London-based multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Oscar “Sholto” Robertson grew up with a deep and abiding love of jazz, soul, krautrock and 60s and 70s soundtracks. Roberton may be best known for being one-half of indie outfit Sunglasses for Jaws. He honed his production skills under the guidance of Allah-Las‘ Nick Waterhouse and Inflo.
Three years ago, Robertson stepped out into the spotlight as a solo artist with his latest project SHOLTO, which sees him crafting a unique take on cinematic, instrumental soul. 2023 looks to be a big year for the rising London-based multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer: He signed to Deep Matter imprint Root Records, who will be releasing Robertson’s SHOLTO debut, The Changing Tides of Dreams EP.
The Changing Tides of Dreams EP‘s first single “Vampire” is built around an expansive and cinematic arrangement featuring twinkling percussion, swirling Wurlitzer organ, cascading harp, lush strings, burst of fluttering flute, a supple and propulsive bass line, a soulful horn solo and skittering boom bap drumming paired with a strutting and infectious groove. The result is a song that reminds me a bit of the gorgeous, widescreen instrumental soul of The Ironsides with the trippy grooves of L’Eclair and Mildlife.
Chicago-based post rock/post-metal outfit The Color of Cyan — Henry Cole (drums), Jorge Santana (bass) and Eduardo Cintron (guitar) — originally formed in San Juan, Puerto Rico back in 2000. The band re-emerged during the height of the pandemic as a solely instrumental project that created intricate soundscapes with aggressive guitar.
The band wrote and recorded their full-length debut, 2021’s Agape, an album that featured multi-layered material that patiently built in pressure and impact.
The act’s sophomore album, Egress, which was recorded between Puerto Rico, Chicago and Mexico City will reportedly see the band blurring the boundaries of a sound that feature elements of post metal, post rock and neo-classical while introspectively exploring emotion through delicate layering,. “Our music arrangements are purposely in constant motion, guided by emotions, impossible to replicate perfectly, like waves in the sea. Nothing is ever the same as before,” the Chicago-based outfit explains.
Egress‘ latest single, album title track “Egress” is a brooding and cinematic composition that brings Collapse Under The Empire and others to mind — but while having a painterly, A Storm in Heaven-like textured quality. “‘Egress’ embodies the pursuit of happiness, no matter the obstacles in life,” the band explains.
2021’s Diego EP, which featured a collection of compositions informed by the raw energy of being together and creating in the same room, a cinematic batch of gongs inspired by The Godfather and Yasujirō Ozu.
The British outfit’s highly-anticipated full-length debut On The Inside is slated for an October 13, 2023 release through Blue Flowers. The 12-song album is reportedly a window into the band’s world, a world that’s been expanding since the band’s formation several years ago. What initially began as an outlet for their shared love of 60s Motown quickly became one of Leeds’ most successful and acclaimed bands, while amassing over 69 million Spotify streams.
Earlier this year, I wrote about “Got To Be Good,” an effortless, vintage soul-inspired strut built around skittering boom bap-like drumming, glistening Rhodes, burst of funk guitar and a sinuous and supple bass line paired with Pip Millett‘s yearning delivery.
“’Got To Be Good’, came together pretty fast. Whenever we’ve been in the room with Pip, it’s pretty free and fruitful,” the members of Gotts Street Park explain. “When a song comes together like this, we don’t overthink it or alter the final take too much and just hope to have the same energy come through to the listener as we felt in the room creating it.”
“’Got To Be Good’ is about pulling yourself out of the darkness,” Pip Millett adds. “You have to really want for a change in order to pull away from that sadness, and that’s what I was writing about.”
On The Inside‘s latest single “Fuego” sees the trio returning to their instrumental roots. Featuring an irresistibly funky, El Michels affair-meets-classic soul-like groove, “Fuego” is built around a shape-shifting arrangement of twinkling keys, squiggling funk guitar and relentless boom-bap snares. The song sees the acclaimed British trio crafting a mischievously anachronistic jam that’s perfect for lounges and for crate diggers looking for deep, hypnotic grooves.
