Category: World Music

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Paris-based DJs Guido Minisky and Hervé Carvalho, electronic music act and production duo Acid Arab have developed a reputation for a sound that meshes Western electronic music, namely house and acid house, with Arabic arrangements and vocals — and for increasing collaboration with scores of Parisian-based musicians from across both North Africa and the Middle East. And as a result of their crowd-pleasing, genre meshing approach, the duo have been a name for themselves by playing the European major festival and club circuit to support several critically applauded EPs released through French label Versatile Records. Interestingly, as the duo of Minisky and Carvalho increasingly began to collaborate with locally based musicians, the duo four the need to make each song tell a story, which takes place in a world without barriers and domination.

The duo’s highly-anticipated full-length debut Musique de France is slated for an October 20 release through Crammed Disc Records and the album finds the Parison electronic music act collaborating with world renowned artists including Algerian keyboard player Kenzi Bourra, Syrian musician Rizan Said, who’s known for his work with Omar Souleyman,  Rachid Taha, raï fusion pioneer, Sofiane Saidi and gnawa musician/singer, Jawad El Garrouge — and a result, the French production and electronic music duo will not only further cement their burgeoning reputation for a globally-based genre mashing sound, it also finds them expanding upon it, as you’ll hear on “Buzq Blues,” the first single off the duo’s forthcoming album. The song has the duo crafting a slick production that features propulsive percussion, tons of kick snare, and skittering drum programming, cascading layers of synth stabs, gently buzzing synths, undulating electronics paired with gorgeous, Arabic instrumentation to craft a a trippy dance floor-friendly song that effortlessly bridges the incredibly modern with the incredibly ancient.

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Initially comprised of Dan Klein (vocals), Chuck Patel (organ, piano), Rich Terrana (drums, vocals) and Preet (bass, vocals), along with Norihiro Kikuta (guitar) and Mike Torres (percussion), Queens-based act The Frightnrs have developed a reputation across the city’s DIY and soundsystem scenes for an aesthetic that draws from Jamaican Rocksteady, a revered genre that took over Jamaican airwaves in 1967 and yielding some of the country’s most beloved and popular songs before petering out by the end of 1968, 80s Rub A Dub, punk rock, ska and reggae in a way that’s a subtle redefinition of what a contemporary reggae act can sound like. In fact, the act’s debut effort received airplay from reggae and radio legend David “Ram Jam” Roddigan and Mad Decent’s Diplo, who later released the band’s EP last year.

After the release of their EP, renowned New York-based funk and soul label Daptone Records released the band’s critically acclaimed cover of Etta James‘ “I’d Rather Go Blind” before officially signing the band as their first reggae signing based on two things — the strength of their local reputation and on the fact that they stumbled on to the perfect band to a long desired Rocksteady album, with Victor Axelrod, best known as Ticklah behind the dials and knobs. As the band’s Chuck Patel explains in press notes “Rocksteady was the first style of Jamaican music that Dan [Klein] and me fell in love with, and the idea of making a classic album for a classic label like Daptone was a dream come true.”  As soon as the band was officially signed, the members of the band immediately went to work with the understanding that they had to work within Daptone Records’ tight frame and constraints — mainly they had to write only Rocksteady songs, which forced the band to display a singular focus. In fact, as Axelrod adds “The fact that the direction of the album was determined by it being a Daptone record was crucial.  We wanted to make a solid and cohesive record and so chose songs that most fit the Daptone aesthetic and the result was the best music that Dan and the Frightnrs had ever made with truly expanded levels of creativity.”

