Category: World Music

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Réunion Island’s Flo Assy Teams Up with Phantom on Brooding “Rien n’est Certain”

Flo Assy is a French-born, Réunion Island-based rapper, who spent a portion of his childhood in Côte d’Ivoire. The Francophone emcee burst into the French hip hop scene with his first two releases — 2015’s C’est La Vie and 2016’s Et Ta Dame? EP. 

His latest single, the Dony Dark-produced “Rien n’est Certain” is a collaboration with fellow Réunion Island-based emcee Phantom that see the duo spitting densely worded bars and verses over a brooding and atmospheric trap-meets-trip hop-like production featuring tweeter and woofer rattling thump and eerie synth arpeggios. The two emcees rhyme about the struggles they face as artists and (most importantly) as people in an uncertain, uneasy world.

Shot on Réunion Island, the seemingly DIY video follows the two emcees in an abandoned and decrepit suburban pool, a children’s park, a forested area and more with a strobe light, further emphasizing the brooding and uneasy air of the single.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Blessmon Shares Sultry “Blessi”

Blessmon is a somewhat mysterious and emerging Spanish artist, who caught my attention last year with “Ariana,” a slickly produced, lounge and club friendly reggaeton-meets-R&B bop featuring atmospheric synths and electronics and skittering beats paired with the Spanish artist’s yearning and subtly Autotuned vocal.

The Spanish artist’s latest single, the sultry “Blessi” continues a run of lounge and club friendly reggaeton for the grown and sexy cohort featuring skittering beats, atmospheric synths and the Spanish artist’s yearning delivery singing about a woman who wants his narrator to take his time — if y’all dig what I’m saying. It’s the sort of song, you want to wine down with that pretty young thing you want to see naked.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: DVTR Shares a Breakneck Spanish Language Version of “Rhum CokeMD”

Deriving their name as an acronym for the French phrase “D’où vient ton riz?” (Where does your rice come from?), Montréal-based duo DVTR is a new collaborative project featuring two of the city’s most highly acclaimed artists:

  • Laurence G-Do, the frontpweaon of JOVM mainstays  Le Couleur, an act that has toured internationally several times, and has opened for Giorgio Moroder, Polo & Pan and others, while amassing over 18 million streams across digital streaming platforms. 

  • JC Tellier, who has played with Gazoline, an act that has received multiple ADISQ and GAMIQ award nominations. Tellier has also played with Kandle, Xavier Caféine, Gab Bouchard and a lengthy list of other well-regarded artists in Québec. 

With the release of their debut EP BONJOUR, the French Canadian duo have been burning up the Canadian indie scene: The EP amassed a plethora of rapturous reviews, landed on a number of Best of 2023 Lists and earned the duo a handful of awards in Québec.

If you frequented this site over the course of last year, you might recall that I wrote about three of BONJOUR EP‘s singles:

  • “DVTR,” a breakneck, blistering and incisive ripper built around scorching riffage, a relentless motorik-like groove, a shouted mantra-like chorus and mosh pit friendly hooks paired with G-Do’s feral shouts. The result is a song that kind of sounds like a wild yet seamless synthesis of Wild Planet-era The B-52s and La Femme’s “Foutre le bordel.“

  • “Vasectomia” another breakneck ripper built around scorching guitar riffage, G-Do’s shouted vocals and a relentless groove paired with the duo’s penchant for wildly catchy hooks and anthemic choruses. But underneath the attention to slick craftsmanship, is furious and incisive criticism of the modern condition, delivered with zero fucks given. With the song, it feels as though G-Do would shout “fuck you!” to every man she passes by while suggesting that if men don’t want unwanted pregnancies or are truly concerned about overpopulation that maybe they should get a vasectomy. 

  • “Rhum CokeMD,” a gritty mosh pit friendly, breakneck ripper featuring scorching guitar riffs, shout along worthy choruses and hooks paired with a balls-to-the-wall, zero fucks given immediacy.

The duo also supported the EP with stops across the global festival circuit.

