Another week, another Between The Cracks selection! A whole heap of great music keeps coming through thick and fast, and we have selected a few you may have missed. So without further ado, check out our mini-guide and don’t forget to hit the links and support the artists.
Albums
Healing Force Project – Drifted Entities Vol. 2
Here’s some left-sided stuff to indulge in on this fine Friday. The ever-interesting Healing Force Project has come through with another genre-hopping offering for Beat Machine Records of his signature fusion of styles that move between jazz, funk, jungle and broken beat. ‘Drifted Entities (Vol. 2)’ is all kinds of fun with its spring-heeled basslines, brass, piano, Rhodes, and FX, which bob and weave around the detailed framework of beats. HFP has delivered another album that is a delight to explore.
Alice – L’Oiseau Magnifique
Armed with a thrift-store synth, bizarre wit and arresting vocals, the intergenerational, all-female micro-choir Alice shares their second album ‘L’Oiseau Magnifique’. Hailing from Geneva, Alice’s music subverts French and Occitan folk music to create a playful and poignant blend of intricate harmony and storytelling lyricism – a unique sound that is deep yet deceptively minimal. Alice continues to cross boundaries and refuses to be pigeonholed.
Andrew Wasylyk – Parallel Light
In 2020, Scottish composer and musician Andrew Wasylyk released the exquisite Fugitive Light And Themes Of Consolation album. Now he’s back with ‘Parallel Light’, a beautiful epilogue featuring a series of alternative mixes that transform the material into something entirely new.
Kai Meara – Statik
Statik is another impressive offering from London-based beatmaker Kai Meara. Across 12-tracks Kai Meara continue to carve his unique sound with an immersive LP inspired by ambient soundscapes, spiritual jazz, broken beats, and movie soundtracks. It is hard to find anything not to like on this album. It reminds me a lot of Al Dobson Jr. in places which is no bad thing.
brad allen williams – œconomy
Words: Gabriel Birnbaum
œconomy is full of contrasts. There are moments of lush beauty (especially in the tracks that add string quartet performances of williams’ arrangements) and others of skittering anxiety courtesy of blown-out percussion, and distorted guitars – Mark Guilana’s tumbling drum parts add a wild burst of energy to a few tracks, and others could be said to veer off into post-exotica. Heavy psych riffs crumble into delicate acoustic guitar chords and ride cymbal. You never know what is coming.
Reissues
PHEW – Our Likeness
PHEW has reissued her 1992 album Our Likeness. This is the first time the album has been released since its initial release. PHEW collaborated with Chrislo Haas (D.A.F.) at Conny Plank’s studio in Cologne on Our Likeness. Across the record, Jaki Liebezeit, Alexander Hacke, and Thomas Stern all appear. The rerelease of Our Likeness follows Mute’s recent release of PHEW’s latest studio album, New Decade.
EP’s
Moussa Tchingou – Tamiditine EP
Enchanting Tuareg sounds from Moussa Tchingou in an effortlessly pleasing, highly melodic, cybernetic autotuned, dynamic drum programming, hypnotic polyrhythms affair for Sahel Sounds.
MA.MOYO X Marysia Osu – EarthCries / Gloriosa
Somehow, we seemed to have missed the release of EarthCries / Gloriosa by S.E London duo MA.MOYO X Marysia Osu, which dropped late last year, but it’s all good because it’s finally on our radar now! Two gorgeous tracks veer between deeply-meditative moods and bursts of light and heaviness, with vivid instrumentation and enlightening spoken word poetry. It’s too good to miss their stunning debut release. Added to that is superb artwork, so the package is complete.