Sadly as the band was recording their full-length debut effort Nothing Left to Say, which is slated for a September 2, 2016 release, the band’s frontman and co-founding member Dan Klein was diagnosed with ALS in last November and although he was able to finish the major work during the recording sessions, Klein tragically died last month making the recorded effort a testament to their friend and founder. As for the album’s first single, album title track “Nothing More To Say,” the track reminds me of the sort of stuff I’d hear during Dahved Levy‘s WBLS radio show. And although the song possesses an upbeat, bouncy riddim, the song is actually a bitter and aching lament from the song’s narrator about being devoted to a fickle and difficult lover, who may not have even loved him anyway — and as you can imagine the song’s narrator quickly recognizes that his relationship with this person was a lie. So he vows to pack up his stuff and go — and go as quickly as possible. Certainly, I’ve been there a couple of times as you have, and the song voices the bitter sense of confusion, heartache, regret and foolishness we’ve all felt at some point or another because of love.

 

 

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Single Review by William Ruben Helms

If you’ve been frequenting this site over the past few months, you may recall that I’ve previously written about Melbourne, Australia-based Latin music nonet San Lazaro. Featuring band members, who claim heritage from all over the Spanish speaking world — including Chile, Cuba, Catalonia and elsewhere. And as result, the Australian act have developed a reputation for a sound that draws across the Latin Diaspora as it possesses elements of reggaeton, salsa, Cuban son, 70s New York salsa and 60s Peruvian cumbia in an effortlessly seamless fashion; in fact, the band has simultaneously developed a reputation for being Melbourne’s preeminent Latin acts, as the band’s 2012 release Clave contra Clave helped the band win Best Australian Latin Band, and their single “Muchacho Tranquilo” was included on the 2014 Rough Guide to Psychedelic Salsa compilation.

La Despedida (which translates from Spanish to English as “The Farewell”) the Melbourne-based nonet’s latest effort, appropriately focuses on some familiar themes to all of us — breakups, loss, insomnia, political protests and more. And adding to the emotional weight is the fact that the material is also deeply informed by the fact that the band has broken up and reconvened several times. Now, you may remember that “Amor De Despedida” was a propulsive song that balanced swooning heartache with a bitter, kiss off to someone who made the song’s narrator feel ambivalent and confused emotions, “La Ola” the album’s latest single is a swinging and bouncing bit of cumbia that has the band pairing twangy country music-like guitars with a propulsive and insistent rhythm and an enormous horn line to craft a song that’s inspired by the Chica cumbia sound of 1970s Peru — while the song’s narrator tells a woeful tale about a fickle love that seems to to come and go as she pleases, and as you listen to the song, the song’s narrator expresses a frustrated, bemused and ambivalent bitterness over it while admitting that they seem hopelessly pulled into a situation they can’t quite control.

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Over the past 18-24 months or so, New York-based electro pop duo Sofi Tukker have become blogosphere darlings while becoming JOVM mainstay artists. Comprised of Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern, the duo can trace their origins to when the duo were students at Brown University . Meeting and a local art galley, the duo began writing music around their shared desire of crafting accessible, pop-leaning world music that could reach a wide audience. And much like a number of artists across the country, the duo upon their graduation relocated to New York, where over the next year they began working on material — including the material that would wind up comprising their soon-to-be released EP Soft Animals, which is slated for a July 8 release. 

Earlier this month, I wrote about “Deja Vu Affrair,” a single that drew from 80s s New Order and house music as angular guitar chords played through gentle washes of reverb and delay are paired with four-on-the-floor drum programming, cascading layers of wobbling synths and Hawley-Weld’s sensual cooing. The EP’s latest single “Awoo” is a mischievous collaboration with vocalist Betta Lemme that pairs propulsive and tribal drum samples with samba-styled keys. Lemme and Hawley-Weld’s contribute sultry vocals and gleeful, child-like shouting — as though they were losing their minds to the song in the club.

Sofi Tukker is embarking on a lengthy series of tour dates — some opening for M83 and a number of headlining shows, including a hometown set at Baby’s All Right  at the end of July. Catch them at a music venue near you.

