Teno Afrika, real name Lutendo Raduvha, is a 23-year-old producer based in South Africa, where he spent his childhood moving around the country’s Gauteng province. Through his teenage years, he discovered amapiano, a style of music that combines the South African predilection for deep house alongside a mélange of endemic influences like kwaito, jazz, gqom, and diBicardi, a percussion-heavy electronic music genre that’s popular in the city of Pretoria and its surrounding townships. As the sound spread through WhatsApp and sharing platforms like datafilehost, amapiano steadily evolved from an underground sound to a nationwide, mainstream staple.
Inspired, Raduvha quickly learned the ropes, using a cracked version of FL Studio, and he began sharing his deftly minimal sketches with his friends and through YouTube. Then, in 2020 he signed Amapiano Selections, a collection of his early tracks, to Awesome Tapes from Africa. It turned out to be the Los Angeles label’s most popular digital release of the year and the first run of a thousand LPs sold out almost immediately. With the release, Raduvha gave listeners outside the movement’s online release economy an insight into the genre.
For his second album, Where You Are, Raduvha introduces listeners to other figures within the amapiano community, and brings more vocalists into the sonic picture, unlocking an “emotive and timbral escalation,” we’re told, to his catalog of work. Singers Leyla and KayCee feature on the title-track and “Fall In Love,” respectively, while Diego Don joins for two driving, pad-propelled works. Raduvha has decided to mark the release with an XLR8R podcast, which he recorded last month in his home in Soweto, filling it with new productions and some of his favorite amapiano songs from the likes of Vigro Deep and Vilosoul. Press play for two hours of uplifting amapiano vibes from one of the genre’s key figures.
01. What have you been up to recently? I’ve been working on new music with other new upcoming artists.
02. How was your 2021? 2021 was great because I got to perform on my first international gig in Japan.
03. What have you been listening to recently? Some tech amapiano, a style which I’ve been working on recently.
04. Talk me through the new album: what can we expect? I added some vocals on the new album, unlike the first album which had instrumental songs only. And my style has matured a little bit in this new album.
05. Where and when did you record this mix? I recorded it in my home in Soweto on January 20.
06. How did you select the tracks that you’ve included? It’s a compilation of my new productions and some of my favorite songs.
07. What can the listener expect? Good music only.
08. How does it compare to what we might hear you play live? When I play live, the music I play depends on the reaction of the crowd.
09. What’s on your horizon for 2022? Hopefully, I drop a tech amapiano album.
XLR8R has now joined Mixcloud Select, meaning that to hear the podcast offline you will need to subscribe to our Select channel to listen offline, or subscribe to XLR8R+ to download the file. The move to Mixcloud Select will ensure that all the producers with music featured in our mixes get paid. You can read more about it here.
Full XLR8R+ Members can download the podcast below.If you’re not an XLR8R+ member, you can read more about it and subscribe here.
Tracklisting
01. Amaarae & Kali Uchis “Sad Girls Love Money” feat. Moliy (Vigro Deep’s Revisit) (A Golden Child Entertainment) 02. Vigro Deep “Can You Feel My Heart” (Bring Me The Horizon)(Kalawa Jazmee) 03. Vigro Deep “Fire & Ice” feat. Yashna & Neo Ndawo (Kalawa Jazmee) 04. Vigro Deep “Been Waiting” (Kalawa Jazmee) 05. Teno Afrika “Bornwise” feat. Black SA (Unreleased) 06. Entity MusiQ “Yahweh” (Unreleased) 07. Teno Afrika “Extension 45” (Unreleased) 08. Teno Afrika “Unknown” (Unreleased) 09. Vilosoul “Groovists” (Mbalambala MusiQue) 10. Vilosoul “Woza” (Mbalambala MusiQue) 11. Robin S “Show Me Love” (Teno Afrika revisit) (Unreleased) 12. Teno Afrika “Al Fateha” (Yano’s Revisit)(Unreleased)
DJ Nigga Fox will release a new 12″ on Príncipe, titled Música da Terra, next month.
DJ Nigga Fox is one of electronic music’s more enigmatic artists and a linchpin of a thriving Afro-Portuguese music scene with its home in Lisbon, Portugal. Born Rogério Brandão Luís in Luanda, Angola in the early ‘90s, he fled to Portugal with his family when he was three years old to escape the horrific civil war. Around 2007, his sibling showed him Fruity Loops, the chosen creative platform behind all Príncipe-affiliated artists due to its simplicity, and he began making his own beats in his bedroom.
