Tag: singles

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Switzerland’s Etienne Machine Releases a Brooding and Uneasy Single

Lausanne, Switzerland-based trip hop act Etienne Machine is a fairly mysterious, emerging indie act. Their latest single “RIFT (Erased Your Face)” is a brooding and hypnotic, Portishead-like take on trip hop centered around twinkling Rhodes, skittering beats, wobbling synths and electronics, shimmering guitars and ethereal vocals.

The song evokes the claustrophobia and unease of a relationship on the brink, full of the complicated and bitter emotions, the contradictory push and pull, the longing and regret that often accompanies relationships.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Stockholm-based psych act Phogg released their full-length debut Slices to critical praise across Scandinavia and elsewhere — with critics comparing their sound to the likes of to Ariel Pink and Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Building upon a growing profile, the band released their highly-anticipated sophomore album Mofeto: Mashine Adamkosh, an album about “robots that take over the world,” in 2019.

If you were alive and coherent, last year may have been among the most difficult you’ve experienced in recent memory — and much like everyone else, 2020 was difficult for the members of the acclaimed Stockholm psych rock act: Riding high from the critical reception of their sophomore album, the band began the ambitious challenge of workin on two different albums simultaneously with the goal of working on each in parallel — and then releasing them at the same time. Attempting to record two albums at the same time wound up being a terrible decision, with the band experiencing extreme burn-out and fatigue.

During that period, the members of the band went through a deep existential crisis, which resulted in the band having deep-seated philosophical questions. “What does it really mean to be a rock band these days? Does anything matter?” The band writes in a statement. “The legendary days of rock have faded into the ruthless fart of the pandemic era. It’s not fun to make songs about the end times when you are in the middle of it.”

Phogg’s third album, The Sharkness is slated for an April 16, 2021 release through Ouyee Bayou Records, and the album’s material is influenced by the harrowing events and emotions of the pandemic, the band’s existential crises and heartbreak — most of the band’s members have had long-term relationships split up during the same time, as well.

Last year, I wrote about “Corme (Rental Palace),” a meditative instrumental jam with surf rock accents, centered around shimmering guitars, atmospheric and twinkling key and a propulsive rhythm section before turning into a breakneck gallop around the song’s second half. While being one of the few instrumental tracks in their growing catalog, it may be among the most brooding yet heartfelt. The Sharkness‘ fourth and latest single, album title track “Sharkness” is a trippy and deceptively upbeat song featuring looping and shimmering synth arpeggios, a propulsive, motorik-like groove and a guest spot from vocalist Indrielle, who contributes her ethereal vocals.

But as the band explains in press notes, the overall vibe of the song is much darker: “’Sharkness’, the title track of our new album, came to be while recording the album. ‘Sharkness’ means to hold a kind of self-destructive self-preservation drive. To navigate through difficulties and hardships. To push down instincts of worries and prance forward in life. This is to hold Sharkness.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstay LutchamaK Releases a Sultry and Shimmering Bit of Deep House

There are few artists I’ve written about as much over the past 18 months than the frenetically prolific French electronic music producer, artist and JOVM mainstay LutchamaK. During that same period, LutchamaK has released an increasingly eclectic array of material — whether as EPs, stand-alone singles and albums — that find him bouncing back and forth between different electronic music styles, genres and sub-genres with effortless aplomb.

The French JOVM mainstay started the year with Pi, a full-length album written and recorded in a three month burst. Interestingly, Pi‘s material may arguably be among the darkest and heaviest he has written and recorded. LutchamaK has quickly followed the release of Pi with Quest EP, a six-song EP, which finds the French electronic music producer and artist crafting more melodic material — but with a more experimental direction. The EP’s second and latest single “Quest” is a melodic bit of deep house, centered around shimmering synth arpeggios, stuttering beats and tweeter and woofer rocking thump. While citing the likes of Underground Resistance, Laurent Garnier, and G-Prod, the song reminds me — to my ears, at least — of Octo Octa’s Between Two Selves.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Renée Reed Releases a Hauntingly Gorgeous Single

Lafayette, LA-born singer/songwriter Renée Reed grew up in an intensely musical home: a young Reed grew up on the accordion-bending knee of her grandfather Harry Trahan in the middle of countless jam sessions at the one-stop Cajun shop owned by her parents Lisa Trahan and Mitch Reed. And as a result, Reed wound up being surrounded by a who’s who of Cajun and Creole music legends — both backstage at the many festivals of Southwest Louisiana and at her family home. Reed also soaked up the stories and storytelling of her great uncle, folklorist Revon Reed and his brothers from Mamou.

