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Mdou Moctar Announce New Album ‘Funeral for Justice’, Share New Single

Mdou Moctar have announced a new album called Funeral for Justice. The follow-up to the Nigerien quartet’s 2019 breakout Afrique Victime arrives May 3 via Matador. Check out a video for the lead single and title track below, and scroll down for the album cover, tracklist, and the band’s upcoming tour dates.

“This album is really different for me,” Moctar, the band’s singer, namesake, and guitarist, said in a press release. “Now the problems of terrorist violence are more serious in Africa. When the US and Europe came here, they said they’re going to help us, but what we see is really different. They never help us to find a solution.”

“Mdou Moctar has been a strong anti-colonial band ever since I’ve been a part of it,” commented producer and bassist Mikey Coltun, who has been playing with Moctar since 2017. “France came in, fucked up the country, then said ‘you’re free.’ And they’re not.”

Ilana was the gateway album, saying that this is a raw rock band. And Afrique Victime was a summation of that vision,” added Coltun, who recorded the new LP over five days in a mostly unfurnished house in upstate New York. “With Funeral for Justice, I really wanted this to shine with the political message because of everything that’s going on. As the band got tighter and heavier live, it made sense to capture this urgency and this aggression – it wasn’t a forced thing, it was very natural.”

In 2022, Moctar released the Niger EPs Vol. 1 & 2.

Funeral for Justice Cover Artwork:

Funeral for Justice Tracklist:

1. Funeral For Justice
2. Imouhar
3. Takoba
4. Sousoume
5. Imagerhan
6. Tchinta
7. Djallo #1
8. Oh France
9. Modern Slaves

Mdou Moctar 2024 Tour Dates:

Apr 14 – Indio, CA – Coachella Music and Arts Festival
Apr 21 – Indio, CA – Coachella Music and Arts Festival
Jun 5 – Atlantic City, NJ – Anchor Rock Club
Jun 6 – Harrisburg, PA – The Abbey Bar at ABC
Jun 7 – Richmond, VA – Cheers Brown’s Island
Jun 8 – Saxapahaw, NC – Haw River Ballroom
Jun 9 – Asheville, NC – The Orange Peel
Jun 11 – Charleston, SC – Pour House
Jun 12 – Birmingham, AL – Saturn
Jun 13 – Atlanta, GA – Terminal West
Jun 14 – Manchester, TN – Bonnaroo
Jun 15 – Indianapolis, IN – The Hi-Fi
Jun 18 – Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall
Jun 19 – Detroit, MI – Magic Bag
Jun 20 – Cleveland, OH – Beachland Ballroom
Jun 21 – Buffalo, NY – Asbury Hall
Jun 22 – Greenfield, MA – Green River Music Festival
Jun 23 – Boston, MA – Paradise Rock Club
Jun 26 – Brooklyn, NY – Warsaw
Jun 27 – Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
Jun 28 – Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer

Cigarettes After Sex Announce New Album, Share New Single ‘Tejano Blue’

Cigarettes After Sex have announced a new album, X’s, which will be out July 12 on Partisan. Today’s announcement comes with the release of the new song ‘Tejano Blue’, which you can hear below.

“The record feels brutal,” bandleader Greg Gonzalez said in a press release. “I could sit and talk about this loss to someone, but that wouldn’t scratch the surface. I have to really write about it, sing about it, have the music, and then I can start to analyse and learn from it. Or just relive it—in a good way. I don’t have that Eternal Sunshine-thing of wanting to forget.”

Commenting on the first single, Gonzalez added:

I grew up in El Paso & Tejano music is huge there. You could go to a lot of the bars in the city and hear artists like Selena, Los Ángeles Azules & La Mafia playing over the speakers. It was in the atmosphere around me back then, but I always rejected it and gravitated towards anything else I was attracted to really.”

