As the intensity of festival season subsides, and as a dedicated hater of weather over 17 degrees, the coming of Autumn always feels like a time of refreshment and repose. Glancing at the albums and tracks we’ve picked out from September, which take us from glorious noise to tender melody and everywhere inbetween, and then to a release schedule that’s packed with bangers from now until Christmas, it would seem as though we’ve got the perfect soundtrack to boot.
Everything you’ll find below, as well as all the other excellent music we’ve covered at tQ this month, will also be compiled into an hours-long playlist exclusive to our subscribers. In addition, subscribers can enjoy exclusive music from some of the world’s most forward-thinking artists, regular deep-dive essays, a monthly podcast, specially-curated ‘Organic Intelligence’ guides to under-the-radar international sub-genres, and more.
To sign up for all those benefits, and to help us keep bringing you the kind of music you’re about to read about below, you can click here. Read on below for the best of the best from September 2024.
Albums
Xiu Xiu13″ Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto With Bison Horn GripsPolyvinyl
The album’s disturbed psyche is revealed in its first and final tracks. Opener ‘Arp Omni’ is musically distant from the rest of 13”…, with huge washes of synth and no percussion. It’s our introduction to the album’s world, but there’s a finality to its confessional tone (“I have done almost nothing right my entire adult life / But having dared to touch the fire with you / Breaks the chains of my being nothing”) and a last-gasp quality to its sentimental romance (“With freckles as sparkling as yours / Who could dare to un-sparkle your dots?”), like the final transmission from a dying star. Then there’s seven tracks of flawless industrial pop music, then we’re left with ‘Piña, Coconut & Cherry’ – a screeching melodrama of ten-feet-tall chords, electronic stabs and emotional extremity (“I never thought I could love this hard for this long! / It makes me insane! / You can’t refuse love like this / It’s criminal / You must love me, love me, love me!”). Stewart crawls and screams over a keyboard preset, a breakdown in a tacky hotel room, the excess scraped off the rest of the record and dumped, dripping off its final track. It’s funny, terrifying, extreme, horny, embarrassing, relatable – everything that Xiu Xiu have ever been at once. And you’re either left there, or you start all over again with reserved, romantic wonder. 13”... is a superlative pop record, but still an endless cycle of extremes. A shining, distorted, expertly constructed, open-ended record, that might be Xiu Xiu’s best.
Nala SinephroEndlessnessWarp
Warp chalk up another success with this assured and, for music that so readily attracts a ‘cosmic’ tag, relatively understated collection by multi-instrumentalist Nala Sinephro. The Belgian/Caribbean pedal harp, modular synthesiser and piano player isn’t propelling us out into the cosmos however; rather she is paddling the small boat you’re in further and further away from the shore and light pollution to a vantage point from which its better to languidly observe the firmament. Should you have a life luxurious enough, you could listen uninterrupted on headphones with no other distractions, and if not, then it should at the very least create the imaginative space in which you can visualise such a life, and in which you can ponder whether or not it should be viewed as a luxury.
Naima BockBelow A Massive Dark LandSub Pop
Naima Bock’s second solo album is an altogether knottier affair than its predecessor Giant Palm, where the musician leapt constantly from one soaring, glorious melody to another. There’s plenty of that here too, the sax-driven wonder of lead single ‘Kaley’ for instance, or the grand emotional sweep of ‘Lines’; her voice still has that rare balance between fragility and power. However moments like the baroque gloom of ‘My Sweet Body’, where gritty violins dance around gently driving plucks of harp, or ‘Age’, where lopsided rhythms drive a twisting melody which brings in multiple voices, feel entirely new. It’s less immediate than the musician’s first record, but when its complexities are allowed to expand it will reward its listener tenfold.
KugelschreiberCheerleadersWamho
The lyrics draw parallels between scientific theories and descriptions of human interactions, but manage to maintain a delightful buoyancy throughout. There’s a lightness, in keeping with the poppy aspect of these tunes, that doesn’t sacrifice depth. The folk flavours of Fortnam’s work with North Sea Radio Orchestra are not entirely absent, as evidenced by opener, ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors, Shoe’, with its use of flute and glockenspiel. Yet even here, her distinctive Yorkshire-accented vocal seems to be seeking out a different kind of territory. Initially constructed by Fortnam for bass guitar and three-part harmony, these songs all share a naturally flowing and emotionally uplifting structure. ‘Elasticine’ exhibits a kind of off-the-cuff swing that bodly asserts itself two-thirds of the way through. ‘Fuck Symmetry’ underpins powerful vocal harmonies with a persistent hurdy gurdy drone. On ‘(me x u) ≠ (u x me)’, Fortnam’s gorgeous vocal rides a wave of synths and a pulsating bassline to a plateau of pure euphoria. The track playfully poses questions about a romantic relationship in terms usually associated with scientific inquiry: “Do you alter at an atomic scale, if I move the ground beneath your feet?”
