Tag: Anti- Records

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Mavis Staples Performs “Human Mind” on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”

The beloved national treasure Mavis Staples‘ latest solo album, the Brad Cook-produced Sad And Beautiful World is slated for a November 7, 2025 release through Anti- Records. The album reportedly sees the 86 year-old legend standing side-by-side with us in the face of dangers she knows all too well — and comes at a time when increasing number of people out there have reason to wonder who and what could be lost.

The new album spans seven decades of the American songbook — a range nearly as vast as Staples’ remarkably lengthy career — and includes reinventions of timeless songs, as well as a batch of originals.

Recently, the legend performed the Hozier and Allison Russell co-written album single “Human Mind” on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “Human Mind” was the first track recorded for the Sad And Beautiful World sessions and the single sees the legend acknowledging the complexities, contradictions, violence and heartbreak of our world, while still finding hope and goodness in people — and in turn, the world over a slow-burning, Staple Singers-inspired arrangement.

The song seems to say, “Yes, life will break your heart many times over; but there are small yet mighty measure of love, kindness and faith that hold it all together, barely. And that is what we should cling to when it’s especially dark.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Combo Chimbita Shares Trippy and Meditative House-like “Dímelo”

Acclaimed New York-based Latinx group Combo Chimbita — Carolina Oliveros (vocals, guacharaca), Prince of Queens (synths, bass), Niño Lento (guitar) and Dilemastronauta (drums) — features members of New York-based Colombian folk collective Bulla en el Barrio, and in some way is a sort of related side project.

Combo Chimbita have publicly cited Sun Ra‘s Afro-futurism as a deep influence on their work and overall aesthetic — with the New York-based Latinx group crafting their own take, one, which they’ve dubbed Tropical Futurism. “The idea that the future doesn’t necessarily have to be this super white Western high-tech Star Wars stuff; that the indigenous ideas and culture of people of color, people of Latin America, can also represent a magical and substantial future,” Combo Chimbita explain. “It’s a vision that maybe a lot of people don’t necessarily think about often. The old and deep knowledge that indigenous people have of the land has been neglected for many years as part of capitalism and colonization.”

The band can trace the origins of their genre-defying global sound, which features elements of cumbia, electro pop and Afro-futurism to their late night, experimental jam-driven, year-long residency at renowned, Park Slope, Brooklyn-based world music club Barbés.  Those exploratory jam sessions eventually lead to their self-recorded full-length debut, 2016’s El Corridor del Jaguar. 

2016’s Lily Wen-produced sophomore album Abya Yala found the band further establishing their Afro-futurism-inspired take on cumbia and other traditional Colombian folk styles. Eventually, the acclaimed New York-based outfit caught the attention of ANTI- Records, who signed the band to the label and released their third album 2019’s Ahomale and their fourth album 2022’s IRE.

Recently Combo Chimbita signed to New York-based label Wonderwheel Recordings, who released their latest single “Dímelo,” their first release on the label, and the second in a series of recordings they did with renowned producer Victor Axelrod, a.k.a. Ticklah. “Dímelo” is a dreamy and mediative bit of Larry Levan era-like cumbia featuring a glistening cumbia-influenced rhythm guitar, jazz-influenced hi-hat driven drumming and a strutting bass line, shimmering synth arpeggio bursts and a remarkably catchy hook seemingly guided by Oliveros’ hypnotic wailing.

“Dímelo is an internal dialogue, a sonic representation of what it feels and sounds like to choose yourself. ‘Cuando por fin yo me elegí (I finally chose myself)’ is a phrase that repeats consistently throughout the track. “It’s an honest song,” says Carolina Oliveros, “that speaks on what it means to understand that for however much you may love someone, you can’t force them to love you the same way- that that is love you have to give yourself.”

For the band, in many ways, it’s the first trade in a return to the band’s roots and a hint of what’s to come from them sonically.  

The track will be available on 7″ alongside a remix by Busy Twist in March.

