The Bug’s First Solo Album in Seven Years Captures the Raw Physicality of his Live Set

Photo: Caroline Lessire

Kevin Martin will release his first solo album as The Bug in seven years on Ninja Tune.

Fire is the third part of a series that began with 2008’s London Zoo and moved through 2014’s mind-melting Angels & Devils. Its 14 tracks will “immolate the synapses and flail the body,” we’re told, and they’re filled with the aggression and unsettling frenzy that the British producer has become so widely known for. They broadly cover dancehall, noise, grime, and hip-hop.

But beyond this, Fire is a response to the unique circumstances of the past year and a chance for Martin to reflect on his own journey from reclusive sound-obsessive to family man. In a period of enforced isolation, it captures his thirst for contact, and more importantly for the mayhem that can only happen between people, noise, and bass. By rebuilding his studio through lockdown, he ended up with a new album.

“I’ve always been addicted to the physicality and intensity of sound. I started The Bug because I wanted to make music for a soundsystem I had in storage, and the live experience of The Bug has always been something I wanted to reflect on record,” Martin tells XLR8R. “I like friction, chaos, fanning the flames with sound, and this album is the most reflective of the live show in terms of intensity and the sheer fuck-off attitude of those shows.”

The album features Martin’s longtime friends like Flowdan, Roger Robinson, Moor Mother, Manga Saint Hilare, and Irah & Daddy Freddy alongside new names to the stable like Logan, Nazamba, and FFSYTHO.

Tracklisting

01. The Fourth Day (feat. Roger Robinson)
02. Pressure (feat. Flowdan)
03. Demon (feat. Irah)
04. Vexed (feat. Moor Mother)
05. Clash (feat. feat. Logan)
06. War (feat. Nazamba)
07. How bout dat (feat. FFSYTHO)
08. Bang (feat. Manga Saint Hilare)
09. Hammer (feat. Flowdan)
10. Ganja Baby (feat. Daddy Freddy)
11. Fuck Off (feat. feat. Logan)
12. Bomb (feat. Flowdan)
13. High Rise (feat. Manga Saint Hilare)
14. The Missing (feat. Roger Robinson)

Fire LP is scheduled for August 29 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Clash” in full below via the player below and pre-order here.

Nite Jewel’s First Album in Four Years Evokes a “Deep Loneliness”

Nite Jewel, real name Ramona Gonzalez, will release her first album in four years.

Gonzalez recorded No Sun in the aftermath of the dissolution of her 12-year marriage. In 2018, she found herself drifting from friend’s couch to friend’s couch while studying for her PhD in Musicology at UCLA. The album is shaped by her studies of women’s musical lament which, in ancient Greece, used female voices to express communal and personal grief. Across eight tracks, Gonzalez considers what it means to be a professional mourner.

Sonically, we’re told that through spacious and steady production, Gonzalez evokes a “deep loneliness.” The instrumentation oscillates from sparse synths to dizzying experimental soundscapes and, while the album can be interpreted as electronic dance music for an era of death or mourning, it is also a “fervent celebration of life.”

Alongside the announcement, Gonzalez has shared the vulnerable lead single, “This Time,” which is inspired by Prince’s “Purple Rain.” The electronic guitar acts as a “direct ode” to the legendary artist.

The album lands on Gonzalez’s own Gloriette Records.

Tracklisting

01. Anymore
02. Before I Go
03. Show Me What You’re Made Of
04. To Feel It
05. #14
06. No Escape
07. This Time
08. When There Is No Sun (Sun Ra Cover)

No Sun LP is scheduled for August 27 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “This Time” in full below and preorder here.

Bok Bok Becomes One Bok for Garage Beat-Tape on AP Life

London producer Bok Bok, real name Alex Sushon, has released a double-EP of instrumental drill as One Bok.

