This month’s edition of our new music roundup is a double edition. What with the last days of June being given over to our albums of the year so far, we’ve selected a bumper crop for July taking in both this month and the last.
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 (a bumper edition covering two months rather than one) 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 June and July 2024.
Patrick Clarke
ALBUMS
Martha Skye MurphyUMAD 93
Um was not created in a vacuum and Martha Skye Murphy does not project the callowness of a debutante or arrive half-formed exhibiting potential. It’s a record made by someone who sounds like she’s been making records for years and, in a roundabout kind of a way, she has (and not just with any ragtag and bobtail, either). Moreover, her remarkable, fragile soprano, offset with bursts of operatic ululations, is tempered by the extraordinary production on the album: a combination of herself, Ethan P. Flynn, and the mixing nous of Marta Salogni. The sonic evolution of ‘Kind’, which toys with abstraction before bursting into a chime-garnered ball of combustion, best exemplifies the talent on offer.
SenyawaVajranalaThe state51 Conspiracy
Senyawa’s music is a unique blend of traditional and modern elements. But on Vajranala, instead of synthesis, they extend their musical language by juxtaposing droning passages with rapt, ecstatic motifs, muttering, singing, and shouting. They seek catharsis in new forms of ritual by building this kind of modern heavy ritual in a dense, rapturous sound on the borders of what is traditional, what is metal, what is subtle, and what is rapture, showcasing their innovation and creativity.
Tashi WadaWhat Is Not Strange?RVNG Intl.
On What Is Not Strange?, Tashi Wada’s music curves, steepens and plateaus like a trail on the way to a vista. The Los Angeles-based composer’s drones continuously evolve; his fractured melodies stop before they’ve started or swerve into unexpected directions, collecting surprises along the way. Throughout, Wada uses an 18th-century tuning system developed by music theorist Jean-Philippe Rameau, which coats his glistening drones and broken-down songs in dissonance, and he works with vocalist Julia Holter, percussionist Corey Fogel, violist Ezra Buchla and bassist Devin Hoff. The alternate tuning allows for his music to expand beyond just the conventional stylings of his keyboard, while his collaborators help each track grow into kaleidoscopes built from the shards of each musical phrase. More than anything, though, What Is Not Strange? is an album about choosing one winding path and following it – even if it ends up somewhere previously unknown.
William Parker, Cooper-Moore, Hamid DrakeHeart TrioAUM Fidelity
Surprisingly, given their three-decades long history of playing together, in ensembles such as the wonderful In Order To Survive quartet, this is William Parker, Cooper-Moore and Hamid Drake’s debut release as a trio. Parker and Drake are possibly the greatest rhythm section working today in the realms of jazz and improvised music, and pianist, composer and instrument maker Cooper-Moore is no slouch either. Complementing Drake on drums and Parker on doson ngoni, dudek, and flutes of bamboo, cedar, and walnut, Cooper-Moore plays ashimba and hoe-handle harp, instruments he designed and built in the 1970s. This is sublime and transcendent rhythm-based music composed in the moment, low on ego and high in spiritual and creative inspiration. One could suggest that Parker is jumping on the current bandwagon for flute-based album-releases, but in reality, the rhythms and tones that flow throughout these seven cuts are as ancient as human music itself, yet paradoxically by the strength of their presence in the present moment, as vital and current as a living heartbeat.
Antonina NowackaSylphine SoporiferaMondoj
Antonina Nowacka plays with air on this latest record, weaving her vocal phrases in an ethereal and mysterious manner, like vibrating chants. On the one hand, her vocals are very down-to-earth, like a soothsayer allow through the desolate landscapes of Peru and the Outer Hebrides. On the other, she is like a transmitter of outer worlds of unspeakable vocals without words, conveying meditative metaphors dictated by endless spaces. This is the most vital element of her work: she chants melodies rather than sings. The content here is in the form. Nowacka is the instrument.
ClairoCharmClairo
With her new album, Charm, Claire Cottrill continues to veer away from her initial sound and public image, and ventures further into her love of older recording styles, landing on something that’s rather peerless in this moment – especially from an artist who has flirted with mainstream pop success. On Charm’s lead single, ‘Sexy to Someone’, Cottrill once again flexes her knack for catchy, relatable songwriting. “Oh, I need a reason to get out of the house,” Cottrill lilts in the chorus, harkening back to a bedroom pop theme of fantasising about what life could be like out in the world, if one were not too cloistered or timid to pursue their yearnings. Whereas Sling burrowed into secluded introspection, Charm finds Cottrill remembering she is still young and doesn’t wish to cut herself off from the bewildering sparks of human connection, be they romantic or otherwise.