Reed’s self-titled debut is slated for a March 26, 2021 release through Keeled Scales Records and the album will feature music that Reed describes as “dream-fi folk form the Cajun prairies.” Thematically, “this album is a collection of songs about toxic relationships, seeing ghosts, ancestral baggage and blessings, and daydreaming about love,” Reed explains in press notes. “It is about certain feelings and experiences I’ve had over my life coming to fruition in the past three years. It was all made on a four track recorder at home, in a place and in a way I feel most natural, and I believe that quality comes through in the sound.”

“Neboj,” the soon-to-be released album’s third and latest single derives its title from a Czech word that Cajuns pronounce as “nuh-boy” and represents the amalgamation of influences and cultures that inform Cajun music. Centered around a hauntingly sparse arrangement of delicately picked, looping guitar and Reed’s ethereal vocals, “Neboj” manages to be a self-assured yet vulnerable fever dream of full of earnest longing. Interestingly, for Reed the song is about letting go and not being afraid to fall in love, to just trust her heart.


Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Emerging Producer PIB Releases an Infectious and Summery Banger

PIB is a French-born electronic music producer and artist, who splits his time between Ibiza and Barcelona. Passionate about creating positive and hopeful music that makes a difference, the emerging French-born, Spanish-based producer and artist’s work is deeply inspired by the beauty of his adoptive homeland.

The French-born, Spanish-based producer’s self-assured, debut single “Es Vedrá Energy” derives its title from an uninhabited, rocky island, just off the southwestern coast of Ibiza. The song is an aptly sun-drenched and upbeat banger, featuring shimmering synth arpeggios, tweeter and woofer rock beats, sultry female vocals, tribal drumming and a rousingly anthemic hook that’s perfect to shout drunkenly along to while in the club.

Interestingly, 50% of all of streaming revenue will be donated to animal charities, like Pet Alert.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstay LutchamaK Releases a Souful and Shimmering Banger

There are few artists I’ve written about as much over the past 18 months than the frenetically prolific French electronic music producer, artist and JOVM mainstay LutchamaK. During that same period, LutchamaK has released an increasingly eclectic array of material — whether as EPs, stand-alone singles and albums — that find him bouncing back and forth between different electronic music styles, genres and sub-genres with effortless aplomb.

The French JOVM mainstay started the year with Pi, a full-length album written and recorded in a three month burst. Interestingly, Pi’s material may arguably be among the darkest and heaviest he has written and recorded. LutchamaK has quickly followed the release of Pi with Quest EP, a six-song EP, which finds the French electronic music producer and artist crafting more melodic material — but with a more experimental direction.

“Fathers & Sugar” Quest EP’s first single is an old-school hip-hop and classic house-inspired track featuring reverberating pads, thumping breakbeats, glistening and atmospheric synth arpeggios. But underneath the club friendly thump, the song possesses a placid, soothing vibe.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Featuring an accomplished array of players including former and current members of Antibalas, The Easy Star All-Stars, The Skatalies, Charles Bradley and His Extraordinaries, The Far East and others, the New York-based collective Combo Lulo initially was conceived a studio project that convened to record a handful of cuts for New York-based label Names You Can Trust (NYCT), including their debut single, released in May 2018. That single, which featured a hybrid of cumbia and reggae helped to quickly establish their sound — a sound that effortlessly draws from and bounces around the Caribbean, finding common threads between cumbia, rocksteady and dub.

