Chlöe has shared a new song called ‘Treat Me’. The track, which samples Bubba Sparxxx and the Ying Yang Twins’ 2005 hit ‘Ms. New Booty’, arrives alongside a music video directed by Diana Kunst. Check it out below.
‘Treat Me’ marks Chlöe’s second solo single, following ‘Have Mercy’, which dropped in September 2021. Chloe x Halle’s most recent album, The Ungodly Hour, was released in 2020.
Black Star, the duo of Yasiin Bey and Talib Kweli, have revealed the details of their new album. Produced entirely by Madlib, No Fear of Time will mark their first album in 24 years, following 1998’s Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star. It’s out May 3 and will be available exclusively through the podcasting platform Luminary. Check out the album cover below.
Talking about the album in a statement, Talib Kweli said:
About 3-4 years ago I was visiting Yasiin in Europe and we started to talk about songs to do on an album, so I flew an engineer out just to see what that would be. Once I realized this conversation is starting to organically become a creative conversation, I started making sure to have the engineer around at all times. There was one day we were just in a hotel listening to Madlib beats, and he’s like, “Play that Madlib tape again.” I’m playing the beats and he starts doing rhymes to the beats. And that’s how we did the first song.
This is very similar to how we did the first album. But the first album, there were no mobile studios. This entire album, we have not set foot in one recording studio. It’s all been done in hotel rooms and backstage at Dave Chappelle shows.
No Fear of Time Cover Artwork:
Alex G has shared a new song, ‘Main Theme’, the opening cut from his upcoming soundtrack to Jane Schoenbrun’s new movie We’re All Going To The World’s Fair. Check it out below, along with a trailer for the film.
“I love horror films, but it was also important to me that my film feel more than just scary,” Schoenbrun said of the track in a press release. “I wanted it to feel gentle, sad, personal, and homemade: the kind of “horror” movie that might make you cry. When Alex’s gorgeous, emotive ‘Main Theme’ enters during our opening credits (and then recurs in mutated forms throughout the movie), it’s meant as a signal to the audience of exactly this ambition.”
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) arrives on April 15 (via Milan Records), and the film is out the same day. Alex G’s last album was 2019’s House of Sugar.
Sharon Van Etten has shared a cover of David Bowie’s ‘Starman’, which will serve as the end-credits song for Return to Space, a new Netflix documentary about Elon Musk and SpaceX. Listen to Van Etten’s 70-second rendition of the track below.
Earlier this week, Van Etten announced her new album We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, which arrives on May 6. She recently shared the singles ‘Porta’ and ‘Used To It’, but they won’t appear on the album; in fact, there will be no advance tracks leading up to the release.
When art is spoken about a lot of different forms instantly pop into your mind. You may think of Artists such as Norman Gilbert, you may think about photography, sculptures, abstract art or contemporary. Art comes in so many forms.
However, there is a question and a popular debate topic, whether all forms of dance fall within the genre of art. Whether dancers such as the Shen Yun dancers to hip hop dancers are creating art.
Here you will read compelling reasons why this form of self-expression is a form of art, in its own right.
Music is a craft of its own and a well known and respected form of art and creative outlet.
Although dance is not necessarily required to be paired with music they do go hand in hand.
Art is closely associated with emotion and mood. It provides a physical representation and visual aid to evoke a feeling, promote talking points and triggers thought and consideration along with enjoyment and beauty.
Whether you are a dancer or you are watching a performance, dance evokes the same reactions.
Through the movements of the body, a dance is able to showcase emotions and entice the viewing into sharing the emotional journey the dancer is telling.
Through facial expressions, gestures, the steps taken, the music associated and the way it engages with the viewer, dance meets the requirements to place it in the category of being a form of art.
Like all types of art, you don’t necessarily need to understand it to appreciate its beauty and find enjoyment from it. If anything it is this subjectivity that makes art popular for people of all ages and of all life experiences.
Dance is about portraying a message through storytelling.