Building upon a rapidly growing profile, the duo recorded a Spanish language version of “Rhum CokeMD” “Ron Coca MD” after a recent sold-out appearance at Mexico City‘s Hipnosis Festival — and it was their first show in Mexico, to boot. The Spanish version of the song sonically is a breakneck and furious mix of The B52s-like New Wave, psych punk and bedroom punk — while retaining the same breathless urgency.

The accompanying visual features footage of the band shot during their Mexico City tour stop.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Population II Shares Mind-bending “R.B.”

Acclaimed Montréal-based psych rock outfit Population II — Pierre-Luc Gratton (vocals, drums), Tristan Lacombe (guitar, keys) and Sébastien Provençal (bass) — can trace their origin back a long way and are inextricably linked to their teenage memories.

After years of jamming to the point of developing a unique sense of telepathy, the trio began recording independently releasing material that caught the attention of Castle Face Records head and The Oh Sees‘ frontman John Dwyer, who released the band’s full-length debut, 2020’s À la Ô Terre, an album that saw the band displaying their mastery of improvised and sophisticated composition. The Montréal-based psych outfit then spent the better part of the next two years touring to support their full-length debut, which included stops at SXSW, Pop Montréal, Toronto, NYC, and Quebec City. 

Population II signed with Bonsound‘s label, booking and publishing arms. Bonsound released the French Canadian trio’s l Èthier-produced sophomore album Èlectrons libres du québec late last year. Èlectrons libres du québec‘s much more straightforward than its predecessor and continues to showcase their remarkably adept musicianship with material that sees them effortlessly balancing between challenging compositions and memorable melodies and hooks. Sonically, the material also continues their unique take on heavy psych rock with feverish punk rhythms, early punk energy bursts, hints of jazz philosophy and a love of minor scales informed by heavy metal’s early roots. 

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I wrote about four of its singles:

  • “Beau baptême,” a song built around a fairly traditional and recognizable song structure — verse, chorus, verse, bridge, coda — that’s roomy enough for buying power chord-driven riffs and mind-melting grooves paired with Gratton’s ethereal crooning. The song sees the trio deftly balancing jazz-inspired improvisational sensibilities with the tight restraint of a deliberately crafted composition. The song explores the psychological journey around inspiration and focuses on the very genesis of ideas — namely how ideas are actually born and the opinions they generate. Throughout the song, the band’s Pierre-Luc Gratton sings about how writing can sometimes happen with ease and spontaneity and sometimes requires deep, long reflection. Fittingly, the song is rooted in a lived-in specificity.

  • “C.T.Q.S,” a song that begins with a driving rhythm, dissonant 70s jazz fusion/prog rock organ with a slightly menacing, off-kilter vibe and a relentless punk rock-like urgency before veering into a krautrock-meets-psych ripper around the song’s halfway point. Featuring tongue-in-cheek lyrics, the band’s Gratton taunts those who are too passive and have surrendered in the face of the world’s current, turbulent state. “‘C.T.Q.S’. is the manifestation of the tribulations of the past among today’s youth,” the Montréal-based trio explain. “It’s the calm after the storm, the law of suburbia, the boomer’s victory lap. It’s searching the ‘Local business” category on Amazon.”

  • “Pourquoi qu’on dort pas,” which sees the trio quickly locking into a scuzzy and forceful  Stooges-like groove with dreamy and campy bursts of organ paired with Gratton’s dreamy falsetto. Caribou‘s and Born Ruffians‘ Colin Fisher contributes some forceful saxophone lines, which manage to add soulful harmony and chaotic dissonance to the affair. The result manages to evoke the fuzziness of brain fog and detachment. With a title that translates into English as “Why Aren’t We Sleeping,” “Pourquoi qu’on dort pas” can trace its origins to a number of late-night strolls through the streets of Montréal’s Ahuntsic neighborhood. “During the time we wrote that song, Pierre-Luc (singer/drummer) used to go running at night when he couldn’t sleep, explains the trio. As the flora and fauna of Ahuntsic is very diverse, he often came across geese.” Fittingly, the song thematically explores birds as symbolic figures. 