Years later when I was living in New York City I finally started listening to Selena’s ‘Como La Flor’ at the same time that I was also listening to a lot of Cocteau Twins. I had the idea then to try to combine both of their sounds somehow, which felt a bit strange, but also felt like it was coming from a genuine place of rediscovering & finally connecting with the music that I heard around me in my youth.

The band have also announced a world tour in support of the album, including dates at New York’s Madison Square Garden and London’s O2 Arena.

X’s Cover Artwork:

X’s Tracklist:

1. X’s
2. Tejano Blue
3. Silver Sable
4. Hideaway
5. Holding you, Holding me
6. Dark Vacay
7. Baby Blue Movie
8. Hot
9. Dreams From Bunker Hill
10. Ambien Slide

Tara Jane O’Neil Announces New Album, Unveils New Song ‘Curling’

Tara Jane O’Neil has returned with news of her first album in seven years. The follow-up to her 2017 self-titled effort is titled The Cool Cloud of Okayness, and it’s out April 26 on Orindal Records. Check out the lead single ‘Curling’ below’, along with the cover artwork and tracklist.

Recorded at O’Neil’s home studio in Upper Ojai, California, the new LP features contributions from her partner, dancer and choreographer Jmy James Kidd, drummer/percussionist Sheridan Riley of Alvvays, multi-instrumentalist Walt McClements, and, on a couple of tracks, guitarist Meg Duffy of Hand Habits.

Speaking about the new song, O’Neil shared in a statement:

‘Curling’ began as a bass figure, discovered on one of many afternoons in a desert studio inside the first year of the pandemic. Jmy Kidd and I spent the time there keeping our public practices of dance and music going but in private chambers of improvised realities. Most of the music on The Cool Cloud Of Okayness started in this way and then found fuller shape with time, intention, and Sheridan Riley on drums and Walt McClements on his effected accordion. Like mantra, propulsion, persuasion, ‘Curling’ is a repetitive drone piece, rendered as a lively jam.

Lyrically this became a portrait of a shapeshifter- transforming, transfiguring, evolving and surviving. With an eye toward the queer kids coming up in my hometown during this era of legislative oppression against inclusion, expression, and safety.

To quote another song from the record, ‘joy is a form of fight, We bright’

One step more, forward.

The Cool Cloud of Okayness Cover Artwork:

The Cool Cloud of Okayness Tracklist:

1. Cool Cloud of Okayness
2. Seeing Glass
3. Two Stones
4. We Bright
5. A Dash
6. Glass Island
7. Curling 05:32
8. Fresh End
9. Kaichan Kitchen

Chastity Belt Release New Song ‘Chemtrails’

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Chastity Belt have put out a new single, ‘Chemtrails’, from their forthcoming album Live Laugh Love. The track comes with an accompanying video directed by Ertuğrul Yaka, which you can watch below.

“‘Chemtrails” started off as a jam when we were rehearsing for an upcoming tour,” the band’s Julia Shapiro explained in a statement. “I started playing that initial lead guitar part without thinking, and the rest came together pretty naturally after that. Gretchen’s drums along with Annie’s bass really drive the song – the drums remind me a bit of Protomartyr (love those boys!), and Lydia’s lead guitar line in the chorus is very rock n roll. The lyrics are about not being able to let go of things and retracing memories in your head. I reached out to Ertuğrul Yaka about animating something to the song because his work is often pretty dark and introspective, and he came up with a video that really fits the vibe.”

Live Laugh Love comes out March 29 via Suicide Squeeze Records. In addition to ‘Chemtrails’, it includes the early singles ‘I-90 Bridge’ and ‘Hollow’.

Shabaka Hutchings Announces Debut Solo Album Featuring André 3000, Moses Sumney, Floating Points, and More

Shabaka Hutchings has announced his debut solo LP under the mononym Shabaka. Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, the follow-up to 2022’s Afrikan Culture EP, is due for release on April 12 via Impulse!. It finds Hutchings focusing primarily on flutes and softer woodwinds, with contributions from André 3000, Esperanza Spalding, Moses Sumney, Brandee Younger, Floating Points, Laraaji, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Saul Williams, Elucid, and more. To accompany the announcement, Hutchings has shared a Phoebe Boswell-directed video for lead single ‘End of Innocence’, which you can check out below.