Storytelling is a well known and respected form of art. Dance takes the story and literally brings it to life in a visual manner.
Through moving their body, the dancer is able to take the viewer on a story. Body language, facial expression and rhythmic motions all sync together to captivate the watcher and draw them into the tale as it is unfolding.
All types of dance forms can be applied to storytelling. One of the most obvious being ballet. Through the combination of gesturing, body movements, solo performances or group dances a story unfolds in front of your eyes.
Like all forms of art, there is an element of interpretation required. Some art forms are ambiguous and others are relatively easy to understand. Dance is no different.
How you are able to interpret what the body movements mean can vary. One person has different emotions evoked than another.
Even if the message is clear, the interpretation of the dance can still differ.
Literature and poetry are both prime examples of where the message can be clear but interpretations can differ. Shakespeare plays are well known for their artistry. The play doesn’t change. The words on the page remain the same. However, the interpretation when performed can evoke different emotions, and can open up different talking points. From how the words are said, the costumes used, the creativity of the set, how relationships are portrayed all influence how interpretations can vary.
Dance is no different. With a variety of different ways to position, angle, gesture and express yourself, dance can be interpreted in many different ways.
Being one of the purest ways of self-expression, dance is an art form that doesn’t require anything more than a person’s body.
Yes, there is technical knowhow associated with certain dance forms, however with so many different forms of dance it doesn’t always require certain training.
Through passion, desire and expression to be shared, dance is one of the only forms of art that has popularity across all parts of the world. Language or technical training doesn’t matter. By moving the body, a story can be told that can be appreciated by anyone.
In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on April 8, 2022:
Father John Misty is back with a new album, Chloë and the Next 20th Century, out now via Sub Pop worldwide and Bella Union in Europe. The singer-songwriter’s fifth studio album and the follow-up to 2018’s God’s Favorite Customer features arrangements from Drew Erickson and production from Josh Tillman’s longtime collaborator Jonathan Wilson, with Dave Cerminara returning as engineer and mixer. It was preceded by the singles ‘Funny Girl’, ‘Q4’, ‘Goodbye Mr. Blue’, and ‘The Next 20th Century’. Read our review of the album.
Wet Leg’s self-titled debut album is out now via Domino. The LP was mainly recorded and produced by Speedy Wunderground’s Dan Carey in London in April 2021, before Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chamber had released their debut single or ever played a show. After emerging with ‘Chaise Lounge’, the Isle of Wight duo previewed the record with the tracks ‘Wet Dream’, ‘Too Late Now’, ‘Angelica’, ‘Oh No’, and ‘Ur Mum’. “Wet Leg was originally just supposed to be funny,” Teasdale explained in press materials. “As a woman, there’s so much put on you, in that your only value is how pretty or cool you look. But we want to be goofy and a little bit rude. We want to write songs that people can dance to. And we want to people to have a good time, even if that might not possible all of the time.” Read our review of the album.
Jack White has put out his new LP, Fear of the Dawn, the first of two new albums he’s releasing this year via Third Man. Arriving four years after Boarding House Reach, the record includes the previously unveiled singles ‘Taking Me Back’ (which made its debut in October as part of the promotional campaign for Call of Duty: Vanguard), ‘Fear of the Dawn’, and the Q-Tip collaboration ‘Hi-De-Ho’. Entering Heaven Alive will follow on July 22.
Melbourne power-pop group Romero have dropped their debut album, Turn It On!, via Cool Death/Feel It Records. The album features the promotional singles ‘Halfway Out the Door’, ‘Honey’, ‘Troublemaker’, ‘Neapolitan’, and the title track. “I guess at the time of writing Turn It On! I was spending a lot of time reminiscing on some of life’s adversity,” singer Alanna Oliver said in a statement. “But instead of writing from a place of loss or pain or suffering, more often than not I was writing from a place of power. It was hard not to write from that place when all of a sudden you were singing about all this stuff with four guys who you hardly knew, in a rock’n’roll dungeon in Kew. It was liberating, electrifying and I knew in my heart I was finally where I was supposed to be.” Read our Artist Spotlight interview with Romero.