Outside of a solitary 12” on Warp Records, all of Nigga Fox’ solo EPs have come through Príncipe, the similarly mysterious entity to which he signed in 2013 after DJ Marfox introduced his music to the label. You can read more about him and his work in his XLR8R podcast here.
Música da Terra comprises four tracks, including a collaboration with DJ Firmeza. “Sanzaleiro,” we’re told, is “a game of contrast, dissonance, driving force, and constant pushing of limits.”
Artwork, as usual, comes from Márcio Matos.
DJ Nigga Fox also contributed to the 18th edition of XLR8R+, exploring Portugal’s thriving dance scene with tracks and content alongside RS Produções, BLEID, and Serpente.
This week;’s Web3 wrap sees the release of V3 of Zora’s protocol, MODA DAO’s path to governance roadmap, the first group of projects selected for Seed Club’s fourth cohort, a photography NFT capsule by legendary rock photographer Henry Diltz, and NFT drops by Mathew Jonson, Kerri Chandler, DeWalta & Shannon, Jonti, and many more.
Check it out below.
Zora Releases V3 of its Protocol
V3 of Zora’s Protocol has been released.
The Zora Protocol is, according to Zora, “the most gas-efficient and feature-rich on-chain marketplace that exists on Ethereum today,” processing over $100 million in bids across multiple marketplaces, platforms, and protocol integrations.
The new version of Zora further incentivizes platforms utilizing the protocol with a raft of new features, including Instant Onchain Royalties, which means, for example, that if an NFT from Art Blocks, Foundation, or a custom collection (minted with the EIP-2981 Royalty Standard) is bought and sold on Zora, the royalties will be paid out instantly and trustlessly on-chain—an industry-first Royalty Registery tool is also now available; Finders Fee, which incentivizes markets to find buyers for NFT by paying a reward set by the seller at listing; and Non-Custodial Listings, which allows NFTs to stay in the owner’s wallet until a sale goes through.
Another new feature is a new “modular architectural design” that uses a permissionless system to allow for the deployment of new versions across the modules in the protocol. This will mean that if and when the Zora DAO—currently a multi-sig owned by Zora Labs—deploys a new version of the protocol, developers can choose which modules they use and easily utilize new versions without an entire migration.
Zora has also improved its gas efficiency, optimizing it to be “39% cheaper to buy using the ZORA protocol than the next best option: Wyvern Protocol (used by OpenSea).”
Finally, there is Zora Fee Switch NFTs (ZORFs), a new ownership structure that is owned by the Zora DAO, which is, essentially, “a governance right which allows the DAO to turn on a fee.” This gives the owner of the ZORF the ability to set the fee for a particular module within the Zora protocol and to decide where those fees are received, which allows for the module to be “individually valued, governed, and owned by the set of contributors who built it.”
MODA DAO has released a detailed five-year roadmap to its decentralized governance.
MODA plans to become a truly decentralized autonomous organization owned and operated by the community within five years. The Web3 and DAO spaces are still in their early days, so there are no rule books, set paths, or examples to follow to successfully decentralize as an organization. Many DAOs, including MODA, believe that premature on-chain voting with full autonomy can endanger DAOs that are in formative stages, as well as diluting the brand, vision, or values before they are fully realized.
The MODA roadmap has been broken down into four stages, running for a year each. With every stage, MODA will give more control over to the community, and individuals voted in by the community. Initially, the DAO will feature nine DAO custodians, with eight appointed by the MODA Foundation and one by community voting, with the Custodians collaborating with MODA Foundation on the DAO’s operations and structure. With every stage, one Custodian seat will be handed over to the community until all nine seats are held by community members.
The roadmap also outlines the structure MODA will use for proposals and voting and how community members and groups can submit a proposal to be voted in by the DAO and how structures may evolve over time.
Seed Club Finalizes Token-Based Selection Process For its Fourth Cohort
DAO incubator and accelerator Seed Club has finalized the first group of projects admitted to its fourth cohort.
Over the last week, Seed Club has facilitated a token-based selection process for its fourth cohort, in which holders of its $CLUB token were able to vote in the projects they were most excited about and felt fit the Seed Club community best. The top-10 projects from the token race—held on Mirror—would be automatically admitted into the upcoming cohort, with a further 5-10 chosen by the Seed Club selection committee.