  • The album’s third single, album opening track “Orlando” is a scuzzy Black Sabbath-like ripper rooted around some blazing and remarkably dexterous guitar work, woozy and arpeggiated keys paired with Gratton’s punchy delivery and the trio’s uncanny knack for crafting trippy, mind-bending grooves. 

The album garnered praise on both sides of the Atlantic from the likes of Rock & Folk, Exclaim!, La Presse, Le Devoir and long list of others. The band also won a Breakthrough of the Year Award at last year’s GAMIQ ceremonies.

The acclaimed Montréal-based outfit are quickly following up with Serpent Échelle EP. Slated for an April 19, 2024 through Bonsound, the EP which will be released on a limited-edition cassette tape and on all digital platforms, sees the band crafting crating material that stands out from their previously released work: Shifting between orchestrated passages and lysergic riffage without warning, the EP’s material is wilder, more adventurous and heavier. Rooted in their remarkable compositional skills, the material displays a newfound commitment to songwriting.

Thematically, the material touches upon the desperate urgency of life in the age of global doom while still enjoying life’s small pleasures — love, friendship, wine, good tunes and the like.

The album also features violin from their acclaimed friend and producer Emmanuel Éthier.

Serpent Échelle‘s first single “R.B.” begins with a gorgeous string intro and an angular and propulsive bass line paired with a quick-paced hi-hat driven bit of percussion before scorching riffs explode around the 35-45 second mark. The song spends it run alternating between breathtaking beauty and scorching power chords. Gratton’s plaintive croon darts in and out of a lysergic and deceptively anachronistic arrangement that sounds as though it could have been released sometime between 1967-1973.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Italian Punks The Gluts Share Explosive and Breakneck “Cade Giù”

Milan-based punk rock outfit The Gluts — Claudia Cesana (bass/vocals), Bruno Bassi (drums) and Nicolò Campana (vocals, synths) and Marco Campana (guitar) — derive their name from an age-old term often used to denote unsold, surplus goods. For the Milanese outfit, they’ve taken the term to symbolically express a surplus of energy, much like the energy that has long driven their work.

Since their formation, they’ve released three 2014’s Warsaw, 2017’s Estasi and 2019’s Dengue Fever Hypnotic Trip which have seen the band establish and hone an explosive, psychedelic-tinged take on noise punk and thrash punk. 2021’s Bob de Wit-produced Ungrateful Heart saw the band making a decided sonic departure from their previously released work: The album’s material was deeply inspired by and indebted to 70s punk, 80s hardcore and post punk — in particular, Fugazi, Gang of Four, Sex Pistols, Public Image, Ltd. and the Campana brothers’ obsession with Italian and American

Recorded over a tireless week in which the band and their producer essentially lived and worked side-by-side in the studio around the clock, the Ungrateful Heart sessions were fueled by a forceful intensity and uncompromising fierceness. “Bob’s contribution to this album was essential. He pushed us beyond our limits. It was difficult, we can’t hide it, but it really was worth it,” the members of The Gluts said in press notes. 

The band’s highly-anticipated fifth album Bang! is slated for a May 31, 2024 release through Fuzz Club. The album’s material sees the band balancing between punchy, breakneck punk and noisy experimentalism, while accurately capturing a distilled sense of the fierce energy and power of their notoriously wild, noisy live shows, which they’ve taken internationally across the international festival circuit with stops at New Colossus Festival, The Great Escape, Eurosonic and others, as well as shows across Europe, South Africa and the States.

Clocking in at a little over two minutes, Bang!‘s first single “Cade Giù”is a searing and punchy blast of psych punk power chord-fueled feedback, thunderous drumming and howled vocals — in Italian. While sonically channeling JOVM mainstays A Place to Bury Strangers, as well as Dion Lunadon, My Bloody Valentine and others, “Cade Giù” is the first song that the band has ever written, sung and recorded in their native Italian. The song, as the band explains speaks about the blurry reminiscences of a typical after-show party while on tour, and focuses on a particularly wild night with their friend and booking agent. You can picture the friends heading from bar to bar to bar, the copious beers, shots, gin and tonics, acting like drunken louts through town — and the vertigo-like disorientation of being fucked up out of your mind. But goddamn it, you’re having the time of your life!