Vince Staples has followed up his 2021 self-titled album with Ramona Park Broke My Heart, out now via Blacksmith Recordings/Motown Records UK. The Long Beach rapper has said there is “a direct correlation” between the two records, explaining: “They were kind of created at the same time. I was in a similar state of mind. I’m still working through things and the questions that life poses. This album will make even more sense if you heard the previous one.” The 16-track LP features Mustard, Lil Baby, and Ty Dolla $ign and includes the early singles ‘Magic’ and ‘Rose Street’. “It’s symbolic of home,” Staples added of album’s title. “And everyone has a home. Even though it’s very personal to me, everyone can relate to it. That’s why I thought it would work for this chapter.”
billy woods and Preservation have teamed up for Aethiopes, out today via Backwoodz Studioz. The album features contributions from El-P, ELUCID, Boldy James, Quelle Chris, Despot, Denmark Vassey, Breezly Brewin, Shinehead, and Fatboi Sharif. It follows woods’ 2019 solo LPs Hiding Places and Terror Management, the 2020 Moor Mother collaboration Brass, and 2021’s Haram with ELUCID as Armand Hammer. Preservation collaborated with woods on several tracks off Terror Management; his last album was 2020’s Eastern Medicine, Western Illness, which featured woods on ‘Lemon Rinds’ and the B-side ‘Snow Globe’. Read our review of Aethiopes.
Nothing’s Ever Fine is the sophomore album by Oceanator, the project of Brooklyn artist Elise Okusami. Out now via Big Scary Monsters/Polyvinyl, the follow-up to 2020’s Things I Never Said was co-produced by Bartees Strange and Mike Okusami. Ahead of the release of the LP, Oceanator shared the singles ‘Stuck’, ‘Bad Brain Daze’, and ‘The Last Summer’. Longtime collaborator Andrew Whitehurst performed drums on most tracks, while Jeff Rosenstock provides saxophone on ‘Bad Brain Daze’, which also features gang vocals from members of Long Neck, the Sonder Bombs, Bad Moves, Maneka, Late Bloomer, Alright, and more.
Syd has returned with a new solo album, Broken Hearts Club, out now via Columbia. The follow-up to 2017’s Fin features contributions from Kehlani and Smilo as well as additional production from Troy Taylor, G Koop, and Darkchild. “The album is about a relationship I had that ended in my first real broken heart,” the Internet co-founder explained in press materials. “It almost felt like I joined a club because all of my friends went through similar experiences. It was like a rite of passage. I started writing the album on the relationship when I was in love. You’re really getting the whole journey from the beginning to the end. I want people to find it beautiful. It’s super vulnerable, sentimental, and it’s soft. There’s touching moments and a couple of dark moments.”
Grizzly Bear’s Daniel Rossen has released his debut solo album, You Belong There, via Warp. The 10-track LP explores “the uncharted territory of adulthood,” according to a press release, as Rossen considered “what comes after the restless enthusiasm and public fanfare of your youth.” Following Rossen’s 2012 EP Silent Hour/Golden Mile, the album is intended as “a reintroduction to a voice that sounds both entirely familiar and fully re-energised by the act of unfettered expression and newfound self-sovereignty.” It includes the previously shared tracks ‘Unpeopled Space’ and ‘Shadow in the Frame’.
Brooklyn-based Filipino/Argentinian artist Renata Zeiguer has released her sophomore LP, Picnic in the Dark, via Northern Spy. The follow-up to 2018’s Old Ghost was made in collaboration with Sam Griffin Owens (aka Sam Evian) and was previewed with the singles s ‘Sunset Boulevard’, ‘Evergreen’, and the title track. The album draws inspiration from the sounds of Zeiguer’s childhood, from jazz standards to classical music, as well as bossa nova icons such as João Gilberto, following the musician “through a dreamworld of magical realism as she navigates her memories and seeks to confront inherited dysfunctional patterns,” as a press release puts it.
