Gotopo, a new promising in the world of music, has released her debut single Malembe, just a few days ago. The song is driven by the majestic-like vocals of Gotopo and backed by a futuristic beat that thrives on intense and mysterious energy.
Talking about the song Gotopo stated: “I re-interpreted an Afro-latin-indigenous song into a contemporary experience inspired by the spread of Afro-latin-indigenous peoples around the globe, and the impact Urban life and Culture has in our identities. I call Malembe’s beat ‘Ancestral Beat’.”
Tony Njoku, a London-based Avant-Pop auteur, released a music video for his latest song 100% 4 Beauty, today.
The song follows his critically-acclaimed album YOUR PSYCHE’S RAINBOW PANORAMA and will feature on Njoku’s upcoming EP Justine which will also feature songs such as </3, BSD YRSLF, and JUSTINE.
Writing about the song Njoku stated: “This is a song about my dedication to self-examination and self-discovery. Unearthing some of my flaws and inner turmoil (lack of courage, low self esteem, etc), and discovering what gets me going despite that turmoil. An ode to beauty, to finding your ‘why’. I suppose you could call this a love song directed at the self. A ‘self love song’.
INNA, a household name in the world of Pop music, has released her song Sober, just yesterday. The piece carries on after the release of Not My Baby and Bebe.
INNA is widely known for songs such as Cola Song, Sun is Up and More Than Friends — to name a few. As a Romanian artist, she is considered one of the biggest stars to come out of the country.
Sober as a song has a solid structure, catchy euphonious vocals and a modern dance-driven beat that we have come to hear in commercial music in recent years.
26-year-old singer-songwriter Angelica Garcia explores the hybridity of identity like few others – it’s no coincidence Barack Obama included her song ‘Jícama’ as one of his favourites of 2019. With Mexican and Salvadoran roots, Garcia grew up in the Latinx community of southern California, before recently moving to Richmond, VA, where she has built a new life. Following 2016’s bluesy Medicine for Birds, her new album Cha Cha Lifeis a richly vibrant and dynamic sophomore effort that’s filled to the brim with colourful vignettes from her upbringing, a celebration of multiculturalism that also showcases her diverse range of musical influences. Spanning both generations and genres, Cha Cha Life draws equally from traditional Mexican culture, modern pop, classic rock, and 90s indie. On the one hand, there’s a rendition of the traditional Mexican folk song, ‘La Lorna’, featuring Garcia’s mother, a Latin pop and mariachi singer, as well a cover of Jose Alfredo Jimenez’s ‘La Enorme Distancia’, sung by her grandmother. On the other, there are cuts like the riot grrrl-inspired ‘It Don’t Hinder Me’, or ‘Guadalupe’, which is most reminiscent of of M.I.A. Amidst all this genre-mixing, Garcia’s belting voice cuts through, displaying more than enough personality and charisma to make you wanna keep coming back to it. Cha Cha Life doesn’t just entertain – it resonates.
We caught up with Angelica Garcia for this edition of our Artist Spotlight series, where we showcase up-and-coming artists and give them a chance to talk a bit about their music.
You grew up in a musical household – are there any strong musical memories you have from your childhood?
I mainly remember guitar being constantly being pulled out at parties. My uncle would play guitar & my mom and aunt would sing with him. I remember learning to sing harmony by singing around whatever my mom was singing.
What are some of your influences, and how have they evolved over time?
Through the years I’ve been inspired by artists ranging fromThe White Stripes, Timbaland, Chavela Vargas, M.I.A, Donna Summer, Bryan Ferry, and Hiatus Kaiyote. I think influence is always evolving. Sometimes I’m inspired by an artist’s tones, sometimes it’s lyrics, performance, rhythm or concept. Anything goes. I love the surprise of finding something new.
Your latest album features a duet with your mother and a snippet of your grandmother singing – how did you decide to incorporate the theme of family into the sound of the album?
It just kind of happened.So much of the album is about my family and how much I missed the connection with them. I was writing about my childhood home in LA. I was writing about how being across the country was causing me to struggle with my identity. That context of having my family represented in the audio and visuals felt essential. In many ways, it was their voices or the memories of them that kept me going whenever I felt down.
Multiculturalism also plays an important part on the album. What are some of the ideas you wanted to get across?
People should feel comfortable connecting with all sides of their identity. In the US, there are so many people who identify as American, but still have a sacred relationship with their family culture—whatever country that may be from. Many people are dichotomous in their identity & that can often feel like coming from opposing worlds. I often caught myself feeling out of place and I wanted to write about it.
