Marie Davidson – ‘So Right (John Talabot Pressure Dub Remix)’
Tirzah is never not a breath of fresh air, from her casual delivery to the mellow rasp of her tone. This week, the Essex singer announced her debut album, Devotion, which she made in collaboration with her longtime friend, the composer Mica Levi (aka Micachu). The first single, “Gladly,” is a warm embrace of a song that clocks in at a leisurely 65 bpm—incidentally, the resting heartbeat rate that indicates tip-top physical condition.
Back in 2013, Taz and Meeks—the pair’s nicknames, which they alsooccasionally record under—charmed with a hyper-minimalist take on euphoric dance-pop called “I’m Not Dancing.” “Gladly” performs a not dissimilar trick with the concept of the soul ballad. “I don’t want/To sound so serious,” sings Tirzah, adopting the gentle back-and-forth swing of Micachu’s spare, piano-led melody. “But you are taking me away from all this hate/All it takes, all it takes/Is your arms, your smile.” It’s a song that creates space to contemplate the overwhelming generosity of love in its simplest gestures: the rush of feelings that the touch of your lover’s skin can stir, the contentment that only a cuddle can bring. That Devotion hints at a full-length exploration of a relationship’s many facets, through Tirzah and Micachu’s singular lens, only sweetens the deal.
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KILO KISH – Elegance
Kilo Kish raps in stirring whispers and conversational asides. It’s made her a great background player for artists like Vince Staples and Childish Gambino, but has often left her lost in her own solo music. Her early tapes were soft-spoken art-rap musings that were pleasing on an aesthetic level but light on personality. Her last album, 2016’s Reflections in Real Time, ventured in the opposite direction; character-driven but musically scattershot, it was charming but seemed more like thought bubbles swirling around her head than fully formed songs.
Her new song, “Elegance,” is a course-correction. It is the best Kilo Kish song by a considerable margin, and it hones in on what makes her such an enchanting and elusive artist, using her wispy raps to drift through a warped pop jam. From an upcoming EP called MOTHE, which Kish told Paper is “focused more on the intersection of nature and the electricity found in all things,” the song bursts with light and life, her flows tracing around scuzzy but vivid synths. There is a static charge emitted by the production, its wattage producing a fluorescent glow through which Kish’s shadows dance.
“Elegance” is more about form than function, which suits Kish’s strengths; she works best when her hushed voice slips out of the cracks in the beat and into the open air. Kish went to school for design and it shows in her process. The song considers how elegance feels and not what it means, and her performance embodies that grace and style—she imagines the motions of her raps the way ballerinas fixate on their lines, each gesture carefully drawn to the next. With “Elegance,” Kilo Kish reveals a clearer image of herself in the contours of the silhouettes she sketches.
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Yves Tumor – Lifetime
Yves Tumor’s music has often resembled musique concrète as it massages rhythmic loops, samples, and scraps of found sound into suggestive forms, foggy as nightmares, with a distinctively narrative undercurrent. But on a new string of singles including “Noid” “Licking an Orchid,” and now “Lifetime,” what was previously lo-fi snaps vividly into focus.
The percussion is crisper, the vocals pushed prominently to the fore. At its murkiest, Tumor’s work always had a vaguely gothic cast, heavy as cobwebs sagging in the humidity, but on “Lifetime,” Tumor’s suddenly channeling the hi-def stadium goth of the Cure’s Disintegration, layering close-harmonized vocals over bright streaks of synth, piano, and drums. Those rolling drum fills are a lot of what gives the song its force: The ethereal background voices of the chorus, bruised by nostalgia—“I miss the good old days back in Biscayne/And I miss my brothers”—sound like they want to disappear into pure atmosphere, but the drums keep things grounded and immediate, relentless as heavy blows. There’s real anger here, real desire, real desperation—a surfeit of emotion that spills over the edges of Tumor’s tightly controlled arrangements and carries the music to a place it’s never taken us before. It’s a thrilling development from an artist who seems to be rapidly evolving, on a song-to-song basis, before our very ears.
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CHINAH – Strange Is Better
It has almost been exactly three years – three years and two days to be exact – when we were first introduced to CHINAH. The trio of singer-songwriter Fine Glindvad, guitarist Simon Kjær, and producer/pianist/keyboardist Simon Andersson were relative unknowns, but they’ve seen grown to be one of Denmark’s most exciting electronic bands. They’re not the typical electronic outfit, however, as they prefer to enthrall with their dark intimacy as oppose to shock and overload like many other outfits. They may have saved their most bewitching single with “Strange Is Better”.
The beats, synth, and production work are spectacular, where every element is delivered with surgeon-like precision. Each note, tone, and rhythm is spine-tingling, creating the haunting atmosphere for Glindvad’s distant vocals to shine. She is like the voice in the back of our minds or the person standing in the shadows of the far corner and teasing us to come over. She’s not, however, trying to seduce us. On the contrary, she’s trying to wake us up from our stupor and realize that strangeness is the new norm. That what worked in the past is now obsolete. And given CHINAH have been going against the mainstream, we should heed their advice.
Read the rest of this article at The Revue
Steven A. Clark – Feel This Way
Miami’s Steven A. Clark finds a way to make the present sound nostalgic. The R&B romantic’s new track “Feel This Way” captures this nocturnal summer essence with the hook “We’ll never feel this way again.” Produced by Boys Noize and Ape Drums, the song is charged and humid and club-ready, bridging the gap between Terence Trent D’arby and Frank Ocean.
And as long as we’re throwing out reference points: I don’t know if it’s “cool” to compare someone to John Mayer, but ever since his Deadhead stint, he excels at grooving guitar melodies that slide over you. Clark does the same. The beat oscillates, digging firmly into its pop tendencies as his voice buzzes with excitement. “Feel This Way” is not ready to let the sun rise just yet.
“Feel This Way” is off Clark’s upcoming sophomore album Where Neon Goes To Die — produced entirely by Boys Noize, featuring guest spots from Gavin Turek and Denzel Curry, and coming this fall via Secretly Canadian. Hear the song below, where you can also find more details on Where Neon Goes To Die as well as Clark’s fall tour dates with Chromeo.
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