Tour Dates:

Supporting M83*

July 1 – London, UK @ British Summer Time @ Hyde Park (w/ Massive Attack) (TICKETS)

July 1 – London, UK @ White Heat at The Lexington (TICKETS)

July 2 – PITCH Festival Amsterdam (TICKETS)

July 6 – Cesme, Turkey @ Burn Electronica Festival (TICKETS)

July 7 – Milan, Italy @ Festival Moderno (w/ Grimes & Blood Orange) (TICKETS)

July 9 – Zamardi, Hungary @ Balaton Sound Festival (TICKETS)

July 15 – Salacgriva, Latvia @ Positivus Festival (TICKETS)

July 17 – One Love Festival Istanbul (TICKETS)

July 20 – Portland, ME @ State Theatre (w/ Chairlift) (TICKETS)*

July 21 – Boston, MA @ Blue Hills Bank Pavilion (w/ Chairlift) (TICKETS)

July 25 – St. Louis, MO @ The Pageant (TICKETS)*

July 27 – Council Bluffs, IA @ Stir Cove (TICKETS)*

July 28 – Chicago, IL @ The Vic Theatre* (SOLD OUT)

July 30 – Brooklyn, NY @ Baby’s All Right (TICKETS)

August 19 – San Francisco, CA @ Popscene at Rickshaw Stop (TICKETS)

August 20 – Los Angeles, CA @ Pershing Square (w/ Todd Rundgren) (FREE SHOW)

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Afro-Haitian Experimental Orchestra Bridges the Sounds and Cultures of the African Diaspora with Funky Grooves

Album title track “Bade Zile” employs the use of propulsive and complex polyrhythms paired with call and response voodoo chants, a driving groove and swirling electronics to craft a sweaty and funky free-flowing jam that subtly nods to reggae and funk while directly and overtly nodding to Afrobeat and traditional Haitian music in dizzying and seamless fashion.

The recently released music video was primarily shot in Port-au-Prince during Fete La Musique and it captures the island nation’s stark poverty, its people’s beauty, dignity and pride, some gorgeous voodoo relics and the musicians of the Afro-Haitian Experimental Orchestra in the rehearsal room and on stage jamming, as well as the audience at the festival rocking out and enjoying the proceedings. And the entire time I watched the video I couldn’t help but be awed by such a proud, beautiful people, who have suffered so greatly.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Brooklyn-based musicians Elenna Canlas and Peter Mason, best known for their primary gig Underground System, the duo have stepped out into their own with a side project, Big Everything, which the duo have described as possessing a sound that’s “equal parts NYC club culture, freaky funk and R&B sty liens and electronic reckless abandon.”

The duo released their self-titled debut mixtape earlier this month and it features guest spots from Tierra Whack, Awkwafina, Bajah and others, and interestingly enough the mixtape has started to receive quite a bit of attention across the blogosphere. And when you hear the mixtape’s latest single “Killer Bee”you’ll see why, as the duo along pair enormous, blasts of enormous brass, boom-bap beats, stuttering drum programming, deft sampling, buzzing synths and an emcee spitting bars towards the song’s last third. Sonically and aesthetically speaking, the song manages to mesh several disparate genres — in particular, hip-hop, Eastern/Gypsy funk, funk, electronic dance music, brass bands and others — in a seamless fashion that only seems possible in a truly global world.

 

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Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Congolese-born, Minneapolis, MN-based guitarist, singer/songwriter and composer Siama Matuzungidi has had a lengthy, decades long prolific career that began in earnest when he left his home in rural Democratic Republic of the Congo, then Zaire with a guitar strapped to his back. He then travelled to Kinshasa and Uganda before eventually landing in Nairobi, Kenya. And during those travels a young Matuzungidi was a studio musician, songwriter and or cowriter with some of soukous’ biggest and brightest names including Kanda Bongo Man, Sam Mangwana, Moni Mambo with Shika Shika, Lovy Longomba, Tshala Muana and Samba Mapangala with Virunga; in fact, Matuzungidi has played on more than 100 singles, including some of soukous’ most beloved radio hits while developing a reputation for material based around tales of love, desire and betrayal paired with catchy hooks and a wry and ironic sense of humor — although on many of those songs he wasn’t officially credited.

