Canadian-based electronic musician Jacques Greene unveils “Believe,” his first new single/video of 2023, out todayviaLuckyMe. Wasting no time, “Believe” sets the pace immediately. With an urgent vocal refrain and a driving beat, “Believe” is one of Greene’s most direct tracks of his career thus far. The accompanying video, directed by Cameron Morse, harnesses the frenetic energy of a Jacques Greene set, with the underlying track displaying all the familiar JG hallmarks. “Believe” marks Greene’s first new solo music since the release of 2022’s Fantasy EP, and follows the success of Greene’s collaborative single with Bonobo, “Fold.” Of “Believe,” Greene adds: “Channeling the feeling of a year spent back in the real world. Fresh energy and bright colors. Fun for the sake of it.”
Greene has been making music “about the club” for over a decade. Over the course of multiple EPs, singles, and two full-length albums — 2017’s Feel Infinite and 2019’sDawn Chorus — his sound has developed into an emotional haze. In 2020, Greene made headlines for creating “Promise,” the first single released with associated NFT that staked the owner to music publishing, and the following year released ANTH01, a collection of unearthed tracks spanning the earliest years of his career alongside previously unreleased tracks. Outside of his own releases, Greene has explored his relationship with the club in a variety of contexts, from remixing Radiohead to producing for Katy B, Tinashe and touring with The xx.
Touted by Carlos Santana as “a work of supreme creativity”, Manhattan-based artist Nevaris has announced his forthcoming ‘Reverberations’ LP, to be released this spring via celebrated boutique label M.O.D. Reloaded.Ahead of that, they present the lead track‘Dub Sol’.
Created by Nevaris (percussion, keyboards) and bassist-producer Bill Laswell, the current artist lineup also includes DJ Logic, Will Bernard, Peter Apfelbaum, Lockatron and Matt Dickey.
A musician and visual artist, Nevaris is a percussionist, keyboardist, vocalist and composer, who is heavily influenced by Afro-Latin, dub, and funk music. Born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, he is of European and Mexican descent with multi-generational roots in both NYC and LA’s Echo Park neighborhood.
Prior to recording ‘Reverberations’, Nevaris recorded and performed with an evolving lineup of musicians under the name Loud Apartment, most notably Bernie Worrell of P-Funk and Talking Heads fame.
‘Reverberations’ is the third collaboration between Nevaris, Bill Laswell and this lineup of musicians (with the addition of Matt Dickey), here focusing more on the dub aspects of their sound. This instrumental recording combines dub, funk, afro-latin rhythms, turntablism and extended improvisation.
“This record builds on the momentum from ‘System Breakdown’and‘New Future’, which we released in 2020 and 2022 under the name Loud Apartment. There were dub aspects of those recordings, so Bill Laswell and I decided to create a recording entirely focused on that sound. It was a logical next step and came together in an organic way. We let the music go where it needed to go,” says Nevaris.
“It’s a dub based project, with breakbeat, funk, ambient, and afro-latin elements. It’s rhythm based music where the pocket is essential. Lockatron is a huge part of that, as, of course, is Bill Laswell, DJ Logic and everyone else involved. Peter Apfelbaum’s horn arrangements are also a core aspect. In my mind, it’s a cohesive piece of music that is best listened to as a whole rather than as individual songs. And Bill takes it where it needs to go with the production like no one else really can.”
In addition to his work as a musician, Nevaris is a visual and multimedia artist, who has worked on a vast array of creative projects across mediums. He also co-founded Nolej Records, Nolej Studios and the Uncomun Festival.
‘Dub Sol’ is out now, available from fine digital music platforms, including SpotifyandBandcamp. The full ‘Reverberations’ album will be released on May 25.
HOMAGE has been at the forefront of electronic music in Brooklyn since its inception in 2017. Originally starting as an event series, the party was a nod to their predecessors in New York, those who pioneered a thriving nightlife scene in dynamic and intimate locations. Jump six years and HOMAGE is on its own path, having released a diverse selection of records from Kettama to Aldonna. Now the label readies its twenty-first release with a relatively new name, Sydney-based producer Half Cut, who over the course of seven tracks explores euphoric house, coiling electro, and jacking acid; tied together by a remix from Panorama Bar regular & Potency Records boss Cromby.
