WNYC's Soundcheck

Junun is a musical collaboration between India-based Israeli composer Shye Ben Tzur, a group of Indian musicians called The Rajasthan Express, and composer (and Radiohead’s guitarist) Jonny Greenwood. The music is in the ecstatic Sufi music style known as qawwali (made famous by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan ), and it's devotional music—sometimes in Urdu, Hebrew, and Hindi, and is built on a percussion-dense and brass enriched groove with everything to love. The band has been opening for Radiohead on their current tour, but they join us to perform some of these ecstatic tunes in-studio.

Watch the full session here :

Sávila is a cumbia-inspired music and visual art project by guitarist Fabiola (Fabi) Reyna, vocalist Brisa Gonzalez and percussionist Papi Fimbres which takes its name from a medicinal plant that grows wild in tropical climates all over the world. Guitarist Fabi Reyna is also the editor-in-chief and founder of She Shreds Magazine, dedicated to women guitarists and bassists.

This Latinx power trio is captivating, with cleanly picked guitar lines, phantom bass lines generated by a loop pedal, playful and wonderfully unexpected rhythms besides the chicha and cumbia from Fimbres, and vocals in both English and Spanish by Gonzales, who also plays auxiliary percussion. Hear their set and interview from June 2018, which was part of the New York Guitar Festival, recorded in The Jerome L. Greene Space.

Watch Savila's set (starting at 1:07:19)

Orquesta Akokán bursts and flows with the spirit of dance orchestras of the 1940’s and 1950’s of Havana on their debut record of nine tunes - all sparkling, blazing, soulful, and meticulously arranged and composed mambo originals. Together, singer José "Pepito" Gómez, producer Jacob Plasse, and arranger Michael Eckroth, along with Cuba’s finest players, young and old, recorded the record live to tape in a three-day session at the legendary and revered Estudios Areito in Cuba – where percussion and piano absolutely pop, and the brilliance of brass is magnified. The recording is the first Spanish-language venture for Daptone Records, (the folks who brought you Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Charles Bradley, and other timeless artists) whose old-school techniques and attention to sonic detail ensure a living, breathing warmth.

The big band collective Orquesta Akokán joins us to play some of these Cuban Mambo (and rumba, cha-cha and jazzy) tunes in-studio.

Watch the session here :

Week of July 9: This week: rollicking Farsi funk, a melancholy Future, and Kate Bush looks to the past.

PREMIERE: Farsi Funk From NY’s Mitra Sumara

Something wonderful happened in the 60s and 70s when young musicians around the world began incorporating Western pop into their music, without totally abandoning their native rhythms and sounds. Examples include the so-called Ethio-jazz of Ethiopia, the psychedelic cumbias of Peru and Colombia, the reverb-drenched cassette culture of the Turkey and the Near East. Something similar happened in Iran, in the years before the 1979 revolution. And that something is the inspiration for the band Mitra Sumara, whose Farsi funk’n’roll comes from the mind of singer Yvette Saatchi Perez. Raised in America by adoptive parents, she began a search for her birth family and eventually met her Iranian birth father. Along the way, she fell in love with the music that a generation of Western-looking Iranians grew up with. Today we premiere the video for the song called “Helelyos,” or “our people are dancing.” The song comes from the band’s debut album, Tahdig , which is the name of the crunchy rice at the bottom of the pot which is an essential (and addictive) part of Iranian cuisine. The video is a swirling, psychedelic montage of traditional Iranian imagery with photos from the Iranian pop scene in the 70s and occasional photos of the band. When trombonist Peter Zummo first appears, you’ll see a photo of tahdig behind him. That’s assuming, of course, that you haven’t started dancing across the room by that point…

Gaby Moreno and Van Dyke Parks Celebrate American’s Immigrant Roots

On the Fourth of July, the NY Times published the Declaration of Independence on the back page of the sports section. A large portion of it is a laundry list of complaints against the British crown, but the second paragraph is one of the most profoundly moving things you will ever read. To think that almost 250 years ago, a group of people (okay, men) had the wisdom to write this: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Yes, the word “men” proved problematic for a while, but nowhere does it say that only the people who are already here should have those inalienable rights – in fact, it is clear that everyone is entitled to them. For the Guatemalan-born singer/songwriter Gaby Moreno , there is heartbreaking disconnect between the openhearted values of the Declaration of Independence and the reality of what’s happening today at America’s southern border. And so, on the Fourth of July, she paired up with the veteran American arranger and producer Van Dyke Parks (you’ll know his work with The Beach Boys, and hundreds of others) to release “The Immigrants,” a song that celebrates the ideals our country was founded on and the immigrants who built it. The song was originally written by the Trinidadian singer David Rudder after the police attack on the Haitian immigrant Abner Louima here in New York in 1998, but its message (which includes a quote from the Declaration) is still resonant today. The song’s original calypso sound has been expanded to a marching orchestral anthem, with Van Dyke Parks pulling out all his arranging stops.

All proceeds from the sale of the single go to the Central American Resource Center of California (CARECEN) .

A Surprising Song From Future’s Surprise Mixtape

Atlanta rapper and singer Future is a guy with a strong work ethic. You may recall when he released his album Future last year it went to number one; then the very next week he released Hndrxx , and it too went to number one. It was the first time an artist had ever had albums debut at the top of the charts in successive weeks. Last month, Future curated the soundtrack of the newly remade film Superfly , and provided much of the music himself. But that hasn’t stopped him from dropping a surprise release on Friday. Beastmode 2 is a followup to his 2015 mixtape called Beastmode , and again was done with the noted producer and pianist Zaytoven. Now, we’ve all heard rappers writing verses about their success, their money, their climb from the streets and how everyone is jealous of their singular talent. So the track called “Racks Blue” on the new mixtape caught my ear. It is all of those familiar things, but delivered in a pensive, almost melancholy way, with Zaytoven providing a lyrical, spare, piano-driven production. It’s quite a different thing from the earlier track “Racks” that Future co-wrote with the rapper YC. That song celebrated money (a “rack” is $1000, usually made up of ten $100 bills, which now have a blue-ish tinge); this one seems to be questioning what it all means.

Kate Bush Unveils A New Tribute To Wuthering Heights – And It’s Not A Song

Back in April, we learned that the English singer and songwriter Kate Bush was one of four British artists commissioned to write tributes to the Bronte sisters, which would be carved in stones set in the Yorkshire moors. Three of the four were unveiled this weekend. Novelist Jeannette Winterson wrote a tribute to all three authors as a single, possibly proto-feminist unit. Poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy was asked to write a tribute to Charlotte Bronte, author of Jane Eyre . Scottish national poet Jackie Kay was given Anne Bronte, whose stone will stand at the parsonage where she mostly lived – it’s the only one not yet ready for visitors. Kate Bush was assigned Emily Bronte – a natural choice given that Bush’s career began with her compelling single “Wuthering Heights.” That 1978 song announced the arrival of a major new talent (she was 19), with its evocation of Emily’s famous novel and its haunting chorus, “Heathcliff, it’s me/I’m Cathy, I’ve come home/I’m so cold; let me in through your window.” In her new poem, simply called Emily , Bush returns to the imagery from that song: there is another plea to open the window, and the poem’s final line is almost like an answer to that early song’s refrain.

Emily , by Kate Bush

She stands outside
A book in her hands
“Her name is Cathy”, she says
“I have carried her so far, so far
Along the unmarked road from our graves
I cannot reach this window
Open it, I pray.”
But his window is a door to a lonely world
That longs to play.
Ah Emily. Come in, come in and stay.

The stone marker was placed yesterday in the West Riding area of the fabled Yorkshire moors, where the Bronte sisters lived and where Wuthering Heights was set. The timing was perfect, as this year marks the 40th anniversary of Kate Bush’s song, “Wuthering Heights.”

Bodega Takes To The Staten Island Ferry In New Video

We met the Brooklyn art-punk band Bodega back in June, when they performed live on the Soundcheck podcast. On Friday, they released their album, Endless Scroll , which is full of plain-spoken, politically-minded, sharp-tongued songwriting that can provoke a surprised guffaw, a wry smirk, and pogoing – possibly all at once. But there is an outlier, a track called “Charlie,” which the band has now released a video for. Singer/guitarist Ben Hozie (or Bodega Ben, as he prefers to be called) wrote the song to remember his best friend Charlie, who drowned in 2007. The details are woven into the lyrics in a way that avoids sentimentality, and the video, of Ben and fellow singer Nikki Belfiglio taking a trip on the Staten Island Ferry, has the feeling of an affectionate memory or celebration.

