Kennedy One is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer and radio show host, who has developed and honed a cinematic take on electronic music. As a ghostwriter, Kennedy One’s material has received airplay globally, as well as placements on film and television. Interestingly, Kennedy One recently stepped out into the limelight as a slo artist with the release of his full-length debut, last year’s Metropolis.
Thematically, Metropolis‘s material is an introspective journey that tackled the challenges of leaving the past behind in search of something new — most often a path that is often taken alone. Since the release of Metropolis, the rising multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer has been busy: earlier this year, he released the chart topping collaboration with Shelley Harland “Calling You” through Black Hole’s Avanti.
His latest single “Drive” was released through Symphonic today — and the track, which is centered around glistening synth arpeggios, a relentless motorik groove, skittering, tweeter and woofer rocking beats and a chopped up vocal sample reminds me quite bit of a slick synthesis of Between Two Selves-era Octo Octa and Tour de France-era Kraftwerk. And as a result, the song manages to evoke being on the road late night and being hypnotized by the white lines ahead of you.
usic scene through her YouTube channel, which initially featured attention-grabbing covers of Lartiste’s “Clandestina” and Lomepal’s “Trop Beau” — with her cover of “Trop Beau” receiving over 40 million streams on Spotify. As a solo artist, Peters quickly established herself a songwriter, who writes heartfelt and lived-in material, based from her own life experiences and with an unvarnished honesty with the release of her debut EP Fous, etc.
don’t be a pleaser and most importantly, don’t lose yourself. Be you at all costs. Interestingly, EP title track “Fous” features the rising French artist’s coquettish yet self-assured vocals over a lush production featuring shimmering Flamenco-styled acoustic guitar paired with skittering, tweeter and woofer beats.
Recently, Edmofo gave “Fous” the remix treatment. While retaining the original’s looping Flamenco-styled acoustic guitar and Peters’ coquettish yet self-assured vocals, Edmofo adds harder-hitting, beats, bursts of twinkling keys, turning an earnest R&B/pop ballad into an urgent, club friendly banger.
INNR CIRCLE is a rising Toronto-based Panamanian-Canadian R&B artist, who has developed and honed a sound that features — and often meshes — elements of New Wave, dream pop and R&B paired with earnest, lived-in songwriting, and the artist’s striking and dynamic vocal register. Over the past year, his material, including “Take” have amassed over 1.6 million streams and have been featured on 70 official DSP playlists.
Earlier this year, the Canadian R&B artist released his debut EP, the six-song BEMUSED + CONFUSED EP. The EP received a feature on Lyrical Lemonade. Building upon a growing profile, the rising Toronto-based artist has remained busy: his latest effort, the standalone single “something called love.” Centered around a shimmering and dance floor friendly, 80s synth pop-inspired production from collaborators TJ Routon and Def Starz paired with INNR CIRCLE’s plaintive and sultry vocals, “something called love” pulsates with a desperate and aching need to be loved — but by that one particular person you want the most.
Octavia is a Corsica, France-born, London-based singer/songwriter who since 2017 has developed an a unique take on alternative pop/R&B inspired by the likes of Missy Elliott, Lauryn Hill, Jeff Buckley, Radiohead, Destiny’s Child, Martha Aregeritch, Hiatus Kaiyote and Alice Coltrane among others, paired with lyrics that touch upon being a survivor, the people she has lost, her experiences and being a woman in general — sung in English and in French.
French-born, British-based artist’s latest single “Girlfriend” is centered around a dark and brooding production by Moma, MADD..’s Basile Peter and Lous and the Yakuza’s Raphaël Zeboulon featuring skittering tweeter and woofer rattling beats, wobbling synths paired with Octavia’s sultry vocals to create a song that swoons with desperate and nervous desire: the song tells a story about a woman’s first romantic and sexual encounter with another woman — and the recognition that they’re at the very least bisexual. While thematically perfect for Pride Month, the track also manages to be an honest exploration of feminine sensuality and sexuality.
