Moby – Like A Motherless Child
Moby managed to drop not one, but two albums over the last 14 months with his band the Void Pacific Choir — 2016’s These Systems Are Failing and this year’s More Fast Songs About the Apocalypse. Turns out the the veteran electronic producer has plenty more coming down the pipeline: On March 2nd, he will return with a new full-length called Everything Was Beautiful, And Nothing Hurt.
(Read: The 10 Best Moments at David Lynch’s Festival of Disruption 2017)
Moby’s 15th record overall takes its name from a quote that appears in the classic Kurt Vonnegut novel Slaughterhouse-Five. It spans a total of 12 songs, including such ominously titled number as “Mere Anarchy”, “Welcome to Hard Times”, “This Wild Darkness”, and “A Dark Cloud is Coming”. (Yes, even more songs about the apocalypse it seems.) There’s also lead single “Like A Motherless Child”, an anxious number in which Moby can be heard singing lines like, “I’m never safe from this danger,” and, “This was not hope, this was not sane.”
Read the rest of this article at Consequence of Sound
Rival Consoles – Unfolding
Ryan Lee West, the London-based producer known as Rival Consoles, makes high-brow, avant-garde electronic music in the vein of Jon Hopkins and Nils Frahm. So it isn’t all that surprising that his upcoming album, Persona, was named after a classic arthouse film: Persona, a 1966 psychological thriller by the legendary Ingmar Bergman, in which two characters gradually lose track of their independent identities. West has made a career out of evoking human emotions with digital sounds, and with Persona, he aims to dive a little deeper: Experimenting with ambient soundscapes, industrial textures, and high-octane club energy, he explores the extent to which electronic music can not only mimic our feelings but help us better understand them.
Each rhythm in the LP’s lead single, “Unfolding,” feels as if it symbolizes an emotion––a frantic synth, a fearless bassline––and the only way to make sense out of them is to see how they work together. West creates a mood one ingredient at a time, beginning with minimal drums and building methodically into a titanic techno track. The song’s snares crack and echo like they’re pinging around an empty tunnel, but within a few minutes, they’re completely surrounded. Syncopated drum beats, chiming cymbals, honking low-end horns, and tinny melodic synths swirl into complex polyrhythms. By the end, every layer is dancing around each other, like children around a campfire, accelerating in tandem until it all blurs into one collective, cathartic release.
Read the rest of this article at Pitchfork
Young Fathers -Toy
Although we first understood Scottish trio Young Fathers as a hip-hop group of sorts, most of their new album Cocoa Sugar forgoes rap music in any conventional sense. Hell, it forgoes music in any conventional sense. The singles we’ve heard so far — the dystopian electronic gospel ballad “Lord” and the avant-pop propulsion unit “In My View” — suggest a band evolving at such a rapid clip that they may one day outpace language’s ability to keep up with the sounds they’re concocting.
Not so “Toy.” Oh, it’s very much of a piece with the rest of Cocoa Sugar, skittering across genre boundaries toward some unknown future. But unlike everything else they’ve shared from the album so far, it more clearly demonstrates Young Fathers’ hip-hop roots. Which is to say: They rap on it, and they rap on it well. Even that rapping, though, shifts shape and tone along the way, morphing into singsong over the course of the phrase: “You paid your debt/ You’re playing dead/ There’s no respect/ You’re just a silly little toy/ Silly little boy.”
Eventually it builds into a full-on gang-vocal anthem, a schoolyard chant powered by frenetic rhythms and moody minor chords, sophisticated in execution but almost primal in its body-moving powers. Like everything else on the album, I love it. Do yourself a favor and listen up.
Read the rest of this article at Stereogum
Yuno – No Going Back
Following an eight-year breadcrumb trail of Bandcamp releases, it’s no surprise that Yuno’s first single after signing to Sub Pop, “No Going Back,” is effortlessly bright and charming. The Jacksonville, Florida native is extensively meticulous and self-taught, producing, recording, and engineering all of his music, in addition to designing his own visuals.
“No Going Back” is as lyrically vibrant and debonair as its champagne fizz-like percussion and rosey synth riff. The noodling piano melody is blanketed and warmed by a synth counterpart reminiscent of the last decade’s playful indie wave. Its weightless melody is bound to the bopping bass line like bubbles on top of bath water. Yuno sprinkles the track with wistful ‘la la la’s after singing the chorus, “There’s no going back for me baby/Maybe you know how I feel.” In spite of the semi-sweet message, his passionate background adlibs and hearty guitar solo confirm his agency (and falsetto) as impenetrable. Although Yuno doesn’t express a final destination, his pop bravado affirms that the end result isn’t important, at least for now. “No Going Back” insists what we’re all thinking for the new pop wunderkind: Only forward.
Read the rest of this article at Pitchfork
Ezra Furman – Suck The Blood From My Wound
Ezra Furman’s new album Transangelic Exodus is out next month, and one of its best songs, opener “Suck the Blood From My Wound,” was released today. It begins with a sound clip seemingly lifted from an old horror movie, and the story from there plays into an album narrative about persecuted angels, as Furman has explained:
“The narrative thread is I’m in love with an angel, and a government is after us, and we have to leave home because angels are illegal, as is harbouring angels. The term ‘transangelic’ refers to the fact people become angels because they grow wings. They have an operation, and they’re transformed. And it causes panic because some people think it’s contagious, or it should just be outlawed.”
The concept serves as a loose metaphor for queer liberation, and on “Wound,” it’s a literal story of underdog pain and defiance. Furman’s narrator is injured and his angel has just broken out of the hospital as the pair set off, still bleeding, on a desperate escape. The distorted low end sounds like it’s throbbing from the speakers of their getaway car, and the snarled hook echoes: “Angel, don’t fight it—to them, you know we’ll always be freaks.” Half the pleasure is in Furman’s songwriting, conversational yet packed with visceral detail and novel rhymes (“Pasadena / deus ex machina”).
As the song fades in spasms of static, another distant strain of movie music enters, and Furman can be heard screaming a line from Romeo and Juliet: “A plague on both your houses!” Perhaps it’s a tragedy, and the lovers didn’t make it out fast enough. Or perhaps they simply sped beyond range of the signal, and they’ve finally broken free.
Read the rest of this article at Spin