Woodpecker is the debut full-length from Dena Miller, who records under the moniker Deer Scour. Out today via Carpark Records, the album was recorded and mixed primarily by Heather Jones at So Big Auditory in Philly and features contributions from Ko Takasugi-Czernowin on bass, Zuzia Weyman on cello, Madel Rafter on drums, and guitar from Miller’s father Mark. The album was written over a period of six years, with many of the songs emerging from periods of grief or change. “I used to sing myself to sleep as a baby and I think music still plays the same role in my life – it’s a way of self-soothing or seeking comfort,” Miller explained. “But there’s also part of it that comes from wanting to connect with people.” The tracks ‘Cowboy’, ‘Peace with the Damage’, and ‘Synesthesia’ preceded the record.
Deanna Petcoff’s debut LP, To Hell With You, I Love You, has arrived via Royal Mountain Records. Recorded in Toronto over the course of a year, the album documents the dissolution of a relationship; Petcoff wanted to explore “the whirlwind of emotions you have when you’re grieving a relationship, which can feel like the death of a part of you or what you thought your life was going to look like.” The record features the previously released singles ‘Trash Bag’, ‘If You Were Me’, ‘Devastatingly Mediocre’, and ‘I Don’t Wanna Get Over You’.
The Linda Lindas have dropped their debut album, Growing Up. Having already opened for Bikini Kill, Best Coast, and Bleached, the Los Angeles band – whose members range in age from 11 to 17 – went viral last spring with a filmed performance of ‘Racist Sexist Boy’ at the Los Angeles Public Library, signing with Epitaph shortly after the release of the song. The quartet was also featured in Amy Poehler’s film Moxie. In addition to ‘Racist Sexist Boy’, Growing Up includes the previously shared tracks ‘Talking to Myself’, ‘Oh!’, and the title track.
Kae Tempest has released their fourth album, The Line Is a Curve, via Fiction Records. Following 2019’s The Book of Traps and Lessons, the record was produced by longtime collaborator Dan Carey and features contributions from Kevin Abstract, Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten, Lianne La Havas, ássia, and Confucius MC. Tempest previewed the album with the singles ‘No Prizes’, ‘More Pressure’, ‘Salt Coast’, and ‘I Saw Light’. “The Line Is A Curve is about letting go,” Tempest explained in press materials. “Of shame, anxiety, isolation and falling instead into surrender. Embracing the cyclical nature of time, growth, love.”
The Parts I Dread is the debut full-length by Iowa-via-New Jersey bassist and songwriter Victoria Park, who records as Pictoria Vark. Out now via Get Better Records, the album was co-produced with Gavin Caine and features contributions from Jason Ross, Michael Eliran, and Lauren Black. The Parts I Dread reflects on Park’s sense of home, following the discovery that her parents were relocating from her childhood home in New Jersey to Wyoming. “Eventually this album became less about this surface-level issue of ‘not wanting to move to Wyoming’ or not wanting to leave behind my band in New York, and more about why I felt so unready to go — which really came from a feeling like I didn’t have a sense of control in my life,” Park said in press materials. “It boiled down to not wanting things in my life to change — and eventually approaching a form of acceptance.”
Orville Peck, Bronco; HEALTH, DISCO4 :: PART II; Lucius, Second Nature; Calexico, El Mirador; Son Lux, Everything Everywhere All At Once (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack); Whatever the Weather, Whatever the Weather; Camila Cabello, Familia; Girl Talk, Wiz Khalifa, Big K.R.I.T., Smoke DZA, Full Court Press; Pendant, Harp; Wet Tuna, Warping All By Yourself; The Regrettes, Further Joy; BANKS, SERPENTINA; Yung Lean, Stardust; Omar Apollo, IVORY; Vicky Farewell, Sweet Company; Annie Blackman, All of It.