Neil LuckEden BoxAccidental
Eden Box, built from performances by Neil Luck and a host of collaborators, largely performed outside and impromptu, mostly recorded on the edge of a forest in southern Germany, revels in ambiguous angles on nature-culture overlaps. The squeaks, screams and feral glissandi on ‘Leaf Catalogue’ give the impression you’re hearing an unspecified non-human creature (somewhere between a horse and a rodent) in distress. It’s actually a group leaf blowing exercise, a momentary break as a performer lets out a gasp for air making clear no animals were suffering. ‘Pith’ and ‘Organic Techno’ drop in propulsive beats from soggy, squelchy, hoofed sources to create, well, organic techno. There’s hints of Matmos in these groove-oriented assemblages of concrete sounds, but Luck’s beats are more clip-clopping and trotting than computer sequenced.
British Murder BoysActive Agents And House BoysDownwards
British Murder Boys went out with a bang in 2012. Performing their “final show” to a rapt Tokyo audience eager for industrial thumps, ear-shredding guitar feedback, and a shamanistic performance by robe clad beguilers. Whilst the duo of Surgeon (Anthony Childs) and Regis (Karl O’Connor) only managed to stay away for three years, it’s taken until now to raise their heads above the parapets and commit their bolshy electronic belligerence to a full-length release. And the good news is that BMB still tear it up. The recordings that make up Active Agents And House Boys hit like the gut-troubling, sub-bass fists of a sonic pugilist. The battery of drums that comprise ‘It’s What You Hide’ gyrate like a wheel coming off its axis and the rasp of blistered synthesis and chest-rattling bass beats on ‘It’s In The Heart’ are a joyous ode to military grade knob-twiddling.
Guided by VoicesStrut Of KingsGuided By Voices Inc.
Defining its status as an anomaly in the vast Guided By Voices back-catalogue by being their only album of 2024, Strut Of Kings is yet another killer release from the current lineup – their 17th since the roster’s inception in 2017. GBV naysayers may suggest that Robert Pollard’s vast output suffers from an overall homogeneity but he clearly deploys several different modes for each release. Strut eschews the power pop of a release like Earth Man Blues, opting instead for the kind of slow-to-hit-but-heavy-when-they-do melodies exemplified by tracks like the classic GBV anthem ‘Official Ironmen Rally Song’. Album standout ‘Fictional Environment Dream’ is possibly the best track of this ilk that Pollard has produced to date. The ludicrously titled ‘Olympic Cock In Radiana’ is both gnomic and groovy in a way that suggests what the Fall might have sounded like had they been beer chuggers from the Midwest. ‘Serene King’ is another emotive performance from Pollard, its melody drawn out lovingly like taffy. Perhaps it’s true to say that GBV are a band best appreciated when you have also seen them live. To that I would say: “Guys, get your act together and get over here one last time, it’s been too long.”
Elijah MinnelliPerpetual MusketFatCat
On Perpetual Musket, Elijah Minnelli has ostensibly arranged four folk songs to be performed by reggae vocalists on the A-side, with dub tracks on the flip. The anti-war song ‘Vine And Fig Tree’, which originates from the Old Testament, is handed over to the legendary Little Roy. Contemporary dancehall star Shumba Youth transforms ‘Soul Cake’ – a song from an All Souls tradition once common in the British Isles, where poor people would go door to door, singing and praying for the dead in exchange for food – into a nimble earworm. Earl 16’s stark version of ‘Lifeboat Mona’ – Peggy Seeger’s composition commemorating the sinking of a lifeboat in 1959 and the death of its entire crew – comes with a stamp of approval from Seeger herself, who calls it, in all caps, “JUST RIGHT”. Bristol newcomer Joe Yorke’s brings a sublime falsetto to ‘The Wind And The Rain’, from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.
Charli xcxBratAtlantic
Two years on from Crash, an album that was at the more polished, mainstream (outright pop) end of Charli XCX’s oeuvre, we have Brat. She’s now into her thirties, a hardened veteran of a game that fetishises new teenagers (especially young girls) every month. Yet it was stupid to doubt her. There’s no let-up, no reconfiguring into a carpool lane. There’s nothing ‘mature’ about the sound of Brat, thank god. What she’s done (presumably freed from contractual pressure, though this is still a major label project) is re-embrace the skeezy late night clubland Charli, open the throttle and push the pedal to the floor. Brat feels years younger than its predecessor. From top to tail, emotionally, as well as in these mid-2020s dancehall dynamics, she smashes her surroundings apart. It’s an ‘unleash the beast’ kind of a record, especially in how it sold itself early doors.
De SchuurmanBubbling ForeverNyege Nyege Tapes
The Dutch bubbling music scene has its roots in a moment of pure serendipity when Curaçao-born DJ Moortje accidentally played a 33rpm dancehall record at 45rpm at a club in The Hague in 1988 – it’s said to have triggered a feverish response on the dance floor and there a new sound was born. Having enjoyed its peak in clubs in the country through the 90s, and been ripped off for the Dutch House storm that defined commercial Dutch clubs through the 00s – think tunes such as Sidney Samson’s ‘Riverside’ – the sound ultimately fell somewhat out of favour. In the late 00s, though, a Dutch producer with Surinamese heritage going by the name De Schuurman was working away building his own arsenal of bubbling bangers.
