Psychic Ills - FRKWYS Vol. 4.5: Nowhere in the Night (RVNG Intl.)
"Psychic Ills and Gibby Haynes’ Nowhere in the Night is a document of sound twisting, snaking, and unfolding with the joy of relationship and unleashed aim."
Picked by Dragoș Rusu
Radko - The Dirt On Caligula (Enfant Terrible)
"A voice creeping from below the soil comes to me through a crack. It swiftly moves to the side of my face, entering my ear canal where it whispers in my middle ear to make sure no one else could hear it. It is a wish to come and wash the dirty * of the Godflesh. I respond: Deviecer egassem."
Picked by Jeroen Holthuis (Ordo Viatorum)
Raz Mesinai, Val Jeanty - Time Assasins (UPA Recordings)
"Drums, vodou electronics, sound chemistry and overall sonic shamanism from very special Haitian born and raised Val Jeanty. Haiti is hell right now, so yeah, Ayibobo."
Picked by Victor Stutz
V.A. - Risks Issues Opportunities II (R.i.O. Label)
"The Berlin based label R.I.O. never ceases to deliver proper outer space, hypnotic sounds. Here with the second edition of Risks Issues Opportunities compilation, they bring together 8 artists to take you by the hand in this spinning slow dance, a seducing dream, a meditation that dares to unfold unseen realms and push limits. It brings a specific nostalgia for an unreachable place far away with fragile ambient yet punchy mystical frequencies and that makes it an impeccably curated selection – a musical trip from beginning to beyond."
Picked by Andreea Ilisăi (Cocco Mio)
Rokia Koné & Jacknife Lee - BAMANAN (Real World Records)
"From Mali, West Africa, comes Rokia Koné, one of the mighty ten singers of the Les Amazones d'Afrique. The debut album BAMANAN roars like a lion for everyone to hear Rokia's powerful voice and mark her debut album, released by no other than Real World Records. The debut album of the
Rose of Bamako, Kone's nickname, has a unique taste due to the insertion of electronics by the Irish rock producer Jacknife Lee. You will feel Lee's electronic drums and bass on tracks like
Kurumba or the guitar riffs on
Anw Tile, but the blandness is incredible. You would believe a producer who works with big mainstream names such as U2, Taylor Swift or R.E.M. would influence the music more. BAMANAN is a showcase of how West African music can mix with the technological Western World, bringing calm, warmth, and spirit to a world that sometimes seems to forget where the musical origins are coming from."
Picked by Codin Orășeanu (Black Rhino Radio)
Romperayo - Así No Se Puede Muchaches (Discrepant / Sook Records)
"Firstly, my attention was caught by the drums of the Meridian Brothers and that's how I found that one the many projects of Pedro Ojeda is Romperayo. Expect a drunken quirky madness like a parade on your national day. But, played by a cumbia band with a hint of punk. Si, asi se pueden mis borrachos!"
Picked by Ovidiu Vasilescu
Sakostamu - Break Down (Brachliegen Tapes)
"There's happy children choir, dur dur d'être bébé, there's also dark children choir and mouth of babes and, as you will find here, there's inner children exorcism."
Picked by Victor Stutz
Sélébéyone - Xaybu: The Unseen (Pi Recordings)
"
Xaybu: The Unseen is the sophomore release from Sélébéyone, an international avant-rap collective led by saxophonist and composer Steve Lehman, well known in musical territories like modern jazz and contemporary classical music. Comprised of MCs HPrizm and Gaston Bandimic, saxophonists Lehman and Maciek Lasserre, and drummer Damion Reid, their 2016 debut album was described by Pitchfork as
legitimately new and a
revelation, an intricate combination of underground hip-hop, modern jazz and live electronic music.
Xaybu, Sélébéyone means
intersection in Wolof and the interaction between different musical styles finds new levels of effortless fluidity. The word
xaybu in Wolof refers to the concept in Islamic mysticism of al- Ghaib - that which is unknowable and unseeable. HPrizm (a.k.a. High Priest, legend of New York's underground hip- hop scene and a founding member of Antipop Consortium), Bandimic (one of Senegal's most distinctive young rap stars), and Lasserre are all Sufi Muslims, and there is a spiritual connection there that leads to complex sonorities, intricate compositional structures, and cutting- edge improvisation that explores spirituality and mysticism through the lens of experimental music."
Picked by Cătălin Teodoru (JADD Records)
Síntomas de techno - Ondas electrónicas subterráneas desde Perú (1985-1991) (Buh Records)
"The mid-1980's saw the explosion of punk in Lima, Peru, and the appearance of the so-called Rock Subterráneo (underground rock). During the same time, and sometimes by the helm of the same people active in the punk scene, various projects emerged in the melting pot of Lima, introducing styles such as techno-pop, EBM, industrial and minimal synth. This compilation presents for the first time the music of various underground techno groups and projects that activated in that period. Many of the recordings included here are extracted from demos with limited circulation, practically impossible to find. Other tracks are unpublished pieces which come from the private archives of the artists themselves. The title of the compilation,
Síntomas de techno (Symptoms of Techno), is inspired by the name of a concert held in Lima in 1991, considered to be the first techno concert to have taken place in Peru."
Picked by Ninu Alin (The Hipodrome of Music)
shemovesshe - moi sni (kashev tapes)
"The album
moi sni ("my dreams") is woven from somnambulistic hallucinations and sonic slumber. The first thing you feel when listening to it is an obsessive feeling of deja vu, as if you had already encountered this disappearing matter. It is enough to start listening to the music and peering into the images that it creates, then everything instantly begins to disappear, to dissolve in the veil of fitbacks. However, the dreams of the Ukrainian electronics artist Galya Abakarova (shemoveshe) are not always airy ambient, but rather disturbing doom-pop with wielding mesmerizing rhythm and macabre guitar distortion echoes."
Picked by Eugenie Galochkin (ТОПОТ / TOPOT)