Edited by Dario Bassi Bruno the video features footage from several different copyright-free, B movies including Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead’s 1951 film Trance and Dance, Jean Rollin’s 1979 film Fascination, Jack Arnold’s 1954 film The Creature from the Black Lagoon, George Romero’s 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, Abel Ferrera’s 1979 film The Driller Killer and Pavel Klushantsev’s and Peter Bogdanovic’s 1968 film Voyage to the Planet of Prehistory Women.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Naomi Shares Club Friendly “Phénoméne”

Over the past couple of years, I’ve spilled quite a bit of virtual ink covering rising Montréal-based multi-disciplinary artist, singer/songwriter and pop artist Naomi. After studying theater, the Canadian artist first made a name for herself acting in roles on both the small and big screen by the time she turned 14.

Naomi went on to study dance École de danse contemporaine de Montréal. As a dancer, she has appeared in and/or choreographed music videos for the likes of Rihanna, Marie-Mai, Cœur de Pirate and others, as well as for local dance performances.

While she was establishing herself as an actor and dancer, the Montréal-based artist quietly developed a passion for singing — without giving herself permission to explore it fully. However, Cœur de Pirate, a.k.a. Beátrice Martin saw potential and took Naomi under her wing. Encouraged by Martin’s mentorship, the rising Canadian artist began to realize that she was never far off from making her own music. All she needed was a bit of a push. 

Naomi signed with Martin’s Bravo Musique, the label home of JOVM mainstay Thaïs, Cœur de Pirate, Chocolat and lengthy list of acclaimed local Francophone acts, and began writing her own original material. Since then, the rising Montréal-based artist has taken a bold leap into a career as a singer/songwriter and pop artist. Her first two singles “Tout à nous” and “Zéro stress” received airplay on WKND, Rouge FM, Arsenal, POP, CVKM and several other regional radio stations across Quebec.

She went on to release a batch of sleek, slickly produced singles that I’ve written about on this site, including last year’s “Hot Ex,” a song that paired the JOVM mainstays’ sultry delivery with a soulful, Larry Levan-like house music-inspired production featuring twinkling keys, bursts of sexy Quiet Storm-like horn, skittering beats and a remarkably catchy hooks. Despite the sultry exterior, “Hot Ex” was part break-up song, part tell-off, part revenge fantasy, full of the bitterness disappointment over a relationship ending, tiger heartbreak over what could have been, the crazed desire for revenge, and the stupidly desperate and dim hope for reconciliation that can only come from randomly running into an ex-lover on the street — or at a party.

The French Canadian JOVM mainstay’s latest single “Phénomène” is a slickly produced bit of dance floor friendly bop built around a hook-driven house music-meets- Rihanna-like production featuring glistening synth arpeggios, a propulsive and infectious groove serving as a lush, silky bed for Naomi’s sultry delivery singing lyrics in both French and English.

Thematically, the song has a powerfully feminist message — that it’s time to take responsibility for your life and your life’s path, to be proud of yourself and accomplishments and perhaps more important, to just be your damn self.

Directed by Ariana Tara, the video is set at a nightclub and captures the ebullience and joy of the nightclub — everywhere.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Corridor Shares a Shimmering and Glitchy Meditation on Money

Mimi, Corridor‘s long-awaited and highly-anticipated fourth album is slated for an April 26, 2024 release on CD, LP and DSP globally through Sub Pop and across Canada through Bonsound. 

The 8-song album, which was co-produced by the band and Joojoo Ashworth, recorded at Montréal-based Studio Gamma and mastered by Brooklyn’s Heba Kadry Mastering, derives its name from Jonathan Robert’s cat and features — presumably — Mimi’s face on the album artwork. Thematically, the album as the band explains is about “getting older” and “figuring out new parts of life,” inspired and informed by the type of personal changes that accompany the passage of time. And while the album’s material reflects a newfound and perhaps hard-won contemplative maturity, sonically, Mimi is reportedly a huge step forward with the band expanding on the sound of 2019’s critically applauded Junior with ever more richly detailed music rooted in a distinct rhythm pulse that recalls post-punk’s own classic era of meshing dance and rock textures. 

