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London's own multidisciplinary artist Rarelyalways kicks off 2023 with the announcement of his forthcoming debut album WORK due March 10th. Along with the album announcement, Rarelyalways shares the first taste of the project with the single "LET'S." Hypnotic, cavernous rhythms float beneath distinct vocals on the track, underscoring Rarleyalways as the self described "shapeshifter." The lead single arrives with visuals directed by MadeInEden portraying Rarelyalways lounging in a bed with Precious Joie on a rooftop in London as they peek out at each other beneath eye masks and playfully start a pillow fight. Additionally, Rarelyalways shares visuals to the b-side, "Voice note 0142," also directed by MadeInEden, which sonically showcases the more jazzy side of Rarelyalways' roots as a jazz bassist.
WORK's announcement follows Rarelyalways' collaborative Manic EP with Hanni El Khatib, featuring the stand out single "Lamenting" as well as his 2020 EP Baby Buffalo. His debut EP was described by The FADER as, “a concise exhibition of his minimalist swagger," with Pitchfork adding, "though Rarelyalways comes out of the London jazz scene, his music has its own distinct flavor."
Rarelyalways learned from a young age that music had functions beyond entertainment. Born in London to a West African family, he was raised by his single father, a drummer who played mainly gospel tunes during hours-long services and would bring Rarely along for afternoons in practice spaces where the young musician learned the power of playing for playing's sake. Rarelyalways went on to attend The BRIT School and eventually entered the South London gig circuit where he would play trip hop and heavy rock in the orbit of artists like King Krule, Henry Wu and the Tomorrow's Warriors jazz collective. With his music often taking on a dark, mysterious tone, Rarely is able to roam freely outside the prescribed structures of hip hop, jazz or anything else, by creating a conversational abstract style that can mold according to a song's message.
“I think she’s gonna blow your mind” BBC’s Maryanne Hobbs
"A hypnotic beat and swelling synth pads." FADER
“No sound or style is off limits for Maria Chiara Argirò” UNCUT
"drifts between club culture's left-field aspects and jazz improvisation" - CLASH
“The Italian composer conjures mysterious, aquatic undulations” The Guardian
"There’s no escaping the gorgeous spell Argirò casts." Pitchfork
Following the release of her critically acclaimed album Forest City, Maria Chiara Argirò recently announced a remix package of some of the album's highlights. For the second installment, Terracassette deconstruct the ethereal album standout ‘Greenarp,’ building it back up into a club-ready IDM burner. This follows ‘Clouds’ which was recently remixed by Atlanta's electronic funk wizard Byron the Aquarius. The remix gained spins on BBC 6 Music and KCRW.
After quietly weaving her way around the UK jazz, classical and electronic worlds Maria has cemented herself as a key player in the capital’s multi-national jazz scene. Maria has released a few solo and collaborative records (Flow was The Guardian’s jazz album of the month and nominated as album of the year in the Jazz Revelations Awards), but on her latest album Forest City it feels like the turning of a page as she liberates herself from the structures of jazz.
On Forest City, Maria found a glistening thread between these movements: where jazz meets Kelly Lee Owens, Jon Hopkins and Radiohead. It’s a concept record, about the “duality of nature and city”, where organic sounds and textures seem to flow above the urban sprawl.
Hiroshima-born, Montreal-based singer-songwriter Jonah Yano shares his new single and video "portrait of a dog," the title track of his forthcoming sophomore album entirely co-produced with BADBADNOTGOOD, out January 27th. The new offering arrives on the heels of Yano's stint supporting Clairo for the last leg of her North American and the entirety of her European tour dates, which wrapped up last month. He also closed the live run with a headline show of his own at Servant Jazz Quarters in London. "portrait of a dog" is a sweeping arrangement that finds Jonah gliding over keys and guitar with heartfelt vocals before the song swells into a winding guitar solo, and is accompanied by a video co-directed by Erin O'Connor, Matisse A-M and Kostadin Kolev.
Speaking on the continued theme of the visuals he's released so far, Yano says "'portrait of a dog' is a video that, like the most recent video for the song ‘always’, is made up of uninterrupted, continuous, and static shots. The thinking behind the monotonous visual information in these new videos comes from a disinterest in the ever-increasing over-saturation and pace of digital media surrounding musicians that is furthering the divide between musicians-as-artists and musicians-as-commodity."
The collaborators, Erin O’Connor, Matisse A-M, and Kostadin Kolev ('portrait of a dog'), and Nik Arthur and David May ('always'), were the directors and producers of these videos because I feel they understand why it might be interesting (and surprisingly challenging) to try and make a music video that did not grab and attempt to retain the attention of a viewer through brightly colored sets and a large amount of cutting back and forth between an array of visually stimulating shots. In trying to subtract most of the elements that exist in the average music video we found it crucial that the idea for the video at its core had to be strong enough to stand on its own for 5 straight minutes – to get the idea across without making a pointless video."
