Thandi Draai has built a strong reputation as a DJ bringing some of the best Afro house music to the dancefloor, and her contribution to the last in Get Physical’s compilation series continued the good momentum the label have built up.
This fifth volume was actually released in December, but with the nights still long and dark in this part of the world it is a compilation Arcana didn’t want to let slip away.
What’s the music like?
The reason this collection should be praised is of course the music, well chosen and executed, with a number of standout new productions.
Among the best are Draai’s own cuts, headed by the superb Letha with DJ Beekay and the excellent collaboration The Clique, made with Candy Man, Cuebur feat. DJ Clock & Kitty Amor. Draai also turns her hand to one of Get Physical’s biggest hits, Samim’s Heater, in a distinctive remix. BlaQRhythm offers the slightly woozy (in a good way) Insimbi Yamabutho, while Dylan-S & Ed Ward offer the propulsive Phantom, with a fine breakdown.
McK & Nana Atta’s Lungisa is spacey, with an unusual loping break beat that works well, while in contrast Foozak & D.O.A. head for the trancier side of things with Uhula Kweeri, offering some great vocals. Josi Chave & TorQue MuziQ’s Inzangoma, featuring Khokho Madlala, is a powerhouse of a track, but topping these is Africa Get Physical from Suffocate SA and Roland Clark, who delivers a fantastic vocal in praise of the continent and its values. The sentiments – “Let’s all come together so we never have to dance alone” – are spot on.
Does it all work?
It does – Draai’s sequencing is pretty much spot on, and there is rich stylistic variety. Not surprisingly, the rhythmic elements are all on point.
Is it recommended?
Yes – the fifth in an increasingly vital series that is doing a great deal of good for house music. This one has plenty of highs!
For fans of…
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Published post no.2,095 – Thursday 22 February 2024
Basque artist Elena Setién last released an album two years ago, the understated but incredibly powerful Unfamiliar Minds – a set of songs begun before 2020 but honed during lockdown.
Glenn Kotche, drummer and percussionist with Wilco, was a fan of the album – and when he was touring Spain with the band, he met up with Setién. The two began collaboration, Setién using a series of drum patterns from Kotche’s series A Beat A Week, after which the drummer started sending in more patterns. Setién enjoyed the irony of her music taking on more rhythmic direction. In her words, “funnily enough, I, being a Spanish artist, sought inspiration in the rhythms of a Chicago drummer to reach something with a Latin feel to it. A somehow surrealistic way to get there.”
Another influence at play in the album was that of Bridget St. John, who Setién sought to emulate in a low register vocal delivery. It became the instrument through which the singer / songwriter could express the dreamlike state of the songs, though her own instrumentation – guitars and keyboards – played a large part too.
What’s the music like?
In a word, dreamy. Yet that is not the only story behind Moonlit Reveries, for these songs often have a feverish quality. Setién has a knack of making intense music from minimal means, but when you listen closely her music is suffused with clever effects and details that give the music a semi-conscious appearance.
She holds her vocal with remarkable poise, and it cuts through clearly, but the instrumental accompaniment that she uses is often haunting and frequently shifts the perspectives of the listener. The gentle undulating guitar of Hard Heart laps like water against the resonant vocals, while Losing Control gets a rippling effect from its shimmering electronics and pizzicato violin. Strange is especially enchanting, Setién singing very slightly out of tune over a throbbing guitar line.
Moonlit Reveries itself is particularly vivid, a hypnotic harpsichord dancing on the horizon as Setien coos softly. Mothers is a deeply immersive song, a tribute to Low’s Mimi Parker with minimalist loops and concentrated, layered vocals that end above delicate cymbals.
Does it all work?
It does – and the more you listen to it, the more Moonlit Reveries has to reveal.
Is it recommended?
Enthusiastically. Elena Setién is a compelling artist, and the restraint in her music is deceptive – for this is an album of great intensity, a set of dreams that take place in slightly balmy conditions but leave their listener with vivid and lasting impressions.
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Published post no.2,094 – Wednesday 21 February 2024
Ash Walker’s Astronaut slipped under the Arcana radar in 2023, so it’s only right to focus on it as its constituent tracks start to get the remix treatment. The choice of Afronaught is ideal, not just because – as the press release states – it flips the title of the album on its head, but because it contains guest vocals from Amp Fiddler.
Amp – Christian name Joseph – sadly left us just before Christmas 2023 at the age of 65, leaving in his wake a stellar discography of solo vocal and band keyboard contributions (notably with George Clinton and Moodymann).
This is what Walker had to say: ‘Having recently very sadly lost a dear friend, mentor, collaborator and huge inspiration of mine – Amp Fiddler, it was very touching to hear how Ron Trent reinterpreted Amp and I’s track together ‘Afronaught’. Label buddy Ron was able to steer Afronaught in a Chicago style, Acid House inspired direction which compliments Amp’s vocal perfectly, giving the track a new lease of life. Amp was such a pioneer and embodiment of Afrofuturism who never ceased to push boundaries, proving that us as black musicians have the power to defy genre and surpass societal expectations. Amp’s spirit will live on eternally, not only through the music he created in his lifetime but also through all the artists he nurtured and influenced worldwide.”