For a more typical example of the band’s bratty, brainy sound, watch their “Jack In Titanic” video – or check out the band’s songs in our studio . But “Charlie” shows that the band is capable of hitting more than one emotional note.

The Bogotá-based Monsieur Periné has taken the the Latin music world by storm since their start in 2008. The eight piece band takes the music of their native Columbia, and infuses it with sweet swing sensibilities of the 1920's and a good dash of modern pop styles. Their upbeat and lively arrangements are engaging, detailed, and above all such a joy to move to. Their excellent musicianship and energy has not gone unnoticed; they were given a Latin Grammy award as 2015's best new artist. They have not slowed down since then and recently released the wildly popular Bailar Contigo . They perform live in-studio.

Watch here :

Portland, Oregon-based Marisa Anderson channels the history of the guitar and stretches the boundaries of tradition. From spacious melancholic laments to transcendent minimalism, Anderson is coming from a place between country, blues, and drone. On her latest record, Cloud Corner , she touches on Tuareg scales from "desert blues," the finger-style picking of so-called “American Primitive,” and chiming sad cowboy chords, while continuously moving and traveling on her guitar. She joins us in the studio to play songs from Cloud Corner .

Watch the session here :

Singer-songwriter and producer Ebony Bones is a powerhouse performer with seemingly no limits. She creates energetic and driving songs with twinges of pop, punk, afrobeat, and dance music, all wrapped up into a compelling display of raw emotion and stunning degree of detail and intricacy. She has already worked with Yoko Ono, CeeLo Green, the New London Children's Choir and more.

Her latest single, "Nephilim," is the title track of her upcoming album and features a dramatic performance from the Beijing Philharmonic Orchestra. The work focuses on how the voices of women, especially women of color, have been silenced. Ebony Bones joins us to discuss these themes and play songs from the record in-studio.

Watch here :

The singer and pianist Henry Butler died yesterday at 68. Blind since infancy but blessed with charisma and a resonant voice, he was not someone you’d forget, once you’d met him. Butler was part of the lineage of great New Orleans pianists, along with Doctor John, Professor Longhair, and James Booker. He was also a voracious consumer of music – and what he took in, he could easily send back. His repertoire included art songs by Franz Schubert, old Mardi Gras songs, 19th century revival hymns, as well as the blues, jazz and funk you would expect from a NOLA master.

I first met Henry Butler in 1989, when he played a typically wonderful set of pieces at our piano. I was blown away by his piano playing, but also by the version of “Deep River” that he sang – the best I’ve ever heard. And it turned out, I wasn’t the only one impressed. I would find out years later that the multi-platinum-selling pianist George Winston , a lifelong fan of the New Orleans pianists, had recorded the show off the radio and listened to it obsessively over the years. Now you can hear it as well:

In subsequent years, Butler would appear on a New Sounds Live concert series we did in Frankfurt, Germany, and also returned to our studio for an appearance on Soundcheck . And we learned that he had an interesting side gig: he was a photographer. He once explained that he would arrange objects by hand into what he felt would be an interesting still life setting. The results were good enough that his photos were exhibited in galleries.

After Hurricane Katrina, Henry lost his piano and many of his belongings, and lived for a time, “in exile,” as he called it, in Colorado, before eventually resettling here in NY. His last album, in 2014, was Viper’s Drag , a collaboration with a gifted group of New York musicians led by trumpeter/arranger extraordinaire Steven Bernstein.

Although he was never going to be a household name, Henry Butler probably wasn’t as well-known as he should have been. Check out his in-studio performances to hear a true American original.

Week of July 2: This week, Drake, Directors, and Dos Santos. Plus a new video from Meshell Ndegeocello.

PREMIERE: The NY-centric Video By Directors, Featuring Sahr Ngaujah

The New York band called Directors features the voice of Sahr Ngaujah; you may recall that Sahr played the title role of the hit Off-Broadway musical Fela ! , about the great Nigerian bandleader Fela Kuti. That performance earned him nominations for both a Tony and an Olivier Award. His newest role is somewhat less demanding: watch Sahr and the rest of Directors biking and bopping along on the streets of Brooklyn and the Bronx (eventually hanging out with multiple versions of themselves) in the new video for their just-released song called “So Fly.” The track itself is a fun, brassy slice of 60’s-inspired pop, with a sultry trumpet solo by Jordan McLean (a member of the band Antibalas , which was basically the pit band for Fela! ). The video is a celebration of the simple pleasures of chilling out on a summer’s day.

Another Great Cover From Meshell Ndegeocello Gets A New Video

The singer and bassist Meshell Ndegeocello ’s latest album, Ventriloquism , is both an album of covers as well as an exercise in gender studies. As we’ve noted before in the Weekly Roundup, her cover of Prince’s beautiful ballad “Sometimes It Snows In April” uses Ndegeocello’s androgynous voice to good effect. Now, she’s released a new video for her cover of the song “Sensitivity,” a 1990 song by Ralph Tresvant. The original was a come-on in the hip-hop-inflected R&B style known as New Jack Swing. Ndegeocello’s version recasts it as a kind of neo-Dixieland stomp, complete with banjo and a brass band. She sings Tresvant’s original lyrics without changing the gender (“you need a man with sensitivity – a man like me”), and the video echoes that by showing couples of many different types. The show is stolen, though, by a youthful brass band who know how to bust a move.

Drake Breaks the Internet. Again.

The rapper/singer/producer Drake routinely sets streaming records when he releases a new album, and he apparently feels quite aggrieved when someone has the temerity to top him. That happened earlier this year with Post Malone’s album beerbongs and bentleys , which set a new Spotify record with just under 79 million streams on its first day. Now Drake’s new Scorpion has shattered that mark, with over 132 million streams in its first 24 hours. The album comes with a fraught backstory – in it, Drake acknowledges publicly for the first time that he has a child. In the song “Emotionless ,” built around a Mariah Carey sample, he says “I wasn’t hidin’ my kid from the world, I was hidin’ the world from my kid.” Some of the album (much of it, actually) is about Drake himself, his fame, his beefs, and his production chops. And, in a roundabout way, his cash. The track “Don’t Matter To Me” is essentially a duet with Michael Jackson. Clearing the rights for that sample must have cost a genuine fortune, and it’s not only a case of conspicuous consumption, it’s also a suggestive meeting between the former King of Pop and the man who would love to inherit that title.

Let’s Eat Grandma Releases Sophomore Album

First, the band name. The name Let’s Eat Grandma is a whimsical grammar lesson on the importance of the comma. Get it? The band is a duo, comprised of two British teenagers, Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth, who’ve been friends since kindergarten. They are both singers and multi-instrumentalists, and their first album, called I, Gemini , was full of strangely off-kilter pop. On Friday, they released their second album, I’m All Ears , which expands their palette to include a lovely ballad (“Ava”), a clanging, metallic track (“Hot Pink”), and a slightly more conventional pop song called “I Will Be Waiting.” Emphasis on the word “slightly.” Strange phrases like “Now all your leaves will change with season/Count to eight to hear the gleaming” are supported by an increasingly lush production that includes a neat little vibraphone solo.

Let’s Eat Grandma plays in New York at Baby’s All Right on September 12.

Dos Santos Offer A New Type Of Latin Psychedelia

Logos by Dos Santos

In the late 60s/early 70s, the sounds of psychedelic rock met Latin American cumbia and chicha rhythms in places like Peru and Colombia. Largely unnoticed by North Americans at the time, this unexpected fusion of old and new, acoustic and electric, has had lingering echoes. Take for example the Chicago quintet called Dos Santos. Their new album is called Logos , and it’s got a colorful mix of indie rock, Latin music, and some elements of jazz and post-rock in the style of their Chicago neighbors Tortoise. The album’s title track is one of two that features the horns of Antibalas (see the Directors track, above) helping out, and on this song, those horns combine with some group vocals to create a big, progressive sound.

Dos Santos plays in Brooklyn at Barbes on July 14.