Speaking on the EP, the labels co-founder Ryan Clover says:
Kain sent us a pack of demos before the pandemic and they were all fantastic. He’s one of a few artists that have sent us a cold email and gotten signed immediately. Kain is half Japanese/half Australian and is based in Sydney, and he’s started to cut his teeth in the local circuit. While he’s a relative newcomer to the scene, his tunes have already seen support from Craig Richards, Gene on Earth, Cromby, Youandewan, Perdu, ANOTR, and Who is Arcadia, and in 2022 he had his first song signed to a VA for Limousine Dream (Nug-Net), Gene on Earth’s highly regarded label.
Half Cut has recently shared the first single from the EP titled Floor Five – a certified dance-floor filler, that brings smiles, energy and the type of sweaty hugs only those who have fallen in love on a dance floor will know.
Today, Eddie Chacon presents his new single/video, “Sundown,” from his forthcoming record Sundown, out March 31st via Stones Throw. The “Sundown” video, which documents the process of recording the album, was shot at 64 Sound Studios in Northeast LA by Brandon Bloom. Appearing in the video is John Carroll Kirby — who produced, co-wrote, and played keys on Sundown — as well as Logan Hone (flute and saxophones), Elizabeth Lea (trombone), Will Logan (drums), and David Leach (percussion). Following a string of previously shared singles — “Holy Hell,” “Step By Step” and “Comes And Goes” — “Sundown” is a song about “being humbled by how little time we have on this earth.” Only now, Chacon says, at his age (59) does he have the life experience and quiet confidence to sing about such a subject.
As one half of the duo Charles & Eddie, whose hit single “Would I Lie To You” was a chart-topper heard around the world, Eddie was a bona fide pop star. He deserted the music business following the band’s stratospheric success. Meeting John Carroll Kirby in 2019 was the catalyst for Eddie’s return to music, and together they made 2020’s Pleasure, Joy and Happiness. The album was intended as a swan song, but eddie felt reinvigorated by its word-of-mouth success. He says, “Sundown is the follow-up I never thought I would get to make.”
This month, Eddie Chacon heads out to Australia and New Zealand, followed by a headline show with John Carroll Kirby at Los Angeles’ Lodge Room and a series of shows in the UK and Europe. Full dates are listed below.
EDDIE CHACON TOUR DATES Sat. Mar. 18 – Auckland, NZ @ Beacon Festival * Sat. Mar. 25 – Melbourne, AU @ Collingwood Yards * Wed. Mar. 29 – Melbourne, AU @ Music Room (DJ Set) Fri. Mar. 31 – Melbourne, AU @ The Night Cat (LP Launch) * Sat. Apr. 1 – Sydney, AU @ The Ace Hotel * Tue. Apr. 4 – Sydney, AU @ Phoenix Park * Fri. Apr. 7 – Bali, ID @ Potato Head Beach Club * Wed. Apr. 19 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room * Tue. May 16 – Brussels, BE @ Ancienne Belgique Wed. May 17 – London, UK @ KOKO Thu. May 18 – Manchester, UK @ Band on the Wall Sun. May 21 – Berlin, DE @ Frannz Thu. May 25 – Dublin, IE @ Sugar Club Sun. May 28 – London, UK @ Gala Festival *
Los Angeles / Bologna based trio, Nuovo Testamento, has taken over dance floors with their uniquely dark Italo disco-flavored pop hits in just a few years. Following the release of the coldwave cult hit Exposure EP back in 2019 (Avant! Records), their acclaimed full-length New Earth exploded onto the scene with its graceful 1980s-influenced club elements, contagious rhythms and a powerful punch of synth-pop. The release was widely considered across genres to be one of 2021’s best underground albums of the year.
Today they return with the release of their highly anticipated second LP, Love Lines, on which Nuovo Testamento continue to explore the light, the dark and exultant personal power in what will undoubtedly become an instant dance classic.