Their debut single sold out in a few months, through good, old-fashioned word-of-mouth. Adding to the growing buzz surrounding the collective, the B-Side single “Canto Del Sol” was featured on NPR’s Marketplace in 2019. 2019 also saw the release of their second single, “The Sieve & The Sand,” which found the members of Combo Lulo incorporating elements of Ethiojazz and Afrobeat while maintaining a spacey, Roots Radics sort of groove.

The collective then teamed up with Panamanian soul singer Ralph Weeks for rocksteady ballad-like re-work of his 1969 slow jam “Algo Muy Profundo/Something Deep Inside” to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the original’s release. Much like their debut single, their collaboration with Ralph Weeks quickly sold out — while becoming a stable of DJ sets in clubs across Paris, Mexico City, and Los Angeles.

Building upon their rapidly growing profile, Combo Lulo will be releasing their highly-anticipated full-length debut Neotropic Dream on May 8, 2021. The forthcoming album’s latest single “Culebra Mentirosa” features a collaboration with Alba and The Mighty Lions’ Alba Ponce De Leon is a slick and soulful synthesis of dub, dancehall and cumbia centered around infectious and shuffling riddims.

“‘Culebra Menitrosa’ came about because we’re huge fans of Alba Ponce De Leon and her group, the Mighty Lions (also on NYCT),” Combo Lulo bandleader Michael Sarason says in press notes.”She’s got such a classy and nuanced sound as a singer, I thought it would work really well with our music. We invited her to come to the studio and after listening through some tracks, we spoke about the idea of writing a song in the form of a parable and using the animal kingdom as a device to tell that story. The concept came together quickly and Alba developed her lyrics and melodies on the spot. When we were mixing it, we tried to imagine what it might sound like if the classic Colombian Cumbia singer Leonor Gonzalez Mina had flown to Jamaican to have King Tubby mix her album. As I listen back now, I can hear all of that in the final version.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstays Boogarins Teams Up with Erika Wennerstrom

Acclaimed Goiânia, Brazil-based psych rock and JOVM mainstays Boogarins — Benke Ferraz (guitar, production), Fernando “Dinho” Almeida (guitar, vocals), Raphael Vaz (bass, synths, vocals) and Ynaiã Benthroldo (drums) formed back in 2013. And up until last year, the members of the psych rock quartet have brought their uniquely Brazilian take on psych rock on non-stop tours to clubs and clubs across the globe.

With touring and live music on hold as a result of pandemic-related restrictions and lockdowns, the members of the JOVM have spent the past year hosting live streams, commissioned remixes of their work, collaborating with other artists across the globe — and revisiting their past work. The band’s forthcoming release, Manchaca Vol. 2 (A Compilation of Boogarins Memories,Dreams, Demos and Outtakes from Austin, TX) is the second of a series of archival releases that focuses on the JOVM mainstays’ approach to improvisational-based songwriting and studio collaborations. The album combines songs, demos and sketches written and recorded during the Lá Vem a Morte and Sombrou Dúvida sessions in Austin between 2016-2017 — with some 2017 Sombrou Dúvida pre-production/rehearsal sessions held in São Paulo’s Fábrica de Sonhos Studios.

Manchaca Vol. 2 (A Compilation of Boogarins Memories,Dreams, Demos and Outtakes from Austin, TX)’s latest single, the slow-burning, lullaby-like “Far and Safe” is an English language version of Sombrou Dùvida track “Te quero longe.” The album closing track is centered around their love of collaboration with different artists: John Schmersal reformulated the English lyrics — and Heartless Bastards’ Erika Wennerstrom contributes her imitable vocals. And although the song features English lyrics, it retains the original’s longing for peace and safety, and its gorgeous melody.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Rising London-based septet Mariachi Las Adelitas is Europe’s first all-female mariachi band. Founded in 2013 by bandleader Anna Csergo (a.k.a Anita Adelita), the act, which features a collection of exceptionally talented musicians and vocalists from Mexico, Cuba, Colombia and the UK, actively shatters stereotypes in an extremely male-orientated genre. Their repertoire includes the mariachi classics, as well as mariachi-styled arrangements of well-known and beloved classics in English. 