 

As a result of his prolific songwriting and incredible guitar work, Matuzungidi became considered one of soukous’ legends — and in a highly competitive genre in which writing catchy song just wasn’t enough to stay relevant. During the genre’s golden age during the 70s and 8os, it took more than writing a catchy song to keep listeners ears and fans buying albums, and the genre’s songwriters and musicians began writing songs with a deeper complexity and nuance, so you’d hear intricate hooks, complex scales an more. And interestingly enough, that period of experimentation may arguably have prepared and influenced the Congolese soukous legend’s future interest in experimenting with his sound.

Now as the story goes, after spending time performing in Japan and Dubai, Matuzungidi relocated to Minneapolis, the soukous legend quickly realized that he was in for a rather big professional and personal change — “for the first time there wasn’t anyone to play soukous with. I was worried I might have to stop playing but another voice told me to try new things,” Matuzungidi explains in press notes. So the Congolese singer/songwriter and guitarist decided to invite a number of local and locally-based emigre musicians to collaborate with him including Carnatic Indian singer and veena virtuoso Nirmala Rajasekar, renowned gospel singer JD Steele, master Tibetan multi-instrumentalist Tenzen Ngawang, classical cellist Jacqueline Ultan and Joe Savage on pedal steel. As Matuzungidi continues “I invited musicians to share what they feel when they hear my music. I didn’t tell them what to play. I just encouraged them to express themselves in their own way. The music still sounds like home but they’ve added so many cool ideas to it.”

And as a result Matuzungidi’s recently released full-length Rivers is a bit of a modern and highly global take on traditional Congolese music. I have the unique privilege of premiering Rivers‘ opening single, the upbeat 6/8 “Jungle Zombie” which pairs a twisting and looping guitar line with bright blasts of horn, playful polyrhythm and a jazz-leaning bridge in a loose composition that allows room for each of the musicians a few brilliant moments to show off in a brilliant solos, along with call and response vocals. Reportedly, the song is loosely inspired by and is meant to channel the imagery of Matuzungidi and his family walking through the bush to get to their farm, where they grew their own food. Interestingly, as the press notes mention the song’s lyrics translated from Lingala simply say “Bring me water. Bring me food . . ” But the main thing is that the song is so joyous, so fun that you can’t help but want to dance along.

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

With the release of their critically acclaimed full-length debut La Allianza Profana and its follow-up, Serpiente Dorada, Peruvian electronic duo Dengue Dengue Dengue quickly received international attention for a sound that possessed elements of traditional cumbia, dub, dancehall and techno — and for being at the forefront of an expanding electro cumbia movement.

Siete Raices, the duo’s long-awaited sophomore, full-length effort is slated for release later this month through Enchufada Records, and the effort takes its name from a traditional Peruvian liquor — a potent beverage brewed from several jungle plants with mystical, aphrodisiac properties. Now, if you stumbled upon this page over the past couple of weeks, you may recall that I wrote about “Guarida,” a single that had the renowned Peruvian duo collaborating with vocalist Sarah Van. And the single revealed an act that has expanded upon the sound that first captured attention as the Peruvian duo paired hauntingly ambient production consisting of gentle layers of shimmering and undulating synths and skittering drum programming —  nodding at the fact that the Peruvian duo methodically carefully craft and shape their work to evoke particular moods while drawing equally from ancient traditions and contemporary production; in fact, it shouldn’t be surprising that their material doesn’t sound like anything you’ve heard on contemporary radio — or anyplace else really.

Siete Raices‘ second and latest single “The Enemy” consists of a production that subtly hints at El Dusty’s nu-cumbia as the song consists of a glitchy and distorted vocal sample paired with a cowbell-led percussion, a languid, looped keyboard sample  that twists and turns around the song’s hook while being subtly danceable. But just under the surface, there’s something that feels subtly menacing and uneasy.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Perhaps best known as a touring and session guitarist for Charli XCX and BØRNS, Los Angeles, CA-based guitarist and vocalist Cecilia Della Peruti is also the creative mastermind behind up-and-coming act Gothic Tropic, a band whose New Wave-leaning sound is indebted to the likes of the Go-Gos The B52s and others as angular and punchy guitar chords are paired with a propulsive rhythm section, Peruti’s sultry vocals and an infectious hook as you’ll hear on their latest single “Stronger.”