"portrait of a dog includes the previously-released singles "leslianne," "always," and "the speed of sound!," which is at the confluence of his love of folk and jazz music.
It’s a focused departure from Yano’s previous recordings – establishing a clear sonic identity throughout the album’s 12 songs to weave together two complementary narrative threads of a family archive and exploration of the family dynamics in the Japanese-Canadian household he grew up in, and a deeply personal recollection of a fading relationship. Beyond the co-production of BADBADNOTGOOD, "portrait of a dog" features additional guest work from Slauson Malone, Sea Oleena, with string arrangements by Eliza Niemi, Leland Whitty, and Yano himself. Yano's forthcoming second album follows his cover of Jessica Pratt’s "This Time Around" and his highly acclaimed 2020 debut LP souvenir, which he spoke about with Lulu Garcia-Navarro on NPR's Weekend Edition.
Hiroshima-born, Montreal-based singer-songwriter Jonah Yano shares his new single "leslianne." The track is his second offering from his forthcoming sophomore album Portrait of a Dog, which is entirely produced alongside BADBADNOTGOOD, out January 27th via Innovative Leisure. From the very start of its rapid run time of just under two minutes, "leslianne" lays out a spacious, intricate tapestry of keys and strings for Jonah's soft story of a girl finding her way home.
For the past month, Yano has been supporting Clairo for the last leg of her North American and the entirety of her European tour dates. Yano has two more dates opening for Clairo in London before he closes the live run with a headline show of his own at Servant Jazz Quarters in London this Wednesday.
portrait of a dog includes the previously-released singles "always", which arrived with a video shot on location in Five Islands, Nova Scotia, and "the speed of sound!," which is at the confluence of his love of folk and jazz music. The 12-track project is an exploration of themes present throughout most of Yano’s catalog – identity as a part of the Japanese-Canadian diaspora, contemplation of different family dynamics, and the intricacies of interpersonal relationships.
It’s a focused departure from Yano’s previous recordings – establishing a clear sonic identity throughout the album’s 12 songs to weave together two complementary narrative threads of a family homage and archive, and a deeply personal recollection of a fading relationship. Beyond the co-production of BADBADNOTGOOD, portrait of a dog features additional guest work from Slauson Malone, Sea Oleena, with string arrangements by Eliza Niemi, Leland Whitty, and Yano himself.
“Detroit experimentalist and texture king Jimmy Edgar is the kind of producer that opens a doorway in your mind” - BILLBOARD
“evokes a thrilling future of club music without borders” - PITCHFORK
“One of electronic music's most diverse producers” – MIXMAG
Announced alongside not one, but two blistering new tracks “SLIP N SLIDE” and “STATIC (FT BANSHEE)”, Jimmy Edgar’s upcoming album LIQUIDS HEAVEN (out on November 11) is a psychedelic canvas of future R&B, euphoric bass, mutant tear-the-club-up rap, foundation-splintering noise, and gossamer soul. On a surface level, it is a starburst of avant-garde fusion, collecting a diverse cast of eccentric geniuses and re-configuring them into an anthology of nü musique concrete. But as with all his work, there is a deeper and subversive intent. Edgar unleashes two mind-melting, genre-bending tracks into the ether, blending funky electronic motifs, futuristic soul, and techno to sublime effect.
Signed to Warp Records as a teenage electronic music prodigy, Edgar has recorded for the world’s most respected imprints (Warp, K7, Hotflush and his own New Reality Now). Raised in Detroit, with stints in Berlin, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and New York, his list of close collaborators includes Hudson Mohawke, Danny Brown, SOPHIE, DAWN, Mykki Blanco, Vince Staples, and Machinedrum (as one half of their duo J-E-T-S). LIQUIDS HEAVEN’s early gestation spawned from Edgar’s explorations of “material” in the digital world, and is part of his broader ambition to change belief and intention in the digital realm – a pseudo-invisible way to summon novel realities by infusing his ultra-sleek aesthetic into transformative conceptual art. LIQUIDS HEAVEN is the ultimate culmination of the idea of “phases of matter.”
LIQUIDS HEAVEN is not merely a technicolor dream of ethereal abstractions, however. It bangs as hard as anything to ever bump from a subwoofer. But for all the high energy propulsion, there is a counter-balance of melancholic beauty, and in a career of fascinating left-turns, it would be more surprising if LIQUIDS HEAVEN wasn’t surprising. The genius of it is that for all its cerebral intent, it remains replete with raw and visceral emotion. Out of sadness comes courage. Water, liquid, and light evaporate, become transparent, disappear peacefully. Nothing less than the sound and look of liquid are transmuted into powerful new sculptures – which are best experienced at a high volume on the far side of the sky.
Read more at CLASH, LINE OF BEST FIT & XLR8R.