Love Lines is an album about proof of life and the joy of survival. Vibrant with Italo disco and Hi-NRG celebration, the record invokes a sense of motion in an often stagnant time and place. Inside the eight new tracks, rich synthesizers and driving percussion testify to the need for movement, connection and autonomy.
Produced by sound engineer Maurizio Baggio (Boy Harsher, The Soft Moon)with vocal recording by Riki, Love Lines is reminiscent of the work of Shep Pettibone, Chris Barbosa and serves as a reminder of the power of pop music.
Nuovo Testamento includes members of hardcore and dark punk royalty Tørsö, Horror Vacui, Crimson Scarlet and touring members of Sheer Mag. In May the trio hit the road on an extensive North American tour supporting Molchat Doma; see below for a full list of dates.
Love Lines is out today via Discoteca Italia – purchase here.
Nuovo Testamento Live Dates:
Mar 24: San Diego, CA – The Whistle Stop Mar 26: Ft Collins, CO – The Coast Mar 29: Milwaukee WI – X-Ray Arcade Mar 30: Chicago, IL – Riviera Theater ~ Mar 31: Detroit, MI – St Andrews Hall ~ Apr 01: Toronto, ON – Phoenix Concert Hall ~ Apr 02: Montreal, QC – M Telus ~ Apr 04: Boston, MA – Roadrunner ~ Apr 06: Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer ~ Apr 07: New York, NY – Terminal 5 ~ Apr 08: Washington, DC – 9:30 Club ~ Apr 12: Asheville, NC – The Orange Peel ~ Apr 13: Atlanta, GA – Variety Playhouse ~ Apr 14: Orlando, FL – Plaza Live ~ Apr 15: Saint Petersburg, FL – Jannus Live ~ Apr 16: Ft Lauderdale, FL – Culture Room ~ Apr 19: Louisville, KY – Old Forester’s Paristown Hall ~ Apr 20: Nashville, TN – Eastside Bowl ~ Apr 21: St Louis, MO – The Factory ~ Apr 22: Kansas City, MO – The Truman ~ Apr 23: Oklahoma City, OK – Tower Theatre ~ Apr 25: New Orleans, LA – House of Blues ~ Apr 26: Houston, TX @ Bayou Music Center ~ Apr 27: San Antonio, TX – The Aztec Theater ~ Apr 28: Austin, TX – Stubb’s Amphitheater ~ Apr 29: Dallas, TX – South Side Ballroom ~ May 01: El Paso, TX – Lowbrow Palace ~ May 02: Tucson, AZ – Rialto Theatre ~ May 04: Denver, CO – Ogden Theater ~ May 06: Salt Lake City, UT – The Depot ~ May 09: Boise, ID – Knitting Factory Concert House ~ May 11: Vancouver, BC – Harbour Event Centre ~ May 12: Seattle, WA – Showbox Sodo ~ May 13: Portland, OR – Crystal Ballroom ~ May 16: Santa Cruz, CA – Catalyst ~ May 17: San Francisco, CA – The Warfield ~ May 18: Los Angeles, CA – TBA ~ May 19: Phoenix, AZ – The Van Buren ~
~ w/ Molchat Doma
Keep your mind open.
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Hailing from Bangkok, Sarayu has brought us a cool slice of the Thailand house music scene (Yes, of course there is such a thing.) with his new EP, Intelligent Jump Rope Music.
Opening up with subtle synths that grow and grow until they become floor-filling grooves with thick bass lines on “The Bag,” the EP never lets up with dance beats designed to get you shaking in a sweaty club or a street festival. The snappy percussion of “E30 Track” will inspire pop-locking and / or kickboxing. The repetitive beats mix perfectly with the almost subliminal bass.
The title track, and a remix of it by Locked Groove, take up the second half / side of the EP. It seems to emerge from you speakers like a serpent being summoned by Buddhist monks to hunt for mice who tend to eat ancient scrolls. The percussion in the remix thumps harder and ups the glam.
It’s a sharp EP, and it looks like the trend of great house music releases continues from last year if Intelligent Jump Rope Music is any indication.
