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BANKS Goddess Harvest Records
DORIAN CONCEPT Joined Ends Ninja Tune
Breakthrough songstress Banks emerged last year from a gloomy mist, mesmerising us with her debut track Before I Ever Met You. Since unveiling her husky sounds that ooze femininity, she continued to hold our gaze by releasing two EPs and five singles in rapid succession, alluding to what we could expect from keenly-anticipated album Goddess. Dripping with sensual coos and solemn RnB beats, Goddess sees Banks remain consistent with style and topic. The subject matters, of course, sway from heartbreak to dark confessions; the line “solitude fits me like a glove” nicely summing up her sultry motif. Opening softly with Alibi, Banks quickly builds momentum. We're brought along on an emotional journey through Goddess, experiments in those darker realms which categorised her earlier work seguing into sickly-sounding pop which could frankly feel at home on a Rihanna album cut. Moving away from those woozy, seductive tracks that preceded the album – songs like This is What it Feels Like and Drowning – Banks exposes her vulnerability against a tender backdrop of subtle guitar riffs, pining piano and emotional rawness strings. However, not all tracks demonstrate her true potential, and the shining moments in Goddess are the collaborations with the likes of Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Jamie Woon and Lil Silva. At times there are hints of what could become a memorable, resonant ballad, but unfortunately Banks never quite achieves that goal.
There’s been no shortage of alternative hip-hop these past few years, but just because some of the most publicised offerings came courtesy of relentlessly controversial figures and part-time rappers Odd Future, we shouldn’t discount any of their genuinely adventurous contemporaries. That’s undoubtedly the category Seattle duo Shabazz Palaces should be placed in; with Lese Majesty, they’ve made a compelling case for the title of most forward-thinking collective under the alt hip-hop banner. The 18 tracks here are split into seven different "astral suites of recorded happenings", both sonically and thematically. It ticks most of the typical hip-hop boxes; a genuine alternative banger in the form of #CAKE and an impressive flow on Ishamel are let down by some uninspired lyricism running through Forerunner Foray. It really is its own entity however, not so much blurring genre lines; aiming instead to abolish them completely. The beats are complex, eccentric and intelligently constructed. The narrative – while not always entirely easy to discern – is intricate and unusual. And with the progression from 2011’s debut Black Up shining throughout; you get the impression that this duo would rather give up completely than face the idea of repeating themselves.
Dorian Concept has come a long way since “fooling around on [his] microkorg” back in ’06. Those YouTube videos and early beats on MySpace catapulted the Austrian synth wiz to the forefront of the bedroom beatmakers of the late 00s. With that scene now dissipating, Dorian has signed to Ninja Tune with a new album and a new approach. Joined Ends sees Concept focus on loops more than before, with straighter, more layered melodies. The influence of Cinematic Orchestra – whom Concept has been playing with live – is palpable. Gone are the wonky rhythms of Flying Lotus and Richard Spaven; Dorian’s new sound is more mature and developed. Yet we can’t help but miss a touch of that frantic, messy energy, and while the use of his own vocals provides additional layers, they suffer from being a touch repetitive. But this album is not devoid of highlights. Draft Culture is more bass driven and the melodies are more understated, taking on a rawer, analogue feel reminiscent of an early Hyperdub release. The Few builds to a proper crescendo thanks to a slightly wonkier lead reminiscent of the ideas built through his earlier work, while Trophies has a pounding rhythm which carries the melodies a lot further than on other tracks. But unfortunately, as an album Joined Ends takes too long to become interesting. While there are a handful of engaging moments and, of course, extremely accomplished synth playing, rarely does it all pull together cohesively.
To say that LP1 is one of the decade’s most anticipated debuts is no overstatement: the industry hype machine certainly got in a flurry with the arrival of this unique chanteuse. The road to LP1 was forged by a meticulously-crafted series of curiosity-sparking videos, genre and genderexploring tracks and a constant air of mystique only slightly cracked by a series of low key live performances and a handful of carefully-selected cover features that proved twigs to be truly out on her own in the field. The reveal of the album cover, her face a canvas blushed with paint, wasn’t the only statement to suggest who was in control. Known to distort her own image in visual accompaniment to her previous EPs and through conscious allusions to previous figures including Sade and Aaliyah (is that line in Two Weeks meant to sound just like Beyonce’s Sweet Dreams?), twigs played to our relentlessly self-referencing era, and constantly wrestled the industry’s conceptions of her into her own hands. And true to form, much like how the FKA twigs aesthetic arrived fully formed, LP1 sounds like nothing that came before it. In mood and content, LP1 is a constant tease, an exploration of prolonged ecstasy that never offers full relief. twigs’ soft breathy falsetto leads a string of erotically charged nocturnes, weightless bombasts of lust, sex and power struggles that subtly and incessantly flip between passive and dominant roles. Thick smoggy pads, fluttering melodies, off-centre beats and that signature clack-a-lacking pendulum percussion take moody, morphing RnB and obscure it even further. A mixture of frosty catharsis and extended ecstasy, LP1 is very much an internal record: an eyes closed introspective on grapples for power at the hands of a impenetrable lover, or internal abandonment in the absence of one. Final track Kicks is a perfect example of this. Lead lyric “Tell me, what do I do when you’re not here?” is the most flatly suggestive of the album (as she explained in our interview, “I get myself off. And I’m better at it than you!”). Equal parts cold passivity and sexual liberation, it’s a display of authority that sees twigs once again seizing power, quite literally, with her own hands. Sure, LP1’s sometimes cluttered mixture of production doesn’t carry as many catchy hooks or defining moments as the tracks that preceded it, but in today’s over-saturated landscape, the hardest thing you can do as a musician is to sound like yourself. A true original, LP1 sees FKA twigs breaking from the doctrine of the mainstream to hone a style that could reach canonical status.
While Ty Segall mellowed out for a second on 2013’s Sleeper, the prolific Cali musician’s latest record is business as usual: a stomping, sprawling record of fuzzy garage, excellent arrangements, boisterous glam and rushing psychedelia. With his guitar wizardry continuing its dominance, Manipulator sees Segall maintain the excellent form which seems to have been in place since his fucking birth, and the 60s references and ethos even more striking and obvious than ever. The electric guitars are pretty 60s, the acoustic guitars are pretty 60s, the vocals are pretty 60s and, loaded with 17 tracks, the album length is actually pretty 60s too. The Hand, for example, has a mandolin and long, fuzzy guitar solos, falsetto vocals and repetitive, stop-start rhythm guitars. Meanwhile, The Singer pulsates and builds to its chorus; bolstered by strings that add a nice touch of “this is a composition, darling. Not a song”-ness to proceedings. All pretty 60s. However, there are few artists who could write an album as derivative as this and still make it sound like their own work, and Ty Segall is one of them. Manipulator is yet another gem in a thriving catalogue.
! Isis O'Regan
! Joe Goggins
! Jack Dolan
! Anna Tehabsim
! Jon Clark
SHABA ZZ PAL ACES Lese Majesty Sub Pop
FK A T WIGS LP1 Young Turk T Y SEGALL Manipulator Drag City