Directed by Andrea Buritica, the accompanying video for “Dímelo” features th members in front of the band in front of projections of VHS fuzz, New York, lighting storms, flowers and more. It emphasizes the trippy yet meditative nature of the song.

singer/songwriters by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Half Waif Shares Cinematic “The Museum”

Last month, acclaimed singer/songwriter, musician and producer Nandi Rose, best known as Half Waif announced the release of her fourth studio album, See You At The Maypole. Slated for an October 4, 2024 release through ANTI- Records, the album’s material came to fruition after a newly pregnant Rose experienced a heartbreaking miscarriage in December 2021, followed by months of medical complications. “I was literally carrying death inside me,” she explains, “and then my body was frozen.” At the same time, Rose’s beloved mother-in-law was diagnosed with aggressive pancreatic cancer; for the acclaimed artist, it felt like the universe was playing an endless, cruel joke.

And so, Rose wrote to save herself. Before sunrise, she wrote in the quiet corner of the would-be nurses while her husband slept across the hall. These were lullabies for no one, whispers dissipating into the fog. Though the stem of many of the album’s songs were written in isolation, they would soon turn into a collective calling for anyone experiencing devastating loss. See You At The Maypole is a room for wailing, not just for catharsis, but for connection.

The album’s latest single “The Museum” is a breathtakingly cinematic track featuring soaring strings, twinkling keys, brooding oboe and a gently stuttering backbeat serving as a lush bed for Rose’s achingly tender vocal. Seemingly nodding at synthesis of film scores and Kate Bush, “The Museum” is anchored in loss, both real and anticipatory — and the absurdity of mundanity in a world on the brink of collapse.

“There’s a warehouse at the top of Main Street in my tiny town that’s being turned into a museum for Shaker art,” Rose explains. “It’s just down the road from my house, so I pass by it all the time. When I wrote ‘The Museum,’ I was thinking about how sort of beautifully delusional it is to create a museum at a time when the world is reaching the apex of climate crisis. This idea of preserving pieces of furniture in a pristine, white-walled space when outside, everything is collapsing.”

She continues, “I’d also read a headline about how people were vacationing in Iceland at an active volcano, and that seemed to hold the same feeling for me as the museum-under-construction. Tourism at the brink of apocalypse. Meanwhile, my husband and I were talking about building a family, building a future, and I was grappling with the responsibility of what it means to bring a child into this kind of world—where people pose for selfies while the earth explodes.”

Directed filmed and edited by Derrick Belcham and featuring choreography and movement direction by Kora Radella, the accompanying video for “The Museum,” is fittingly a museum painting-like visual.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Half Waif Shares a Breathtakingly Gorgeous Meditation on Grief and Loss

Back in May 2022, Nandi Rose, the creative mastermind behind the critically applauded Half Waif, was standing on the ridgeline in northeastern Wyoming, looking at the landscape, a layer cake of strata, the colors representing compressed geologic time. She was at an artist residency, where she found herself grappling with loss and looking for answers in the sagebrush.
The previous winter in Upstate New York, Rose’s life had been riddled with blows as she faced losing a family member to illness and moved through a medical recovery of her own.

As she was gazing out at the wide plains, she felt the beneficence of the passing of time. “I’m not a failure,” she thought to herself. “I’m an ephemeral being.”

Rose’s latest EP, the five-song Ephemeral Being EP is slated for a May 31, 2024 release through ANTI- Records. Recorded between the winter 2021 and into the following spring, the EP looks at the transience of life while celebrating the continuation of nature’s infinite cycles. The EP’s material, the first part of a larger body of work scheduled later this year, Rose finds comfort and hope in the natural world.

Sonically, the EP’s arrangement boldly blend elements of contemporary classical with indie rock and synth pop. And while being at turns fierce and delicate, the songs reportedly set e as a reminder of scale: that we are ephemeral and tiny in midst of geologic and cosmic time. It’s also a reminder that when you feel paralyzed by life’s disruptions, and when we are often at most desperate, that nature offers us perspective.

Ephemeral Being EP‘s first single “Big Dipper” is anchored around a breathtakingly lush arrangement of twinkling keys, skittering gated reverb-soaked beats, atmospheric synths, bursts of guitar. The Kate Bush-like arrangement serves as a satiny bed for Rose’s vulnerable and yearning delivery. And while the song conveys an overwhelming sense of loss and grief, the song’s viewpoint is not of devastating heartache, but of hope and resolve.