Zodiac Beats 1 & 2 explores themes of solitude, pain, and frustration. It comprises eight tracks—including two short voice note interludes—of densely layered synths and pitch-bending bass fused with glitching hi-hats and robotic percussion. We’re told that the melodies are “menacing and dirge-like,” and “propelled into rhythmic shapes by Effectrix patterns.”

The record comes on Bok Bok’s AP Life, a label he launched earlier this year to “try to bring some of the original DJ and dub-plate culture I grew up with in the grime scene to a new skool of UK 140+ production,” he told Resident Advisor. Unlike Night Slugs, his other label, it’s “really routed in the city, the community, and the world around us.”

In March, Nammy Wams kicked off AP Life with a collection of UK grime instrumentals.

Tracklisting

01. KH Voicenote
02. Pisces
03. Capricorn
04. Nine Saturn
05. How Can I Forget
06. RG Voicenote
07. Leo
08. Fifty
09. Melodi
10. When I Start

Zodiac Beats Volume 1 & 2‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎ LP is available now. You can stream it in full below and order it here.

Shackleton Pivots Towards Psychedelia for First Solo Album in Nine Years

Shackleton will release Departing Like Rivers, his first solo album in nine years.

Departing Like Rivers is the British artist’s third solo album, and it follows his recent releases as Tunes Of Negation alongside Heather Leight, Takumi Motokawa, and Raphael Meinhart, and in collaboration with Wacław Zimpel. Unlike these works, it is “not a concept album,” Shackleton, real name Sam Shackleton, tells XLR8R. “I just wanted to focus on my core sound really but without any of the genre tropes that may have been present the last time I made a solo album.” We’re told that it is “meditative, foggy, and scuzzy,” and made of “multiple psychedelic layers and ghosts of Brit folk songs.” Shackleton anticipates it will be the kind of release that people play “at the end of an excessive night, like after a club being back home with some friends.”

Born in Lancashire but currently based in Berlin, Shackleton released his first album in 2009 on Perlon, and he’s since put out music on Honest Jon’s Records, Cosmo Rhythmatic, and his own Skull Disco in collaboration with the likes of Pinch, Appleblim, Vengeance Tenfold, and Ernesto Tomasini.

Departing Like Rivers comes of Shackleton’s own Woe To The Septic Heart!, which he started in 2010.

Tracklisting

01. Something Tells Me / Pour Out like Water
02. The Turbulent Sea
03. Shimmer, Then Fade
04. One of Us Escaped
05. The Light That Was Hidden
06. Few Are Chosen
07. Transformed into Love

Departing Like Rivers LP is scheduled for September 9 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Something Tells Me / Pour Out like Water” in full below and pre-order here.

Sarah Davachi’s New Album is “Like Half-Speed Progressive Rock, But Just the Keyboard”

Photo: Sean McCann

Sarah Davachi will release Antiphonals, her new album, in September.

Antiphonals sees the Canadian minimalist composer returning to the sound palette of Mellotron, electric organ, piano, and synthesizer that she developed on 2018’s Let Night Come On Bells End The Day. In many ways, you can consider the two releases “sister albums for a subdued moment.”

The release also leans heavily on English horn, bass flute, clarinet, recorder, oboe, French horn, chamber organ, and nylon-string guitar tape samples. Davachi recorded it in a “restricted manner,” using only an RE-501 Chorus Echo and a TEAC A-2340 four-track reel-to-reel. She describes it as like “listening to a half-speed progressive rock album, except it’s just the keyboard parts.”

Whereas in the past Davachi has separated studio practice and live performance, on Antiphonals she wanted to merge the former with the tonal characteristics and sound-on-sound tape delay processes that have informed her approach to the latter. She produced two demo EPs in the early stages of this album, Five Cadences and Gathers, both of which she released in 2020.

The release comes on Davachi’s own label, Late Music, which she developed for the release of Cantus, Descant, an 80-minute, 17-track album meditation on impermanence and endings.