Directed by Kumara Vision, the accompanying video for “Fuego” offers a rare snapshot into the band’s inner workings with hazy, mind-bending footage of the band working in the studio.
“’Fuego’ started as a quick jam one afternoon during our June 2022 residency at Laylow,” the rising British trio explain.”It was super hot in London that day, and we were sweating it out in the top floor studio. The riff came about as we were letting off steam in between writing and developing ideas with a vocalist. Josh hit on the bass riff first and it kinda flowed from there.
“When we’re in a session writing with someone, we can end up playing the same chords round and round for a few hours – and ideas like ‘Fuego’ come about when we’re letting loose and being super playful after being so restricted.”
Best known for his work playing bass in Red Thread Theory, Michael Mosley is the creative mastermind behind rhythmspitter. Conceptually inspired by Bill Laswell‘s Material and Jah Wobble’s Invaders of the Heart, Mosley’s rhythmspitter sees him combining various world instruments and rhythms to create instrumental, lo fi, beat-driven indie rock meant to vibe with and chill.
rhythmspitter’s latest single “First Movement” is a decidedly minimalist yet composition built around glistening and looping guitars, atmospheric synths and a sinuous bass line paired with a motorik-like groove. The result is a song that reminds me of Minimal Compact — but much more laid back.
Melbourne-based duo Divide and Dissolve — Takiaya Reed (sax, guitar) and Sylvie Nehill (drums) — have long been focused on Indigenous sovereignty: Reed is Tsalagi (Cherokee) and Black, Nehill is Māori. As a duo, they released two albums 2017’s Basic and 2018’s Abomination through DERO Arcade before signing with Invada, who released their widely acclaimed third album, 2021’s Gas Lit. Gas Lit Remix EP was also released in 2021 and featured reworkings and remixes of Gas Lit material by Moor Mother, Chelsea Wolfe and Bearcat.
Last year, the duo toured across North America and Europe, opening for Low, which included a stop at Webster Hall, as well as headline dates and festival appearances.
The acclaimed Aussie outfit’s fourth album, the Ruban Neilson-produced Systemic was officially released today through Invada. Thematically, the album sees the duo exploring the systems that intrinsically bind us — and calls for a system that facilitates life for everyone. It’s a message that fits firmly with the band’s core intentions: to make music that honors their ancestors and Indigenous lands, to oppose white supremacy, and to work towards a future of Black and Indigenous liberation. “This music is an acknowledgement of the dispossession that occurs due to colonial violence,” Divide and Dissolve’s Takaiya Reed explains in press notes. “The goal of the colonial project is to separate Indigenous people from their culture, their life force, their community and their traditions. The album is in direct opposition to this.”
Recorded as a duo, the album according to Reed is a continuation of Gas Lit. “Because of what was built with Gas Lit, Systemic is able to express itself.” She adds, “The album is a prayer to our ancestors. A prayer for land to be given back to Indigenous people, and for future generations to be free from this cycle of violence.”
Reed emphasizes that it’s crucial for their music to be instrumental. “I believe in the power of non-verbal communication,” she continues, “A huge percent of communication is non-verbal. We learn so much without using words.” There’s one exception on the album, the spoken word track “Kingdom of Fear,” which features writer and artist Minori Sanchiz-Fung, who contributed to previous Divide and Dissolve albums.
In the lead-up to the album’s release, I wrote about two released singles:
“Blood Quantum,” a composition built around a dissonant and insistent thumping of crashing cymbals, thunderous snare, Melvins-like guitar sludge, wavering synths and horns paired with mournful yet gorgeously orchestrated passages meant to evoke brief moments of respite. The song is rooted in — and expresses awe-inspiring beauty and heart-wrenching anguish of human existence. “The heaviness is really important,” Reed says. “It’s congruent with the message of the music, and the heaviness feels emblematic of this world’s situation.”