“This is a song about looking for answers, and finding none, and looking again,” Rose explains. ““It was written at a time when I was feeling very stuck in my body and overwhelmed by compounding griefs. I was inspired by the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who had just passed away, and his idea of continuation–how we are not bound by our forms. We continue on. ‘This body is not me,’ he said. ‘So laugh with me, hold my hand, let us say good-bye, say good-bye to meet again soon.’”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Seattle’s High Pulp Shares Surreal and Symbolic Visual for “You’ve Got to Pull It Up From The Ground” feat. Theo Croker

Seattle-based jazz outfit High Pulp features:

  • Antoine Martel (keys, synths), a self-professed mad scientist with a wall of modular synthesizers and a passion for film scores and abstract soundscapes
  • Rob Homan (keys), whose innate ability to process, deconstruct and reassemble material on the fly bordered on the impressive and scary
  • Scott Rixon (bass), who comes from a punk and hardcore background and possesses pop sensibilities
  • Victor Nguyen (tenor sax), a Pharaoh Sanders acolyte with an ear for urgent, entrancing solos
  • Andrew Morrill (alto sax), whose bold tones and fearless harmonic sensibilities earned him a reputation for pushing the old school into the 21st Century
  • Bobby Granfelt (drums), whose hip-hop and bebop-inspired drumming laid the rhythmic foundation for the entire project

High Pulp can trace their origins to a loose, weekly jam session at Seattle’s historic Royal Room. “When you put us all together, our sound isn’t so much a fusion as it is a synthesis,” the band’s Bobby Granfelt says in press notes. ““There’s a lot of different personalities coming from a lot of different places, and we use it all as fuel to create something that’s totally our own.”

The Seattle sextet’s latest album Pursuit of Ends is slated for a Friday release through Anti- Records. The band’s unique brand of experimental jazz is simultaneously vintage and futuristic, often hinting at Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Aphex Twin and My Bloody Valentine and a wide range of others. The album’s material sees the band carefully balancing meticulous composition with visceral spontaneity and centered around virtuosic performances.

While High Pulp is primarily centered around their core six, Pursuit of Ends sees the band making judicious use of a board network of collaborators with guest spots from Jaleel Shaw (sax), who has played with Roy Haynes and Mingus Big Band; Brandee Younger (harp), who has played with Ravi Coltrane, The Roots, and Makaya McCraven; Grammy-nominated Theo Croker (trumpet); Jacob Mann (keys), who has played with Rufus Wainright and Louis Cole to help push their sonic boundaries even further.

Pursuit of Ends‘ latest single “You’ve Got To Pull It Up From The Ground” is a mind-bending and incredibly slick synthesis of bop, jazz fusion, funk and hip hop. The composition begins with an extensive bop jazz-inspired, drum solo. The song then quickly moves to a section featuring rapid fire percussion paired with sinuous bass lines, twinkling keys and a mournful, modal horn line led by Theo Croker’s expressive Miles Davis-like playing. Throughout the rest of the song, the melody floats and dances through the instrumentation. While the material is rooted in precise performance of the written composition, there’s ample room for soulful, free-flowing improvisation among a collection of sensitive and thoughtful artists.

“During COVID we spent a lot of time listen to Miles Davis’ Second Quintet, and specifically the drum solo at the start was inspired by ‘Agitation’ off of E.S.P.,” Granfelt explains “There’s something about that quintet that is so awe-inspiring. I think it’s the way they have such a deep shared concept which allows them to improvise in a meaningful way.”

“Pull It Up” is really a concept that is at the core of the band,” Granfelt explains. “It’s sort of about magic, sort of about will, sort of about self-love. It’s a concept based in the idea that things are already where they need to be, and it’s about unearthing what is already there as opposed to creating something ‘new’.”