As a composer of both acoustic and electronic music, Davachi is concerned with the close intricacies of intimate aural space, utilizing extended durations and simple harmonic structures that emphasize subtle variations in texture. You can read more about her work in her XLR8R Influences podcast here.

Tracklisting

01. Chorus Scene
02. Magdalena
03. First Cadence
04. Gradual of Image
05. Border of Mind
06. Abeyant
07. Rushes Recede
08. Doubled Flutes

Antiphonals LP is scheduled for September 10. Meanwhile, you can stream “Rushes Recede” below and pre-order here.

We Have Three Mini-Synths Custom Made by ZOUJ to Give to XLR8R+ Subscribers

XLR8R is offering XLR8R+ subscribers the chance to win a mini-synth designed by French-Moroccan-American producer ZOUJ, real name Adam Abdelkader Lenox, in celebration of “Lefty,” a funk-filled intoxicating pop track available now on City Slang.

“Lefty” is the latest taste of Lenox’s debut mixtape, TAGAT, which is set to drop on June 29. The full release collates a handful of previous singles with a collection of new tracks. Its name means “curse” in Tamazight, a family of languages spoken by people in the Atlas Mountains.

Sonically, the release features an experimental sound palette that combines tough, in-your-face percussion with silky synth lines—many of which are created with custom-made analog synthesizers—and catchy pop-style hooks. “I’m trying to make my machines sound human by emulating errors, randomness, and tempo ups-and-downs, while I’m trying my best as a human to sound like a machine,” Lenox tells XLR8R.

To be in the running to win, subscribers need to email their full name to [email protected] with “ZOUJ Giveaway” as the subject line. For those who haven’t yet subscribed, you can do so HERE. Each name will be assigned a number and chosen using a random number generator, with winners notified via email next Friday, July 2. Subscribers are eligible for one synth only.

You can stream “Lefty” in full via the player below, with the mixtape available for pre-order here. Photos of the synths can also be found below.

Download: Basile3 “Sans Retour”

This Friday, June 25, Infiné Music will release the latest EP from Basile3, titled Sans Retour.

Following on from the Ciel Rouge EP, which inventively used the human voice across a collection of southern US hip-hop, dubstep, house, and abstract electronics, Sans Retour presents six hyperreal sonic environments that combine gut-churning sub-bass with organic textures and sci-fi-like synthetic percussion. Like its album cover, it’s an intriguing piece of art full of otherworldly spaces that warrant continued exploration and immersion.

In support of the EP, Infiné has offered up the EP’s title track as an XLR8R download, available to XLR8R+ subscribers below. Recorded as a way for Basile3 to “project into a more intense fantasized life than what reality has been for months,“ “Sans Retour” is the EP’s most intense, club-focused track, although, within that club framework, Basile3 has imbued a floating sense of beauty and wonder via nimble percussion and dreamlike sound design that provides the perfect escapist’s soundtrack.

Tracklisting:

1. Extase
2. Sans Retour
3. Abundance Is A Myth
4. The Oxygen, The Walk, The Dreamer and The Bird
5. Ciel Rouge feat. Simili Gum (Spring Mix)
6. 3 4ever

Sans Retour will drop this Friday and can be preordered via Infiné’s Bandcamp, with the title track available as a download below.

Full XLR8R+ Members can download the track below. If you’re not an XLR8R+ member, you can read more about it and subscribe here.

Saoirse Launches Label with Debut Solo Outing

Saoirse will launch her Trust label with her much-anticipated first solo release.

Saoirse’s first forays in electronic music came in Dublin, Ireland at a young age, when she’d accompany her mother to free parties and raves. She’s been collecting records for 20 years and playing them out in public for nearly a decade, with particular focus on London. Her sets broadly sit within the realms of house and techno, but she’ll also present her favorite dub, jazz, electro, garage, and records, plus some surprises. Trust 001 comprises four tracks, each of which tries to “capture a different dancefloor feeling.”