For the acclaimed Montréalers and their fans, Mimi will feel like a fresh break — even for a band that has established themselves as being forward-thinking. Much like its predecessor, Mimi sees Corridor being impossible to pin down from song to song; however, whereas the elastic guitar rock of Junior came together quickly — or as the band’s Jonathan Robert describes the process ” in a rush” — the steady-as-they-go creative pace of Mimi marked a desire to break from the “exhausting” work ethic that birthed Junior. 

“The goal was to work differently, which is the goal we have every time we work on a new album—to build something in a new way,” Robert explains. “This time, we took our time.” During the summer of 2020, the members of the band — Jonathan Robert (vocals, guitar), Dominic Berthiaume (vocals, bass), Julien Bakvis (drums) and multi-instrumentalist Samuel Gougoux — holed away in a cottage to engage in the sort of creative experimentation that would lead to Mimi‘s material. “We went there to write, and a lot of ideas came from that retreat,” Berthiaume explains. “We didn’t end up with songs as much as we did ideas, so the result is a collage of the ideas.”

After that productive writing retreat, the band continued to tinker with the songs’ raw parts digitally and remotely over the next few years with co-producer Joojoo Ashworth leading their own specific talents in the theoretical booth. This process was naturally a byproduct of not having access to their rehearsal space as the COVID-19 pandemic faded into public view, but it was also a result of the band leaning header into incorporating electronic textures than previously. 

 “For a long time, we identified as a guitar-oriented band, and the goal of making this whole record was trying to get away from that,” Berthiaume says, but while admitting that the band encountered their own challenges as a result: “We had to figure out how to make new songs without having the chance to play together. It was complicated sometimes.” 

Some of the album’s new energy and life may be owed to Samuel Gougoux joining the band full-time, after pitching in on live performances in the past. “I come more from a background of electronic music, so it was nice to involve that with the band more,” he explains. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about Mimi’s first single, “Mourir Demain,” a song built around brightly shimmering and chiming guitars, soaring synths and post-punk-like angular rhythms that served as a lush, velvety and somewhat uneasy bed for Robert’s plaintive delivery, which sees him ruminating on his looming mortality with a brutally unvarnished yet fearful realism. “I wrote it when my girlfriend and I were shopping for life insurance,” Corridor’s Robert says with a laugh. “With our little daughter growing up, we also considered making our will. I said to myself, ‘Oh shit, from now on I’m slowly starting to plan my death.”
 

Mimi‘s second and latest single “Mon Argent,” which has a title that translates into English as “My Money,” features the sort of electronic glitch and squiggle that reminds me of VHS fuzz and badly tuned TVs with rabbit ears paired with jangling and chiming bursts of angular guitars, a remarkably steady and propulsive backbeat serving as a lush and shimmering bed for Robert’s plaintive delivery to bitterly muse about the role of money in his — er, the narrator’s — life. And of course, fittingly enough, the sense of shame and failure that money, and the lack of money creates with all of us. Certainly, as a writer and photographer, this is a familiar and remarkably bitter aspect of my life that I can relate to.

The visualizer, by the band’s Jonathan Robert features a Lite Brite, falling pennies and dollar bills into a scale, trinkets and other bric-a-brac in a hypnotic loop.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Indy Fontaine Share Gorgeous Ballad “El Amor No Alcanza”

Indy Fontaine is a Cuban-born, Miami-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, who can trace the origins of her career to her early childhood: Singing alongside her uncle and his old guitar, she fell in love with music when she as three. And by the time she turned six, she was enrolled full-time at music school in Sancti Spiritus, Cuba, where she trained to be professional vocalist and musician.

Fontaine went on to graduate at the top of her class from Havana‘s prestigious National School of Art. By the time she graduated, she already had over a decade experience playing gigs all across Cuba, including music festivals, live radio and TV sessions and more.

Upon graduation, she joined Sol y Sun, an act that has played sets across the international music festival circuit between the States and Cuba, including some of the most popular venues in Havana. Sol y Sun also frequented national TV and radio shows.

