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ALLISON CRUTCHFIELD Tourist In This Town Merge
08
The more you think about the sixth A Tribe Called Quest LP, the more remarkable it becomes. Before making it, childhood friends QTip and Phife Dawg had to first repair a relationship badly fractured following the group’s unhappy disintegration towards the end of the last century; and its recording still wasn’t complete when Phife passed away earlier this year. The album reunites all four founder members, one of whom is effectively making his debut here (Jairobi White, the group’s “spirit guide”, left the band in 1991, having never rapped on any of their records). And yet, despite all that, they’ve managed to make an album that doesn’t just remind long-term fans of how great they once were, but that stands as a worthy addition to one of hip-hop’s more lauded discographies. The group have returned with the same distinctive sound they’d developed over their first five LPs in the 1990s, ever so delicately spruced up to ensure it still feels fresh. Shadows of the past are allowed to hover in the background rather than being flung, blinking and confused, into the spotlight. The Space Program shares a loping vibe with Award Tour; the Rotary Connection sitar sample first used in Bonita Applebum drops in like an old friend during Enough!!. There’s space for experimentation, as Kids…, a collaboration with Andre 3000 of the heavily Tribe-influenced OutKast, pounds by on panicked piano, while Jack White adds stringdamped menace to the brew as the hookline of Ego references the epochal posse cut, Scenario. Best of all, Tribe have as much to say as they have engaging ways of saying it. If the lyrics of the three opening tracks (The Space Program, We The People… and Whateva Will Be) feel like they could have been written back in the 90s, that’s only because police brutality and America’s racial divisions are as pronounced today as they were between Yusef Hawkins’ murder and Rodney King’s beating, when Tribe made their name. Yet the record is never wearisome or overbearing, the band’s mastery of contrasting moods evident throughout a track list that ends with The Donald – not a protest song about the president-elect, but a hymn to the Trinidaddescended Phife’s status as the don-dada of the microphone. He will be sorely missed, but his group’s last testament does him and his comrades considerable honour.
If your heart is broken, aged folklore advises that you reach for a record by a Crutchfield sister. Allison and her identical twin Katie, from Birmingham, Alabama, have long held the patent for understated, devastating balladry. They’ve co-piloted DIY feminist punk bands since their early teens (inc. the eternally missed PS Eliot), and then since they’ve also pursued separate paths: Allison fronts Philly band Swearin’ and Katie makes records as Waxahatchee. As Allison’s first full solo outing, Tourist In This Town puts family history to one side, but without losing sight of her comfort zone. Written over a year’s worth of touring in 2015 but recorded in just a week (assisted by bandmates Sam Cook-Parrott and Joe Doubek) Tourist in this Town sees Crutchfield sing with out-of-towner perspective on her country and her demons in classic road-trip fashion. “I keep confusing love and nostalgia,” she admits on I Don’t Ever Wanna Leave California, and the record basks in that sweet spot between painful memory and the freshness of moving on and out. Crutchfield builds a familiar world of warm alt-country imperfections, this time aided by the rumbling gravitas of ancient analogue synthesisers. While some tracks look towards Swearin’ – The Marriage, for example, is a 57 second pop-punk bounce about selfconsciousness – others mark a determined step towards a straight pop sensibility. Dean’s Room sounds like The Cure’s Plainsong after too much sugar, with a missed-connections story line straight out of a John Hughes film. Saccharine, but sweetly persistent. Somewhere in between, album highlight Mile Away describes an all-too-familiar post-truth distance between someone’s “prized radical opinions” and actual reality. As her voice rages over a furious, thrashing sea, Crutchfield articulates comebacks we can only dream of: “You assume you understand because your voice is the loudest”; “You’re standing too close”; “You wake up confident every single day.” Ouch. Tourist in this Town hits hardest when Crutchfield stops sending postcards home.