Directed by Isaac Calvin and Seth Calvin, the accompanying video draws on the song’s overarching theme of digging deep, being persistent and staying humble. The video features Granfelt doing useful but mundane tasks: pulling nails out of a board, washing dishes, tying knots and so on. Towards the end f the video, Granfelt builds a shrine, but the offerings aren’t high quality of expensive; rather, they’re scuffed up, well-worn items including roadside flowers, cigarette butts, trinkets, tchotchkes and knick-knacks.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Acclaimed and Rising Soul Artist Curtis Harding Releases a Slow-Burning and Trippy Single

Atlanta-based psychedelic soul artist Curtis Harding broke out Stateside with the release of 2017’s Sam Cohen and Danger Mouse co-produced Face Your Fear. The album amassed over 60 million Spotify steams while receiving praise from NPR, who declared that it was one of the year’s best R&B release, while calling Harding, a “gifted, gospel-bred shooter and deep digger in the Curtis Mayfield/Stevie Wonder crates” Complex who hailed the album as “vintage, classic soul music” with “psychedelic splashes and a touch of garage rock fuzz” and New York Magazine, who raved that “with a scorching voice like his, the funk is eternal.” And with the buzz surrounding him, Harding wound up playing dates with everyone from Jack White to Lenny Kravtiz while playing festival sets at Newport Folk, Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits and others.

Harding’s sophomore album If Words Were Flowers is slated for a Friday releaser through Anti- Records. Written and recorded over the past two tumultuous years, the album’s material is draws from vintage soul, R&B, hip-hop, garage rock and psychedelia and centered around airtight grooves, punchy horns and Cohen’s adventurous production. “Nina Simone said that it’s an artist’s job to reflect the times,” Harding explains. “I think it’s important to live in the moment. If you do that and you’re honest and vulnerable, you can reach the people that need to be reached.”

“Explore” If Words Were Flowers‘ fifth and latest single is a slow-burning song that’s one-part, trippy psych soul with horns and twinkling keys drenched in reverb and delay and one-part classic, Quiet Storm-like soul serving as a silky and sumptuous bed for Harding’s plaintive falsetto croon. But at its core “Explore” sees its narrator diving headfirst into a sea of new experiences — romantically and sensually — with a new partner.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Combo Chimbita Release a Gorgeous Visual for Meditative “Todos Santos”

Acclaimed Latinx group Combo Chimbita — — Carolina Oliveros (vocals), Prince of Queens (synths, bass), Niño Lento (guitar) and Dilemastronauta — features members of New York-based Colombian folk collective Bulla en el Barrio and is a sort of related side project. Interestingly, the members of Combo Chimbita can trace the origins of their genre-mashing sound, which feature elements of cumbia, electro pop and Afro-futurism, to their experiments with different traditional music styles during their late night residencies at Park Slope, Brooklyn-based club Barbes. Most of that experimentation included explorations between visual identity and improvisational long-form trips that would eventually lead to their self-recorded, 2016 full-length debut El Corridor del Jaguar.

Unsurprisingly, the members of Combo Chimbita have cited Sun Ra’s Afro-futurism as a deep influence on their work and overall aesthetic — with the New York-based Latinx group crafting their own take, one, which they’ve dubbed Tropical Futurism. “The idea that the future doesn’t necessarily have to be this super white Western high-tech Star Wars stuff; that the indigenous ideas and culture of people of color, people of Latin America, can also represent a magical and substantial future,” Combo Chimbita explain. “It’s a vision that maybe a lot of people don’t necessarily think about often. The old and deep knowledge that indigenous people have of the land has been neglected for many years as part of capitalism and colonization.”

2016’s Lily Wen-produced sophomore album Abya Yala found the band further establishing their Afro-futurism-inspired take on cumbia and other traditional Colombian folk styles. Shortly after the release of Abya Yala, the members of Combo Chimbita began to receive attention locally and elsewhere for their live show, led by Oliveros’ powerhouse vocals and commanding stage presence. Eventually, the acclaimed Latinx group caught the attention of ANTI- Records, who signed the band to the label and released their third album 2019’s Ahomale.

Much like countless others, the pandemic wound up putting the act’s plans on an indefinite pause — but they used the time to write a batch of singles, including their latest, the slow-burning “Todos Santos.” Featuring atmospheric synths, skittering beats, a sinuous bass line, hypnotic four-on-the-floor-like drumming, expressive guitars, Afro-Colombian percussion and Oliveros’ yearning vocals, “Todos Santos” finds the act continuing to effortlessly and seamlessly mesh the ancient with the hyper contemporary.

e Mother of all Orishas in Yoruban tradition — and guardian of the ocean, representing home, creation and love. “Todos Santos gave us an opportunity to situate our instruments in such a special place, out in the open near the ocean, with no people around, just listening to the wind and watching the birds,” the band’s Prince of Queens recalls. ““It generated a peaceful & tranquil energy, which reflects our capacity to heal and to forgive, something we often lose sight of through the hustle of day-to-day life.” Dilemastronauta adds “The track’s hypnotic drumming was done in collaboration with Grammy-nominated percussionist Philbert Armenteros, a Cuban-born Babalawo and dear friend to Combo Chimbita who helped us perform this special homage to Yemaya.”