Aethiopes, the latest project from the prolific New York rapper billy woods, is a frayed tapestry of cultural narratives. woods is a master storyteller at his apex, and he fills the album with vivid characters and haunted spaces. Born from a collaboration with producer Preservation, Aethiopes unearths a legacy of bygone samples, reckoning with colonial histories, personal histories, and the indivisibility of the two (not unlike Preservation’s own Eastern Medicine, Western Illness). It’s an ambitious work from woods: an artist who never repeats himself, always moving into new creative terrain.
woods’ lyricism is dense, packed with an arsenal of allusions from Camus novels to Earl Sweatshirt lines. His meter is unpredictable, and his focus is fluid. Throughout the album, woods shuffles between spaces and perspectives, making drastic temporal leaps. He moves across continents and shifts from the eyes of children to adults. Aethiopes builds around fragmented narratives: cryptic vignettes of histories, both personal and collective. On ‘Christine’, a track named after the eponymous automobile from Stephen King/John Carpenter, woods weaves together a tale of a dead man’s car – a “coffin running around” – and its surrounding community. Aethiopes’ vignettes paint portraits of people and the unstable spaces they inhabit: microcosms of larger narratives.
On Aethiopes, woods dials down his typical sardonicism, fusing cynicism with moments of sincerity. The album features some of his most emotive vocal performances. This isn’t to imply the album isn’t funny – it is (“shipwrecked Europeans swimming with the virus shot out like God’s semen,” he raps on ‘Wharves’.). Yet beneath woods’ trademark bleakness rests a forlorn earnestness, most visible in Aethiopes’ introspective moments. The gut-wrenching ‘No Hard Feelings” opens with a barrage of associative imagery. Then, halfway through, it moves into a forlorn narrative about a man who’s stood-up for a hotel rendez-vous. Alone, he smokes and channel surfs. woods’ attention turns to the cycle of scenes that flicker across the TV screen. The specifics of the album’s characters and their histories remains ambiguous, but the melancholia is undeniable.
Like some of woods’ other recent projects, Hiding Places (produced by Kenny Segal) and Haram (produced by The Alchemist), Aethiopes is a single-producer collaboration. The result is a both thematically and texturally cohesive project, strung together with seamless transitions. It’s a work of undeniable ambition, melting genre boundaries and thriving in the in-between spaces. ‘Harlaam’ (which woods co-produced) begins with a looped big band sample, bolstered by wailing brass. Then, halfway through, the song re-forms as a frenzy of disharmonious piano chaos, notes tripping over themselves. It’s arrhythmic, but this doesn’t stop woods and his feature Fatboi Sharif from rapping over it. Preservation’s sampling is unorthodox, plucking sounds seemingly outside the purview of modern hip-hop. His samples are artifacts: old sounds (e.g., jazz, dialogue snippets, baseball play-by-play) crackling with vinyl static. Preservation’s an archeologist, excavating lost sounds and breathing new life into their bodies. Yet his production goes beyond mere re-purposing. Integrating archaic sounds within hip-hop conventions positions the record outside of time. It’s a haunted project, deeply rooted in the past, yet beyond mere nostalgia.
Still, none of these subversions or out-of-the-box samples impede Preservation’s ability to make hard-hitting beats. In fact, it’s the opposite. Preservation finds new potentials in his samples. ‘Heavy Water’ loops a short piano sample, sparking a frantic energy through the constrained repetitiveness of the loop. Recurring flute samples imbue a delicate emotionality into the often bassy and noisey mixes. The harmonica bursts on ‘NYNEX’ expand the blistering drum loops into a blusier terrain, soaking the high-energy rhythm with a thick atmosphere. Most impressive is Preservation’s ability to craft immersive tracks with little-to-no percussion; ‘No Hard Feelings’ and ‘Remorseless’, two of the most emotional songs here, find woods spitting over drumless compositions. In these moments, Preservation offers a triumph of restraint.
