Video & Audio: You wanna tell me what this is all about
Modern Stone Age fantasies
Te Kuru Marutea: “Kei Wareware i a Tātou”
I think this remembrance of ancestors passed is the first time a performance from Te Matatini, the leading Māori performing arts festival, has become a New Zealand-wide hit, and it’s easy to hear why: the two soloists, Naia Awatea and Baliee Tava, just nail the sweet singer/power singer dichotomy, and the choir’s ready to back them up. Sometimes a big part of beauty is singing loud.
Sturdyyoungin, Ohthatsmizz, Zeddy Will: “Trippin”
Rappers have been sheepish about their past pop loves for a while, but maybe that’s changing in the TikTok-adjacent corner of rap? Anybody who not only samples Fergie but puts her in their video (in the Michelle Pfeiffer Dangerous Minds role) has a different conception of shame from what prevailed in the 2010s.
Memie: “O tshephile eng”
Not just another South African subgenre to learn, another South African language, and I’m not even sure which one (Sepedi?) Also unsure whether the genre is lekompo or makompo (TikTok seems confused as well.) The musical language is clear enough: all the good bits from the last thirty years of SA dance.
Mörda, Thakzin: “Vault”
Meanwhile 3-step keeps on step step steppin’. This is one of the more amiable Thakzin projects I’ve heard, presumably thanks to the genial contributions of Mörda (f/k/a Murdah Bongz.) The outline of a chord progression leads to house piano, which then turns into long-sustained chords that get broken up by stuttering drums.
Chrystal: “The Days” (Notion remix)
Department of “huh, those streaming numbers got big without anyone (at least in the US) really noticing”: singer-producer who’d semi-retired from the biz has a 10-year-old track resurrected by a remixer who chipmunks her a little and add buzzsaw synths which apparently evoke nostalgia now, and somehow it charts in a bunch of countries. It’s a pleasant notion that you can put songs in the cellar and age them like wine.
Seyi Vibez: “Shaolin”
Speedier and hornier than his 2023 semiclassic “Man of the Year”, this Nigerian number one is street pop with amapiano characteristics and a little oja-esque soprano recorder for national unity, running for 2.5 minutes before ending abruptly like it’s a Ryusuke Hamaguchi movie. Maybe I should be checking out arthouse Nollywood?
Ari Lennox: “Soft Girl Era”
As a non-participant in Black women’s TikTok, I was unaware there’d already been a Soft Girl Era trend-and-backlash cycle long before this came out. No matter: Jermaine Dupri does Jermaine Dupri things, Lennox remains the most underrated singer in R&B, and this sonically resembles a non-duet version of Kyle and Kehlani’s actual hit “Playinwitme”, so I hope for the best.
Irene: “Winter Wish”
Irene’s solo EP Like a Flower betrays no world domination ambition, not even the desire to try anything new—it’s exactly what you’d imagine a Red Velvet solo project to sound like. Which means it’s superfluous except when she gets an indomitable melody, which is the case here: elegant falling-like-snow chorus then surprise! She’s an octave up again.
ALT BLK ERA: “Run Rabbit”
For video directors, the most obvious thing in the world when “run” is in the title is to have running: forwards, backwards, inside, outside, downstairs, upsta… no actually they’ll take the lift. Similarly the song is motion in seemingly all directions; given that, the singing is surprisingly propulsive, in the way that Emil Zátopek won gold medals while looking like his head was going to fall off. [Editor’s note: there is no editor, I can make my references as esoteric I want]
Shandesh, Mvzzle: “Sdudla or Slender”
More lekompo/makompo, this time a proper smash closer to the mainstream, both in the bass synths pulling double-duty as melodic and percussive instruments, and in Shandesh’s vocals (rhythmic singing? melodic rapping? does it matter anymore?), which blend dexterity and an appealing sweetness with a hint of a threat she’ll go gruff on you.
Théa: “Qui Fera Taire les Kidz Fucked Up??”
“Fucked up” is adjectival, so “Who will shut up the fucked-up kids?”. There are lightly Auto-Tuned vocals (by Théa Barromes), there are synth chords that build to a nice pause before the chorus (played by Théa Barromes), there’s a big guitar break at the end (maybe played by Théa Barromes). For all I know she’s the entirety of les kidz fucked up.
Jade: “FUFN”
As another shot at getting something to stick as a follow-up to “Angel of My Dreams”, this is either trying too hard or not trying too hard enough, especially the video: if you’re gonna be named after a Mortal Kombat character, then the video where you psychically levitate an annoying beau should really have a fatality. As music, a win’s a win.
Mamehy: “Je Mitsiko Ro mokotse”
Fascinating to compare two versions of this song from a tsapiky act from Madagascar. The version for local consumption is in line with wider trends in East African pop (you can hear the sound’s been studio-tweaked), plus the video’s full of gratuitous twerking across ages and genders. The live performance that leads off Sublime Frequencies’ (excellent) tsapiky comp fits into Western fantasies of primitiveness, with shoutier performances and worse recording quality; somehow it’s also more in tune. They do briefly show you the dancers from the back at the end. Unfortunate that I like the live version better.
Nels Cline Consentrik Quartet: “Satomi”
This tribute to Satomi Matsuzaki is the best thing on Cline’s new album. For the Deerhoofian first four minutes, Ingrid Laubrock’s soprano sax and Tom Rainey’s drums cut loose while occasionally returning to the theme. In the remaining “oh right, we’re on Blue Note” six minutes, Cline’s guitar and Chris Lightcap’s bass lead the way through progressions that, like the ’Hoof, prove you can stay in the treble and still be avant-garde.
Jessie Reyez: “Psilocybin & Daisies”
To even late millennials, the release date of “1979” and the time that “1979” was nostalgic for seem like equally distant and equally real parts of the infinitely plunderable past. Was Billy Corgan at Woodstock? Did the characters in Dazed and Confused take shrooms? Did Fred Flintstone really slide down that dinosaur?
IVE: “Rebel Heart”
WHEN IT’S TIME TO REBEL WE WILL ALWAYS REBEL HEART (REBEL HEART)