“Indignation,” a composition, which begins with a gorgeous introduction featuring looping and mournful saxophone and yearning strings that quickly morphs into the song’s second and longest section, a stormy and forceful dirge featuring power chord-driven guitar sludge, thunderous drumming and wailing strings, before ending with the mournful saxophone and yearning strings of its introduction. Divide and Dissolve’s Reed says that the song “is a prayer that land be given back to Indigenous people. A hope that future generations no longer experience the atrocities and fervent violence that colonisation continues to bring forth.”
Systemic‘s third and latest single “Want” is a noisy yet yearning composition built around shoegazer like layered textures that include doppler effected-like oscillating feedback and brooding undertones. “‘Want’ is a deep dive into longing within a decolonial framework,” Divide and Dissolve’s Takiaya Reed explains. “We can want many things, but how will it happen? What is necessary, what systems must be broken in order for people to live?”
Continuing their ongoing collaboration with director Sepi Mashiaof, the accompanying video for “Want” features a variety of imagery that spins endlessly to the song’s oscillating tones. “As ‘Want’ is the song that introduces us to ‘Systemic’, the concept for the video emulates this kind of infant yearning for worlds beyond our current heartbreaking reality. There are so many beautiful textures above our heads that are inaccessible (as there are so many desired modes of existence that are inaccessible), and the rotation emphasizes the limbo of what that desire feels like. Trying to reach something, but succumbing to the loop of failure. Still, that infant yearning is persistent, and that compliments the need for hope and cements the importance of idealism as essential tools in our greater struggles for liberation.”
Formed in 2021, Paris-based collective Asynchrone — Aloe Blacc‘s Clément Petit (cello), producer and musician Frédéric Soulard, Hughes Mayot (clarinet, sax), Delphine Joussein (flute), Manuel Peskine (piano) and A.L.B.E.R.T.’s Vincent Taeger (drums) — features a collection of musicians across the city’s free jazz and electro scenes, who wanted to honor the work of the late, legendary Japanese jazz keyboardist and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. Influenced by Sakamoto’s freedom, mysticism and his ability to draw inspiration from Debussy and Kraftwerk equally, the Parisian collective revisits his massive back catalog with a breath of rebellious freedom and a communicative pleasure of playing. Fittingly, the members of Asynchrone see their endeavor as more than a tribute to a frozen, seemingly static body of work, but a tribute to pure creative freedom.
The Parisian collective burst into the scene with last year’s debut effort, Kling Klang EP. Sakamoto died from rectal cancer earlier this year, and a few months after his debut, the members of the Parisian jazz outfit announced that their full-length debut, Plastic Bamboo, will see a a September 29, 2023 release through Nø Førmat!
Plastic Bamboo‘s first single, title track “Plastic Bamboo” is the Parisian outfit’s loving yet subtle interpretation of Sakamoto’s “Plastic Bamboo,” which originally appeared on his full-length debut, 1978’s Thousand Knives. The original version sonically seems like a mischievous mix of Man Machine-era Kraftwerk, Parliament Funkadelic/Bootsy Collins-like funk built around a deceptively minimalist yet classical- melody. The Asynchrone rendition subtly modernizes the original, giving it a jazzier and percussive L’Eclair/Mildlife-like trippy groove while retaining the minimalist classical melody.
“The original version sounds like slow Funk mixed with influences from Kraftwerk, with a very melodic theme that reminds you of François de Roubaix’s music,” the members of Asynchrone explain. “This new refined and dynamic version gives more space to the drums, cello and rhythm boxes that give a sense of urgency to it, while the flute and the piano are playing the theme, giving it an exotica touch.”