The press release goes on to say that “Ron Trent’s remix marks just the beginning of this journey, a sonic flare if you will lighting up the way for the projects to come”.
What’s the music like?
It’s difficult to imagine a more appropriate mix to mark Amp Fiddler’s passing. Ron Trent delivers a spatial piece of work full of low-end goodness – mellow keys underpinned by a steady, deep kick drum and surrounded by vocal snippets that are easy on the ear. Amp’s voice appears as though in a vision, while the keys flicker in the middle ground.
Does it all work?
It does. All very easy on the ear!
Is it recommended?
It is – a very classy remix and the ideal tribute to a much-missed musical presence.
For fans of… Moodymann, Charles Webster, Carl Craig, Juan Atkins
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Published post no.2,093 – Tuesday 20 February 2024
Poppe Zug (2007) Bailie Night Scenes I & II (2023) [World Premiere] May Multiplayer Instrument (2023) [World Premiere] López Brass Quintet (2003-04)
Ensemble Apparat (Mathilde Conley and Rike Huy (trumpets), Samuel Stoll, Morris Kliphuis and Elena Kakaliagou (horns), Weston Olencki and Wojciech Jeliński (trombones), Eliot Duschmann (tuba)] / Max Murray
Radialsystem V, Berlin Sunday 21 January 2024
by Richard Whitehouse
Heading into its second quarter-century, Berlin’s annual Ultraschall festival put together some typically wide-ranging programmes – not least this Sunday afternoon concert, which featured Ensemble Apparat in a sequence of diverse pieces for various ensembles of brass instruments.
Among the leading German composers of his generation, Enno Poppe (1969-) has now built a sizable catalogue – from which Zug, whether it refers primarily to a train or a procession (or the capital of a Swiss canton), continually diverts and intrigues with its interplay for brass septet. Unfolding as three intensifying waves of activity, the music elides between sometimes playful and at other times ominous moods. While the expressive outcome is left in the balance, there can be no doubting the formal cohesion of a work whose technical dexterity never draws undue attention to itself.
Its comparable number of players aside, there could scarcely have been greater contrast than with Night Scenes by Joanna Bailey (1973-). Much of her recent output features audio-visual or installation elements, the present diptych setting its instrumental component in the context of a soundtrack whose incrementally changing ambience likely reflects those places specified. Hence the luminous if distanced activity of Geneva and atmospheric if never claustrophobic confines of Schwarzwald, with these two complementing each other in an evocative totality.
From here to installation pure if not so simple. Visual artist Ragnhild May (1988-) has made a feature of human and mechanical amalgams, with Multiplayer Instrument her most ambitious such project yet by fusing the ensemble into a ‘meta-brass instrument’ whose sonic and even constructional qualities are in a constant state of change. While its overall impact inevitably depends on being seen as well as heard (see the photographs on the Ultraschall website), the stark and even hieratic nature of this undertaking is undeniable even to those ‘just’ listening.
The combining of sound-sources was heard at its most graphic in the Brass Quintet by Jorge E. López (1955-). Here the instrumental music is interpolated with concrète episodes such as evoke respectively the sonic overlap between an alpine crevice and industrial powerplant, the tortuous process of mountain rescue down a vertical cliff-face, then its effortful continuation over a field of scree. In each case, the contextual emergence and resolution of these episodes has been provided by the music for brass out of which they come then into which they return.
That brass writing has all the visceral immediacy associated with this composer, not least in its emphasis on those lower sonorities of Wagner tuba and contrabass tuba. The preludial first section vividly contrasts its contrasting musical-types, while the second is an incisive toccata and the third a plangent threnody, then the fourth section resembles an introduction and fugue in which a lively jig earlier insinuated by trumpet rapidly comes to the fore – dominating the closing stages as it draws all five instruments into a recessional of jocular yet wanton inanity.
Such was the impression made by this performance, superbly rendered by the musicians of Ensemble Apparat under the astute direction of Max Murray. It set the seal on a programme of engrossing music and music-making – these being characteristic of Ultraschall at its best.
William Doyle returns to the LP format with this response to the ‘ecstasies and agonies of the 2020s’ . On it, he is assisted by Brian Eno, Alexander Painter and Genevieve Dawson.
What’s the music like?
This time Doyle shows his musical versatility through a collection of intricate art pop songs. Drawing on late 1960s pop and psychedelia for inspiration, he updates them with cultural references for today, a kind of coping mechanism for life in the digital age.
Doyle’s lyrics show an awareness of the changing climate, and as he found nearly all the songs mention water in some way. They are clever and well written, with songs like RelentlessMelt that are knowing commentaries on modern life dressed with catchy tunes. The orchestration is bright and suits Doyle’s delicate tones.
Does it all work?
Largely – though on occasion the feeling persists that the music on this album is just a bit too bright eyed and bushy tailed, that darker thoughts below the surface are not fully expressed.
Is it recommended?
It is. SpringsEternal is an optimistic statement proving once again how versatile William Doyle can be.
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