, Petrushka. The antics of a puppet endowed with life are the central focus of this large-scale ballet. This release marks the first all-Stravinsky release on the LPO Label since it was established in 2005. It is also significant in being Vladimir Jurowski’s first ever recording of these three works.
When an artist consistently creates at the forward edge, there are no guardrails. Quelle Chris has been comfortable at the boundaries, leading Hip-Hop since he started. Quelle’s vision extends beyond genre or format. He continued broadening his creative ambitions even beyond his own legendary four album run (BYIG, Everything’s Fine, Guns, Innocent Country 2) and worked with Chris Keys to compose part of the score for the Oscar-winning film Judas and The Black Messiah with director Shaka King. The new album, DEATHFAME, is a sonic treatment produced by Quelle himself, along with Chris Keys and Knxwledge. The record carries on like an incredible lost tape found at a flea market. It explores, unflinchingly, every moment of the trials the early 2020s has brought to all of us.
Since releasing her debut album Don’t Let the Kids Win in 2016, Melbourne’s Julia Jacklin has carved out a fearsome reputation as a direct lyricist, willing to excavate the parameters of intimacy and agency in songs both stark and raw, loose, and playful. If her debut announced those intentions, and the startling 2019 follow-up Crushing drew in listeners uncomfortably close, PRE PLEASURE is the sound of Jacklin gently loosening her grip. The album presents Jacklin as her most authentic self; an uncompromising and masterful lyricist, always willing to mine the depths of her own life experience, and singular in translating it into deeply personal, timeless songs.
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David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television