The now L.A.-based band La Luz recently moved to California from Seattle and their surf-noir refracts that weird golden paradise. Awash in reverb, the surf guitar and fuzzy vocal harmonies from singer/guitarist Shana Cleveland, drummer Marian Li Pino, keyboardist Alice Sandahl, and bassist Lena Simon are like a dreamy B movie, surreal, and kitschy, but definitely fun. The band joins us to play songs from their latest record, Floating Features, in-studio.

Watch the session here:

Also, this video for their song, "Cicada," is spectacularly goofy. Wait for the band in the hospital room...

NYC-based art rock quintet Bodega (previously known as Bodega Bay) are the model of modern tongue-in-cheeky post-punk band. With politically-minded personal commentaries on masculinity, consumerism, the hustle of capitalism, and female pleasure, their staccato guitars and shouty gang vocals make for a potent delivery vehicle. Dance party with them as they play salty new tunes in-studio.

Watch here :

Prolific Italian pianist and composer Ludovico Einaudi has been commissioned by prestigious orchestras and festivals, scored music for films and TV, and headlined festivals alongside Kendrick Lamar and Lady Gaga. He has also done collaborations with Malian kora virtuoso Ballaké Sissoko, Armenian duduk master Djivan Gasparijan (the duduk sounds like an oboe, and is made of apricot wood), and with the brothers Lippok as a post-rock trio called Whitetree.

Born in Turin, Einaudi trained at the Conservatory in Milan, and studied under Luciano Berio, celebrated for his experimental and electronic works. Einaudi's style of melodic stillness is part American-style minimalism, a bit of European romantic lyricism, and may lean towards ambient music while dominating contemporary classical charts. He has also championed the environment, creating a video for Greenpeace to bring awareness to climate change.

The musical alchemist Ludovico Einaudi performs his music on our piano, in-studio. His current tour makes a stop at Radio City Music Hall on Saturday night, June 30.

Watch live here :

Week of June 18: new music from Paul McCartney, hip hop for the Brexit era, and owning the generation gap.

A New “Single” From Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney will release his latest album, Egypt Station , in September, but he’s just released the first two tracks from it. In the old days, the A-side of this single would be “Come On To Me,” a simple, almost simple-minded rocker that promises that “if you come on to me, I’ll come on to you.” It’s one of his good-natured, slightly goofy tracks, and the 76-year old’s eternal youthfulness and cheer keep the song from becoming icky. “Come On To Me” has a lot of Macca’s favorite tropes – the false ending, the return of the chorus, and the sudden appearance of such Beatles-y sounds as a brass band and an electric sitar in the final moments.

The B-side is a pensive, piano-driven number called “I Don’t Know ,” which might well be a better song but isn’t nearly as much fun to listen to.

Egypt Station comes out on September 7 .

Hip Hop For The Brexit Era From The Rotten Hill Gang

The Rotten Hill Gang is a motley crew of London-based rappers, writers, singers, and musicians, whose forthcoming album is called Teach Peace . The title puts this squarely in the "conscious hip hop" box, but the sound is not so easily contained. A good example is the first single, "Party's Ova," a wild and colorful blend of brass band, music-hall, rock, and Caribbean sounds, all supporting rapped verses and sung choruses that wrestle with themes of ignorance, economic inequality, and racism. The band is plainspoken about the challenges of Brexit-era Britain, and the wider problems facing the world, but the sound is catchy and inviting.

Teach Peace comes out on July 27 .

Big Red Machine And Other "PEOPLE" Announce Big Collaborative Music Event In Berlin

PEOPLE is a collaborative music-making enterprise that includes Bryce and Aaron Dessner, the twin guitarists of The National , Justin Vernon of the band Bon Iver , and over a hundred of their musical friends. Today PEOPLE has announced the list of musicians who will be taking part in this year's event, which will be at the famous Funkhaus, a series of studios in Berlin, on August 18 and 19 . The roster includes (as you might expect) The National, and members of Bon Iver, but also Arcade Fire and a host of others. Among them is Big Red Machine - a collaboration between Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon. You may know the band from its theme music to WNYC's hit podcast American Fiasco , about the disastrous come-uppence of the US Mens' Team in the 1998 World Cup, but that theme music is just part of a larger song , which you can hear on the PEOPLE digital stream at https://beta.p-e-o-p-l-e.com/ , where you can also hear new works by the various contributors.

For a complete list of artists taking part in PEOPLE this August, click here .

Having Fun With The Age-Old Generation Gap, From Shakey Graves

The "gentleman from Texas," as Shakey Graves describes himself, has been releasing albums of rootsy American music since 2011. Born Alejandro Rose-Garcia, he has steadily widened his sonic palette, from guy-with-a-guitar to a kind of folk-rock group to occasional full-on rock band. He's just released a wry, witty video for the song "Kids These Days," from his new album Can't Wake Up . The song itself is a dry commentary on how each generation thinks their parents have no idea what it's like to be young - until they become their parents' age and suddenly start wondering why the next bunch of teenagers are such losers. The video gives Shakey Graves the opportunity to portray one of the classic examples of this generational confusion: the aging (but unwilling to admit it) rock star. Watch Graves don a long-hair wig and eyeliner! Thrill to the sight of the crowded interior of John Denver's tour bus! Or don't - I don't care; I don't understand what you young people are doing these days.

More Unearthed Records, But This One Is Early Punk

In the early 1970's, before there was punk rock, there was Death . Death consisted of three brothers who made a kind of proto-punk music that was far enough ahead of its time that it almost vanished without a trace, until the band was rediscovered and hailed as visionaries about a decade ago. In the early 1980's the brothers moved to Vermont and recorded a kind of gospel-based form of hard rock under the name The 4th Movement. It too has only now been rediscovered and released by Drag City Inc.

Charles Lloyd and Lucinda Williams Make Bleak But Beautiful Music Together

Now 80 years old, sax player Charles Lloyd is still refusing to bow to expectations. Yes, he’s a jazz musician, but his long career has included pioneering excursions into what would later be called “world music,” as well as collaborations with classical and country musicians. Now he’s working with the exemplary folk/country/rock singer and songwriter Lucinda Williams. Together with Lloyd’s band The Marvels, which includes the killer guitar team of Bill Frisell and Greg Leisz, they’ve released a moody, epic song called “Dust.” Williams’ weathered vocals say as much as the lyrics do about resignation, doubt, and despair, and the band creates the sort of alternate-reality Western sound that Frisell in particular has made his own over the years. And then there’s Lloyd himself, whose sax broods beneath the surface, only to take flight at several points in the song. It’s somehow both deeply sorrowful and unaccountably thrilling.

Richmond-based musician Natalie Prass is a fighter. Her forthcoming record, The Future And The Past , has transformed resistance and personal heartache into defiant, groove-laden romantic anthems. With a little dash of disco, and a little bit of soul, this record might look to Janelle Monae & Prince but also further back to Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye for its sound. That said, hear tender, big-hearted, shake-your-groove-thing songs by Natalie Prass, in-studio.

Watch the session here:

On the face of it, Red Baraat is a dhol-driven big band full of brass instruments and drums (both the dhol and drumset keep the groove going), rooted in Bhangra music (Punjabi dance music), who bring a party with them wherever they go. On their latest record, Sound the People , they combine the sounds of South Asian diaspora, along with jazz, hip-hop, psychedelia, and a bit of Caribbean music, to draw attention to issues of migration, colonialism, and our current political climate. The record blends instruments, cultures, and offers an aural tribute to "the way diversity makes, and has always made, America great.” With a joyfully and defiantly disruptive ruckus for dancing, the band Red Baraat joins us in-studio to play some of these new tunes.

Watch here :

Week of June 18: This week, Parquet Courts Plays Total Football, Angelique Kidjo Tackles Talking Heads, and another lost jazz album is found

PREMIERE: A Lost Jazz Album Is Found – No, Not THAT One…

Last week we heard the news of John Coltrane’s lost 1963 album . Now comes word that an early recording by some pivotal players on the downtown jazz scene in the 1970s is about to see the light of day, after being out of print and unobtainable for almost 40 years. It’s called Valley of the Search and it was recorded at the Jazz Loft in 1975. Though credited to saxophonist Alan Braufman, the recording also included notable musicians like the pianist, instrument inventor, and educator Cooper-Moore , bassist Cecil McBee, drummer David Lee and percussionist Ralph Williams. On June 29 , the same day that the Coltrane album comes out, Valley of the Search will be reissued, and will be marked by a series of live performances by Braufman and Cooper-Moore: the first on August 1 in The Greene Space at WNYC/WQXR , and the second on August 3 at National Sawdust. The session has been referred to as “free jazz,” which many people find a forbidding term (and sound), but tracks like “Destiny” show the band hewing more closely to the spiritual jazz of Pharoah Sanders (and of course, before him, Coltrane). Braufman’s sax has a questing melody that seems to be flying over a landscape sketched by percussion and subtle use of Cooper-Moore’s piano.