In their almost decade-long history, the septet has established themselves as a highly in-demand live act. They’ve opened for Arcade Fire at London’s Earl Court. They’ve shared a stage with the two-time Grammy Award winning Mariachi Divas at  International Mariachi Women’s Festival, where they received a standing ovation. They’ve also played the Victoria & Albert Museum and at The Roundhouse. And they’ve serenaded Selma Hayek on her birthday.

Late last year, I wrote about the septet’s debut single “El Toro Relajo.” Featuring a new arrangement by the band’s founder and recorded during pandemic-related lockdowns, the gorgeous Mariachi Las Adelitas rendition revealed a self-assured and super talented band that can really play– and a vocalist, who belts like a young Linda Rondstadt. The London-based septet’s latest single finds them crafting a loving Huapango mariachi arrangement of Amy Winehouse‘s classic, heartbreaking ballad “Back to Black.” Both versions are gorgeous –but interestingly enough, the mariachi rendition somehow manages to enhance the bitter heartbreak at the song’s core.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Los Angeles’ Bass Race Releases a Space-Age Take on Neo-Soul

Los Angeles-based indie pop act Bass Race — Steven Mertens and Laura Benack — features a highly accomplished duo: Mertens formed his first band Satan’s Rats when he was 13 with elementary school friends. That project led to two decades of tours and collaborations. After studying Studio Composition at SUNY Purchase, Mertens joined The Moldy Peaches in 2001 — and he eventually went on to direct videos for an eclectic array of artists including Regina Spektor, Lil Peep, Benee and Sheryl Crow. He has also collaborated with Blood Orange and Here We Go Magic. Benack, who started playing piano when she turned four comes from a deeply musical family: her grandfather was a bandleader, her mom is a vocalist and her father and brother are jazz musicians.

Mertens and Benack met in New York back in 2010. They started dating and immediately started a musical partnership, centered around their love of their craft — and of course, each other. With the help of friends and Benack’s brother on trumpet, they made a bunch of music videos, including for “Clowns Everywhere.” Determined to use every bit of their collective talents, they began combining their music with Mertens’ visual art in 2019 with Bass Race’s Instagram page, which fans have described as “magical” and “super amazing mega fantabulous.”

While the duo cites yacht rock, synth pop, jazz, funk and soul as influencing their sound and aesthetic, their latest single “Chasing the Sun” is a warm and easygoing retro-futuristic, neo-soul number featuring an infectious two-step inducing groove featuring twinkling Rhodes, shimming rhythm guitar, stuttering boom bap-like drumming, a sinuous bass line. Adding to the easy-going yet retro-futuristic vibes, Benack soulfully and suggestively sings lyrics full of playful space age double entendres and references.

“We were in Pittsburgh a couple years ago over Christmas to see my family and we visited our good friend Pete Mudge (Nice Rec) in his studio along with our friends Laura Herrmann and Blane Britt (GrandEar),” the duo recalls in press notes.”There was a snow storm, and it was freezing. Once we were inside, we started to warm up and Pete played us some beats he had been working on. When we heard the track that would soon become ‘Chasing the Sun,’ we all started smiling right away. The creativity started flowing and within a couple hours, I had recorded all the vocals and Steven laid down some guitars. The gray weather definitely inspired the song title, but the song lyrics detail the arduous process of overcoming writer’s block and chasing creative inspiration.”

The duo created a space-age visualizer that follows Benack and an amorphous, cosmic being traveling through space and time in a spaceship — and there’s the sense that our space traveling duo is grooving through the cosmos, as you might be while playing the song.

The duo’s latest album Tender Vittles is slated for a March 19, 2021 release.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: St. Louis’ Concept Releases a Soulful and Conscious Plea for Empathy

Concept is a St. Louis-based singer/songwriter, emcee and lyrical storyteller, who tells stories through a hip hop and R&B — sometimes through a slick synthesis of the two. Thematically, his works focusers on pain, perseverance and pride while being based in his personal experience.