Los Angeles-based JOVM mainstays Allah-Las — Matthew Corriea (drums, vocals), Spencer Dunham (bass, guitar, vocals), Miles Michaud (guitar, organ, vocals) and Pedrum Siadatian (guitar, synth, vocals) can their origins to when its members first bonded over psych rock vinyl in the back room at Amoeba Records. And over the course of the past 15 years, the Los Angeles-based quartet have been busy: they’ve developed a reputation for alchemically blending surf rock with folk rock jangle and rock; they’ve built up their lauded music podcast Reverberation Radio; and their record label Calico Discos.
Naturally, a lot has changed throughout the years, and their forthcoming album Zuma 85 reportedly finds the quarter facing a new world with a wealth of new sounds.
The pandemic-induced downtime between 2020-2022 opened up space for the members of the band to focus on their own lives and interests, and the time to re-envision what their creative process could look like and be. When it was safe to reconvene, a sense of looseness proved to be pivotal. Instead of bringing finished songs to the studio, they arrived at Stinson Beach-based Panoramic House with sketches, ideas and riffs.
Working with co-producer Jeremy Harris, the band crafted and shaped the album’s material over the course of three sessions, which were then mixed in Los Angeles by frequent collaborator Jarvis Taveniere. It was clear to the band that the studio’s bucolic environment — observed through picture windows overlooking Stinson Beach and Bolinas Bay — would be conducive to creating Zuma 85‘s material. “We got in real late that first night of the first session,” Allah-Las’ Miles Michaud says. “It was around midnight. We had a quick intro and Jeremy had a bottle of wine. We had a little and he said, ‘You wanna start recording?’”
They wound up recording something. When the group reassembled the following morning to listen to what they recorded, they found the session’s first song “Right On Time” mostly finished. It managed to be unlike anything the band had ever recorded, but it felt entirely natural. “Everything just worked,” Michaud says. “That studio just pulls it out of you.”
Zuma 85 derives its title from a photo of an abandoned by California-based photographer John Divola. Selected by the band’s Matthew Correia, the band’s resident photography fan and graphic designer, the photo juxtaposes a visage of man-man chaos against the natural beauty of the West Coast. It served as a reference point for the album, a symbol for the band’s new era.
Sonically, Zuma 85 reportedly sees the band leaving the familiar territory of their previously released material and embracing newer influences like late-era Lou Reed and John Cale, Peter Ivers, early Brian Eno and Roxy Music, as well as textures borrowed from Japanese pop and loner-folk obscurities. Some of the album’s material touches on komische, others are antehmic and electronic boogie, and there are even prog rock inspired material.
Zuma 85‘s first single, album title track “Zuma 85” is a dreamy composition built around a glistening and looping guitar lines, twinkling percussion, a driving groove powered by relentless four-on-the-floor and atmospheric synth textures paired with an easy-going yet catchy groove. The end result is a trippy take on the komische sound.
The JOVM mainstays will be embarking on a lengthy international tour that features an August 4, 2023 stop at The Rockaway Hotel and a September 11, 2023 stop at Amsterdam’s Paradiso, one of the world’s great music venues. Check out the rest of the tour dates below.
Tour Dates
6/15 – 17 – PiP Fest – Oslo, NO
6/16 – Bergenfest (Bergenhus Fortress & Castle) – Bergen, NO
6/17 – Pumpehuset – Copenhagen, DK
6/20 – Slaktkrykan – Stockholm, SE
6/22 – Selección Sonora @ Centro Cultural Ágora – A Coruna, Galicia, ES
Emerging Mission, British Columbia-based electronic music artist and producer Adam Gill writes and records under the alias GhostfaceK45, a name that pays homage to the Wu-Tang Clan and Michael Jordan. Gill says that his own production methods are inspired by RZA.
His latest single “Skyfall” derives its title from Adele‘s “Skyfall,” which was featured in title sequence of 2014’s installment in the James Bond series, Skyfall. Sonically though, Gill’s latest single is a woozy and brooding electronic soundscape built around glistening synth arpeggios, skittering boom-bap like beats that brings John Carpenter and Vangelis to mind.