The Cuban-born singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer relocated to the States, where she steps out into the spotlight as a solo artist. Her forthcoming 11-song, full-length debut reportedly ranges across a number of genres and styles Adult Contemporary, Easy Listening, Soft Rock, Indie Pop, Indie Rock and R&B — with songs in English and Spanish. The album’s material is rooted in the song-as-story tradition, inspired by love and real life situations.

Fontaine’s latest single “El Amor No Alcanza,” which translates into English as “Love Is Not Enough” is the Cuban-born artist’s subtly modern take on bolero, a genre that originated from Eastern Cuba that frequently focuses on affairs of the heart in a sophisticated fashion. Built around arrangement that features twinkling keys, electric guitar, a gorgeous flute line, along with bongo-driven percussion and serves as a lush bed for Fontaine’s yearning and heartbroken delivery, “El Amor No Alcanza” details the emotional drama of a tumultuous relationship with a seemingly lived-in experience — although it’s informed by a friend’s relationship.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Montréal’s Grand Public Shares Trippy Visual for Krautrock-Like “Lisbonne, Paris La Sorbonne”

Grand Public is Montréal-based indie rock outfit that features a collection of some of the city’s most accomplished musicians: Gregory Paquet, the band’s founder and frontman has played with The Stills, Alvvays‘ Molly Rankin and Peter Peter. The band also features three childhood friends, who have played together in several local bands, including Reviews, an act that has shared stages with Omni, JOVM mainstays Corridor, and others. 

Last year’s four-song Dominic Vanchesteing-produced debut EP Idéal Tempo featured “Lundi normal,” and “Goutte á goutte,,” two tracks that seemingly recalled Junior-era Corridor to mind with nods to 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock and 60s psych rock.

The Montréal-based outfit’s highly-anticipated full-length debut is slated for an April 2024 release through Lisbon Lux Records. The album’s second single “Lisbonne, Paris La Sorbonne” is a krautrock-like song featuring shimmering and angular guitars and an explosive guitar solo before a slow fade-out. Channeling Corridor and XTC but with a decidedly post punk edge, the song’s career-orientated narrator is desperately figuring out the right moves to advance his ambitions — and at seemingly any cost.

Directed by Joel Pelletier, the accompanying video features a montage and animation from Pelletier and follows the members of the band on a surrealistic and psilocybin-fueled romp to battle a karate master — with instruments.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Marseille’s Social Dance Shares Upbeat and Funky “Sometimes”

Formed back in 2020, Marseille, France-based electro pop trio Social Dance — Faustine, Thomas and Ange — are best friends and former roommates, who craft uninhibited and absurd pop inspired by their common experiences and complementary music tastes.

Their debut EP 2022’s Rumeurs featured material that was featured in the Netflix series Emily In Paris. As result of their music appearing in the hit Netflix series, the Marseille-based trio toured across Europe and Canada last year, playing over 70 shows.

The trio’s latest single “Sometimes” is their first single of 2024 — and the first bit of new material since their debut EP. “Sometimes” is a feel good slice of dance punk rooted in a euphoric, dance floor friendly groove featuring squiggling bursts of Nile Rodgers-like guitar, punchy, mathematically precise drum machine, angular bass lines paired with glistening synths serving as a sleek and supple bed for dueling bilingual boy and girl vocals that seems to channel LCD Soundsystem, JOVM mainstays Psymon Spine and others — while being remarkably mischievous.

The Wes Anderson-like accompanying video for “Sometimes” is a behind-the-scene look at the filming of the video for “Sometimes,” that begins with the production company ironing and preparing outfits for the trio, styling hair and makeup before they hit the set. During the shooting, we follow the boldly colored outfit trio rocking out and goofing along to the song. The video manages to capture the mischievous air of the trio and of the song — and in a way that’s adorable.

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Omar Souleyman Shares a Club Banging Ode to Erbil, Iraq

Acclaimed JOVM mainstay Omar Souleyman is a Tell Tamer, Syria-born, Erbil, Iraq-based Sunni Arab vocalist, who can trace the origins of his professional career back to 1994, when he began as a part-time wedding singer.

