On Heavy Rotation: 7 June 2023
New music by Toumba, Anz, rRoxymore, Irreversible Entanglements and GloRilla
Another Substack? Yeah, maybe! I actually wrote a newsletter for several years on the now-defunct Revue platform, which I quit after landing a full-time job copywriting in 2021. I don’t have that job anymore and while I’m looking for another one, I thought I might as well try my hand at a new newsletter. In English this time because I like a challenge (my native tongue is Dutch), and because the new music I like best often doesn’t get much attention in American and British online media either.
I used to pick out cool new records for a living as a radio DJ and music journalist, and never really stopped even when it wasn't my job anymore. I think I’ve only been getting better at it, to be honest. My taste was formed as a teenager in the 1980s, loving Scritti Politti, Run-D.M.C., Motown, Aretha Franklin, the dance-pop hits of the day, American college rock and a cut-price copy of the 9-LP box set Essential Electro - The Business. That open and curious mindset and desire for the fresh and funky, the smart and the headstrong is still guiding my quest for the best new sounds.
I’ve been fascinated by taste ever since I read Bourdieu in university. How much of my taste is determined by race, class, gender and nationality? Probably more than I’d like to think, but tell me, who else has been bringing you such an excellent selection of cutting edge pop and hip-hop and rock and house and amapiano and techno and jazz and R&B and, as I used to say on my radio show, “less easily identifiable beats” throughout the years?
I always liked this Mr. Magic sample on Public Enemy’s “Public Enemy No. 1”:
I guarantee you, no more music by the suckers.
So let’s get to it.
DISQUE POP DE LA SEMAINE
When I worked at VPRO radio in the Netherlands, we always had an album of the week which, for some reason, was called the Disque Pop de la Semaine in French. I can still hear the jingle we played before airing a track. I nicked the name in 2017 when I started the Instagram account @disquepopdelasemaine to post my favourite new album on Monday afternoons. (I still do!)
Toumba, Janoob
In November of 2018, I picked Inner Worlds by the London-based Italian producer TSVI as my Disque Pop de la Semaine. When the Jordanian DJ and musician Toumba heard the track “Hossam” from that album, he told Mixmag earlier this year, it was the final push for him to start making club music, too. So things have come full circle now Toumba’s debut album Janoob (six tracks in half an hour) has been released, five years on, on TSVI’s (and Wallwork’s) great Nervous Horizon label. It is an equally fantastic and energetic collection of cutting-edge, offbeat dance music. Where TSVI drew inspiration from Asian and African cultures that were foreign to him, Toumba, who is from Jordan’s capital Amman (and who lived in England for three years), turns to electronic music from the West (and specifically London) for more than just inspiration (or sample sources). Whereas on his first releases he was still audibly fusing the musical traditions of his region with UK-oriented club music, he finds a style all his own on Janoob (‘the south’ in Arabic) , which of course could only have been developed by someone with his background. These are raw, energetic, rousing tracks in which anything can happen and different rhythms alternate. I have said before that half an hour is an ideal length for a club music album, and Toumba proves my point with this varied and uncompromising stack of tracks.
THREE SONGS
My aim here is very simple: to get you to listen to three new songs that I think are outstanding.
The English DJ Anz is one of my favourite dance producers of the decade so far. “Clearly Rushing” is her first release in a couple of years and, as the title indicates, it’s not bothered by the pressure of coming back with something heavy and serious. It’s a bouncy breakbeat track (not a million miles from a classic like DJ Zinc’s “138 Trek”) with squelchy synth melodies on top, a real party starter.
“We Can Do” is a highlight from the compilation album Synergy, released by Black Artist Database, a UK-based platform which aims to “highlight the boundless range of Black creativity and give power back to the community”. It has a similar breakbeat energy as the Anz single, but this track is an altogether more slippery affair. Less euphoric, but more determined and intricate with vocal snippets edging on the dancer.
The American poet and performer Moor Mother is one the most interesting and arresting musicians working in avant-jazz today. Aside from being a solo artist (check out her latest album Jazz Codes from last year, and especially the footwork-adjacent “Barely Woke”), she’s also part of the improv band Irreversible Entanglements (under her government name Camae Ayewa). “Nuclear War” is a cover from a 1982 Sun Ra composition (on a new Red Hot + album also featuring the great Angel Bat Dawid). It’s over twice as a long as the original and about twice as fierce too. Will Putin drop an atom bomb? I don’t think he will, but I know who I’ll be listening to when he does. I can’t think of anyone who can more authoritatively state that if they push that button, YOUR ASS GOTTA GO.
And, because it’s hard to stop quoting this outstanding performance, without your ass, whatchu gon’ do?
FULLSCREEN
Oh yeah, I also run a music video account on Instagram, named after a music video night I used to host in Amsterdam. I don’t know why, but ever since the pandemic I’m finding it harder and harder to find great new music videos. I used to be able to catch almost one every day, now I’m lucky to see one or two a week worth sharing. But share I shall!
‘Rapper hangs out in the hood with their homies’ is an age-old music video trope. There are very cool videos in this style, but 9 times out of 10, you’ve seen it all before and it’s just not very compelling. Director Chris Villa and GloRilla know what they’re doing. “Lick or Sum” is an explicit song about sex and GloRilla and her friends and entourage can be seen having loads of fun with it. On the street, in the shop, on the field, in the car park, and in the salon. The clip is also a tribute to GloRilla’s hometown Memphis, from the iconic Hernando de Soto Bridge over the Mississippi River in the background to the song’s origins in “Slob on My Knob”, an underground classic by local legends Three 6 Mafia from before GloRilla was born. She had her first big hit along with Cardi B in 2022, but “Lick or Sum” shows she can do it on her own too (hopefully, it hasn’t charted yet).