A Weekend Surprise From Beyoncé and Jay Z

You have to be impressed when two of the world’s biggest pop stars are able to release a new album without any leaks or online rumbling beforehand. But that’s what Jay Z and Beyoncé did this weekend. Everything Is Love was released, initially only on the Tidal, and is credited to The Carters (Jay Z’s real last name). The first single, called “Apeshit,” is notable for two things: the repeating line “I can’t believe we made it” seems to conclude the married couple’s very public troubles. Beyoncé called out Jay Z for infidelity in her withering album Lemonade, and Jay Z’s response album 4:44 was full of self-recrimination and doubt. The new single and the album suggest the king and queen are once again in harmony, which brings us to the second notable aspect of “Apeshit”: its video features Jay Z and Beyoncé at their most imperious in no less a setting than the Louvre. The suggestion that their art is of equal stature to the overwhelmingly white, male history of western culture is hard to miss. So, by the way, is Beyoncé’s final verse, a rapid-fire rap that does not take a backseat to her husband’s NFL-dissing verse before hers.

Parquet Courts Celebrate The World Cup and Total Teamwork

The essential NY rock band Parquet Courts has released a new single, just in time for the World Cup. It’s called “Total Football,” a term that was used to describe the Dutch national soccer team in the 1970's where every player except the keeper could switch positions and change fluidly to meet the needs of each situation. But Parquet Courts has more than soccer history on their minds – the song uses that Dutch team ethic as a metaphor; “collectivism and autonomy are not mutually exclusive” yells Andrew Savage at one point. The song is full of hooks, and a great, catchy moment where the band collectively shout out to artists and movements that they believe used the total football aesthetic (including the Dadaists and the Beatles). The song ends with a curious line which suggests that a certain NFL quarterback stands for personal glory at the expense of the greater good. Watch the lyric video so you don’t miss any of the verbal athletics.

Angelique Kidjo Reimagines A Talking Heads Classic

The Benin-born, Brooklyn-based singer Angelique Kidjo has finally released her distinctive, distinctly African-flavored take on the 1980 album Remain In Light by Talking Heads. This will not be news to Soundcheck listeners: Kidjo and her band performed several of these songs in our live podcast series last year, shortly before a sold-out performance at Carnegie Hall. But a project this big doesn’t materialize easily or quickly. The multiple Grammy-winner and occasional New Sounds contributor enlisted the aid of Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend, the great Nigerian drummer Tony Allen, and numerous others to flesh out her vision of this groundbreaking group of songs, written when David Byrne and producer Brian Eno were firmly under the spell of Afropop – especially the music of Fela Kuti, propelled by that same Tony Allen. The album is a kind of magic trick: the songs are intact and recognizable even as they sound like they’ve come from another planet. The ominous and unsettling “Listening Wind” is a personal favorite – driven by the sounds of the West African balofon , a type of xylophone; but a good track to start with might be “The Great Curve,” which features the line “the world moves on a woman’s hips” – a line that the staunchly feminist Kidjo somehow invests with a world of meaning and attitude.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Spiritualized Are Still Floating In Space

The English psychedelic rock band Spiritualized gained widespread fame in 1997 with their Album Of The Year-winning LP Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space . The band’s appearances since then have been sporadic – founding member J. Spaceman (real name Jason Pierce) has been the only constant member, and the band hasn’t put out a record since 2012. But in September, Spiritualized will return with an album called And Nothing Hurt , and the first single is out now. It’s a typically gauzy, anthemic song called “I’m Your Man,” which will appeal to Beatles and Pink Floyd fans. Its video sees J. Spaceman – in full spaceman regalia – traveling through Joshua Tree and paying his respects at the memorial to Gram Parsons .

Protomartyr Deals A Winning Hand In New Single

The Detroit post-punk band Protomartyr released an EP on Friday called Consolation , a collection of four songs that includes the usual rumble of distorted guitars and singer Joe Casey’s care-worn vocals. But two of the songs also feature Kelley Deal of The Breeders, who adds a touch of poignancy to the song “You Always Win.” Despite a largely well-earned reputation for abstract but barbed songwriting, Protomartyr’s best songs have also been melodic, and on recent albums, Casey has shown a flair for songs about growing up, and growing older. “Ellen,” from 2015’s The Agent Intellect , is an almost impossibly touching song (though still loud and edgy), that imagines his dead father singing to his mother, who is struggling with Alzheimer’s. “You Always Win” seems to be cut from the same cloth, and closes the new EP on a bittersweet note.

The British guitarist and singer, Joan Armatrading, has had a long and award-winning relationship with the British folk scene, has had a strong jazz influence in a lot of her early hits, topped the American charts with a new wave song in 1980, and just a few years ago became the first British woman to debut at #1 on the Billboard Blues Chart. Joan Armatrading has just released her 21st album, called Not Too Far Away , and she’s here in the studio to play some of it for us.

Watch here :

Week of June 11: This week, a lost album by John Coltrane, a new Superfly soundtrack, and a Hungry March Band premiere.

PREMIERE: The Hungry March Band Return. Pandemonium Ensues.

When the Brooklyn-based collective known as The Hungry March Band plays, they don’t really do much marching. Swarming is more like it. This anarcho-art-punk brass band includes a color guard and dancers as essential members, making their songs a visual experience as well as an aural one. So today we premiere the band’s latest video, for a song called “Running Through With The Sadness,” the title track of their brand new album. It’s their fifth LP, and the first time they’ve made a conventional video where they mime to the recorded song. (Previous videos have been live performances.) Sax player Okkon Yokoyama co-authored the song, and tells us it was written to the break-neck merengue setting on a Casio keyboard. There are moments that remind me of Balkan gypsy bands, or circus music, or New Orleans jazz, but it all adds up to a wild ride.

The Hungry March Band will be playing at Market Hotel on Friday night, June 22.

John Coltrane’s Lost Album Has Been Found

This week’s announcement of a newly rediscovered album from jazz legend John Coltrane sent shock waves through the music world. First, Coltrane is one of the towering figures in American music of the past century – a jazz pioneer, a sonic and spiritual experimentalist, and, though it’s hard to believe now, a best-selling artist on the popular music charts. Second, the lost album was made at a time when Coltrane and his quartet (the so-called Classic Quartet with McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and the great Elvin Jones on drums) were at the height of their fame and popularity. And third, the set they recorded, on March 6, 1963, contains a couple of original works that were apparently never played anywhere else. So when a typically breathless press release from the label, Impulse! Records, calls it “the holy grail of jazz,” it’s actually hard to argue with. One of those previously unknown works is “Untitled Original 11383” – which features Coltrane playing not his more customary tenor sax but rather a soprano sax. It’s the only work available so far, but the rest of the album promises further surprises – McCoy Tyner sits out several of the tracks, leaving a huge amount of space in the music that might presage some of Coltrane’s later harmonic adventures.

Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album will be released on June 29.

Rapper/Producer Future Presents The Soundtrack To Superfly

The remake of the 1972 film Superfly comes out on Wednesday, but the soundtrack dropped on Friday. Rapper and producer Future curated the soundtrack, co-produced the film, and will be performing some of his own music from the soundtrack on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Tuesday night. But not all of the music on the Superfly soundtrack is by Future, and at least one piece actually looks to the past. The soundtrack’s opener, “If You Want It,” is by Sleepy Brown (remember TLC’s massive hit “Waterfalls ” in the mid-90s? He wrote that.), and it has a big, technicolor sound reminiscent of Curtis Mayfield’s classic score to the original movie. In fact, when you hear the “chukka-chukka” of the electric guitar come in, you almost expect to hear Mayfield’s voice following. Instead we hear the voice of Scar, a singer associated with Outkast , in a perhaps career-boosting moment.