The 10 projects admitted so far feature a wide-range of goals and objectives, including Mirage, a decentralized AR (augmented reality) marketplace for augmented art, experiences and dynamic content; MusicOS, which will build an interface that acts as a Web3 dashboard for musicians and fans, pulling in data from Mirror Crowdfunds, Catalog, Sound, and other tools musicians are using; Kali, a DAO deployment and services system focused on solving and helping with legal issues surrounding DAOs; Metalabel, which will provide resources, tools, community, support, and funding to cultural projects such as record labels, filmmakers, publishers, activists, and the like; COLORS, a media and content organization that will launch a DAO to activate a global community of artists; gmgn Supply, a DAO looking to launch Web3-native physical brands that look to disrupt the likes of Unilever, Nestlé, and Procter & Gamble; SongADAO, a DAO focused on helping muscians make a living in Web3 and spreading the daily creative model promoted by Song A Day; Boys Club, a social club that will help onboard women and non-binary people into Web3 in a safe and welcoming environment; ClimateDAO, a decentralized fund focused on climate action and community; and Floppy, which will build a Decentralized Audio Workstation, featuring a First Person Sampler (FPS), 3D game environment, and more Web3 music creation tools.
The final 5-10 projects will be publicly announced on Monday, January 31.
SuperRare Releases Henry Diltz Photography Capsule Featuring Kurt Cobain, Jimmy Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and More
SuperRare has partnered with legendary rock photographer Henry Diltz on a photography NFT capsule.
As reported by HypeBeast, the photos in the capsule have been animated and will be released one by one in rounds, starting with a photo of Kurt Cobain during one of his Los Angeles concert performances. Other photos in the capsule include The Rolling Stones’ 1970 Amsterdam concert, a 1973 San Francisco concert featuring Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Hendrix’s 1969 Woodstock concert, Elvis Costello’s 1979 Long Beach concert, and Jim Morrison’s 1969 Hollywood Bowl concert.
The Kurt Cobain photo NFT is available now with a reserve price of 7 ETH (approximately $17,200) set to kick off the bidding.
XLR8R’s NFT Picks, Featuring Mathew Jonson, Kerri Chandler, Torn Hawk, and More
Here are our picks from the music NFT ecosystem.
On Nina, you can find Torn Hawk’s psychedelic 19-minute version of a 2013 L.I.E.S. Record; distorted and euphoric power ambient by XHL UNIT; an endlessly morphing living rhythm excursion from Flaty; and a head-swirling doublepack of deep and poignant ambient electronics from Schema.
Pianity has dropped a banging new selection of club tunes, featuring house icon Kerri Chandler’s smooth-as-silk deep house cut “Mommy What’s A Record”; a heads-down organic techno groove from DeWalta & Shannon, with transfixing visuals by Felix Koch; the re-release of an early mostly unavailable album from Mathew Jonson presenting ambient, deep techno, and breakbeats; and an all-analog house steamroller from Steve Lawler.
Finally, Catalog keeps the continuous flow of high-quality tracks coming, with a killer 10-minute S2400 beat tape from Jonti; another fierce and groove-led 808 punk cut from STUFF; and an inventive pop-infused flipping of Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up” by REINEN.
What to Join and Who to Follow:
HiFi Labs: an incubator for artists building the MusicOS dashboard.
Floppy: a Web3 Decentralized Audio Workstation (DAW).
Artizen: a community fund for art, science, and public goods.
Crenshaw, a jazz bassist, producer, and song-writer currently based out of Los Angeles, has previously put out Bass Tone Paintings, a collection of psychedelic jazz exploring Black identity and love for the environment, on Leaving. Last year, he released Kensho !, which follows the same format: one-minute-long tracks in various different languages. (There’s also this cover of Solange’s “Things I Imagined.”)
PARASAiL-18, though, is Crenshaw’s first proper full-length, and he recorded it over a period of four years, in a process that “has made me as much as I’ve made it,” he says. Its nine songs represent the point in Crenshaw’s life where he has needed escape most, and the lowercase “i” represents ego dissolution and “yielding to things as they are,” we’re told.
Tracklisting:
01. Sustainer 02. Fade 03. Huntress 04. Roden 05. The Remains 06. Braid 07. Within Me 08. Parasail 09. Slide On Me
PARASAiL-18 LP is scheduled for February 25 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Roden” in full via the player below and pre-order here.