Miss Grit — the New York-based, Korean-American musician Margaret Sohn (they/she) — will release their debut album, Follow The Cyborg, February 24th via Mute. Leading into the release, Miss Grit has released a string of stunning singles, and today they reveal a new track, “Nothing’s Wrong.” There is a profound tenderness resonating throughout “Nothing’s Wrong.” A tone of lament seeps from Sohn’s vocals, as they sing “Nothing’s Wrong // And so I can’t feel, can’t hear, can’t figure out how to make things right // I’ll never know // Why I was built without a throat // So I can never stomach growth // Or see outside this world I know.” The song’s instrumentation is rich and immersive, with melancholy guitar and piano, ticking drums, and illustrious strings.
Across Follow the Cyborg, Miss Grit pursues the path of a non-human machine, as it moves from its helpless origin to awareness and liberation. Miss Grit’s impetus to conceive an album about the life of a cyborg stems from their own connection to this way of existing. As a mixed-race, non-binary artist, Sohn has always rejected the limits of identity thrust upon them by the outside world, in favor of embracing a more fluid and complex understanding of the self. In their exploration of the life of a cyborg, they subtly and overtly refer to films, including Her, Ex Machina, and Ghost in the Shell, as well as essays by Jia Tolentino (from Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion) and Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto.
At times gentle and sparse, at others volatile and explosive, Follow the Cyborg occupies a sonic world of electronic experimentation and stirring electric guitars. It was recorded mostly in solitude in Sohn’s home studio, with the exception of a few guest collaborators joining: Stella Mozgawa of Warpaint, Aron Kobayashi Ritch of Momma, and Pearla.
“Nothing’s Wrong” is the follow-up to the “clearly anthemic” (FADER)“Lain (Phone Clone),” the “beguiling and elastic” (Stereogum) “Like You,” and the title track. Following the release of Follow The Cyborg, Miss Grit will play a pair of album release shows in New York and Los Angeles. Following, she’ll head down to SXSW (more details to come). Tickets for the release shows are on sale now.
Berlin-based duo Das Beat, made up of Agor of Blue Hawaii & German actress Eddie Rabenberg, are today sharing their new single “Last Laugh“, which is out now via Arbutus Records. T
Speaking about the track, the band said “Who laughs last does not necessarily laugh the best. There’s always more to any situation than meets the eye and it’s hard to see it from any one perspective. The song plays with German sayings and inspires one to just let go and have fun.”
Blending sounds of New Wave, Dark Disco, Indie, & Dance, their sound is unified by the vocals of Eddie Rabenberger, sung and belted in both German and English. Amidst the spirited lyrics lies a strong dancey pulse, pinning down the duo’s dreamy atmospherics, guitars and percussion.
The duo is half-Canadian and half-German. Dj Kirby (Blue Hawaii), moved to Berlin from Montreal in 2018. Eddie is a theatre actor originally from a small town in southern Germany. Together they find an alluring symbiosis – like Giorgio Moroder meets Nico, or Gina X Performance finds The Prodigy.
Cabaret Mañana is an excellent collection of the space-age composer, maestro, bandleader, musician, and arranger, Juan Garcia Esquivel, who was so cool that he could just go by his last name like Karloff, Lugosi, Bowie, Kubrick, Hitchcock, and Morricone.
The compilation covers tracks from 1958 to 1967 and begins with “Mini Skirt,” which was only released in Mexico and Puerto Rico until this album was released in 1995. It’s a fun track about one of Esquivel’s favorite subjects, women, complete with wolf whistle’s and sexy piano riffs.
“Johnson Rag” blends big brass sections with singers singing “Zu-zu-zu” again and again. Esquivel was known as mixing traditional sounds with plenty of outsider stuff like nonsense lyrics just for the sound of them or putting Chinese bells in Latin music. His arrangement of Cole Porter‘s “Night and Day” sounds like it could be a Bond film theme at one point, and then bachelor pad music in the next. “El Cable” is so happy that it could probably banish rainclouds if you played it loud enough.