The Lijadu SistersHorizon UnlimitedNumero Group
It was only after Yeye Taiwo was able to gain control of their recordings in 2021 that a plan could be put in place to reassert the legacy of The Lijadu Sisters. Working with the label Numero Group, The Lijadu Sisters will re-release their entire back catalogue, starting with their final record, 1979’s Horizon Unlimited. It is a record that best demonstrates the sisters’ unique vision and their crossover appeal in the West, smoothly incorporating buoyant funk rhythms with the rubbery beat of the traditional talking drum and the sisters’ bright harmonies, heard on songs like the joyously addictive ‘Come On Home’.
SealionwomanNothing Will Grow In The SoilThe state51 Conspiracy
The Sealionwoman is a mythological figure in the folklore of several northern European territories. In the Faroe Islands, she’s a kópakonan, and in Ireland, Orkney and the Shetland Islands she’s a selkie. These creatures are normally irresistible sirens who peel off their sealskin for lusty farmers, and then find themselves trapped on the mainland for long, anguished periods with no hope of return (often the selkie is coerced into marriage and has her skin stolen or hidden). Dark fables of sex and death offer a useful place to start with Sealionwoman, the band. A London-based duo of vocalist Kitty Whitelaw and double bass player Tye McGivern, this pair are doing something entirely new by tapping into a rich seam of traditional folk. Their first album, 2018’s Siren was all at sea, and set adrift, if you will. For the followup, Nothing Will Grow In The Soil, they’ve crawled onto the dark, desiccated land, and everything is firmer, harder, dryer.
Samih MadhounOud Music From GazaAvanthardcollective
Released earlier in the summer but new to tQ, Oud Music From Gaza is byyoung musician and composer Samih Madhoun. According to Avanthardcollective, who release the record with all proceeds going directly to Madhoun, he now works on a borrowed instrument after his own was taken by the occupying Israeli army, and in an accompanying quotation from the musician he tells how his musical education has been cut short amidst the wanton destruction of his homeland. Although it’s a record that is impossible to separate from its wider context, specifics remain hazy; due to slow internet access in Gaza during the genocide, Madhoun has been unable to listen back to the release, so the majority of tracks, some of which are snippets of less than 30 seconds, remain untitled. Audio quality varies from one to the next. Nevertheless, Madhoun’s playing is so deft and graceful that it remains transfixing throughout, weaving its way around the ambient sounds of his surroundings, gusts of wind that distort the recording and vocals bolstered often, movingly so, by those of his friends and family.
NonpareilsRhetoric & TerrorMute
Nonpareils is Aaron Hemphill’s solo project, which he launched several years after leaving Liars. His second album, Rhetoric & Terror, takes its name from a chapter in a book by Giorgio Agamben titled The Man Without Content. The book, published in 1970, raises questions over whether art has become detached from its existential purpose and hollowed out into mere logic and form. In some ways, this record reflects both – partly engaged in the amorphous subconscious and partly tapped into structure and form. Rhetoric & Terror is constantly swinging in different directions, constantly in flux, moving between different states like Hemphill’s mind. It is emblematic of his life as a dad and artist – two worlds which he was keen on integrating with its making. What results is an uninhibited and intriguing jumble, with all the colours and shapes to boot.
RubieSeek SistersPressing Up Club
On Seek Sisters, recorded over a tumultuous four years defined by both the end of restrictive relationships and the beginning of long-awaited trans healthcare, Rubie turns often to the piano, her playing both deliberate and dramatic as she deftly navigates the buzzing emotional aftermath. Her gift for melody is so clear that you get the impression that, if she were so inclined, she could produce a ballads collection so water-tight it’d make Elton blush. And yet, what the musician does from that foundation is anything but straightforward. Innovative production and electronics – a warping of vocals here, an inflection of moody abstract synthesisers there; a sudden shift of snaky jazz or a quick detour into psychedelic disco – makes the record’s emotional palette brilliantly restless. The combination of a field recording and a distant drone in the backing of the title track, for instance, means that at first it seems as if Rubie’s singing gently and privately to herself alone, deeply intimate, but by the end of the song her voice has somehow shifted into an immense, transcendent plainsong. Dedicated “to the queer sisters who have helped Rubie through darkness and allowed her to flourish,” final track ‘Extra’ exemplifies everything that this record does so brilliantly – beginning as a rich and tender piano ballad, but ending with a glorious layering of voice note contributions from 20 of said sisters, layered on top of one another into a staggering, steeling chorus.
