On Heavy Rotation: 28 June 2023
New music by Al Wootton, Kodak Lemonade, Alabaster DePlume & MettaShiba, Karenn and Little Simz
It’s ironic for someone who used to write them for a living as a music journalist, but I seldom read artist interviews anymore. This is partly due to the fact the ones that I would read are A) hardly ever published, and B) even when they are, I seldom come across them at the moment that I’m most interested, i.e. when I’ve just listened to and loved a new record. Still, I would like like to at least know a little bit about the artists I listen to. What do they look like, where are they from, do they have an interesting process or concept? A review or some Bandcamp promo copy often suffices. I can usually find something when I try.
As a an amapiano fan, I often have no idea who I’m listening to though. I can see what they look like on Instagram and I know they’re from South Africa, that’s usually it. When there are lyrics, they are often in Zulu. There are no reviews anywhere, there are no interviews, they are not on Bandcamp. Their Instagram accounts don’t always say where they’re from and sometimes don’t even mention the single they’ve just released. Maybe it’s all happening on TikTok (I’m not on TikTok), or on local radio, or the fans in general don’t care, I don’t know. One of my favourite new tracks this week, which you can read about below in the Three Songs section, is by Kodak Lemonade. I found his EP on the pop-up infested download site Fakazahub (still the best channel I know for staying up to date on this music) because it was falsely credited to Daddy Ash & DrummeRTee924, who I like a lot and wrote about here a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been able to put together that it was released on Ash’s label, and that he probably produced it (Spotify credits one Tumelo Tumelo as the writer, and Tumelo turns out to be Ash’s middle name). So there’s that! Maybe you should just listen to it.
DISQUE POP DE LA SEMAINE
Not for the first time, my favourite new album this week is by the English DJ and producer Al Wootton, whose main alias from 2009 to 2018 was Deadboy.
Eight months after the excellent Forest Trilogy, which asserted Al Wootton’s dub influences deeper than ever, he already has a new album ready. Like its predecessor, We Have Come to Banish the Dark has a musical narrative all of its own. You could call it Wootton’s techno album. Ever since he first came out in the late ’00s post-dubstep era (which he helped usher in), Wootton has been slaloming through just about every significant UK dance style. So even when he engages with a harder and more serious ‘techno’ sound, as he does here, it rarely sounds straightforward. Dub and (early) dubstep continue to influence his production. Rather than laying down harsh rhythms (though he does that too at times), Wootton likes to play with exotic percussion. In defiance of the album title, this is hardly happy party music, but that comes with the territory. The deliberate tension in the sound design creates an enduring unpredictability in which he obviously excels.
THREE SONGS
The cover art shows a young rapper, that’s Kodak Lemonade. He calls himself a ‘lyricalist’ on his Instagram page. “Delela” is a highlight from his debut 4-track solo EP Iskhalo se Mali, which Google translate suggests means something like ‘money complaint’ in Zulu—the dollar bills in the image seem to confirm this. The song title means ‘let go’. There are a lot of lyrics though, and even if you can’t understand what Kodak Lemonade is saying, the energy of his performance is undeniable. Dextrous rapping like this is not standard on amapiano, which usually favours either singing or a kind of chanting. Producer Daddy Ash (I think!) provides Kodak with a rousing set of menacing log and snare drums.
The British musician and band leader Alabaster DePlume recorded so much material for last year’s Gold, that apparently there was enough for a new album, the upcoming Come With Fierce Grace. This one promises to sound ‘embryonic’, ‘unfiltered’, ‘raw’ and ‘candid’, and you can hear all of that on the exceptional ballad “Did You Know”. The singer Momoko Gill a.k.a. MettaShiba whisper-sings over plucked double bass, as handclaps, breathy coos and DePlume’s increasingly animated saxophone respond to her intimate confessions, ‘brazen like a baby’.
“Happy Birthday” arrived last week on my actual birthday, which was a nice gesture from the producers Blawan and Pariah, who make up the British duo Karenn. At 145 beats per minute it’s a fast track, but this is not your average techno stomper. For one, it has a kind of backbeat that you don’t hear a lot in this genre, which instantly gives the song a playful feel. There’s also a flutey loop playing throughout that sounds like it’s coming from a mischievous wizard hidden in the woods. Yes, that’s a frog on the cover art. Good gift!
FULLSCREEN
“Gorilla” arrived last December on Little Simz’s album No Thank You and was one of my favourite rap songs of 2022. Six months later, it has almost 11 million streams on Spotify, which is respectable but not huge numbers. Maybe it was that release date, but it’s fair to say that it didn’t get all of the attention it deserved. Evidently, American music video legend Dave Meyers agrees. The director has worked with the likes of Missy Elliott, Jay-Z, OutKast, Kendrick Lamarr and many other megastars over the past quarter-century. I could well be wrong, but I doubt that Forever Living Originals—Simz’s record label, run by Inflo from Sault, who also produced her album—can pay the superstar director his usual fee. The video is here though, and it looks every inch the MTV hit it would, could and should have been in a previous era. It has no less than sixteen different, eye-popping scenes, something you rarely if ever get to see anymore in a music video.
My latest Echobox radio show, which went out live on 16 June 2023, is now archived on Mixcloud. Tune in for two hours of great music and some babbling in Dutch from me in between songs. Here’s the playlist:
Anz - “Clearly Rushing” (Hessle Audio)
N∆eon Te∆rdrops - “Outbound” (Lindstrøm Remix)” (Love OD Communications)
Meshell Ndegeocello featuring Brandee Younger & Julius Rodriguez - “Virgo” (Blue Note)
Christine and the Queens - “Aimer, Puis Vivre” (Because Music)
Matt Espy - “Grey Winged Blackbird” (Drag City)
Kassa Overall featuring Danny Brown & Wiki - “Clock Ticking” (Warp)
Khanyisa featuring Ceeka RSA, Nandipha808 & Tyler ICU - “Suka” (Superstar Studios)
Tyler ICU & Tumelo_ZA featuring DJ Maphorisa, Nandipha808, Ceeka RSA & Tyron Dee - “Mnike” (New Money Gang/Sony Music)
Call Super & Eden Samara - “Sapling” (Can You Feel The Sun)
Decisive Pink - “Cosmic Dancer” (Fire)
Caterina Barbieri - “Sufyosowirl” (Light-Years)
rRoxymore - “We Can Do” (Black Artist Database)
Neana - “Cyberia” (Hagan Remix)” (Night Slugs)
DrummeRTee924 - “86 Drums” (Salutation to 2wobunnies & Major League DJz)” (DrummeRTee924 Presents A Salutation To The Major Artists)
Toumba - “Eqla3” (Nervous Horizon)
Dogpatrol & Nasty King Kurl - “Creepin” (Sneaker Social Club)
GloRilla - “Lick or Sum” (CMG/Interscope)
Etch - “Sunbeam” (BangersOnly)
Irreversible Entanglements - “Nuclear War” (Red Hot Organization)
Israel Fernández - “Soleá de Mi Casa” (Universal)
As always: you can subscribe to my Heavy Rotation Spotify playlist, and follow my Disque Pop de la Semaine and Fullscreen Instagram accounts. I’m also on Twitter.