In the time since launching in 2018, Alien Communications has cemented itself as one of London’s best underground events and labels, as well as a credible DJ duo with residencies at two of London’s finest clubbing institutions The Lion and Lamb and The Cause (unfortunately, the Cause was forced to close late last year due to the increasing amount of residential developments appearing around the venue). They’ve brought an array of talent to the UK capital in those years, including DJ Masda, Carl Finlow, Nicholas Lutz, DMX Krew, Enrica Falqui, and more, delivering high-quality events with a focus on understated grooves.
Next month, on February 26, Alien Communications is partnering with XLR8R+ to mark its debut event at one of London’s outstanding venues Village Underground. The party features a huge lineup of DJs who excel at delivering groove-laden, eclectic techno, including XLR8R favorite Vlada, who consistently creates those special moments that you talk about for years to come, plus vinyl digging wizard Omar, EYA Recordings label boss, Jos, Loa Szala, and the Alien Communications duo (Bays & DJ.Rise). This is a night not to be missed.
As a token of our appreciation to our supporters, new and current XLR8R+ subscribers can claim a free ticket to the event, with details on how to claim below. We have a few announcements on the way in regards to the next edition of XLR8R+ and the artists and content to be featured, which we are sure event attendees will be excited about.
All you need to do is SUBSCRIBE HERE and email your full name with “Alien Communications” as the subject to [email protected] to claim your FREE pass. For current subscribers, simply email your full name and “Alien Communications” as the email subject.
XLR8R+ is a member-supported music community and curated music experience. Every month, you will get three exclusive tracks—sometimes more—by a wealth of amazing artists that XLR8R has supported over the years, as well as access to the member’s area where you can submit tracks and DJ mixesto be showcased in this feature series and to the XLR8R+ community. There’s also exclusive editorial content, mixes, FREE passes to music festivals and events, playlists, and more.You can find out more here.
Brian Leeds, better known as Huerco S., will release his first album in six years next month.
Leeds, the Kansas artist known for his shapeshifting sound worlds, continues to chart new landscapes that explore the blurred textures between genres—solo as Huerco S. and Pendant, and through his curation of West Mineral Ltd., where he releases the work of and collaborates with the likes of Exael, Mister Water Wet, Pontiac Streator, Ulla, and Uon. (You can read more about this community of artists in XLR8R+27, which even featured a track from Leeds as Autobouncer620.)
The world of Plonk, though, does not wholly resemble anything Leeds has made before. We’re told that his sound palette has broadened to absorb trap and drill’s taught rhythms, “amongst the gaseous bodies,” which he fuses with “soul-piercing ambience.”
“Where those previous veins were rooted in the pre-Columbian civilizations of his native Kansas,” Incensio, the New York label behind the release, explains., “Plonk reflects the mournful sodium glow of cities at night, street corners that light up with painful moments of clarity you wish would disappear.”
The album’s conception was rooted in Leeds’ love of rally cars and his fascinations for their engine mechanics.
Each track on the album highlights a different aspect of the machine, which forces the listener to pay attention to the spaces between the notes, and their many interlocking parts. The album features Leeds’ first vocal collaboration, with SIR E.U, which “reflects the machine’s subconscious,” we’re told.
Welcome to 2022, everyone! As the first month of the new year draws to a close, we’re ready to present the latest batch of submissions for our portal, which through 2021 continued to attract several hundreds of high-quality and innovative musical gems to our radar. This edition, you’ll be pleased to know, is no different: there are the usual familiar faces—Stature’s synth-heavy garage, Christopher Ledger’s slick studio jams, and Aspetuck, who delivers a calming ambient mix to see the year in—but there’s also an assortment of rich electronic productions from a string of new names. Cirene, a rising Italian artist, delivers a cut of euphoric, sample-heavy house, as do Moritz Bommert, better known as Bomat, and Robin Flux, based in Copenhagen, Denmark. For those looking for something a little bit more experimental, check out “Wake” from Manchester’s Catch92 and James Bangura’s room-shaking 2-step remix on Canadian labels YUNG DUMB Records and Model Future. There’ll be more to come soon, but this is plenty for now—and please, support the artists.
Editor’s note: we’ve made a point of linking each artist’s Bandcamp page, or a place where you can buy their music, and we encourage our readers to support these independent artists by buying their music. Let’s keep independent culture alive!