How was the writing and recording process like?
It was very sporadic.Many of these songs were pulled together in spare studio moments or impulsive hang outs.I would go home and write in my bedroom or on napkins at the restaurant. Some songs were first voice memos, others were first recorded in a friend’s studio, others were GarageBand demos. I like to think of the album as a collage of all these moments.
How has the response to the album been?
I’m so excited every day I see new people listening to it for the first time. People have been saying it’s hard to call the album one thing. I love that everyone has a different favorite song. I hope Cha Cha Palace finds more people as a whole body of work.
What’s next for you?
I’m writing and writing and I can’t wait for the next journey. Maybe a new album will be here sooner than I think.
The Murder Capital, a post-bunk quintet, have released their new three-song EP Live from BBC Maida Vale, today. The EP features their full March live session for Annie Mac at BBC Radio 1.
Talking about the EP, the band stated: “When Annie asked us to do a live session at Maida Vale, covering FKA Twigs was an easy decision. “Cellophane” especially encapsulates such a poignant landmark of heartbreak, and its innately exposed nature further allowed us to really connect with it.
The process itself was exciting for us, as we came to reshape its original mould, and impart our own sound and emotion onto the sentiment of inadequacy that she embodies so selflessly on the track.”
Electronic artist BABii has shared the music video for her single ‘Beast’. Made entirely in her bedroom while in quarantine, the video features BABii alongside shots of celestial imagery as it appears she is controlling the weather.
In a statement, BABii explained the inspiration behind the video:
“Somehow this whole EP has become all about my childhood and this video which I made entirely by myself in my bedroom ended up being based on a lie that I told when I was in primary school. I didn’t have a Mum growing up so I used to tell everyone that my mum was Mother Nature, that’s why my name was Daisy and I could control the weather, and that I would go to secret weather meetings in an abandoned bread factory. Totally unbelievable, I know. Anyways one sunny day in year 3, loads of kids started trying to make me prove it, and knowing that it wasn’t true, I closed my eyes and tighten my fists, and to my surprise the sky darkened and the heaviest rain poured from the sky. I felt like a 7 year old god.”
‘Beast’ is taken from BABii’s latest EP, iii. The song was produced by Kai Whiston, her collaborator in the GLOO collective also featuring Iglooghost. According to BABii, the song is about “being far away from someone but still feeling emotionally close to them, and realising the opposite could be much worse, being in close proximity to someone but emotionally feeling distant from them.”
Nyah Grace, a rising star in the world of music, has released her latest single Sooner or Later, not long ago. The song carries on the streak of ear-pleasing songs that showcase the wonderful voice of Nyah Grace that we have come to adore. If you’re looking for something refreshing, this one will be for you.
Jarreau Vandal Nothing Nice
Another brilliant addition to our Sound Selection is by the exciting Dutch producer Jarreau Vandal who released his latest single Nothing Nice featuring Kojey Radical and Gaidaa. The song features some mellifluous vocals that go hand in hand with the stunningly smooth production that carries them
Evie Irie Worst Enemy
Raw and exhilarating are just two ways to describe Worst Enemy by the superb Evie Irie. In this track, Irie delivers a beautiful range of thrilling vocals that get you hooked on within a few seconds. This one is for the playlists.
Style, colour or collar? Nope, none of them. An Oxford shirt is distinct not because of the collar or shape, but the particular basket weave style fabric that is unique and now attributed to the Oxford shirt; in fact, they were initially made in Scotland and not in Oxford, England.
Oxford shirts tend to be thicker and thus bring out a more casual look. They have become a household name in men’s fashion and have grown more popular through marketing strategies and the use of its name. Other than that, Oxford shirts tend to be perfect for a variety of looks due to its nature, thus making your life easier when choosing an outfit for the day.
Taschen has delivered some brilliant books on fashion, art, film and music — over the years. One of my favourite series of books they release are based on advertisements in different eras. Mid-Century Ads is a decade old book that presents some classic adverts from the 1950s and ’60s.
If you’re a fan of the TV series Mad Men, you’ll love this book.
It’s been four years since we last got an album of entirely new material from Car Seat Headrest. Normally, that wouldn’t be such a huge gap – but in roughly the same span of time, before signing to Matador, Will Toledo released no less than 12 albums on Bandcamp under the same moniker. But 2016’s Teens of Denial was a turning point for the project – an indie rock juggernaut that came to be scrutinized as much by critics who praised it for its dynamic yet catchy song structures as it was by fans who analysed it interminably in Reddit subforums.