The St, Louis-based artist’s latest single “Butterflies” is centered around a warm and unfussy, neo-soul inspired production featuring twinkling Rhodes, stuttering boom-bap beats and a hook with heavily distorted vocals. Interestingly, the production is roomy enough for the emerging St. Louis-based artist to coolly unfurl his laid back and self-assured flow. Lyrically, the song finds Concept meditating on Black folks’ painful struggle for equality, our beauty, our hopes and our perseverance and pride. Much like Mos Def’s “Umi Says,” “Butterflies” manages to be soulful and empathetic reminder of our humanity and decency.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Bay Area-based Producer Nick Andre Teams Up with Lil B, ZIon I, and Casual on a Banger

Nick Andre is a San Francisco-based producer, who co-founded Bay Area-based indie label Slept on Records with his friend Myron & E’s Eric a.k.a. E da Boss and The Pendletons as an outlet to release music they were making with friends on their own terms. The label released a series of 12″and 7″ records featuring Gift of Gab, Lyrics Born, Bicaso and others. And although all of the label’s founders went on to sign with different labels for their own original work — E signed with Stones Throw Records and Andre did a record with MUSH — they managed to continue the label’s primary mission.

Over the years, Andre has been rather busy as an in-demand producer, collaborating with the aforementioned Gift of Gab and Bicaso, Lateef the Truth Speaker, Zion I, Lil B, Casual, Hanni El Khatib, Rob Sonic, Deuce Eclipse and others — and several instrumental projects. The San Francisco-based producer and label head co-wrote the score for the feature film Chasing Valentine and he has had his music appear on the Showtime’s The CHI, Netflix’s EASY and Freeform Networks’ Grownish. Additionally, Andre has composed music for national TV ad campaigns for Reebook, Nike, Adidas, Mini Cooper, ESPN’s X Games, Levi’s, HUF x Playboy, Thrasher Magazine and DC Snowboarding.

Andre’s latest single “Life Is Awesome” sees the San Francisco-based producer collaborating with longtime collaborators and Bay Area hip-hop legends Lil B, Causal and Zion I. Centered around a warm and soulful production featuring skittering boom bap beats, looping and wobbling Rhodes that’s roomy enough for each emcee to spit swaggering and self-assured bars full of dexterous wordplay and witty punchlines. Simply put, it’s a warm reminder of straightforward hip-hop featuring dope emcees spitting bars and pushing themselves in friendly rivalry over slick yet soulful production.

“I love Casual and the squad. Thanks Nick for putting this legendary track together,” Lil B. Nick Andre says, Really happy I was able to get these three Bay Area legends all on one track. Lil B set if off by sending me a dope verse and chorus And Zion I and Casual killed it as they always do.” “In terms of Bay Area Hip Hop . . . we are spanning decades and styles by clicking up with Lil B, Casual, and Nick Andre on the beats,” Zion I adds. “You wouldn’t expect to hear Lil B on a song with me…but that’s the beauty of this song.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Two from Acclaimed Belgian Post Punk Act Whispering Sons

Initially started in 2013 as a hobby for its then Leuven, Belgium-based founding members Kobe Linjen (guitar), Sander Hermans (synths), Lander Paesan (bass) and Sander Pelsmaekers (drums), the rising Brussels-based post punk act Whispering Sons have evolved a great deal. As the story goes, in search of a singer they recruited Fenne Kuppens, who at that point had been uploading covers of bands like Slowdive to Soundcloud. Already fostering deep ambition, she rigorously prepared. “I’d always wanted to sing in a band, but I never had friends who made music, they weren’t in my surroundings,” Kuppens recalls in press notes. “They were talking about this post-punk thing that I’d never heard of before, so I had to read into it. I could see myself in it, I felt the music.”

Leuven is a quiet, European university town and its mainstream-leaning music scene didn’t connect with Kuppens. But after a year studying abroad in Prague, where she immersed herself in the city’s DIY scene, Kuppens was galvanized — and inspired. “I made friends there who did things with their lives! There was a guy who had a DIY record label and who made music, all from his bedroom. I thought, if they can do this, why can’t we at least try?” Kuppens recalls. As soon as she returned, she relocated to Brussels. The remaining members of the band — Linjin, Hermans, Pelsmaekers and Paesan — later joined her. And immediately, the band quickly began honing their live show and sound.