“Harlem Nocturne” also sounds like an action film theme, and Esquivel did write a lot of music for action TV shows (Miami Vice, The Six Million Dollar Man, and The A-Team among them). “Mucha Muchacha” is one of two tracks on the compilation, the other being “Estrellita,” that are from his Latin-Esque album. Esquivel was so committed to capturing stereo sound on that album that he divided his orchestra in half and had them play simultaneously in separate studios while he and another conductor worked together via closed-circuit television.
Yeah, that was the kind of work ethic he had.
“Time on My Hands” reminds me of some of Ennio Morricone‘s work with its ticking clock setting a constant beat while a slightly sorrowful trumpet plays in another room. “Malagueña” transports you to an exotic desert land on another planet. His take on “Sentimental Journey” is a blast and loaded with his trademarks of space-pop sound, flirting whistles, and those lovely ladies singing “zu-zu-zu.”
The percussion on “Limehouse Blues” is delightfully weird, especially when you mix it with Tiki bar guitar riffs and synths that sound like they’re drunk on margaritas. “April in Portugal” shows off Esquivel’s piano skills. “Question Mark (Que Vas a Hacer)” sounds like the opening theme of a 1960s European sex comedy. His version of “It Had to Be You” is bawdy and beautiful, suitable for night clubs and strip clubs.
“Yeyo” is snappy and a bit bratty (in a fun way). “Lullaby of Birdland” practically struts its sexy stuff down the boulevard on a hot summer day. “Flower Girl from Bordeaux” is full of bold trumpet work, jazz lounge piano, and exotic vocal sounds that create a luscious cocktail.
It’s a fun, lovely compilation from one of the best composers of the 1960s and should be heard by many.
What do you get when you mix lectures on Zen, the cosmos, the soul, the Tao, and the journey of the self with wicked bass and beats? If you’re lucky, you get something as cool as Cosmix by philosopher Ram Dass and Australian DJ Kriece.
The album has parts of Dass’ lectures under Kriece’s beats, and neither overwhelms the other. They perfectly blend to promote each other. “Mystic Poetry” has Dass talk about embracing cosmic love while Kriece puts down snappy, toe-tappy beats behind him. “Thousands of thoughts go by, like clouds in the sky,” Dass says on “Thoughts” – a great track about non-attachment to the things that keep us from experiencing the present.
“Mantra” is downright groovy, mixing Dass’ chants and Kriece’s dance beats in perfect unison. This will be stuck in your head for hours, and that’s a good thing. “Stuck” has Dass discussing how he moved away from psychotropic drugs and into deep meditation.
“Breath Inside the Breath” brings the beats to the forefront. “The soul is unique. It has its unique karma,” Dass tells us at the beginning of the beautiful “Dream Dance.” Kriece’s synths shimmer as Dass explains how the soul can liberate itself from attachments through various incarnations. It’s heavy stuff, but heavenly stuff.
“Do you hear that?” Dass asks as rain drops and thunder rolls ahead of Kriece’s synth beats. “That’s peace.” Dass asks us to find peace in the sounds (and silence) around us, and Kriece’s beats (and the spaces between them) nudge us toward it. On “Spacesuit for Earth,” Dass’ words of “When you take an incarnation, it’s like getting into a space suit…” begin the track and soon he’s talking about why we feel separate from each other, from the world around us, and the universe, and Kriece’s hypnotizing synths are soon taking us beyond that universe and Dass is telling us that we’ve been crammed into “a conceptual model since birth…From your point of view, it’s the only reality most of the time.”
“Desire” is both a lecture on the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism and an ambient house track. The closer, “Additya Hridayam,” mixes what sounds like ambient crowd noise from a bus station with Dass’ echoing chants and mantras. It reminds us to slow down in the chaos of our daily lives, to step back from the rush to chasing a buck or get to the magical “golden goodie” (as Dass’ contemporary Alan Watts described it) that we think will make us happy.
It’s a neat album that mixes drum and bass and Zen, Taoist, and Hindu philosophy. What’s not to like?
Keep your mind open. This album will help in that regard.
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