The hour-and-24-minute piece was honored with the Grammy for best dance/electronic album in 2019, and the group later released a film for the dazzling stage performance, Iris: A Space Opera. Turn to Clear View moves effortlessly between jazz, R&B and hip-hop without diluting any of the three art forms; the songwriting is sharp but leaves plenty of open spaces for fiery improvisation, particularly from Armon-Jones himself and Garcia on saxophone. Over the course of the album’s nine songs, she broadens, deepens and intensifies her story and her musical palette, testing and creatively blending the waters of hip-hop, R&B, industrial and avant-garde music. Titled Moon Trip Radio, Clam... What's the first thing you notice about an album? On the album closer “If You Think It’s Love,” for instance, she pares things back to just her voice, manipulated into an electronic echo, which lets her sharp writing shine. Rote song structures are replaced by wandering repetitions; clear-eyed slogans of empowerment are replaced by fragmented mantras. But the California teen—who was first boosted to fame thanks to an early SoundCloud hit—has struck a chord, both with her young generation and beyond, thanks to that mix of forward-thinking pop and an attitude of deep vulnerability, confidence and nonchalance. But her songs are full of dark stories of convoluted love, nihilistic disillusion and pain. As ever, our best albums of 2019 so far list reflects the diverse tastes of the Exclaim! It’s an album of love songs—the oldest subject in the book—but it’s filled with new sonic ideas. But her music sounds and feels of an earlier era, its jazzy syncopations and her silky-smoky voice coming together on songs like early viral hits “1950” and “Talia” and welcome follow-ups “Useless Phrases” and “Hit the Back” to form an altogether new alt-pop sound. Veteran electronic music composer Fennesz treated the world to his excellent comeback album Agora this year, and in 2020, he'll take the rec... Ambient recordings are seldom referred to as powerful. Compiled by the Official Charts Company, the UK's biggest dance albums of the week, based on sales of digital bundles, CDs, vinyl and other formats, across a seven day period. Death and disease pervade nearly every song of U.F.O.F.. As Segal lays down a bedrock of metallic guitars and piercing cymbals, Woods weaves tales of police brutality, hospital bills, war zones and pervasive depravity and complacency: “Anthropologists watch the negro sell dope / On huddled corners / Corner stores / Jot notes,” he raps on “Spider Hole.”, But while the album paints a bleak societal portrait, it’s also filled with plenty of gallows humor and inquisitive scholarship. The Canadian producer/DJ will share Both o... As climate anxiety worsened and world leaders ignored mounting pleas from scientists, the climate emergency defined the way we looked at the... After releasing her Significant Changes album earlier this year, Jayda G has announced that three tracks from the effort will be remixed for... Jacques Greene released one of Exclaim! Over 12 songs, the pair challenges the rosy image set forth by American myths and politicians, instead vividly narrating from the country’s crawl spaces and secret passageways. … Yet she’s not constricted by either genre or self-definition, instead finding moments to flirt with production styles and sounds that echo her willingness to break from tradition. 10. There are lulling campfire songs and gritty rock grooves, frenetic jazz saxophones and menacing trap drums. Diverse, inspired appearances from the Los Angeles singer Georgia Anne Muldrow, the Nigerian-British Afrobeat star Obongjayar and the London rapper Jehst all serve as testaments to the flourishing breadth and intensity of the music of the modern black diaspora. Variation can be a death knell for artists, signaling indecision or lack of focus. writers list, but this was a little different. View reviews, ratings, news & more regarding your favorite band. writers list, but this was a little different. Powerfully, Straus has openly embedded her sexuality in her music from the start, turning simple love songs into statements of queer identity and rallying cries for contemporary romance. And with a few simple instrumental parts and muted vocal phrases repeated over and over, Solange conjures immersive trance states that become habitats for meditating, dancing and dreaming. To analyze our moment, Woods scours the annals of history and culture, readily name-checking feminist Andrea Dworkin, Mozambican revolutionary Samora Machel, and J.D. (Bruner), “This your land of plenty?” snarls the New York rapper Billy Woods on his collaborative album with the Los Angeles producer Kenny Segal. Other moments are bombastic with layers of electronic production and lyrics she drops as an angry rebuke, like on the arresting “Fallen Alien.” “In this age of Satan, I’m searching for a light to take me home and guide me out,” she croons, without much hope. Exclaim! The Chemical Brothers are rolling out their latest LP, No Geography, and the latest album track to get treated to a video is "We've Got to T... After announcing the effort late last year, the Chemical Brothers have detailed their