Inspired by Xiu Xiu and Chinawoman, Kuppens distinctive, low register vocal style emerged early. “I started to feel more comfortable on stage, to express myself more rather than just singing a song,” she says. “I started feeling the music more, identifying more with the sounds and what I was doing.” Kuppens stage presence became known for being transfixing and trancelike, defined by compulsive and movements. “People have said it looks like I’m fighting my demons onstage, I guess there’s some truth in that,” she says.

During the summer of 2015, the band went into the studio to record material. “Fenne was really pushing us saying ‘We have to go for it, not just make another demo,” Whispering Sons’ Kobe Linjen recalls in press notes. The result was their goth-inspired debut EP, 2015’s Endless Party EP. Just a few months after its initial release through Wool-E-Tapes, the Brussels-based post-punk act won Humo’s Rock Rally, one of Belgium’s most prestigious music competitions. With the increased attention and accolades came bigger shows, bigger tours across Europe and larger crowds. “People started to expect things from us. We had to adapt quickly,” Linjen adds.

With the demands of a growing profile, the band began setting new, more ambitions targets for themselves. While writing new material for the increasingly longer sets their increased status required, they began to grow tired of the limits of post-punk and eagerly sought ways to push past them as much as possible. “We wanted to evolve, we wanted to attract larger audiences and not just play in one scene,” Kobe continues.

The Belgian post-punk quintet released two 7 inches, 2016’s “Performance”/”Strange Identities” and 2017’s “White Noise” — while going through a lineup change: the band’s friend Tuur Vanderborne replaced Paesan on bass. The band’s Micha Volders and Bert Vliegen-produced 2018 full-length debut Image was released through Cleopatra Records here in the States and Smile Records throughout the rest of the world. Recorded over a ten day period at Waimes, Belgium’s GAM Studios, Image found the band crafting a dark, brooding blend of experimental and frenetic post-punk that expressed the alienation, loneliness and anxiety that each individual member felt when they relocated to Brussels, Belgium’s largest city.

Image garnered praise from music press across the globe — and it amassed millions of streams across digital service providers. Before pandemic-related quarantines, lockdowns and restrictions, the Brussels-based post punk quintet was establishing themselves for a ferocious, must-see live show while sharing stages with the likes of The Murder Capital, Patti Smith, The Soft Moon, Croatian Armor and Editors. “We were very happy with Image, and at that point it was the best thing we could have made,” Fenne Kuppens says. “But from the moment we finished it we started to look at it in a critical way. ‘This is something we should do again. This is something we don’t like.’ So very quickly we found the direction we wanted to go in for the next album.”

Last summer, the members of Whispering Sons retreated to the Ardennes to work on new material. And in those writing sessions, the band took what they believed were the strongest part of their earliest work and refined them even further, with a focus on their greatest strength — sheer, unpretentious intensity. “We tried to create an album that’s more direct and more dynamic. More in your face,” Kuppens says.

Interestingly, Kuppens can trace the origins of the lyrics for the band’s highly-anticipated sophomore album Several Others from one sentence she’d scribbled in a notebook “Always be someone else instead of yourself.” “It’s terrible advice,” Kuppens says in press notes. “But it resonated with me and my personal ambitions.” She stared writing about her uncompromising perfectionism that although was partly responsible for the band’s initial success, was becoming stifling and overwhelming. “I was at a stage where it was becoming unhealthy. You always think things have to be better, that you can always do more.”

Recently, the band released two companion singles “Satantango” and “Surgery” off the forthcoming single. Both tracks see the band ambitiously pushing the ferocious and dirvintensity that helped win them international attention to the limits — while somehow delicately balancing fragility and vulnerability. Centered around anxious and propulsive instrumentation, both songs evokes unease of someone hopelessly trapped in stasis, possibly of their own making — and the slow-burning, creeping unease of someone struggling with their own role with their misery. Hell is often other people; but hell can be your own mind, too.

