Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 4 August 2023.
Drummer, composer, and bandleader Johnathan Blake follows up his acclaimed 2021 Blue Note debut Homeward Bound with Passage, an uplifting sequel that once again features his band Pentad with Immanuel Wilkins on alto saxophone, Joel Ross on vibraphone, David Virelles on piano, and Dezron Douglas on bass. Dedicated to the memory of his father John Blake Jr., a jazz violinist whose stirring composition “Passage” gives the album its title, the 10-track set also features five new originals by Blake, as well as pieces by Douglas, Virelles, and Blake’s drum teacher and mentor Ralph Peterson Jr.
Emil Amos (Grails, OM and podcaster plus) decommissions pieces originally bound for the KPM library. A personal interpolation of ‘music for films (& television)’ expounds upon diverse sounds: synthy 80s soundtracks, contemporary hip-hop beatmaking, ambient music, and The Hulk’s “Lonely Man Theme”. Emil’s dark visions are full of noirish shadows and eerie neon glow
The Jesus and Mary Chain have released Sunset 666, a new live album recorded at the Hollywood Palladium in 2018 whilst they were touring North America with Nine Inch Nails. Out now on double LP vinyl, CD and digital via Fuzz Club, ‘Sunset 666’ sees the Reid brothers deliver a discography-spanning set that includes tracks from ‘Psychocandy’, ‘Darklands’, ‘Automatic’, ‘Honey’s Dead’, ‘Stoned and Dethroned’, ‘Munki’ and ‘Damage and Joy’.
The Chineke! Orchestra have released a new album celebrating the wonderful life and trailblazing works of Florence Price, marking the 70th anniversary year of her death. The album includes Price’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the young piano soloist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, her award-winning Symphony No. 1, and His Resignation and Faith from Ethiopia’s Shadow in America, which is a necessary and long-overdue tribute to the composer’s remarkable contributions to classical music.
Five years since her debut album Delivery, Mikaela Davis has moved away from her hometown, shared the stage with the likes of Christian McBride, Bon Iver, Lake Street Dive and Circles Around the Sun and entered a new decade. But it’s the ever-evolving relationships between her closest friends and bandmates that has propelled her latest album And Southern Star – a truly collaborative effort that ruminates on the choices we make, and the people we always come back to. The band, made up of Davis (harp/vocals), Alex Coté (drums), Cian McCarthy (guitars/vocals), Shane McCarthy (bass/vocals) and Kurt Johnson (steel guitar), have been playing together for over a decade and it’s the first time they’ve appeared on a full length record together. Weaving 60s pop-soaked melodies, psychedelia and driving folk rock, And Southern Star picks apart the reflection we used to recognise, while trying to build a new one.
Australian indie-rock outfit Dippers (FKA Thigh Master) have dropped a new album, Clastic Rock. For the album, founder and leader Matthew Ford (vocals, guitar, drums, bass, synth, percussion) is joined by his songwriting partner Innez Tulloch (vocals, guitar, keys, synth, bass, melodica), with longtime collaborator Dusty Anastassiou (Dag, Permits) providing guitar on a handful of tracks.
Girl Ray, the three-piece comprising Poppy Hankin, Iris McConnell and Sophie Moss, have released their third album, Prestige, via Moshi Moshi. Co-produced by Grammy Award-winning producer, Ben H. Allen (M.I.A, Gnarls Barkley, Christina Aguilera, Deerhunter) along with the band’s singer and songwriter Poppy Hankin, Prestige takes the shambolic charm of their debut, Earl Grey (2017), and the indiefied R&B of 2019’s Girl, and injects it with a booster shot of Hi-NRG eighties disco pop. Prestige is the sound of Girl Ray reclaiming disco music as the celebration of sexuality and outsider culture it started out as. Inspired by Pose, the television drama about New York City’s queer ballroom scene in the 80s, Prestige is an escape to a fantasy clubland, it’s dancing with your friends, it’s falling in love. In fact, the overarching narrative of Prestige is love: falling in it and being afraid of getting hurt by it; being all alone and longing for it; the tensions between what it is and what you imagined it would be.
Other reviews you might enjoy:
- New music round-up (for w/e 24 May 2024)
- New music round-up (for w/e 16 August 2024)
- New music round-up (for w/e 23 August 2024)
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television