Ryan Lee West is a critically acclaimed, London-based electronic music producer, best known as Rival Consoles. Over the course of his 15 plus-year career, the London-based electronic music producer’s work has diversified from the challenging electronic output of his early EPs to gradually become more conceptual and metamorphic: 2020’s Articulation used drawings and sketches to imagine and developed each track while 2021’s Overflow explored themes of the human and emotional consequences of life surrounded by advancing technologies, including social media — and was composed for choreographer Alex Whitley‘s contemporary dance production of the same name.
West’s consistent desire to create a more organic, humanized sound often sees the acclaimed British producer often developing early ideas on guitar or piano; forming pieces that capture and evoke a sense of songwriting behind the electronics. His eighth album, last year’s Now Is featured some of the most playful and melodic material of West’s catalog in some time, with the album’s material drawing from music, art, film, colors, shapes and even human emotions.
“The title of the record Now Is interests me because it is the beginning of a statement, but it is incomplete. I like art that is open and suggestive of ideas even if they are inspired by very specific things,” West explains. “With my previous record Overflow being very dark, heavy and almost dystopian, I wanted to escape into a different world with this music and ended up creating a record which is a lot more colorful and euphoric.”
I wrote about three singles off the album:
The Autobahn-era and Trans Europe Express-era Kraftwerk-like album title track “Now Is,” which features a a relentless motorik pulse and glistening synth arpeggios that manage to evoke prismatic bursts of color exploding before the listener’s eyes.
“World Turns,” which also features a relentless motorik pulse built from a propulsive bass lines, glistening synths and twitter and woofer rattling industrial thump paired with a gently morphing song structure that sees tempo and tone shifts throughout. The end result is soulful, thoughtful electronic music with a human soul and beating heart.
“Running,” a deceptively simple composition built around a single melodic idea — a glistening synth line that subtly morphs and bends throughout. The synth melody is paired with skittering thump and a motorik pulse that propels the song towards its conclusion — a gentle fade out. “I am very into classical music and the kind of structures and ideas they often use, and love the works which take a single melodic idea and create multiple variations from it,” West explains. “That is what I tried to do with this piece, where every single thing is a variation on the opening ten second theme. I spent over one year exploring a huge amount of variations from light to very heavy. Over much time I ended up being more inspired by the subtler, gentler variations, which allow the idea to breathe, which is a theme on this record.”
West’s latest Rival Consoles single “Coda” is the first bit of new material since the release of Now Is. The incredibly nocturnal “Coda” is built around an eerie chord progression that slowly twists, turns and morphs as it builds up tempo paired with skittering beats and a relentless motorik-like groove. The composition manages to evoke a somnambulant and woozy buzz of energy.
“’Coda’ started as a really late night experiment around a chord progression that seemed haunting but also had some strange beauty,” West says. “The whole piece is centered around this theme. I wanted to embrace the dark and quiet moments of the nighttime but also the energy of people who were maybe moving around London late at night with a nod to house music.”
Along with the release of the single, West announced his first North American tour dates in over five years. The tour includes a September 27, 2023 stop at Music Hall of Williamsburg. Check out the rest of the tour dates below.
Melbourne-based duo Divide and Dissolve — Takiaya Reed (sax, guitar) and Sylvie Nehill (drums) — have long been focused on Indigenous sovereignty: Reed is Tsalagi (Cherokee) and Black, Nehill is Māori. As a duo, they released two albums 2017’s Basic and 2018’s Abomination through DERO Arcade before signing with Invada, who released their widely acclaimed third album, 2021’s Gas Lit. Gas Lit Remix EP was also released in 2021 and featured reworkings and remixes of Gas Lit material by Moor Mother, Chelsea Wolfe and Bearcat.
Last year, the duo toured across North America and Europe, opening for Low, which included a stop at Webster Hall, as well as headline dates and festival appearances.