Along with the record, which is slated for a June 18, 2021 release through [PIAS] Recordings, the band will be releasing each single with a corresponding live session to be compiled and released as a live film.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Although the rising Sacramento-based trio Best Move — Kris Anaya, Joseph Davancens and Fernando Olivia — formed in 2019, the band can trace some of its origins over the better part of the past decade: the band’s primary songwriters Anaya and Davancens have played a variety of different music under various banners.

Early on, Kris Anaya developed a reputation for his penchant for crafting wry, offbeat, guitar-based folk, and for following his muse down whatever sonic path it might take him. Davancens earned graduate degrees in avant garde composition and jazz double bass. Interestingly, Best Move was born from Anaya and Davancens’ desire to return to their natural inclinations for organic instrumentation and earnest songwriting, with the project drawing from the work of Randy Newman, Van Dyke Parks, Brian Wilson and Harry Nilsson and film and TV scores — in particular, the films of Michel Gondry, Sofia Coppola and Wes Anderson. The end result is a sound that Anaya calls a “thank you to the past” while being decidedly modern.

Clocking in at a little over 4.30, the slow-burning “Forgotten Bloom,” Best Move’s debut single possesses a quirky, cinematic soundtrack vibe while drawing from 60s and 70s AM Radio rock, thanks to a lush arrangement of strummed guitar, twinkling Rhodes, atmospheric synths, shimmering bursts of pedal steel, a steady backbeat and razor sharp hooks. While sonically bearing a subtle resemblance to Young Narrator in the Breakers-era Pavo Pavo, “Forgotten Bloom” manages to be carefully sculpted yet rooted in wry yet lived-in lyricism and songwriting.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Acclaimed Act Innov Gnawa Releases a Gorgeous and Hypnotic Single

Founded in 2014 by Fez, Morocco-born, New York-based master musician Maâlem Hassan Ben Jaafer (sintir, vocals), the New York-based Grammy Award-nominated act Innov Gnawa, which currently features core members Casablanca, Morocco-born, New York-based Amino Belyamani (chorus, qraqeb, piano) and Salé, Morocco-born, New York-based Ahmed Jeriouda (chorus, qraqeb, cajon) and a cast of collaborators, specialize in gnawa, the ritual trance music of Morocco.

Frequently refereed to as the Moroccan Blues or the Sufi blues, Gnawa is rooted in centuries of history with the musical genre and dance being traced to the mixing of rhythms and polytheistic spiritual beliefs of West African — primarily from what is now known as Mali and Mauritania — with Islam and Morocco’s indigenous culture. Lyrically, Gnawa songs are prayers and invocations to saints and spirits for liberation, peace and freedom from worldly suffering and so on. Featuring unique instruments that are often handmade — including the lute-like sintir, the three-stringed African bass, the guembri, metal castanet-like qarqaba, which are used to pound out clattering and hypnotic rhythms, symbolically meant to represent the clinking and clanking the slaves’ chains and shackles — paired with call and response vocals, gnawa possesses a hypnotic power that has won over audiences and musicians from all over the globe, including Jimi Hendrix, Paul Bowles and Randy Weston. And in the band’s native Morocco, the genre is revered as a treasured, indigenous soul music, much like the blues and country are to Americans.

Produced by Daptone Records’ founder and self-professed Gnawa enthusiast Gabriel Roth, the acclaimed Brooklyn-based act’s forthcoming album Lila is slated for an April 30, 2021 release through Daptone Records. Deriving its name for a Moroccan term for “night,” Lila is traditional ceremony in which the group dedicates an evening of cleansing and healing through music that was recorded in an epic five hour, one-take session.

Clocking in at 13.51, Lila’s latest single “Chorfa” is a centered around an expansive arrangement featuring the double bass-like guembri, the hypnotic polyrhythm of the qarqaba and the call and response vocals led by the collective’s Ben Jafaar. The song, much like the rest of their work finds the act tapping into a deeply spiritual and universal longing for freedom, clarity, peace and healing that’s seemingly older than time with a gorgeous, heartfelt sincerity.

Lila is slated for an April 30, 2021 release through Daptone Records.