! Angus Batey
Katie Hawthorne
07 D∆WN Redemption Local Action
YUSSEF K AMA AL Black Focus Brownswood
REVIEWS
Tenderlonius’s 22a imprint and Bradley Zero’s Rhythm Section have both nurtured a wave of artists unbound by genre but nonetheless dealing in a distinctly soulful, jazz-flecked aesthetic. Centred around Peckham, there exists a real community among these artists, and as a result a spirit of collaboration and friendship has defined much of the output. This record, though released on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood, is in many ways a culmination of that spirit: between them Kamaal Williams and Yussef Dayes are mainstays on both labels and the supporting cast is a strong reflection of the depth and richness of the area. At the heart of Black Focus is the chemistry between Williams and Dayes. The way the initiative bounces from keys to drums, egging each other on, is at times thrilling. Moments come and go when extra components cut through and take things to a higher level (notably the piercing saxophone on Strings Of Light) but tracks like Remembrance, Wing Tai Drums and Joint 17 where the pair demand centre stage, are the most effective. If there’s a criticism to level, you could argue it’s a little too languid, too lounge. If you compare it to Ruby Rushton’s Two For Joy from last year (on which Dayes drums), it can feel safe. More so if you consider Shabaka Hutchins’ incendiary Sons of Kemet, or the wildly futuristic Comet Is Coming. Really though, this is splitting hairs: the sound palette is warm, you can feel experimentation at work and the vibe is a good time. Another energetic addition to modern jazz’s growing London movement.
While Crawley may not be on the map for many British techno fans, the Surrey commuter belt town has a notable history rooted in the fabled shop Fat Cat Records in the 90s. T. Wiltshire may not be making a big deal about his hometown heritage, but his sound certainly harks back to the explorative nature of classic UK electronics, albeit with a modern twist. Coming to light on Tender Hooks following an EP back in 2014, Wiltshire’s debut album brims with the kind of inventive sequencing and processing that typified the London-centric scene populated by B12, Mark Broom and Baby Ford before loopy industrial techno took hold. On the likes of #2 a starry-eyed wonder can be felt in the layers of ranging, expressive synths that sit atop crunching drum machines, and it’s this spirit that makes Selfless Machines an engrossing listen. Less concerned with standard dancefloor demands and instead reaching for the expressive, futurist vision that defined techno from the start, every track makes its own distinct artistic statement and the record feels fresher for it. From slow-treading contemplation to thumping acid abstraction, Wiltshire has mixed equal parts technological tinkering and human heart, and turned out a charming debut LP in the process.
Former member of pop group Danity Kane and Diddy’s Dirty Money collective, Dawn Richard now cuts a striking figure in electronic music, becoming a critic’s favourite by toying the line between pop and the underground. Now going by the D∆WN moniker, Richard’s sound is difficult to define, but it could be loosely classified as fearless RnB experimentalism. Redemption, the final instalment of D∆WN's album trilogy, encapsulates electronic music's enduring attraction to Afrofuturism and pop. Its magic realism, fantastical practices and cosmological aesthetic underscores her artistry. The album sees D∆WN finalise the chapters of her past, confidently striding into the unknown of a new and fragile world. She opens up candidly on topics of sexual liberation and gender equality, and a joyful embrace of home and identity underpins the record. Cryptic semi-biblical cries are frequent on songs such as Voices, where D∆WN calls upon God to see her upon her knees and react. The album is also indebted to the direction of its coproducer, Machinedrum. The two have collaborated on multiple projects over the course of 2016 and they share a similar ethos when it comes to writing irregular pop. Big brass samples and dainty string arrangements coexist alongside moments of free-jazz, hyperactive IDM and light vocal harmonies. Much like the Californiabased producer's latest offering Human Energy, the driving brightness on this scale is at points overbearing. Yet D∆WN's sedating vocal delivery, dressed in such colourful political language, ultimately makes Redemption a most progressive and original release.
! Theo Kotz
! Oli Warwick
! Tom Watson
T.WILTSHIRE Selfless Machines Tender Hooks
A TRIBE CALLED QUEST We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Servicey Epic