His overall sound has largely been influenced and informed by the incredibly diverse milieu of Northeastern Syria. Souleyman and a rotating cast of musicians and producers he has worked with his early days have found ways to draw from and mesh the sounds and themes of several different ethnic groups that inhabit the region, including Kurdish, Ashuris, Turks, Iraqis and the larger Arabic world in a way that’s both familiar and novel. And as a result, Souleyman has become a regional and global pioneer of club rocking electronic music that’s also wedding hall friendly.

Since starting his career 30 years ago, Souleyman has been astonishingly prolific, releasing well over 500 studio and live albums — with about 80% of those releases specifically made at weddings. Most of those recordings were first presented to the newlywed couple and then later copied and sold at local kiosks. The acclaimed JOVM mainstay has released four compilations and four albums through Western record labels — 2013’s Wenu Wenu, 2015’s Bahdeni Nami, 2017’s To Syria with Love and 2020’s Shlon. Each of those albums have not only brought some of the Middle East’s deepest grooves and trippiest sounds to the West, Souleyman’s recorded output has helped to expand his profile to the larger world.

Adding to a rising international profile, Souleyman has played sets across the global festival circuit, including Paredes de Coura, a Caribou co-curated ATP Festival, ATP Nightmare Before Christmas, Bonnaroo, Roskilde Festival, Mostly Jazz, Funk and Soul Festival, Pukkelpop Festival, Electric Picnic, Treefort Music Festival — and oddly enough, one of the strangest House of Vans bills I’ve ever seen, in which he opened for Future Islands. Souleyman has also collaborated with the likes of Bjork and Four Tet.

The acclaimed Syrian-born, Iraqi-based dabke singer’s fifth full-length album Erbil is slated for a March 29, 2024 release through Mad Decent. The eight-song album, which sees Syrian-born singer collaborating with his longtime keyboardist Hasan Jami Alo, pays homage to Erbil, the Iraqi city that has offered him solace and embraced him during recent uneasy and difficult times. His relocation to Erbil came with rich, new experiences and friendships that are best celebrated in joyous songs specifically dedicated to a new chapter in life. Sonically, Erbil‘s material reportedly sees Souleyman and Alo crafting a forward-thinking dabke-meets-techno sound.

Erbil‘s first single “Rahat Al Chant Ymme” may arguably be the most club friendly track that Souleyman has released in some time with the production featuring dense layers glistening and arpeggiated synths, tweeter and woofer rattling thump, skittering beats, hand claps and enormous bass drops serving as a lush and sultry bed for Souleyman’s imitably cooler-than-cool yet yearning delivery.

Presumably shot in Erbil, Iraq, the accompanying video for “Rahat Al Chant Ymme” follows the global dabke sensation through a warm, mind-bending and humanistic tour through the Iraqi city that also manages to nod at hip-hop videos.

Souleyman will be supporting the new album with an extensive tour that will include live shows in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, the wider Middle East and Europe, as well as his first Stateside shows in over 6 years — with shows in Los Angeles and NYC. More on that to come.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: KOKOKO! Shares Club-Rocking Ode to Kinshasa’s Nightlife

Since exploding into the scene back in 2017, the acclaimed Kinshasa-based collective KOKOKO! have captivated audiences globally with a striking, forward-thinking, dance floor friendly sound. The Congolese outfit’s full-length debut, Fongola was released to widespread critical acclaim with DJ Mag writing that it was “quite unlike anything else you’ll hear,” and The Guardian calling the collective a “commanding new voice.”

Building upon a growing profile, the band played attention grabbing sets across the global festival circuit, including All Points East, SXSW, Green Man and Pitchfork Festival. The Congolese outfit was named bad live band by the likes of AIF, NPR Tiny Desk and Boiler Room.