Fun New Video From The Internet (The Band, Not The Series Of Tubes)

The members of the neo-soul/funk band The Internet spent last year engaged in solo projects – the band’s frontwoman, Syd (formerly Syd Tha Kid, a member of the hip hop collective Odd Future), has been especially active and will continue to do solo concerts this year as well. But they’ve come back together to make a new album, called Hive Mind , which comes out on July 20. Syd has directed a new video for the single, “Come Over.” The song itself is a likable slice of '90s-style R&B, and as for the video, it is a totally good-natured story of hanging out, notable for its normalized same-sex couples and for its genial wit. Oh, and its interrupted guitar solo.

The Internet will play at the Afropunk festival here in New York on August 25. They’ll be back opening for Gorillaz on October 13 at Barclays Center.

Twin Shadow Celebrates “Saturdays” With An Assist From Haim

The Dominican-American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and occasional actor George Lewis Jr. makes music under the name Twin Shadow . That music is – despite the guitar’s presence – a synthy brand of pop reminiscent of the '80s. When Twin Shadow played in our studio, all of the listener comments noted that fact with evident satisfaction. Except for one listener who identified himself as George Lewis Sr., and simply wrote “And one day the moustache was all grown up...So prouda my boy!” Anyway, Twin Shadow has just shared the video for "Saturdays,” a mostly live-action video (the moustache is just a – well, a shadow right now), but featuring an animated Haim , the sister trio who are also known for their retro-rock sound. Their harmonies color the song’s final verse and chorus.

Twin Shadow is also playing Afropunk in Brooklyn, but on the second day, August 26. He too will be back in New York, at Radio City Music Hall on Sept. 27 with Børns.

Meet the impressive R&B songstress Deva Mahal, who claims her parents as inspiration: blues legend Taj Mahal and dancer/artist/teacher Inshirah Mahal. Her latest record, Run Deep is collection of modern and seductive, rich and rocking tunes that make for a grand tour of soul, blues and classic rock. She and her band take us for a ride on powerhouse stompers and sumptuous ballads, in-studio.

Watch :

This Is The Kit is English singer and songwriter Kate Stables (lately based in Paris or Bristol) and whoever joins her. Under that nom de plume, she's been releasing since the 00's. Her latest album, called Moonshine Freeze , has been nominated for the prestigious Ivor Novello Award in the UK. This Is the Kit plays some of these songs which range from ghost stories, clapping music, sax solos and birdsong in-studio.

Week of June 4: Yes, there is new Kanye West. But other stuff happened too. Oneohtrix Point Never dropped a new weird pop record; plus new music from bassist Marcus Miller, and electropop band The 1975.

From The Big Expanse of the US West, A Little Album by Kanye West

Well, you gotta hand it to Kanye West – he sucked all the air out of the music world again this past week, unveiling his new EP-masquerading-as-an-album called Ye at a star-filled ranch in Wyoming . It feels small in size, but more surprisingly, it feels small musically as well. None of the seven songs look to be crashing anyone’s Top Ten Kanye Songs playlist. Where it does not stint is in scope: West takes on his recent disclosure of his bi-polar diagnosis, the #MeToo movement and its snaring of hip hop mogul Russel Simmons, his own views about women (which this album suggests is evolving from Paleolithic to parental), and his erratic public behavior. One song, “Ye Vs. The People ,” features the rapper T.I. chiding West for his support of Trump at the apparent expense of the African-American community, and even though West gets to respond, his opponent’s jibes are pretty strong and land hard. It all points to West’s epic sense of self-regard, which works well when it’s one of the spices in his recipes but at times on Ye threatens to become the overwhelming flavor. The song “No Mistakes” might be the one that best balances West’s undeniable production skills and taste in sampling with his need to tell us his story. “It’s been a shaky ass year,” he admits, only to go on to proclaim how he doesn’t “take advice from anyone less successful than me.” Meanwhile, the chorus samples the gospel legend Edwin Hawkins, and Slick Rick’s repeated “believe it or not” samples slyly suggest that we question everything West says.

The 1975 Return, Only A Little Older But Apparently Much Wiser

The British electropop band called The 1975 released their debut LP in 2013, but really hit their stride here in the States with 2016’s album I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It . Now they’ve announced that their followup, called A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships , will be out in October, and have released a single called “Give Yourself A Try.” Lead singer Matt Healy, who has recently revealed that he went through a period of rehab for drug addiction, adopts the role of an older man (he’s all of 29) dispensing the hard-won wisdom of his years (again, all 29 of them). One thing about The 1975 has been a sense of ironic self-awareness in their work – think of the video for their early hit “Girls,” for example, which starts with Healy complaining that the video looks like a typical pop band video (“we’re not a pop band”), and then pulls out every cliché in the book as the production unfolds. In this song, Healy details things like finding a grey hair “and like context in a modern debate I just took it out,” and hilariously refers to himself as “a millennial that baby boomers like.”

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Latest “Hamildrop” Features The Regrettes

As we’ve mentioned here before , Lin-Manuel Miranda , the creator of Hamilton , has been doing a monthly series of audio or video releases of Hamilton -related content, and this month’s Hamildrop , as the series is known, is an actual cover of one of the hit musical’s songs. “Helpless” has a 90s R&B groove in the original version, but the LA-based band The Regrettes have other things in mind – 60s girl group harmonies, for one, and the classic propulsive sound of garage-rock. Their version of “Helpless” has a great summery sound – perfect for this month’s Hamildrop.

Oneohtrix Point Never Drops Long Awaited LP

Composer and visual artist Daniel Lopatin finally released his album Age Of on Friday – shortly after presenting the songs in three sold-out performances of his interdisciplinary extravaganza Myriad at the Park Avenue Armory. Clearly Lopatin is not hobbled by a lack of ambition, andAge Of has been eagerly awaited since Lopatin’s earlier release of a video for the album track “Black Snow ,” which he directed and which Pitchfork called (pretty accurately) “a head-spinning, cyborg nightmare.” The album turns out to be at once the darkest but also the most songful album that Lopatin has made under the Oneohtrix Point Never banner. Harpsichords share space with heavily processed vocals; some tracks are short enough to almost function like the skits in an old hip-hop record. There’s an impressive amount of sonic territory being mapped, and a good portion of it happens in the song called “The Station.” Its repeating bass line underpins a steadily building array of synthesizers, what sounds like a fuzzed-out guitar, harp samples, and auto-tuned vocals where you hear the auto-tune more than the vocals. An instrumental coda suggests a meeting of electronic music and Philip Glass-style minimalism, with a nod to alternative tunings. Not bad for a 4-minute “song.”

Marcus Miller’s Jazzy Take On Trap Music

Bassist Marcus Miller is part of the generation of jazz musicians who draw freely from the full range of black American music. Like pianist Robert Glasper or trumpeter Christian Scott Atunde Adjuah , Miller writes music that incorporates hip hop, funk, soul, and various types of R&B. His new album, called Laid Black , features guests like New Orleans’ Trombone Shorty, vocal group Take 6, and singer Selah Sue, who does a surprising version of “Que Sera Sera.” But it begins with a song called “Trip Trap.” The title refers to the spare Southern hip hop style known as trap, and it starts with the genre’s trademark stuttering hi-hat cymbal and Miller’s funky, almost speech-like bassline. But as the song goes on the whole band gets into the act, with the horns leading the way and framing a number of short but virtuosic bass interjections.

Hear unpredictable and graceful melodic lines traded by sax and strings, as tenor sax superstar Joshua Redman and string quartet Brooklyn Rider, along with all-star rhythm section of Scott Colley (bass) and Satoshi Takeishi (percussion) take over the studio. It's chamber music with swoops, dives, groove and bite in original and newly-arranged music with one foot in the jazz world where sharps are optional. Look for these pieces to appear on a forthcoming record due in fall 2018 via Nonesuch.

Watch the full session here :

Resisting gender-specific compliments in print since 2014 (and probably before), producer, songwriter, badass, and musician Neko Case is about to unleash her latest record, Hell-On, into the world. She’s written songs that traverse a lot of ground: folk ballads, radio pop, rock anthems, a little bit of goth moodiness, honky-tonk piano, and swagger of all kinds. Her exceptional and distinct voice, “like garotting wire,” delivers wordplay of the highest order on this gorgeous, daring, won't-be-a-supplicant-ever record. Neko Case brings her touring band to play some of these new tunes in-studio.

