1 Vassals –
When You Hear My Bell (3)
Stunningly beautiful in its understatement. One of the best things we’ve heard all year and we’ve heard a lot of good stuff this year already. Make sure you listen to this
2 Cru Servers – Accursed Share (112)
If you like Tobacco (that’s the tobacco you listen to not smoke!) you’ll like this. It’s like he’d hung out in a minimal berlin club for a few weeks and decided to take home the experience. Top stuff.
3 Crypt Trip – 16 Ounce Blues (172)
We’re suckers every time for that late Byrds & Gram meet the Dead sound. Reminds me i must stop working for the man and get on the road again !
4 Mdou Moctar – Ilana (309)
Moctar & Sahel Sounds come up with a contender for album of the year here. Not a dud track. We are big fans of all things Sahel Sounds and Chris is on fire this year with his releases.. This, as they say, takes it to the next level. I don’t think i saw Moctar on the Glasto line up. With this album he should be headlining Saturday night. Amazing album.
5 Kool Keith – Blast (363)
A week with a Kool Keith release is a good week. Simple as that.
6 Vanessa Worm – I Did A Lava Dance (401)
Optimo just keep putting out great tunes this year, week in week out. This one’s got a bit of a New York feel to it. Why I say that I don’t know… just feeling it.
7 Skyscraper Stan – On Your Corner (703)
We featured him a couple of months back. His latest single and another taste of an artist we reckon will will be huge a few years down the line. Check him out.. proper songwriting.
8 Masalo – New Dance (720)
Dutch producer creates Italo gem. We’re happy.
9 Kel Assouf – America (880)
And it’s not just Sahel Sounds at it , so are Glitterbest with this great album from Kel Assouf, again every track a winner and yet again no Glasto booking. In my youth the best thing about Glasto was the world music stage hidden away up the hill introducing me to artists that in the eighties you’d never get to hear for the rest of the year.
10 Future Pilot AKA feat. Robert Wyatt • Tutti Shruti (Radio Edit) (943)
Another absolute treat…. As I may have mentioned last week there’s some amazing dub coming out this year. Dubbed out Robert Wyatt .. you spoil me Ambassador ….”Tutti Shruti’ features a unique postal collaboration with Soft Machine legend Robert Wyatt who posted a cassette of his vocals to Dade, who in turn created a dub landscape around Wyatt’s trumpet like motif. Synths, trombones, tablas and guitars come together to provide a launch pad for Wyatt’s vocal delivery wrapped in the hypnotic groove of Dade’s drum and bass. Think Sun Ra meets Lee Scratch Perry in Mumbia and you get the idea. A nourishing dose of futuristic dub to be taken as one of your 5 a day.”
PLANETARY (LOS ANGELES)
NEED PR FOR COLLEGE RADIO
THEY ARE THE BEST & REAL PEOPLE TOO
BEAUTY STAB
O’EDEN EP
Beauty Stab, a sort of intelligent, non plinkity plonk Soft Cell for the Smartphone generation. There are so many influences to be heard and yet it’s so original.
I DON’T HEAR A SINGLE
Bedsit seediness that has not been heard in pop
since the golden days of Soft Cell
Monolith Cocktail
Utterly adorable and simply perfect.
Losing Day
GRAHAM DOMAIN
Cold Moon Harmonics
An album that highlights the dark underbelly of pop, a magical carpet ride of record store dust. Melodrama and melody fuse together songs that bring to mind a vision of Scott Walker and David Sylvian sat quietly watching the sun fade through the memories of a glittering past
Monolith Cocktail
SIR ROBERT ORANGE PEEL
TURN THAT BLOODY RACKET DOWN
Any LP that starts off with a wonderful farting synth and proceeds to erupt into a fury of lo fi funk before going on to a sample of telephone scammers over a slow drumbeat (slow very funny and very strange) is what the world is crying out for…… insane but brilliant!
Monolith Cocktail
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