SOUL FEEDING: a list-with-review of the best releases of the month, selected by our editors.
Artist: Barker
Album: Utility
Label: Ostgut Ton
Barker is a sorcerer, an alchemist who materializes new elements fusing what’s already familiar. Naming his record Utility but making the opposite of Dj tools, he invites us to creatively deploy it as such. Whether you take it as a lush soundtrack for deep listening or as a creative tool for the dancefloor, Utility is as enthralling as they come.
Artist: Boy Harsher
Album: Country Girl Uncut
Label: Ascetic House
Less meek than Careful, more skeletal and immersive, despite not sailing through waters unknown, Country Gril Uncut it still delivers and feels even more urgent during their live sets. Surely one of their best releases and recommended if in the mood for dancing low key vehemently.
Artists: Florentino
Album: Contrabando
Label: Mixpak
It is evident that there’s a constantly ongoing project of experimentation plus a deep study of a genre that is worldly renowned as popular but that, when sapiently kneaded, is able to touch more fluid categories and reach different interpretations. If you’re in need of some good quality Latin vibes, Contrabando is the album of your desires.
Artist: Iglooghost, BABii and Kai Whiston
Album: XYZ
Label: GLOO
To conclude, if you forget about the not-so-perfect collaboration thing, this is a 10/10 album: in front of the masterful Aphex Twin (Alberto Balsalm) sample in Teef Chizzel it cannot be done otherwise. The all album is so good, creative and futuristic: it looks like an alien language. It’s abstract but still feels deliberate. Probably the most unique type of electronic music you can get to hear this autumn.
Artist: JPEGMAFIA
Album: All My Heroes Are Cornballs
Label: EQT Recordings, LLC
In general, All My Heroes Are Cornballs highlights an evolution in JPEGMAFIA’s music: it is a more cohesive and tidy work compared to Veteran, while being as much raw and positively violent as its predecessor. JPEGMAFIA bares his tumultuous mind and radical soul to his listeners in this album, leading us to believe that yes, we think we know you now, Peggy. Maybe.
Artist: Klein
Album: Lifetime
Label: Ijn Inc.
By taking sound material she found herself in contact with and reworking it, Klein pastes it in her collages following an inscrutable narrative logic and gives it a new meaning. That’s why, although each track has its own completeness in itself, Lifetime can be seen as a sort of introspective diary – as Klein herself explained.
Artist: Loraine James
Album: For You and I
Label: Hyperdub Records
For you and I is a compendium of Loraine James influences and creative output, a visual and sonic photography of London where the past and the present are juxtaposed but not exactly overlapped. Another precious stone in the Hyperdub catalogue, and a flawless record to introduce this young and talented producer to a wider audience.
Artist: M.E.S.H.
Album: Hart…Aber Fair!
Label: Janus Berlin
M.E.S.H.’s last fatigue embodies an important moment in his career as an artist: rather than creating ex novo and moving forward to new ideas, it looks like with this chapter he felt the necessity to stop and reflect on what he has achieved up to now.
Artist: W00dy
Album: My Diary
Label: Self-released
While plenty of dance weirdoes have repurposed the vocabulary of club music for their own use, W00dy’s freakishly exciting dance hybrids stand in a realm of their own. I hope you have the chance to put this album on at an intense volume and flail madly along to it.
Artist: xin
Album: Melts into Love
Label: Subtext Recordings
xin’s debut album, Melts into Love, repurposes the tropes of abrasive genres like dubstep, hardcore, and d’n’b to bewildering effect. These ten interlocked compositions accentuate the physical impact of the referenced genres while dissolving the grids and structures that anchor them.