Watch the full session here :

Week of May 28: This week, returns for Jake Shears and Buddy Guy, a benefit song from Hurray For The Riff Raff for Puerto Rico, and an expansive hip-hop/orchestral collaboration.

Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge Present The Midnight Hour

The Midnight Hour is a project of the producers Ali Shaheed Muhammad, of A Tribe Called Quest, and Adrian Younge. The two have been scoring the Netflix series Luke Cage , and their Midnight Hour collection has a grand, cinematic sound that includes a taut soul/jazz rhythm section and what sounds like a full orchestra. In addition, the album will be full of guest vocalists from the worlds of hip-hop and R&B, including Raphael Saadiq , Bilal, and, on one memorable track, the late Luther Vandross. Ubiquitous drummer Questlove and electrifying trumpeter Keyon Harrold also make an appearance. The first single is “Questions,” and features the distinctive voice of CeeLo Green (“Crazy,” “F*** You,” etc.) up front. Both producers look back to old-school hip-hop, and therefore even further back to the soul and jazz of the 70s that provided so much of the samples used in hip-hop in the 80s and 90s. “Questions” may sound familiar to Kendrick Lamar fans – he wanted to use an early version of this song on his Grammy-winning album To Pimp A Butterfly , and it ultimately appeared on his 2016 compilation untitled/unmastered under the title “Untitled 06.” Now, you can hear the final version of the song as part of The Midnight Hour . The album comes out on June 8.

Jake Shears Goes Solo – With A Crowd

For many years, Jake Shears was known as the flamboyant frontman for the dance-pop group Scissor Sisters. Lately he might be better known for his leading role in Broadway’s hit musical Kinky Boots . Soon, though, Shears will also be known as a solo artist: he will release his first solo album in August. The first single is “Creep City,” and its video finds Shears as the Master of Ceremonies at a place that seems like a version of Cabaret set in New Orleans at Mardi Gras. The combination of sexual abandon (unrestrained by gender or apparently by orientation), horn-heavy dance hooks, and Shears’ impish sense of humor make the video eminently watchable, as it somehow stays just this side of NSFW. The music, according a statement from Shears, is acoustic, handcrafted, and slow-cooked, the traditional Southern way. “If it sounds expensive,” he writes, “that’s because it was.”

The album, simply called Jake Shears , is due on August 10.

Hurray For The Riff Raff Support Puerto Rican Recovery With “Pa’lante”

For years, the singer and songwriter Alynda Lee Segarra has led her band Hurray For The Riff Raff through songs that celebrate roots, diversity, and identity, in music that has elements of folk, punk, and echoes of her adopted hometown of New Orleans. (Segarra is a Bronx native.) Now, she’s released a remarkable short film that’s built around her song “Pa’lante,” which means “forwards,” or “onward.” It follows a Puerto Rican family’s struggles in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria (Segarra herself appears briefly in some of the archival footage), and amplifies the song’s original statement of ethnic pride and its suggestion that assimilation should not mean the loss of one’s familial culture. The song is not played continuously all the way through – there is a break in the middle of the film, but give it a minute. Because when the song returns, with Segarra’s simple but affecting chorus and her urgent/raging cries of “pa’lante,” it is a deeply moving experience.

The Legendary Buddy Guy Releases A New Single

Buddy Guy is justifiably famous as a blues guitarist – one of the great exponents of the electric Chicago Blues style. His fans include Eric Clapton, who saw Guy play in 1965 and labeled it a transformative moment in his (Clapton’s) career, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and by extension the countless bands who’ve been influenced by those folks. The 7-time Grammy winner is about to release an album called The Blues Is Alive And Well (a title that English teachers can have some fun with), and has just given us a first glimpse in the form of a single called “Nine Below Zero.” And the first thing you’ll probably notice is not the guitar playing – there are lots of fine guitarists out there, and this song hews pretty closely to the classic blues format; it’s Buddy Guy’s voice. It’s hard to believe that at 81 he can still sing with the strength and clarity he brings to this old Sonny Boy Williamson song. Oh, and the guitar playing is also pretty great.

Psychedelic country/rock from Texas’s Israel Nash

Israel Nash has spent the past couple of years creating music that evokes the wide expanses of Texas, seemingly viewed through the dual lenses of Nashville and peyote. A big sweep of steel-guitar, an even bigger sweep of orchestral sound, an anthemic chorus – all of that comes together in his newest single, called “Rolling On,” but there’s something new too: a kind of 60s pop sheen that just adds to the epic feeling of what is, at heart, an intimate song about perseverance and positivity.

Nash’s next album, Lifted , comes out on July 27.

Paul Beaubrun’s Call To “Rise Up”

In the late 80s/early 90s we had a chance to hear the Haitian band Boukman Eksperyans on several occasions in NY; we even presented some of their live music on the air here at WNYC. It was a family band, and the family in question was the Beaubrun clan. Paul Beaubrun grew up in that family, surrounded by music. He fled Haiti for NY after the 1991 coup, and has released a couple of albums of roots-based music built around the sounds of reggae, blues, and the Haitian rasin style. The latest is called Ayibobo , the Haitian Creole word for “blessings,” and he’s just released the video for the largely acoustic single called “Rise Up.” That sounds like a Bob Marley title, and indeed the song has a definite early reggae quality to it. It’s a call to action, but typically for the younger Beaubrun, it is not rabble-rousing screed but rather an understated, lyrical offering, sung in English.

Hear unraveling minimalist electronica with restrained ambient feels from Rival Consoles, aka London-based producer Ryan Lee West, whose music combines warm and human analogue-heavy synthesizers, along with acoustic and electric instruments. On his latest, Persona , which might have taken inspiration from the shoegaze band, Slowdive, West strikes a delicate balance between music for home listening and larger spaces. He’ll perform this shifting palette of drones, melodies, and effects, in-studio.

Watch the full session here :

Part book club, part composer collective, Oracle Hysterical’s works occupy the fluid space between classically-inclined song-cycle and art-rock concept album. The group’s songs take on great literary with text sources from Grimms’ Fairy Tales to Greek tragedy, and falsely-attributed Shakespeare, all in modern settings that might be chamber rock, baroque folk or (staff favorite:) “Alt-classical.” The chamber band’s latest is "Hecuba," a “savage story of revenge in which the disgraced queen of Troy, Hecuba, with her city razed and her children murdered, descends from nobility to primal violence.” (National Sawdust ) Oracle Hysterical plays songs from it in-studio.

Watch the full session below :

Week of May 21: This week, Neko Case gets dark, Fantastic Negrito gets darker, and Nine Inch Nails… You get the idea.

Neko Case Takes a Long and Winding Road

In her solo songs, her long-term collaboration with indie rock supergroup The New Pornographers , and her trio with Laura Viers and k d lang , Neko Case has established herself as a great singer… to the point that it has threatened to overshadow her songwriting. But early songs like “Things That Scare Me ,” which may have seemed dark and pessimistic at first, now seem prophetic. Her latest is a 7-minute epic called “Curse of the I-5 Corridor,” which features guest vocals by Mark Lanegan . It’s a slow burner about bad choices, bad luck, and people who may be good but have not been given the chance to show it. The title refers to the interstate that runs through the Pacific Northwest (already immortalized in the Wedding Present’s brilliant “Interstate 5 ”). Like the highway after dusk, the song winds its mysterious way to its destination – a dark and dramatic instrumental finale.

Neko Case’s new album, Hell On , comes out on June 1.

Fantastic Negrito Returns, And He Ain’t Happy

Xavier Dphrepaulezz is a considerate guy: he chose the stage name Fantastic Negrito so you wouldn’t have to trip over his Somalian last name (de-frep-all-ez). But he is not in a happy place when it comes to the state of our Union. His new single, “The Duffler,” comes from his forthcoming album called Please Don’t Be Dead . In a statement for the release of the single, he writes that the album title refers to his "fear for the life of my black son. I fear for the lives of my daughters. I am uncertain about what kind of future they will face.” The single is about regrets and not realizing what you had until you’ve lost it. It’s a feeling Dphrepaulezz knows well, having signed a lucrative record deal when barely out of his teens (and his strict religious home), only to suffer a near-fatal car accident in 2000 that looked to have ended his career before it had a chance to bloom. But since adopting the Fantastic Negrito moniker in 2015, he’s gone from strength to strength, wielding his urgent R&B, with occasional hard rock riffs, in a way that led to a Grammy award for his debut album in 2016.