For those unfamiliar, XLR8R+ is a member-supported music community and curated music experience. Every month, you will get three exclusive tracks—sometimes more—by a wealth of amazing artists that XLR8R has supported over the years, as well as access to the member’s area where you can submit tracks and DJ mixesto be showcased in this feature series and to the XLR8R+ community. There’s also exclusive editorial content, mixes, FREE passes to music festivals and events, playlists, and more.You can find out more here.
Enrico Follesa is the artist behind Cirene—pronounced “chee-reh-neh.” Hailing from Cagliari, Italy, Follesa has been listening to house music since the ’90s, though he’s only been producing it for less than a year. The project aims to uplift and is heavily influenced by Follesa’s background in producing rap, so you can expect wavy Rhodes sounds, fat synth lines, and hazy pads, while his drums provide a sturdy structure to allow his bass to “develop effortlessly and produce movement within the groove,” he tells XLR8R. “Gotta Flow” is one of his first tracks and we can’t wait for more.
David Mayboroda, better known as Vroda, grew up in the industrial Luhansk region of Ukraine, and gradually took a great interest in heavy guitar music before discovering trip-hop from the likes of Portishead and Massive Attack. He focuses his time today on instrumental electronic music, and in August he released Senses, his debut EP, on Thousand Kisses Place, a label for breakbeat, ambient, and techno. “Transcriptions,” an eerie breakbeat cut, is one of his more recent productions.
Moritz Bommert, better known as Bomat, is a German DJ-producer originally from Cologne. His passion for house music started at a young age when he moved to Berlin, where he worked for several years and released music under various monikers. After a creative break in 2015, Bommert returned to the studio and in 2020 teamed up with Nervous Records for his Classy Talk single. He returned to the New York label last year before signing “Feels Like I’ve Seen You,” a classy lo-fi house tune, to Melbourne label clipp.arr. Deep and resonant, driving and gritty, “Feels Like I’ve Seen You” aims to generate a “melancholic euphoria,” Bommert says, with some “head-nodding and more than a few limb movements.”
Folded Music, based in Nicosia, Cyprus, will release Wander, an EP of emotive jazz from Manchester-based beat-maker Catch92, later this week. The EP draws influence from Lewis Carroll’s literary classic ‘Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland,” after Catch92 bought a copy of the soundtrack for his girlfriend and discovered its assortment of samples. We’re streaming “Wake,” which exhibits this psychedelic influence from the first beat, with its hypnotic synth line, creative sound design, and lush, delicate strings. (Last year, Catch92 released Capricious, his debut album, on Aviary Bridge Records, which we also recommend.)
In December, Belgian producer Brice Deloose, better known as Pattrn, released Echoes Of Gourds on Deflection Music. You can expect four hypnotic, dancefloor-ready techno cuts, and we’re streaming “Imantodes Path,” the standout, in full here.
Through his ^ L_—pronounced “control L” project—Luis Fernando delivers a mix of techno, breakbeat, hard techno, acid, and even gabber. In May, he released The Skull on Berlin’s Antime Records, which was flanked by a remix by the Brasilia-based artist Quizzik and followed a collaborative release with the founder of the Berlin label, Martin Steer (a.k.a. Bad Stream). More recently, though, he’s put out Eyes of The Old Man on Fcode’s MTDN Audio, which once agains sees him eschewing the four-to-the-floor techno sound of his earlier work for something more complex.
Canadian labels YUNG DUMB Records and Model Future have teamed up on Wade Galaxy, a collaboration between Toronto artist AZARI, Butr, and vocalist Jeremy Glenn. Whereas the A-side is a hazy fusion of R&B and slowed electro, accompanied by Jeremy Glenn’s ethereal vocals, the B-side delivers a room-shaking 2-step remix of the second track, “Phaze,” by James Bangura, which we’re streaming here. (For more information on Bangura, the alias of former military man Timothy Smith-Bangura, check out his XLR8R podcast here.)
Michael Donoghue is a Rotherham, UK-born artist who featured in our October roundup with “Aequorea IV,” a stomping techno jam taken from Landing, his debut album. This time around he’s submitted “Overview Effect,” a slice of ambient, also from Landing, as a demonstration of his versatility.
Robin Flux is a German DJ-producer currently based in Copenhagen, Denmark, who is influenced by ’90s dance music but has developed his own production style that dips into garage, breakbeat, and disco. In 2019, he released Future / Universe, his debut EP, and more recently he’s put out “You Make Me Feel,” a compilation contribution to Valencia’s Miura Records. Expect six minutes of euphoric, sample-heavy house.