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of Afrobeat godfather and pioneer Fela Kuti‘s tragic and untimely death from AIDS, and in that time Kuti’s influence has managed to loom rather largely over contemporary music from Africa and elsewhere as countless bands have expanded upon the sound and aesthetic that the influential and controversial Nigerian created. And I suspect that if Kuti were alive today, the 78 year old would likely be amazed at the diverse nationalities and ethnicities, who have adopted his sound, aesthetic and message to their own particular situations, while picking up on the larger, global context that Kuti always managed to write about. But if there’s one thing I’m certain that Fela would never have imagined actually existing it would be this — Swedish Afrobeat.

Comprised of Frida Eleonore Winlöf (trumpet),  Christopher Ali Thorén (tenor sax), Jonas ‘Finland’ Rönnqvist (alto sax), Fredrik Brändström (keys), Jesper Lundquist (guitar), Tobias Alpadie (guitar), Vilhelm Bromander (bass), Wille Alin (drums), Celso Paco (congas and vocals), Jon Olofsson (percussion), and Mattias Hidemo (claves, fiddle), the twelve-member Stockholm, Sweden-based collective Music is the Weapon may arguably be Sweden’s best (and seemingly only) Afrobeat outfit. Although Sweden isn’t particularly known for a funk scene, as the band’s co-founder Christopher Ali Thorén explains in press notes “We’re not fighting the same fight in Sweden as Fela did in Nigeria, of course, but I feel that in some way it’s political to play this kind of music in clubs here. We give people the experience of big live band playing raw funk. For me it’s an act of resistance all its own.” Of course, as Thorén and   the rest of the band have also discovered, their fellow countrymen are starving for Kuti’s particular brand of funk.

The Stockholm-based collective’s latest full-length effort Sweet Choral Motion was released through Fashionpolice Records and from the album’s opening track “Black Hole,” the Swedish collective reveals an inventive take on Fela’s signature sound as the composition employs the use of complex polyrhythm that sounds as though it owes a debt to the Caribbean, enormous horns and an equally complex song structure that would make the legendary Nigerian godfather of the genre proud while gently expanding what contemporary Afrobeat can sound like, as the Swedish act’s sound also seems to employ elements of hip-hop and cosmic funk to the mix.

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Holy Bouncer is a Barcelona, Spain-based indie rock quintet, who will be releasing their full-length debut later this year, and from the album’s second and latest single “Hippie Girl Lover,” the band specializes in a sound that clearly draws from early era The Doors (their self-titled album in particular), Steppenwolf‘s “Magic Carpet Ride” and the incredible Brown Acid proto-metal/proto-stoner rock compilations released by the folks at RidingEasy Records, complete with a gritty, primal, and grungy self-assuredness. Certainly, if it wasn’t for the subtle, contemporary production sheen — you’ll notice it with a pair of good headphones or a good speaker — the song sounds as though it could have been released in 1966, and some devoted record collector or blogger stumbled upon this one in a dusty, used record store in Milwaukee or Albany. But perhaps much more important, is that Holy Bouncer along with Madrid‘s The Parrots should prove that Spain has a vital and burgeoning indie rock scene that’s worthy of international attention.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Gorgeous, Surreal and Ancient Mythology-based Visuals for Dengue Dengue Dengue’s “Guarida”

With the release of their critically acclaimed full-length debut La Allianza Profana and its follow-up, Serpiente Dorada through Enchufada Records, Peruvian electronic duo Dengue Dengue Dengue quickly received international attention for a sound that possessed elements of traditional […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Surreal Visuals and Dreamy Sounds of Boogarins Latest Single “Benzin”

Over the past year or so, renowned Brazilian psych rock quartet Boogarins quickly became a JOVM mainstay artist, and if you’ve been frequenting this site over that period, you would have come across posts on several […]