The new album, Please Don’t Be Dead , comes out on June 15.

Trent Reznor’s Anxious New Prayer

“God Break Down The Door” is the plea – or maybe the command? – of singer Trent Reznor on the new Bowie-inflected single by his band, Nine Inch Nails. “God Break Down The Door” finds Reznor in unusually relaxed form, vocally, even as he’s singing enigmatic lines like “you won’t find the answers here/not the ones you came looking for.” But all around him is a confusion of skittering drums, restless synthesizers, ominous blasts of sax, and a sense that maybe you don’t want to see what’s behind that door after all.

The album, Bad Witch , comes out on June 22.

Bombay Rickey – Bollywood Funk With A NY Attitude

Surely we’ve all wondered at some point what it would sound like if an operatically trained singer performed Hindi film music with a funk band in 1960s California… or was that just me? Anyway, Brooklyn’s Bombay Rickey answers that question with their latest album, Electric Bhairavi , which came out on Friday. (Bhairavi is a raga scale familiar to fans of Indian classical music.) The band features the enormous voice of Kamala Sankaram , a singer and contemporary music composer, and a psychedelic surf vibe that spans decades effortlessly. The album is full of good-natured originals (“Megalodon” is apparently based on the singer’s collection of prehistoric shark teeth), and songs that have roots in South Asia. It also features a cover of an old Yma Sumac song, “Gopher Mambo,” here simply called “Gopher” because it’s no longer in a mambo rhythm. I mention this track because Bombay Rickey began as an Yma Sumac cover band, which sounds like a joke but evidently wasn’t. (Sumac was a Peruvian-American soprano who was a big hit in the 50s but seen as the ultimate in camp by the time I was giggling over her vocal exploits in the 80s.) This song, called “Meri Aankhon Mein Ek Sapna Hai,” is a Bollywood song associated with the famous singer Mohammed Rafi , and the funky guitar-led instrumental opening is pretty true to the original; but Sankaram wastes little time making the song her own, and each time you think, “wow, that’s high,” she somehow finds an even higher note.

Treya Lam Is Kaki King’s First Artist Signing

Guitarist and composer Kaki King has started her own record label, humorously named Short Stuff Records. (Hey, she may be on the small size, but we’ve learned over the years that she is a big presence on stage .) Her first signing is singer and violinist Treya Lam, whose debut album called Good News will come out on June 8. Lam’s first single is “Sapphire Skies,” in which layers of strings and some beautiful overdubbed vocal harmonies take the song out of the usual singer/songwriter territory and into something closer to art song or chamber music. King plays guitar and other instruments on the album, which, we are told, was entirely performed, recorded, mixed and mastered “using 100% female talent.” Speaking of which, both Treya Lam and Kaki King will be performing at historic Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn on May 29 as part of the Secret Society of the Sisterhood, along with actress Amber Tamblyn, comedian Yamaneika Saunder, and others.

Treya Lam also performs on June 8 at Joe’s Pub. Lam and King will also share a bill at Celebrate Brooklyn on July 28.

Pianist, composer, MacArthur Fellow, and bandleader Vijay Iyer has done imaginative re-workings of pop songs, explored the connections between jazz and the music of India, and veered into the classical realm as well, with electronics. His most recent album, Far From Over , features an all-star lineup of virtuoso jazz improvisers: horn players Graham Haynes, Steve Lehman and Mark Shim alongside rhythm partners Stephan Crump and Tyshawn Sorey. And the rhythms under some these tunes have come from folk music - from West African drumming or Indian classical music – or just straight-up funk. The Vijay Iyer Sextet joins us live in the studio, in advance of their Village Vanguard residency this week.

Watch the full session here via New Sounds Facebook :

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Some folks get a fast car, a tattoo, or a drum set for their mid-life crisis. However, New York singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Stephin Merritt, songwriter of The Magnetic Fields recorded 50 Song Memoir : a five-disc, two-and-a-half-hour audio autobiography, featuring one song for each year of his life from conception to teenage years; early explorations of synthesizer to when he founded The Magnetic Fields, and made 69 Love Songs; all the way up to 2015, his 50th year. There were certain rules: no more than seven instruments per song (which works well for the live band configuration), and no instrument could be used more than seven times across the album - oh and the song material came from personal life events.

When the band performs the collection of songs live, it takes two full nights to perform, which they'll do on June 15 & 16 at the Apollo Theater . Stephin Merritt and Sam Davol are in the studio to play a few of these story-songs of cartoon pop, club disco, fractured love songs, and beyond, and maybe tell a few stories too.

Week of May 14 : shades of blue from the Ruen Brothers and from Kelsey Lu, and a message from Sioux sacred lands by Gang Gang Dance.

The Ruen Brothers Evoke 60s TV Variety Shows in All My Shades of Blue

Originally from the UK, Henry and Rupert Stansall are now making music in Brooklyn under the name The Ruen Brothers. They appear to have grown up with a steady diet of 60s pop and country – their songs recall Johnny Cash, Paul Revere & The Raiders, The Everley Brothers, and most of all, Roy Orbison. This is largely because of Henry’s soaring vocals, although their forthcoming album has been cleverly produced to sound like one of Phil Spector’s “wall of sound” recordings from the '60s. The producer is none other than Rick Rubin (Run DMC, Beastie Boys, Johnny Cash’s brilliant late albums, need I go on?), and the album will be called All My Shades Of Blue . The title track is out now, and the band has just released a fun video for it which imagines the brothers on some '60s TV variety show – the type where bands would (poorly) lip sync and play along to their hit singles.

All My Shades Of Blue comes out on June 1. The Ruen Brothers will play a Facebook Live set on June 5 at 2pm; like us if you don’t already .

All Her Shades of Blue , from Kelsey Lu

Kelsey Lu is a classically-trained cellist who also plays guitar and sings. She was born in North Carolina but has Nigerian roots, a fact that colors some of the imagery (the hair, for one thing) in the new video she’s released for her single “Shades of Blue.” The video is actually a short movie, with the song appearing about five minutes in. \The title isn’t the only thing that connects this song to the Ruen Brothers, above – like them, Lu harkens back to music of an earlier time. In her case, it’s the slow-burning, soulful R&B style of the late '70s/early '80s known as Quiet Storm. In a statement accompanying the release of the single, Lu referred to the song as “a glimpse of hopefulness and peace” coming from a period of depression (she was squatting in a Hoboken factory at the time). So among the various shades of blue in the song is that ur-text of American pop, the blues.

Kelsey Lu plays at the Music Hall of Williamsburgh on Wednesday, May 23.

Nature and Politics Meet in New Song by Gang Gang Dance

The NY-based experimental rock trio Gang Gang Dance hasn’t released an album since 2011, but that’s about to change with their new album, Kazuashita . It comes out on June 22 but today the band released a new single from it called “J-Tree.” As usual, the focus is on Lizzi Bougatsos’s sometimes otherworldly vocals and the ambient electronics of Brian DeGraw and Josh Diamond; but there is another voice at the center of the song. It’s a sample of one of the leaders of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, protesting the plan to build the Dakota Access Pipeline through what the Sioux consider to be sacred land. The band states that the track was intended to evoke nature and the wide open spaces of the American West, but the sample makes this a song about a time as well as a place.

Gang Gang Dance will be performing a record release show at Elsewhere in Brooklyn on June 22.

Aisha Devi’s DNA Feelings : A Double Helix of Electronic/Spiritual Sound

DNA Feelings by Aisha Devi

The singer and electronic music composer Aisha Devi was born in Switzerland to a Tibetan-Nepalese family, and it shows. Her music occupies a decidedly Western soundworld, but fills it with gestures taken from Eastern spirituality. Her new album, DNA Feelings , is built around her voice, often heavily processed, swooping and gliding over slowly turning electronic tones and bursts of percussion that sound like they were borrowed from a Buddhist ritual. These various pieces sound like they could easily cohere into something danceable and familiar, but they never do. The album is willfully strange and discomfiting, but at the same time it clears a space for thought, and perhaps even contemplation. The track called “Aetherave” has passages that come close to the sound of the classic Euro-electronic music of Tangerine Dream or Jean-Michel Jarre, but even here, the comfort of familiar sounds and rhythms is broken up by what sounds like a traditional Tibetan melody, accompanied by widely-spaced gongs.