Born in Southern France, the emerging Paris-based artist Ukiyoe grew up surrounded by and immersed in music: she listened to Nirvana, George Michael, The Cure, Ellen Allien, punk rock and cold wave; in fact, the emerging French artist can trace her love of music to listening to George Michael’s “Amazing.”
As Ukiyoe got older, she began to sing and write original material about life and love, eventually developing a difficult to pigeon sound and style that draws from and meshes alternative, indie pop and techno. Interestingly, despite the uncertainty of the pandemic, the emerging Paris-based artist released new material including her debut single “Angel” earlier this year. Her latest single “On est tous des animals” is a dense layered and trippy take on techno featuring skittering beats and the Paris-based artist’s vocals fed through distortion. Interestingly, the track is a mischievously forward-thinking yet accessible song.
who performs as SOUNDQ (shortened from Soundquake) and has developed a reputation for crafting dizzyingly innovative, alternative dance and outsider pop that sonically draws from house, drum ‘n’ bass, IDM and even contemporary pop. Thematically though, his work generally focuses on the dynamics of interpersonal struggle, the vagaries and cruelties of fate, power imbalances. And as a result, his work manages to be heady and forward-thinking yet accessible, propulsive and dance floor friendly.
Released earlier this year, “Disco Turrista Antifascita” is centered around a brash and infectious production featuring skittering, tweeter and woofer rocking beats, shimmering synth arpregios, a rousingly anthemic hook, and Kubica’s dreamy falsetto. But underneath the club rocking vibes, the song as the rising Polish producer explains “is an encouragement to go ut there — back into the wild world. Even if it’s gotten a lot wilder while we were locked inside. It’s a rallying cry in times of confidence depletion. Don’t take things for granted. Be cautious and watchful. You have every right to be pissed off with the turn the world has taken. You have every right to be scared. But it’s your world, and you can’t let the loud ones take it from you. Don’t get bullied. Don’t get hurt. Don’t engage in physical contact. You’ll be fine.”
In 2004, Chicago-based producer David Vandenberg brought the Leeds-based funk act The New Mastersounds to the States as an opener for Greyboy All-Stars for what would be the acclaimed British act’s first Stateside tour. And as the story goes, Vandenberg took The New Mastersounds’ guitarist, bandleader and producer Eddie Roberts out to Rosa’s, a legendary blues club on Chicago’s West Side on Roberts’ first night in town to catch local blues legend Omar Coleman, who had been playing Rosa’s for decades. Interestingly, almost two decades later, Roberts would wind up producing Coleman’s forthcoming album Eddie Roberts Presents Omar Coleman: Strange Times.
Slated for release this summer through Roberts’ own Color Red Music, the album’s title is an ode to The New Mastersounds 2001 debut, Keb Darge Presents: The New Mastersounds — and in many ways Coleman’s album finds Roberts, an acclaimed musician, bandleader and producer taking on the role of curator and influencer, championing and supporting artists he believes should be heard and love, essentially paying Keb Darge’s support forward to a worthy act.
Earlier this year, I wrote about album title track “Strange Times,” a strutting and gritty synthesis of The Payback-era James Brown funk and Chicago blues featuring a looping bluesy guitar line, bursts of shimmering strings and a funky bass line that would Bootsy Collins‘ proud paired with Coleman’s powerhouse, soulful vocals. Lyrically, the song’s origins can be traced to a series of conversations Coleman had with Roberts during the album’s recording sessions about the bizarre, infuriating and tragic state of America during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unsurprisingly, the exchange between the two kept turning back to the fact that we were all living in very strange times. Coleman took that and ran with it, immediately scribbling out incisive and fiery lyrics that accurately describe life in our very moment with the song talking about the abject poverty, desperation and uncertainty that hardworking and decent folks everywhere face. As the old saying the rich get richer while the poor get sicker.
“Chicago,” Strange Times‘ latest single is a fiery song that hews to Chicago’s beloved blues tradition while brashly refusing to be pigeonholed. Much like its predecessor, it’s a bit of synthesis of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf-like blues and James Brown-era soul featuring an enormous horn line, a blazing harmonica solo and a strutting grove paired with Coleman’s soulful wailing. Starting with Coleman proudly announcing that he’s from Chicago’s West Side, the song talks about the things I love about that city: its a town inhabited by tough, hardworking people, who like countless people across the world are struggling to survive to keep their dignity intact, despite the despair, shittiness and inequity and inequality thrown in their path.