‘End of Innocence’, and the album more broadly, “really signifies a departure for me, a departure from the bands that I’ve become known for playing in, and the arrival of the flutes in general,” Hutchkings explained. “I bring a lot of flutes to the album and explore different kind of sonic terrains, although for this track in particular, it’s not actually the flute, it’s the clarinet. It’s my first instrument, the instrument that I consider to be my primary instrument, so it’s really going back to what I feel most comfortable with.”

Opening up about the collaborative process behind the LP, Hutchings shared: “I invited a bunch of musicians I’ve met and admired over the past few years of touring throughout the United States to collaborate and everyone said yes, which I constantly find breathtaking,” he disclosed. The musicians gathered at Rudy Van Gelder’s historic studios, which “informed the sound of so many seminal jazz albums that have shaped my musical aptitude. We played with no headphones or separation in the room so we could capture the atmosphere of simply playing together in the space without a technological intermediary.”

Hutchings added: “Around the release of the Shabaka and the Ancestors album We Are Sent Here by History, I coined the term ‘sonic poems’ to express how I’m intending the listener to relate to the words associated with the sounds contained on the disc. Each title on this disc was extracted from a longer poem written specifically for the album which only achieved its full meaning in the presence of the music.”

Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace Cover Artwork:

Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace Tracklist:

1. End of Innocence
2. As the Planets and the Stars Collapse
3. Insecurities
4. Managing My Breath, What Fear Had Become
5. The Wounded Need to Be Replenished
6. Body to Inhabit
7. I’ll Do Whatever You Want
8. Living
9. Breathing
10. Kiss Me Before I Forget
11. Song of the Motherland

Keeley Forsyth Announces New Album ‘The Hollow’, Shares New Single

Keeley Forsyth has announced her third album and debut for FatCat’s 130701 imprint, The Hollow. It’s out on 10 May. To mark the announcement, Fosyth has shared a video for the lead single ‘Horse’, which you can check out below.

‘Horse’ was inspired by Bela Tarr’s final film, The Turin Horse, and Forsyth reached out to its composer Mihály Vig to ask for permission to “reimagine” his soundtrack score. “With this track, I roamed, capturing vocals in different spaces, forging a connection as I sang,” Forsyth explained in a statement. “I imagined battling against an invisible force, facing down challenges, pressing on, determined to breathe in this. I chose to refuse to be shackled by the chains of language here, surrendering instead to the primal dance of my body’s urges. My mouth moves in sync with the shallow breaths of my gut, and impulse guiding my every wordless utterance.”

The Hollow, which follows 2022’s Limbs, features guest appearances from Colin Stetson and Matthew Bourne. It was produced by Keeley and Ross Downes.

“We wanted to make something slightly more expansive, continuing to reference what we love from various genres without ever belong-ing to one,” Forsyth said of the record. “It’s with this ethos that we recognise aspects of sacred music, minimalist post-classical, dark ambient, film and theatre soundtracks. Forsyth layered her vocals into chamber choirs, applied pitch shifts and other digital processing, and speaks directly with clear articulate intention one moment to mumbled numb utterances in the next.”

The Hollow Cover Artwork:

The Hollow Tracklist:

1. Answer
2. The Hollow
3. Come And See
4. Eve
5. Turning [feat. Colin Stetson]
6. A Shift
7. Slush
8. Drag Me Down
9. Do I Breathe
10. In The Corner
11. Horse
12. Creature [feat. Matthew Bourne]

Kiran Leonard Announces New Album ‘Real Home’, Shares New Song

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Kiran Leonard has announced a new album titled Real Home, sharing the song ‘My Love, Let’s Take the Stage Tonight’ along with the news. The LP is out April 17 via the London-based artist’s new label home, Memorials of Distinction. Check out the new song and find the album cover and tracklist below.