DialectAtlas Of GreenRVNG Intl
The Gene Wolfe-inspired ‘New Sun’ gives us a first glimpse of how our world and the worlds that came before it might be reconstructed in some distant future in which a folk tale is all that’s left of us. Screeching, rusty cello lines grow into voluminous guitar effusions, like an orchestra warming up, while each guitar strum sprouts into immense, deeply resonant notes. A cluster of synthesiser lines, piano keys, and answering machine beeps swirls below, and overjoyed flute licks dance a solitary dance above. This vaguely pastoral orchestra wobbles up and down, reminiscent of dandelions swaying on a soft summer breeze. Shards of ebullient pop, Day-Glo electronica, ambient Americana, roots music, and mediaeval song somehow come to occupy the same space and time. Their crescendo shoots sharply upwards, then floats softly back down to earth.
Robyn Rocket And People You May Have Heard OfConnection EPSelf-Released
As well as running one of the best regular nights in London, Robyn’s Rocket, an inclusive conscious night which features a mix of artists with and without learning disabilities, the titular musician has also dedicated her 2024 to the release of five separate EPs with her amorphous, and brilliantly-named collective People You May Have Heard Of. For the fourth, on the theme of connection, they include the likes of Alabaster DePlume, Charles Hayward and Danalogue, as well as Robyn herself on her self-described space trumpet. Opener ‘I Was Disconnected’ is the standout here, with Sam Castell-Ward’s poem exploring vulnerability and solitude pushed into gently psychedelic territory by subtle instrumentation. ‘I’m Sorry My Best Wasn’t Good Enough’, a woozy looping ambient piece sees Robyn going it alone, before closer ‘We Are Connected’, driven by Hayward’s labyrinthine drums, provides a blistering free jazz closer.
Tracks
Divide & Dissolve‘Monolithic’Bella Union
Dynamic novel vibrations from a newly Bella Union-rehoused drone duo who easily disprove several slices of (outmoded) received wisdom about metal, demonstrating the genre’s robust framework for those wishing to oppose patriarchal and colonial power structures.
HiTech‘SPANK!’Loma Vista
From Detroit, the loud and lewd lords of ghettotech return with this infectious if oddly affectless ode to bottom slapping. Be warned: from here on in, if you’re at a party and this come on the stereo, you can be pretty sure someone just spiked the punch and things are going to get messy.
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Joe Goddard‘Neptunes’Smugglers Way
‘Neptunes’ is one of those collaborations where both constituent members don’t only bring their A-game, but their A-games interlock with such ease that the music is somehow even greater than its constituent parts. The slinky and propulsive title track from the Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Joe Goddard’s forthcoming EP is a banger of the highest order.
Tuluum Shimmering‘I Feel (A) Love (Supreme)’Tuluum Shimmering Records
Tuluum Shimmering deserve high praise in the ‘just go for it, fuck what anyone else thinks’ stakes. They deconstruct and rebuild massive tunes (by request if you email them!) into 5am sunrise on the beach reveries. Obviously the idea of combining Coltrane and Summer into an utterly chonged Krautrock bliss out, won’t sit well everyone, but if you dig it, you’re going to really dig it.
White Magic For Lovers‘Count The Rings’Chord Orchard
From Brakes and the Electric Soft Parade (and currently to be found playing live drums with The Waeve), Tom White ditches the orchestra for this lush choral prelude, evoking the Beach Boys at their most gorgeous (think ‘Till I Die’, ‘Our Prayer) tempered by the brittle tenderness of Anohni.
Benefits‘Land Of The Tyrants’Invada
Now that the dust kicked up by the whirlwind evisceration of debut album NAILS has settled, it’s fascinating to see Benefits reemerge as a different beast entirely. Featuring Zera Tønin of Arch Femmesis, new single ‘Land Of The Tyrants’ is no less cutting than its predecessors, but the delivery is slinkier, darker, more complex. There’s more than one way, Benefits are proving, to get your point across.