There’s a steady progression of features across the album: some big names, some small, yet all solid verses. Nonetheless, Preservation’s beats sound most natural accompanied by woods’ voice, with his staccato flow and enigmatic lyricism. Aethiopes feels delicately crafted: words and sounds intricately laboured over, yet never to the point of rigidness. It’s a fluid work, floating between temporalities and between people. Over these last few years, woods has continuously proven himself as one of the most talented and original working rappers. Aethiopes – his boldest and most lyrical tango with history – just may be his masterpiece.
Latto appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last night to perform a medley of ‘Sunshine’ and ‘Big Energy’, two tracks off her latest album 777. The Atlanta rapper was joined by a full band as well as background singers and dancers for her set. Watch it below.
777, which arrived in March, features guest appearances from 21 Savage, Lil Wayne, Kodak Black, Childish Gambino, and more. It’s the follow-up to Latto’s 2020 debut album, Queen of da Souf.
Maggie Rogers has released her new song ‘That’s Where I Am’. It’s the lead single from the singer-songwriter’s upcoming album Surrender, which is set to arrive on July 29 via Capitol. The track comes paired with video directed by Rogers, Michael Scanlon and Warren Fu and featuring cameos by David Byrne, Quil Lemons, and The Walkmen’s Hamilton Leithauser. Check it out below.
Maggie Rogers said in a statement about the song:
That’s Where I Am’ is a story I’d been carrying around for many years, the story of a love that had been with me and unfolding for a long time. A lot of the events that Surrender chronicles take place in New York City. In the stark solitude and distance of Covid, it was the backdrop for all my claustrophobic fantasies. The proximity and pleasure of just staring at strangers. The way a night could unfold. Events that interrupt your day instead of having to consciously and deliberately make each decision. I longed for someone to sweat on me. Spill their beer on my shoes. Be too tall for me to see at the concert. The city’s music and attitude was a big source of inspiration for the record. For all these reasons, there was only ever one place we could shoot the video. I’ve always said that New York is the city that winks back. It’s a main character. It’s a friend, a lover, an enemy sometimes. In many ways, the music video is about that New York love story. And on those filming days, it felt like the city was on our side. We got our first taste of true New York spring. That feral downtown explosion when suddenly everyone’s smoking on the sidewalks in short sleeves and drinking gin and tonics. The appearance of a few classic New York characters – David Byrne, The Walkmen’s Hamilton Leithauser, and photographer Quil Lemons – made the daydream feel complete.
Surrender was recorded in three locations: her parents’ garage, Electric Lady Studios in New York City, and Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios. Rogers co-produced the album with Kid Harpoon.
Pink Floyd have shared ‘Hey, Hey, Rise Up!’, their first original music in 28 years. The song, which is being released to air the relief effort in Ukraine, features guitarist David Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason joined by longtime Pink Floyd bass player Guy Pratt and Nitin Sawhney on keyboards. It includes a sample of Andriy Khlyvnyuk, singer for the Ukrainian band BoomBox, singing the protest song ‘Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow’ outside St. Sofia Cathedral in Kyiv. The title of the Pink Floyd track is taken from the final line of the song, which translates in English as “Hey, hey, rise up and rejoice!” Listen to it below.
“We, like so many, have been feeling the fury and the frustration of this vile act of an independent, peaceful democratic country being invaded and having its people murdered by one of the world’s major powers,” Gilmour said in a statement. He continued:
In 2015, I played a show at Koko in London in support of the Belarus Free Theatre, whose members have been imprisoned. Pussy Riot and the Ukrainian band, Boombox, were also on the bill. They were supposed to do their own set, but their singer Andriy had visa problems, so the rest of the band backed me for my set – we played Wish You Were Here for Andriy that night.
Recently I read that Andriy had left his American tour with Boombox, had gone back to Ukraine, and joined up with the Territorial Defense. Then I saw this incredible video on Instagram, where he stands in a square in Kyiv with this beautiful gold-domed church and sings in the silence of a city with no traffic or background noise because of the war. It was a powerful moment that made me want to put it to music.
All proceeds from ‘Hey, Hey Rise Up!’ will go to Ukraine Humanitarian Relief.
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