Some of those tracks ultimately found their way out in 2021 when the ever-reliable Nyege Nyege Tapes approached him to put together the retrospective release Bubbling Inside. Now, three years later, comes Bubbling Forever, which digs back into the archives and also throws in some newer works for good measure. The 12 tracks featured here are all firmly focused on making you dance as addictively syncopated drums mesh with bonkers, laser-like synth melodies. The opening one-two punch of ‘Raw’ and ‘Bounce’ is a perfect introduction to the compelling percussive and sample-based ticks of De Schuurman’s sound world, while other cuts like ‘Fucked Up Industrie’ and ‘Fashion Week’ introduce a more sleazy, slow-paced take on the movement into proceedings. With nods to kuduro, tarraxo, dancehall, EDM and modern Latin club sounds like changa and raptor house, Bubbling Forever is an essential window into global club music sounds in 2024.
TRACKS
Jim Legxacynothings changed (!)Self-Released
After taking some time out after the release of his standout 2023 mixtape Homeless N***a Pop Music to grieve the loss of his younger sister, Atinuke, Jim Legxacy returns with this poignant “celebration of her life”, as he described it on social media. Centred around an unfussy Afrobeats instrumental and the kind of guitar licks that have been a mainstay of much of the Lewisham-raised artist’s work to date, its lyrics are a heart-wrenching survey of love, loss and grief.
Ginger Root‘There Was A Time’Ghostly International
The last few singles from Californians Ginger Root have plowed a fine furrow of sunshine pop that sounds like it was recorded on a TDK C90, and ‘There Was A Time’ is no exception. It reminds me of Ariel Pink’s early stuff before he became an irredeemable embarrassment to himself and others.
Naima Bock‘Kaley’Sub Pop
Amid a flurry of excellent new tracks shared ahead of the release of Naima Bock’s second album, the romantic, timeless sweep of ‘Kaley’ is the pick of the bunch, that rich and resonant vocal playing magically off a melodic, punchy line of saxophone.
flowerovlove‘breaking news’Self-Released
Do I only like this because Flowerovlove shot the video in one of my favourite London public libraries? Possibly. An extremely pleasant bit of fluff nonetheless.
FKA Boursin‘All Kinds Of Shame (Circumcised Mix)’Accidental Meetings
With nods to the subtle deep house of DJ Sprinkles, this latest release from Bristol label Accidental Meetings, by Bristol-based producer FKA Boursin, is a hypnotic window into the power of restraint in dance music. Built around sparse drums, divine synth motifs, an abysally deep bassline and snatches of soulful vocal samples, it and its B-side, ‘Decoupled’, make up one of my favourite electronic music 12-inches of the year so far.
Heartworms‘Jacked’Speedy Wunderground
Jojo Orme’s Heartworms project continues to plough darker and more addictive furrows. ‘Jacked’’s punishing industrial-goth instrumental is ornate in its intensity, Orme’s vocals simmering with menace.
Kugelschreiber‘(me x u) ≠ (u x me)’Wamho
The first track from Kugelschreiber’s excellent forthcoming debut album, Cheerleaders, playfully poses questions concerning a romantic relationship in terms more usually associated with philosophical or scientific inquiry: “Do you alter at an atomic scale, if I move the ground beneath your feet?” Sharron Fortnam’s gorgeous vocal rides a wave-particle duality of scintillating synths and a powerfully pulsating bassline to a plateau of pure euphoria. This is a wonderful first taste of this new band’s sound, quite different in some respects from anything Fortnam has done before. And it’s not even the best track on the album.
Holy Tongue Meets Shackleton‘The Merciful Lake’AD 93
Holy Tongue’s upcoming collaborative record with Shackleton is an essential meeting of minds that stands as one of the best things both acts have done in their already impressive discographies. Lead track ‘The Merciful Lake’ is a dubbed-out trip through haunting bass, skipping drums, cosmic guitar, and the kind of weird stretched-out vocals so characteristic of Shackleton’s work, and stands as one of the record’s highlights.
Nídia & Valentina‘Mata’Latency
Everyone’s favourite drummer, Valentina Magaletti, joins the peerless Afro-Portuguese kuduro producer Nídia with predictably brilliant results.
Xiu Xiu‘Common Loon’Polyvinyl
‘Common Loon’ is easily one of the most pop-leaning cuts in Xiu Xiu history. Jamie Stewart’s guitar work on the song glides, the intermittent buzzing distortion feeling more like an overflow of exuberance than an element of harshness, as in Xiu Xiu’s past.
Mica Levi‘Slob Air’Hyperdub
Mica Levi’s debut for Hyperdub is a dream-pop collision of galloping drums and hallucinatory strings that subtly progresses and shifts over the course of its absorbing 12-minute runtime.
Batu‘Zeal’A Long Strange Dream
Batu’s latest outing for his imprint A Long Strange Dream is a proggy tech-house roller revolving around a huge, electro-inspired synth earworm that drills into your brain. A sinister tune, it grabs your attention with the producer’s signature spatially conceived sound image and detached ad-libs that add a layer of mystique.