Leonard offered this context on the song:

My imitation of the great Hank Williams, in spirit if not in substance…This is one of the best efforts on Real Home at a song-as-object. Looking at it now I realise I was trying to write a song that made itself known as a song to the listener, and I wonder whether that’s crucial if you want a song to transcend its context. And that this is either accomplished through a total openness – by being inviting, by laying the tricks of the song out plain to see, as Williams and his many ghostwriters did so well – or by adopting a knowing aloofness, positioning oneself against the listener but letting it be known that that’s what it’s doing. In this song I try both, but mostly the former: as in, I wanted to write a song where every line follows on from the next.

Speaking about the album, he added: “The theme of the home obviously recurs throughout the record; the album was mostly recorded in domestic spaces with friends, and the name of the album is Real Home. I like the qualifier ‘real’, like you’re getting past the cloak of the word and towards the thing-itself…[also] nearly all the percussion in this record was recorded on items from my dad’s shed (jam jars, sandpaper, blocks of wood, etc). Real home record!”

Real Home Cover Artwork:

Real Home Tracklist:

1. Pass Between Houses
2. Theatre for Change
3. Real Home
4. Treat Me a Stranger
5. Utopia of Bog
6. Void Attentive
7. My Love, Let’s Take the Stage Tonight
8. The Kiss
9. He Had Always Led

Fred again.. Recruits Lil Yachty and Overmono for New Single ‘stayinit’

Fred again.. has joined forces with Lil Yachty and Overmono for his latest single, ‘stayinit’. The accompanying video captures the moment Yachty heard the song out of a sound system for the first time; “I’m pretty sure that before this he might have only heard it thru his phone lol,” the producer writes in the description, “And this tune is obviously builtttt for rooms and sound like this.” Check it out below.

‘stayinit’ is the latest in a series of collabroations from Fred again.., following December’s Baby Keem-assisted ‘leavemealone’, ‘ten’ with Jozzy, and ‘adore u’ featuring Obongjayar.

fanclubwallet Release New Song ‘Easy’

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fanclubwallet have dropped a new single from their upcoming EP Our Bodies Paint Traffic Lines, following January’s ‘Band Like That’. Check it out below.

“‘Easy’ is all about growing pains. I had been thinking about my younger self, who was so debilitatingly shy, and wondering what she’d think about me now playing music on a stage in front of so many people,” the band’s Hannah Judge reflected in a statement. “It kind of bounces back and forth between me and the perspective of my younger self; contemplating the differences and wondering how things have changed as I’ve grown up. I think a lot of people wonder how their younger self would feel about them now. I think the chorus guitar swells on this song sound like a rusty swing set dug up from the past.”

Our Bodies Paint Traffic Lines arrives March 29 via Cool Online.

Jane Weaver Unveils Video for New Song ‘Romantic Worlds’

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Jane Weaver has released a new song, ‘Romantic Worlds’, alongside an accompanying video. The song appears on the singer-songwriter’s upcoming album Love in Constant Spectacle, which was previously previewed by the title track and ‘Perfect Storm’. Check out the Nick Farrimond-directed video below.

“I wanted to write a really over the top love song, it’s kind of tongue in cheek and about romance and brief encounters with a wonky synth,” Weaver explained in a statement. “It’s based on a ‘real life’ date after meeting online, how this changes from generation to generation and how romance is perceived now.”

Farrimond added: “Growing up watching the 80s Dungeons and Dragons, I was endlessly frustrated by the number of times the group nearly escaped back to the ‘real world’, only to be denied by that stupid unicorn. This video presented an opportunity to finally let the characters make their getaway. The ‘realm’ was one of my first forays into the world of AI. I was really happy with how it interpreted the footage and threw up some weird and wonderful results.”