Directed by Iván Vernaza, the recently released video for “Todos Santos,” is the second of a series of visuals accompanying news Combo Chimbita material that follows the journey of Colombian sisters in a non-linear storyline that began with
“Mujer Jaguar” The videos were filmed and produced in Cali, Colombia at the beginning of a national uprising that has seen the government respond with violent repression against its citizens. “Mujer Jaguar” followed a young woman, whose fiery presence was connected to the current resistance across Abya Yala. “Todos Santos” is a gorgeously shot, nostalgia-fueled fever dream centered around an interconnected community of women, who guide and love the video’s roaring and passionate protagonist.

e surrounding mountains, we knew this song would be healing, purifying, and hopeful. Those maternal characteristics are something we wanted to evoke through the single and its video, recognizing that the young girl who roared in ‘Mujer Jaguar,’ had a process of learning and unlearning, of guidance and autonomy, which she uses to confront life,” Carolina Oliveros explains in press notes.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Acclaimed Rwandan Act The Good Ones Release a Nostalgic Ode to Soccer and Innocence

Acclaimed Kigali, Rwanda-based folk act The Good Ones — co-lead singer Janvier Hauvgimana, co-lead singer and primary songwriter Adrien Kazigira and Javan Mahoro — can trace their origins back to roughly 1978 when the founding members of the band were children. Hauvgimana’s older brother taught them music — and they’ve been writing and playing together ever since. Starting off a long list of heartbreaking tragedies and unthinkable horrors, Hauvgimana’s older, who was also blind, later died in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

The members of The Good Ones formed the band as part of the healing process after the genocide and interestingly enough, the band’s original trio featured individual members of each of Rwanda’s three tribes — Tutsi, Hutu and Abatwa — symbolically and metaphorically reuniting a country that had been split apart at its seams. But on a personal level, for each of the band’s founding members, the band was an active attempt to seek out “the good ones” after witnessing and enduring unthinkable horrors.

Most of the members of the band are small plot, subsistence farmers — with two of the band’s members living on family plots that have been passed down through several generations. Because most Rwandans are very poor, instruments are very rare. And yet, they find creative ways to play and create music: Sometimes they may find and use a broken guitar. But in most cases, they’ll make their own instruments, sometimes incorporating their farm tools.

Last year, the Rwandan folk act released their critically applauded album Rwanda, You Should Be Loved through Anti- Records. The album was written and recorded during periods of profound loss and heartbreak for their producer: Adrien Kazigira’s 13 year-old Marie Claire had a life-threatening tumor that afflicted her left eye. Producer Ian Brennan’s mother and a former bandmember and founding member had both died during the sessions. The album was recorded in a very simple fashion without overdubs at Kazigira’s family farm — and thematically, the album focused on their experiences and lives. Although, written and sung in their native tongue, their work has drawn comparisons to bluegrass, country, Americana and acoustic Mississippi Delta Blues as it talks about the plight of their fellow farmers, their countrymen and off working men everywhere struggling to get by as best as they can.

“Soccer (Summer 1988)” is the first bit of new material from the act since last year’s Rwanda, You Are Loved. Much like all of their work, the song was recorded at Kazigira’s family farm — without overdubs. Centered around a deceptively simple yet mesmerizing arrangement of plucked acoustic guitar and a milk jug filled with milk from Kazigira’s prized cow for percussion, the band’s founding duo effortlessly interweave intricate and achingly earnest harmonies. Fittingly, the song is an end-of-summer song — a tale of of nostalgia for Rwanda’s beloved soccer club Rayon Sports F.C. in the more innocent days before the 1994 genocide, which later claimed some of the club’s players and countless fans. And as a result, the song is an acknowledgment of time passing, the prerequisite losses of time and a longing for when things were as simple as going to a soccer game and rooting for your beloved club with friends, family, coworkers and others. Other than memories, you can never get that back. But we push on as we always do.