No Geography album. Some of the best—like on “Stay Flo,” “Almeda,” “Sound of Rain”—take elements from various touchpoints, from Stevie Wonder to Pharrell to Sun Ra, but are wholly original. There are dead moths and pigeons, hospital waiting rooms and drownings; singer-songwriter Adrianne Lenker’s voice often comes out in a strangled whisper. The 15 best dance/electronic releases heating up dancefloors this summer. “If this is love, I want my money back,” she sighs, “’cause I could use the check to spend it on a better heart to wear upon my sleeve.” For an artist so young, she already sounds like an old soul. (Chow), Historically, Mary Magdalene is a conflicted character: vilified, sanctified, often reduced to the contours of her femininity and her suffering. In venues across the city, artists like Shabaka Hutchings, Nubya Garcia, Nérija and the Ezra Collective lead sweaty, explosive gigs that bear little resemblance to the solemn conservatory atmospheres that have come to define the genre. And if you spend your time waiting for a drop, you’ll miss the fact that the gentle, sparse grooves are the ends in and of themselves. US … 's 10 Best Dance and Electronic Albums of 2019, Osheaga Announces 2019 Lineup with Childish Gambino, the Chemical Brothers, Tame Impala, The Chemical Brothers Teach a Dog How Fly to Space in "We've Got to Try" Video, The Chemical Brothers Detail 'No Geography,' Share New Song, Fennesz Brings 'Agora' to Montreal on 2020 North American Tour, Fennesz Returns with New Solo Album 'Agora', Clubs Are Closed, but Jayda G's 'Both of Us / Are U Down' Couldn't Have Come at a Better Time, Artists and Labels to Give Bandcamp Revenue to Black Lives Matter Organizations, Jayda G Returns with New EP 'Both of Us / Are U Down', How Music Felt the Climate Emergency in 2019, Jayda G Gets Dâm-Funk, Honey Dijon for Remix EP, Jacques Greene Treats 'Dawn Chorus' to Deluxe Edition with Remixes by Lunice, Project Pablo, Exclaim! Since their seminal late '90s dominance, the Chemical Brothers have released respectable albums at a reasonable pace, arguably maintaining a... Osheaga has officially announced its 2019 lineup, and it's impressive. 20 Best Hip-Hop Albums of 2019 In a year where rap’s biggest stars (Kanye West excepted) took a break, a new class of stars, from Megan Thee Stallion to DaBaby to Roddy Ricch, emerged. On his newest album, i,i, Bon Iver delves into some new territory—but he’s mostly content to draw upon his past explorations to create one spellbinding tapestry. In it, she builds a self-contained world that luxuriates in vintage Americana references—both sonically and lyrically—while still hinting at some of our age’s deep-seated flaws. The Best Dance Albums of 2019. Rescue comes in the form of self-recognition. Cast your vote in the reader poll. Salinger for both inspiration and scorn. Some moments are hauntingly tender, like on the delicate chorus of “Home With You”; that’s quickly offset by brutally distorted drums and her intimate recitation of pain. When I Get Home may not have the urgent rhetoric about American injustice that pervades Solange’s earlier work like A Seat at the Table—but the way she builds on decades of black excellence to formulate her own aesthetic masterpiece is a radical statement on its own. From her distinctive cover of Sublime’s “Doin’ Time” to the unapologetic first line of the opening track, “Goddamn, man-child,” it’s easy to get lulled into a false sense of security by Del Rey’s dreamy aesthetic and languid singing, which find their clearest expression yet on this fifth album. And at the center lies his pliant voice, which explodes in bursts of cascading harmony before dropping down to a near-whisper to utter simple but gut-wrenching confessions: “I like you,” he sings, “and that ain’t nothing new.” (Chow), Most of Billie Eilish’s music has an eerie edge: “I want to end me,” she says repeatedly on “Bury a Friend” over screeching beats. (Bruner). A woman’s prerogative. (Bruner). Almost all of them deal, in one way or another, with the current moment of global anxiety—whether directly protesting authority figures or offering an escape valve. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our. Here Are The Recent Trump Campaign Lawsuits, No Charges for Indianapolis Officer Who Shot Black Man, On Positions, Ariana Grande Is Fully in Her Feelings, Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know now on politics, health and more, © 2020 TIME USA, LLC. There’s no sheen on Solange’s vocals. Exclaim! Magdalene opens with something like a funeral dirge, an echoing hymnal over which her falsetto rings at an almost unbearably high register. Over rippling guitars, Lenker sings morbid lyrics with a startling optimism: “See my death become a trail / And the trail leads to a flower.”, The band understands the captivating nature of liminal spaces, and also the fraught relationship between pain and creation: “The silkworm’s rage / Iridescent thread, beautiful and dead / Billions of worms were boiled to make the bed,” Lenker sings on “Strange.” But if the music itself was a labor of love, it didn’t wear the band out; they immediately turned around and released another gorgeous album, Two Hands, five months later.