The launch of Trust comes at a point when Saoirse is finally able to trust in her own ability, hence its name. It will continue to present “music made for dancefloors” from Saoirse, her friends, and her favorite producers either as solo artists or as collaborators.

“I started writing music many years ago but pulled back from it over and over because I never believed it was good enough, constantly comparing myself to other writers I loved, questioning whether I should tailor my music to sound more like what’s on labels I liked so it was accepted by them. A constant state of imposter syndrome,” Saoirse said in a social media post. “Last year during the first lockdown, I went back to the studio full time and just kept writing and writing, the only positive escape I had from crippling anxiety and the world imploding, and eventually I started to trust in the music I was writing. Trust in my own ability. Trust in music for the dancefloor, nothing more, nothing less and that’s ok.”

Tracklisting

A1. Trust
A2. (.)(.)
B1. Drop The Bass
B2. La Burbuja

Trust 001 EP is scheduled for July 26 release on vinyl. Meanwhile, you can stream the full release below and pre-order here.

Los Angeles’ Gothic Tropic Next on Dome of Doom

Photo: Spencer Trent

Wylie Cable’s Dome of Doom will release a new EP from Gothic Tropic, the project of Cecilia Della Peruti.

Peruti is a guitar-wielding Italian artist now based in Los Angeles, California. Tang Brain follows a handful of EPs and her debut LP, Fast or Feast, released in 2017. It was conceptualized during the summer of 2020 and features five songs that traverse pop, electronic, psych, R&B, and indie rock. Features include vocals from Allie X on “Give Me The Love,” and there’s also live drumming from rising artist Robert DeLong across “Made Up Bad” and “OnlyFans,” plus congas on the psych-infused “Please Say Yes” by Toro Y Moi collaborator Brijean.

Gothic Tropic describes the process of creating the EP as “a euphoric state of artistic freedom following a slew of slapstick failures administered by a fascist music industry.”

The limited edition cassette version of Tang Brain will be pressed in a run of 100 units.

Earlier this month, Wylie Cable curated a special edition of XLR8R+, delivering exclusive tracks from CLYDE, Gnome Beats, and QRTR.

Tracklisting

01. Give Me The Love (feat. Allie X)
02. OnlyFans
03. Made Up Bad
04. My Friend
05. Please Say Yes

Tang Brain EP is scheduled for July 9 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “OnlyFans” in full below, and pre-order here.

Planningtorock’s Latest EP Celebrates the Joys of Queer Love

Planningtorock—the alias of of Jam Rostron—will release the Gay Dreams Do Come True via their new label, Human Level.

A “loud, proud, unabashed celebration,” Gay Dreams Do Come True stands in opposition to the “tragic queer narratives which can sometimes dominate the mainstream,” we’re told. Rostron set out to make a record which basks in the “all-consuming joy of queer love,” and also the sense of belonging, intimacy, and safety that comes with it. The EP captures this feeling across three celebratory house tracks.

Rostron has been a disruptive voice in dance music for 15 years, having initially signing with DFA. They have released four studio albums and recently uprooted to the Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia, after spending two decades in Berlin. Everything fell into place when the musician met their partner, Riinu, through mutual friends in Helsinki, and Rostron soon relocated to Finland full time. Last September, the couple married—but LGBTQ+ marriage isn’t legal in Estonia, so the ceremony took place at the city’s British embassy. To read more about Planningtorock, check out their XLR8R podcast here.

Alongside the announcement, Rostron has shared the EP’s euphoric title track, “a dedication to my love, my wife Riinu, and to the Black trans women who fought for the rights we have today as queer, gay, non-binary lesbians,” they tell XLR8R.

Tracklisting

01. Gay Dreams Do Come True
02. Girl You’ve Got My Heart
03. Her Heart Is Now My Home

Gay Dreams Do Come True EP is scheduled for October 29 release. Meanwhile, you can stream the title-track below and pre-order the release here.

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