The acclaimed Aussie outfit’s fourth album, the Ruban Neilson-produced Systemic is slated for a June 30, 2023 release through Invada. Thematically, the album sees the duo exploring the systems that intrinsically bind us — and calls for a system that facilitates life for everyone. It’s a message that fits firmly with the band’s core intentions: to make music that honors their ancestors and Indigenous lands, to oppose white supremacy, and to work towards a future of Black and Indigenous liberation. “This music is an acknowledgement of the dispossession that occurs due to colonial violence,” Divide and Dissolve’s Takaiya Reed explains in press notes. “The goal of the colonial project is to separate Indigenous people from their culture, their life force, their community and their traditions. The album is in direct opposition to this.”
Recorded as a duo, the album according to Reed is a continuation of Gas Lit. “Because of what was built with Gas Lit, Systemic is able to express itself.” She adds, “The album is a prayer to our ancestors. A prayer for land to be given back to Indigenous people, and for future generations to be free from this cycle of violence.”
Reed emphasizes that it’s crucial for their music to be instrumental. “I believe in the power of non-verbal communication,” she continues, “A huge percent of communication is non-verbal. We learn so much without using words.” There’s one exception on the album, the spoken word track “Kingdom of Fear,” which features writer and artist Minori Sanchiz-Fung, who contributed to previous Divide and Dissolve albums.
Last month, I wrote about “Blood Quantum,” a composition built around a dissonant and insistent thumping of crashing cymbals, thunderous snare, Melvins-like guitar sludge, wavering synths and horns paired with mournful yet gorgeously orchestrated passages meant to evoke brief moments of respite. The song is rooted in — and expresses awe-inspiring beauty and heart-wrenching anguish of human existence. “The heaviness is really important,” Reed says. “It’s congruent with the message of the music, and the heaviness feels emblematic of this world’s situation.”
“Indignation,” Systemic‘s latest single begins with a gorgeous introduction featuring looping and mournful saxophone and yearning strings that quickly morphs into the song’s second and longest section, a stormy and forceful dirge featuring power chord-driven guitar sludge, thunderous drumming and wailing strings, before ending with the mournful saxophone and yearning strings of its introduction. Divide and Dissolve’s Reed says that the song “is a prayer that land be given back to Indigenous people. A hope that future generations no longer experience the atrocities and fervent violence that colonisation continues to bring forth.”
The accompanying video continues the acclaimed Aussie outfit’s ongoing collaboration with director Sepi Mashiahof. “In reflecting on the powerful and vital messaging found in Divide and Dissolve’s music: decolonization, the destruction of white supremacy, and liberation from oppressive structures—this video is about the collective grief we experience about the lives we all could have were it not for the cruel and arbitrary systems of power that impede each and every one of our potentials,” Mashiahof explains. “The potential to truly love ourselves and each other is distorted by the agendas of vicious capitalist vultures who seek to emaciate our joys, bonds, and communities for their own gain. This video depicts an abstracted portrait of what suffering under these accelerating conditions feels like. Technology, dysphoria, dream-form sentience, transaction, and depersonalization constitute the thematic palette, laid upon the hope of shedding our current forms and transcending into boundless, beautiful ether.”
Francesco Virgilio is a French electronic music producer and artist, best known as the creative mastermind behind m o k r o ï e, an electronic music project that specializes in a sound that features elements of electro pop, electro soul and industrial that sees him pairing music with unique imagery and video through three releases, Global System Error, Machines & Soul and Works2k21.
Released earlier this year, Virgilio’s latest m o k r o ï e single “Natural” is cinematic bit of electronic music built around layers of glistening and glitchy synths and skittering beats that brings John Carpenter soundtracks to mind.
The accompanying video by Virgilio features two characters in a post-apocalyptic world trying to escape an ongoing natural disaster, which is heading towards them. Even then they think they’ve escaped into an idyllic paradise, nature’s brutal force is inescapable.
