Destroyer "LABRYNTHITIS"
Destroyer’s 2022 album brims with mystic and intoxicating terrain, the threads of Dan Bejar’s notes woven through by a trove of allusions at once eerily familiar and intimately perplexing.
More than an arcane puzzle for the listener, LABYRINTHITIS warps and winds through unfamiliar territory for Bejar as well. Written largely in 2020 and recorded the following spring, the album most often finds Bejar and frequent collaborator John Collins seeking the mythic artifacts buried somewhere under the dance floor, from the glitzy spiral of “It Takes a Thief” to the Books-ian collage bliss of the title track. Initial song ideas ventured forth from disco, Art of Noise, and New Order, Bejar and Collins championing the over-the-top madcappery. “Our version may have been punk clubs, but our touchstones for the album were more true to disco,” says Bejar.
Minibeast "On Ice"
Minibeast is the current project from Peter Prescott, formerly of Mission of Burma. The Providence based band has a new album coming out on April 1, “On Ice: and one of the songs they’ve made available to listen to is “Exclusive.” If you’re familiar with Prescott’s work with Mission of Burma or Volcano Suns, chances are you’re going to dig this song. “Exclusive” has a lot of the noise and clunky guitars of his previous bands, but there is also an jazz-like groove throughout the song. The song surprisingly stops just shy of being mainstream, but definitely stops short. While it may be rooted in classic Burma, Minibeast are a completely different project, but still ones fans will love.
Ibibio Sound Machine "Electricity"
Electricity was produced by the Grammy Award– and Mercury Prize–nominated British synthpop group Hot Chip, a collaboration born out of mutual admiration watching each other on festival stages, as well as a shared love of Francis Bebey and Giorgio Moroder. The fruits of their labor reveal a gleaming, supercharged, Afrofuturist blinder.
Electricity is the first album Ibibio Sound Machine have made with external producers since the group’s formation in London in 2013 by lead singer Eno Williams and saxophonist Max Grunhard. True, 2017’s Uyai featured mixdown guests including Dan Leavers, aka Danalogue, the keyboard jedi in future-jazz trio The Comet Is Coming, but Hot Chip and Ibibio Sound Machine worked together more deeply throughout the process, collaborating fully. Along the way, the team conjured a kaleidoscope of delights that include resonances of Jonzun Crew, Grace Jones, William Onyeabor, Tom Tom Club, The J.B.’s, Jon Hassell’s Fourth World, and Bootsy Collins.
Kevin Devine "Nothing’s Real, So Nothing’s Wrong"
In simplest terms: Nothing’s Real, So Nothing’s Wrong is a grown-up break-up (or break-ups, as it were) record, for strugglers by strugglers, a kitchen-sink 10th album pivot, painstakingly brought to life by two career-long collaborators and their shared (& split) obsessions.
The mission: alchemize a chainsmoked series of destabilizing life experiences into something musically dynamic & progressive & expansive;
be lyrically evocative & excavating & unflinching without irresponsibly printing your journals;
navigate two successive endings, and the “how did I get here,” and the dark night of honestly assessing the soul, and digging a tunnel, and the stubborn humanity in beginning again.
(It’s also sort of a fatherhood record.)
And now: to get people to hear it.