Stature, the alias of Connor Harrison, is a regular on XLR8R, having featured in several submissions roundups—most recently September. Having studied music production at a young age, he now makes intoxicating beats with a focus on dance. “Etched” is one of the few singles of the Nottingham producer we haven’t shared, and it falls right in the Stature wheelhouse: synth-heavy garage music that’s sure to make your feet shuffle.
Cy Dune is the project of Seth Olinsky, the co-founder of experimental rock band Akron / Family. Sparked by a fascination with the primal, transcendent energy of rock music and informed by his lifelong love of early blues music, Olinsky has explored blues, ’50s rock, and ’60s/’70s punk through the Cy Dune project and soon, with Against Face, his latest album, he will deliver a new collection of explosive, post-punk tracks. “Don’t Waste My Time,” streaming above, is the lead single, and you can hear the title-track here, too.
Originating as an improvisational acid house and techno artist during the 1990s, MSTRBLSTR learned to move crowds at illegal rave parties held in shady warehouses, and at full-moon parties in the Arizona desert. He’s now based in Queens, New York, where he has a studio of hand-built gear that he uses to produce music to “work its way deep into your mind and make your body move,” he says. In August, we featured his pumping acid remix of his own “Are We Living In A Simulation,” out now on Toy Opulent, and now we’re sharing “8 Acid,” a blistering acid techno brain-melter with a dubbed-out breakbeat breakdown surprise hidden inside.
Last month, Christopher Ledger, the rising artist known for his slick studio productions across Dana Ruh‘s Brouqade Records, DeWalta’s Meander, and his own CL Series, delivered a studio mix for Italy’s Danza Nativa. As with his DJ sets, Ledger’s recording is stacked with unknown jams and coveted unreleased tracks, which are pieced together among oddball classics to create over an hour of timeless and futuristic house music.
Aspetuck, real name Griff Fulton, is an American DJ-producer from Vermont, northeastern United States. Cut off from nightlife, he and his younger brother, Pierce, jammed together on guitar and drums in their basement, encouraged by their music-loving parents to pursue their wildest musical whims. He discovered new music through snowboard videos, and these exciting new flavours dragged him down the wormhole that is electronic music. (You can read more about him in his XLR8R feature here.)
After an unusually hectic December, the new year kicked off peacefully and he bought a ton of new music on Bandcamp and recorded “Music For New Parents 3,” a mix he recently uploaded to his Soundcloud. As a new parent, he finds himself constantly craving ambient, non-club-type music—calming music for background listening that “won’t wake up a baby,” he says. The mix serves as a tool to help him unwind by creating a really nice, tranquil feeling at his home. “I had such a nice time recording this one and hope it helps you find a well-deserved quiet moment,” he says, “whether you’re a new parent or just someone in need of a deep breath!”
DJ, promoter, label co-owner, and festival coordinator, Adam Rahman has been a driving force for dance music across the Middle East for decades. And while techno might be the go-to sound for dance music right now, he’s been pushing forward-thinking techno and electronica since he started in the late ’90s. In December 2020, we featured his guest show on Proton Radio, for which he unveiled a deep, hypnotic techno set with transfixing mixing to boot. To close out last year, he’s delivered another mix with the same hallmarks, and that’s what we’re streaming here.
Jameszoo, the alias of Mitchel van Dinther, will return to Brainfeeder with a new album, Blind.
Blind, a 12-track record, is imbued with the same spirit of adventure as the Dutchman’s previous work on the Los Angeles label, including 2016’s Fool, and it once again explores the fringes of jazz and electronica.
The recordings were shaped by van Dinther’s studio sessions at Willem Twee Studios, the specialist analogue studio in Den Bosch. He started out by asking himself an important question: “In music and other arts there is a heavy emphasis on the artist,” he says. “Is it possible to create something that bypasses this? A project that forces active objective listening?”
He began by trying to bypass himself as the protagonist, by remotely recording musicians and collaborators reshaping his initial ideas, morphing the music as if repainting a portrait again and again. He also recorded all sorts of motorised instruments to attempt to embody this idea. For example, the Disklavier (motorised piano) which allowed for precision and the execution of passages unplayable by the human hand. “It really helped me aesthetically detach from the human aspect,” he says. “The Disklavier started to embody the music’s characteristics.”