For the album, Roberts recruited an accomplished backing band that features himself, Ghost Light’s Dan Africano (bass), Matador! Soul Sounds‘ Chris Spies (keys and organ), Dragondeer’s Carl Sorenson (drums), Lettuce‘s Eric “Benny” Bloom (trumpet), Michal Menert‘s Nick Gerlach (sax), Adrienne Short (viola) and Kari Clifton (violin) to help him with a sonic approach that would combine classic blues with funkier blues. And to capture the rawness and immediacy of the material, they recorded it straight to tape on Color Red Studios’ Tascam 388. “I hear Omar’s voice as a cross between Muddy Waters and Charles Bradley,” Roberts says. “I tried to reflect those qualities in music approach and songwriting as well as the way we recorded the album and built the instrumentation of the tracks.
kom is an emerging Swiss progressive techno producer, who has been releasing a new single every month since over the past few months. Released earlier this year, “Ève,” is a woozy techno banger centered around twinkling synth arpeggios, skittering beats and Estelle Poscio’s gorgeous operatic vocals that manages to be forward-thinking yet accessible.
Groovemonk is an Istanbul-based electronic music, who has developed a sound influenced by his love of ’90s club music, rave and breakbeat sounds, jazz, disco, hip-hop, funk, soul and traditional genres. The Turkish producer’s latest single “In Silico” derives its name from a scientific term that describes biological experiments carried out entirely by computer simulation.
Interestingly, “In Silico” is a glitchy and feverish collage of constantly morphing sonic ideas held together by tweeter and woofer rocking beats, euphoric hooks and a relentless energy that twists and turns and morphs constantly, which makes it feel off-kilter and angular yet somehow accessible and club friendly reminiscent of old school house. It’s the rare track that manages to be danceable yet mind-bending.
Toronto-based psych rock act Possum — Brandon Bak, Tobin Hopwood, Christopher Shannon, Patrick Lefler and Bradley Thibodeau — can trace their origins to their involvement and eventual meeting through their hometown’s psych rock and garage rock scenes, bonding over a mutual love and appreciate of acts like CAN, Grateful Dead, Fela Kuti and Ty Segall. Possum’s full-length debut Space Grade Assembly and the Toronto-based quintet crafting a hypnotic sound that drew from and meshed elements of garage rock, kraurock, psych rock and Ethio-jazz, centered around expansive arrangements full of shifting time signature changes.
Possum’s self-produced, sophomore album Lunar Gardens is slated for a July 2, 2021 release through Ideé Fixe Records, and the album reportedly finds the band further cementing their sound while pushing their songwriting into new, unchartered territory for them. Thematically, the album touches upon telepathy, ESP, thought transference, Ley line riding and the like; it’s a a psychic exploration of the collective cortex, the capture of cosmic energy and the alignment of astral flux. Trippy shit, indeed.
“While Space Grade Assembly dealt more with space in a cold literal sense, Lunar Gardens’ approach is more ‘space as metaphor for consciousness in all of its infinite expanding fractal forms’, a surrealist escapist space fantasy of impossible spaces — the type of place you might go when the things are too heavy here in 3D,” the Toronto-based quintet says of the differences between their debut and forthcoming sophomore album. “If we were talking movies, one might say Space Grade Assembly is 2001: A Space Odyssey and Lunar Gardens is The Holy Mountain.”
In the buildup for the album’s release next month, I’ve written about two of the album’s single:
“Gala at the Universe City,” a languorous song centered around a slithering and musty funkiness that to my ears brought Zappa and The Mothers of Invention and CAN to mind.
“Clarified Budder,” a song that acts as a bridge between their debut and sophomore album that begins with a languorous intro before quickly exploding out the gate, featuring rapid-fire drumming, a hypnotic motorist groove, wah-wah pedaled guitars and punchily delivered vocals. And the end result is a song that actively evokes the sensation of being weightless and floating away from your surroundings.