Thematically and aesthetically, the acclaimed Congolese outfit has had a long-held, fiercely activist and political slant. The Democratic Republic of Congo continues to experience serious human rights violations, including mass killings within the context of armed conflict and inter-communal violence, as well as crackdown on dissent and ill-treatment of detainees. People residing in regions affected by a variety of armed conflict are deeply impacted amid mass displacement and other deepening humanitarian crises. Additionally, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s wealth of natural resources are routinely exploited by large, multi-national tech companies and other conglomerates, which helps to fuel even more conflict in the region.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, political protest using words carries a risk of imprisonment, so dissidents and performers often work with their bodies and sounds to express and signal their critiques and commentary. The acclaimed Congolese outfit’s highly anticipated sophomore album BUTU is slated for a July 5, 2024 release through Transgressive Records. The album reportedly sees the collective continuing to pair a resistant, punk-like energy and attitude, informed by the attitude and thoughts of a new generation of Congolese artists and young people with their attention grabbing block party alchemy, but pushed to new, global heights.

Kinshasa’s after-dark buzz was one of the major inspirations behind BUTU, which means “the night” in Lingala, and the album dives deep into the heart of the chaotic, throbbing city, celebrating and championing the joyful and creative spirit of its inhabits. Continuing their ongoing collaboration with Belgium producer Xavier Thomas, a.k.a. Débruit, the forthcoming album reportedly sees the collective led by Makara Bianko channeling a more electronic-driven, upbeat sound while replicating the frenetic feel of their hometown’s dynamic nightlife: equipment is pushed to its limits through saturated and distorted speakers and the sonic push-and-pull of nighttime sounds.

The band employs field recordings, recorded from the city’s nighttime sounds and “ready-made percussion” like detergent bottles,. the collective fed those sounds through distortion to get closer to those nighttime sounds. “Compared to Fongola, this album is intentionally way more intense, because it’s quite upbeat and quite full-on,” Xavier Thomas says. The album’s material also pulls from much wider influences and span across West Africa and South Africa, influenced by Bianko’s global travel, which introduced him to new types of alternative electronic music and punk.

BUTU‘s first single “Mokili” is a house music-informed banger featuring glistening synth arpeggios, relentlessly skittering hi-hats, tweeter and woofer rattling thump serving as a slickly produced bed for Bianko’s crooning and impassioned shouts. Continuing a remarkable run of club friendly material with an in-your-face punk attitude and ethos, “Mokili” captures the frenetic and sweaty energy of their hometown and its nightlife scene with an uncanny, novelistic realism. But along with that, the song is a forceful and joyous reminder that Africa is the present and the future. (If y’all didn’t know, by 2050 close to a quarter of the entire world will be African.)

“’Mokili’ is about moving the world so much that it’s going to tip over sort of,” the acclaimed Congolese collective explains. “This track was a track we were used to trying live in a more improvised way, we never got the chance to record till recently where we added the right touch for the studio. It was the last addition to our album BUTU and became the first single, so it’s really fresh. It has obviously influences from Kinshasa but also Kwaito and 90’s dance music.”

Filmed by Erick Abidal Editing with Creative FX BY Myrtille Moniot in Kinshasa, the video sees the Congolese collective taking over the media seemingly by force, even without Internet signal. And throughout they let the world dive into the surreal and energetic scenes and people they come across in their hometown.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 74th Birthday, Peter Gabriel!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Peter Gabriel’s 74th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Milla Shares Lush and Gorgeous “Courbes”

24 year-old, Martigny, Switzerland-based singer/songwriter and visual artist Milla Besson is an an emerging artist best known as the mononymic Milla. Beeson studied music at College of Saint-Maurice and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Geneva (HEAD), which she graduated in 2021. Since 2019, the young Swiss artist has also collaborated with Marc Aymon, Jérémie Kisling and Aliose.

Besson’s Frédéric Jalliard and Yann Arnaud-produced three-song EP is slated for a March 1, 2024 release. Recorded between Switzerland and Paris, the EP will feature “Courbes,” a gorgeous bit of folk/pop built around a lush arrangement of strummed acoustic guitar, atmospheric synths, gently padded drums, twinkling bursts of percussion paired with Milla’s gorgeous and expressive vocal, which manages to convey a maturity beyond her relative youth.

Directed by Loris Theurillat, the accompanying video for “Courbes” is set at a local boxing club and is shot in a dreamy and breathtakingly gorgeous black and white.