Across the album, van Dinther is supported by a cast of “exceptionally talented” friends who share his “passion for improvisation and invention,” including his long-term writing partner Niels Broos, Swedish bassist Petter Eldh, and drummers Richard Spaven and Julian Sartorius, all of whom contributed to Fool.
Fool, a blend of jazz and off-kilter electronics, featured cameos from Brazilian composer Arthur Verocai and pianist Steve Kuhn, in addition to Thundercat.
The artwork for the project is by the celebrated Dutch artist Philip Akkerman, a dear friend of van Dinther.
Tracklisting
01. “song” 02. Bugatti (étude) 03. Alejandro 04. Imps 05. Egg Modern 06. music for bat caves 07. How do i shape-shift? 08. Big Game 09. For drummers (and guitarists) 10. Philip 11. Hommage à qui 12. My kingdom for a horse
Blind LP is scheduled for March 11 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Bugatti (étude)” in full below and pre-order here.
Ramallah-based vocalist and producer Julmud has signed to Bilna’es, the label of Muqata’a, Ruanne Abou-Rahme, and Basel Abbas, for his debut album.
Tuqoos is rooted in deconstructed club, glitch, grime, and hip-hop. We’re told that its heavy beats “bend space and time to subvert forms of enclosure,” and that the sounds have an almost “granular detailed texture” while maintaining a “gripping rhythmic flow.” Across 15 tracks, the album blurs the lines between “hanging on a street corner, at a protest, or in a club.” It was entirely produced in Ramallah, Palestine.
Julmud is part of Ramallah collective Saleb Wahad and regularly collaborates with other Ramallah acts like Al Nather and Makimakkuk.
Tuqoos is only the second album to land on Bilna’es, the label Muqata’a co-founded with New York City-based visual artists Ruanne Abou-Rahme and Basel Abbas in late 2020. The platform has, though, launched a project of experimental video games and art, plus a series of posters for New York bookstore Printed Matter.
In April 2020, Palestinian DJ-producer SAMA’ contributed to the XLR8R podcast series. You can stream that here.
Tracklisting
01. Basmala بسملة 02. Kassara كسّارة 03. Haras El Jabal حرس الجبل 04. Marhale A’la مرحلة اعلى 05. Saree’ el thawaban سريع الذوبان 06. Falnukmel فلنكمل 07. Toshkol Asi تشكل آسي 08. Kalma’ كالماء 09. Ishi Hawa’i اشي هوائي 10. Juwway جوّاي 11. Harti حارتي 12. Roh Al Nahrain روح النهرين 13. Mawlana مولانا 14. Taghyeer Thabet تغير ثابت 15. Ur اور
Tuqoos LP is scheduled to land on March 30. Meanwhile, you can stream “Falnukmel” below and pre-order here.
The past five years have seen amapiano, a bright dance music that fuses deep house and jazz with lounge, born in the townships of South Africa’s Gauteng province, evolve from an underground sound to a nationwide mainstream staple. Raduvha, who has spent the bulk of his life moving between different townships on the outskirts of Johannesburg and Pretoria, uses the sound as a vehicle to reflect those influences. The first run of his first album, Amapiano Selections, released in 2020, sold out quickly, and now he’s back with a new batch of songs.
We’re told that Where You Are expands on Raduvha’s rhythmic subtlety and warm bass, which are adorned by amapiano’s telltale shakers, hi-hats, and mid-tempo shuffle.
The release also sees Raduvha bringing more vocalists into the sonic picture. Singers Leyla and KayCee feature on the title-track and “Fall In Love,” respectively. Regular cohort Diego Don joins for two driving, pad-propelled works, “SK Love” and “AK Love.” The album’s closer “Duma ICU” features another returning collaborator, Stylo MusiQ. “There’s a palpable feeling of not knowing where the young producer might go next,” we’re told.
Tracklisting
01. Teno Afrika ft Leyla “Where You Are” 02. Teno Afrika & Diego Don “SK Love” 03. Teno Afrika “Bells” 04. Teno Afrika ft KayCee “Fall in Love” 05. Teno Afrika “Gomora Groove” 06. Teno Afrika “Halaal Flavour” 07. Teno Afrika & Diego Don “AK Love” 05:20 08. Teno Afrika ft Stylo MusiQ “Duma ICU”
Where You Are LP is scheduled for February 4 release. Meanwhile, you can stream the title-track feat. Leyla and “AK Love” with Diego Don in full below. Pre-order is available here.