Not that Toledo has been entirely absent during this time. In 2018, he released a re-recorded, polished version of his 2011 project Twin Fantasy, to more critical acclaim. He continued repurposing old material with 2019’s Commit Yourself Completely, this time through the live album format. But most intriguingly, he put out two albums with drummer Andrew Katz as 1 Trait Danger, a comedic EDM ‘side-project’ where Toledo could cheekily poke fun at the very same system that had crowned him indie rock royalty. Wit and humour had always been among Toledo’s strong suits as a songwriter, but for the first time, he could enjoy making something defiantly silly and balls-to-the-wall fun, with absolutely no regard as to how it would be received.
For Toledo, keeping the two projects separate didn’t seem like the more interesting option, and so Making a Door Less Open marks the grand introduction of his new persona, Trait, to the rest of the world. Inspired by the Bob Dylan mantra “if someone’s wearing a mask, he’s gonna tell you the truth”, this new character finds Toledo wearing a gas mask (talk about bad timing), partly because it simply makes him feel more comfortable during live performances, but perhaps also as a way of separating the himself from his art. With all the fame and scrutiny that came with the intensely personal Teens of Denial, you can’t exactly blame him.
Musically, too, the sounds Toledo has been experimenting with on his side-project find their way on Making a Door Less Open. Not too dissimilar in style from fellow mask-wearing, genre-mixing alternative duo Twenty One Pilots, Car Seat Headrest’s latest presents itself as the classic ‘indie rock band experimenting with electronic production’ album, from the droning synths that open ‘Weightlifters’ to straight-up EDM jams like ‘Deadlines (Thoughtful)’. But MADLO is harder to figure out, as it sounds like it’s trying to be as much of an appeal to the masses as it is an off-kilter experiment – on one end, there’s ‘Deadlines (Hostile)’, which might as well be a cover of a Killers song, and on the other, there’s the utterly chaotic ‘Hymn (Remix)’ (one of three version spread across the album’s different formats). Neither of them are exactly bad, by any means, but it feels like Toledo’s not willing to commit to either direction fully.
Which, of course, is kind of the point. Rather than trying to open a new door, Toledo seems to be frustratingly caught in between ones he’s already opened, different sides of him that are at odds with each other. On the one hand, there’s Trait, who looks at the stupidity of the world and screams about how it “makes him wanna puke” (‘Hollywood’) and sums up the futility of the creative process by pointing out that “You are not unique/ Everything you’ve done has been done and will be done again” (1 Trait Danger’s ‘Unique’). And then there’s that other side, the one that still yearns for meaning: “Please let this matter,” he sings out on ‘Famous’.
If it weren’t for the upbeat electronic beat that guides the song, ‘Famous’ wouldn’t feel out of place on any other Car Seat Headrest record. In fact, with the exception of tracks like ‘Hollywood’, which sounds like the long-lost cousin to My Chemical Romance’s ‘Teenagers’, the majority of the album doesn’t stray that far from Toledo’s usual songwriting tropes – take the acoustic cut ‘What’s With You Lately’, for example, or the soaring ‘Life Worth Missing’. Neither does Trait’s snarkiness overshadow the kind of soul-searching Toledo’s become known for. Of the songs that do tread new sonic ground for the band, though, ‘Can’t Cool Me Down’ is the most memorable one – Toledo’s uneasy hum cooing brilliantly against slowly-unfolding, Radiohead-esque electronics.
It’s not that other experiments here aren’t successful, but there’s a kind of messiness to the album as a whole that makes it hard to make sense of. Which, again, for an album that’s about feeling lost, is probably intentional – the questions Toledo poses remain largely unresolved, so it only makes sense for the songs to lack resolution, too. On the 7-minute epic ‘There Must Be More than Blood’, he sings: “There must be more than blood/ That holds us together/ There must be more than wind/ That takes us away/ There must be more than tears/ When they pull back the curtain/ There must be more than fear.” Unable to find an answer, he closes the song by repeating the lines “There must be more, there must be more, there must be.”
Toledo knows that there are no answers, but a part of him is still unable to fully let go and just have fun with it. “I am not that shallow,” he declares on ‘Deadlines (Thoughtful)’, “I am not that deep.” As intriguing as that conflict is, one does wish that it was explored in a bit more depth here – as it is, the album can sometimes feel aimlessly disorienting in its ambivalence. But while it doesn’t reach the same soaring heights as Teens of Denial – something Toledo has pointedly avoided trying – there are still plenty of worthwhile moments on MADLO, even if the subtext is sometimes more interesting than the album itself.