This Is Why We Love Courtney Barnett

The Australian singer, songwriter and guitarist Courtney Barnett has become a top attraction in the rock world: touring globally to sold out theaters; garnering critical acclaim for her best-selling solo recordings and her duo album with Kurt Vile ; and delivering songs that can be witty or withering (or occasionally both) in her wry, deadpan voice . But what really sets her apart is the unaffected, unpretentious way she presents her work, and herself. Witness, for example, her new single and video. It’s called “Sunday Roast,” the closing track from her forthcoming album Tell Me How You Really Feel . It’s a simple tune about the simple pleasures of sharing a dinner with friends at the end of the week. But the video is pure Courtney: it’s basically a send-up of those YouTube videos where someone teaches you how to play a song on the guitar. It’s a work of gentle, understated humor (among other things, she’s a left-handed guitarist, so trying to learn the song by watching her is a strange experience). The video looks like it was made with a couple of friends and no budget, which may well have been the case – when you finally see the guys who are holding the sheet that provides her backdrop, they are faces that will be familiar to Barnett’s fans.

Bombino, aka guitarist and songwriter Omara Moctar, comes from the nomadic Tuareg people of North Africa. On his latest record, Deran , recorded close to his native Niger in the southern Sahara, he extends best wishes for peace and celebrates his desert home. Bombino’s guitar-based “desert blues” or “desert groove” tunes might have that camel gait-like loping rhythmic feel, or even Bombino’s own style of ‘Tuareggae’ - and are sung in Tamashek, the language of the Tuareg. He plays some of this powerful, hypnotic Saharan guitar music in the studio.

Watch the full session here :

The California Honeydrops play stripped-down rootsy music that might sound like country-blues, Southern soul, New Orleans second-line, and R&B - all at once old school and really old-school. Their origin story is inspirational – Polish-born Lech Wierzynski (vocalist, guitarist and trumpeter) and drummer Ben Malament got their start busking in an Oakland subway station, and 10 years later, have added members, gotten tighter, and played all kinds of major tours, opening for Bonnie Raitt, B.B. King, Allen Toussaint, Buddy Guy and Dr. John . The Honeydrops are, as drummer Ben Malament says “a band that shines because of each other.” They’ll join us in-studio to play new tunes with soulful groove from their double album, Call It Home: Vol. 1 & 2.

Watch the full session here :

Week of May 7: This week, the lighter side of Dirty Projectors, Childish Gambino’s dark view of America, and Red Baraat’s color-coded dance music.

Dirty Projectors’ New Single Is For The Birds

Singer/composer David Longstreth is preparing to release the next album by his band Dirty Projectors , called Lamp-Lit Prose , and the first single, “Break-Thru,” is out now. The sound is trademark Dirty Projectors – a kind of fractured, world-music-inflected art/funk powered by Longstreth’s flexible vocals and (lefty, upside-down) guitar playing. But where many of the band’s songs have been obscure or darkly-colored, “Break-Thru” is sunny, and pretty straightforward about its good mood. That extends to the video, which features Longstreth in the company of an increasingly large, and increasingly improbable, group of birds – several of whom seem to be enjoying the song as much as he is.

Lamp-Lit Prose comes out on July 13.

Childish Gambino’s Disturbing View of America

Saturday was a big day for Donald Glover , the actor and comedian who doubles as the rapper and songwriter Childish Gambino. That night, he hosted Saturday Night Live (as Donald Glover) and performed as the musical guest (as Childish Gambino). After the show, he unveiled the video for his new song “This Is America,” which tackles both racism and gun violence. This ambitious, deeply provocative work juxtaposes uplifting communal tropes of the black American experience – the school dancers, the gospel choir – with startling images of killing and rioting. Similarly, we hear friendly singalong vocals giving way to harsh rapping. It’s deliberately unsettling, but the song is also engaging and catchy, with eccentric Southern rapper Young Thug and others contributing verses. The singer SZA makes a brief cameo in the video as well, and the final shot, of Glover running in a darkened hallway, seems to be an allusion to Jordan Peele’s film Get Out – another creative work that offers an uncomfortable mix of humor, violence, and racism.

Red Baraat: Dance Music From Punjab Via Brooklyn

The band Red Baraat , led by drummer and composer Sunny Jain, has spent the past decade perfecting its irrepressible blend of Punjabi wedding music, Western dance music, and rock energy. Their next album, Sound The People , comes out on June 29 but the band has just released its first single, called “Kala Mukhra.” The album title hints at what the band is about – not just celebrating South Asian culture, but asking people to be engaged in what is happening socially and politically. The choice of the first single is emblematic of that theme: “Kala Mukhra” is based on a Punjabi folk song called “Ghora Mukhra,” which means “white face.” Jain writes that “there's a fetishization in South Asian culture about being fair-skinned or light-skinned, something that is pressed upon women.” Seeking something a little more progressive, he worked with singer and lyricist Ali Sethi to come up with a new version of the song, and “Kala” (black) replaces “Ghora” (white) in the title. Of course, you don’t need to know a word of Punjabi to understand the music’s main message: get up and dance.

Red Baraat plays at Flushing Town Hall on June 8.

Tanya Tagaq and Damian Abraham Cover Iron Maiden

The Inuk/Canadian singer Tanya Tagaq has spent her career railing against patriarchy, sexual abuse of women and children – especially in First Nation communities like hers, and environmental abuse. Using an array of vocal techniques, including the so-called throat singing of the Inuit people, she has gained a reputation for her powerful, even intimidating, stage presence. Now, she’s teamed up with Damian Abraham of the Canadian band Fucked Up , which, in case you hadn’t guessed, is a hardcore punk outfit. The two of them have done a cover of Iron Maiden’s “Run To The Hills,” perhaps that English metal band’s best-known single. The choice is an inspired one – with the verses being set in an ominous whisper, you can actually hear that the song is about the white suppression of Native American culture in the US. This neatly sets up the “death growl”-inspired chorus, and when you hear Tagaq doing some traditional Inuit throat singing at the very end, it suggests that this centuries old style has much in common with metal’s more recent raspy vocal technique.

Tanya Tagaq plays at Le Poisson Rouge on Friday, May 11.

Joseph Arthur + REM’s Peter Buck = Arthur Buck

Singer, songwriter and guitarist Joseph Arthur has teamed up with guitarist Peter Buck , of R.E.M., on a series of new songs under the name Arthur Buck. While their album, otherwise untitled, doesn’t come out until June 15, the two rock veterans have begun releasing a few singles, including the new one called “Are You Electrified?” The video sees the two guitarists wandering around Portland, Oregon, but the real draw is the song itself, with some beautifully layered voices in the chorus and the chiming of the two guitars imparting a classic 90s indie sound to a song that was only written a few months ago. Although the collaboration is new, the two are old friends: Joseph Arthur’s peripatetic career saw him touring as the opening act for R.E.M. in their later years, and Peter Buck’s many post-R.E.M. projects have included backing Arthur on several occasions. The two are apparently making plans for an Arthur Buck tour later this year.

Eleanor Friedberger, best known as one half of the indie rock duo The Fiery Furnaces, has recently shifted her musical landscape, swapping out live instruments in favor of drum programming and synths for a sound that she can create mostly on her own. (Part of her desire to be more self-reliant, in the wake of the 2016 election.) On her latest record, Rebound , she channels the sound and energy of an experience at a very smoky 80’s goth disco in Athens where they do a “chicken dance.” Lyrical inspiration came to Friedberger from a biography about the poet Edna St Vincent Millay. Eleanor Friedberger brings these dark and smoky, yet groovy and poetic tunes to perform in-studio.

Watch the full session here :

The latest music from American pop band Speedy Ortiz, ‘Twerp Verse,’ speaks smartly to political and social situations of the present from a feminist perspective of truth-telling and is designed, on purpose, to make us uncomfortable lyrically and musically. With songs that airdrop aggressive, unpredictable chord progressions and disorienting rhythms behind enemy lines, this record is music for popping out from the cover of safety, armed with teeth and claws. Speedy Ortiz plays some of these tunes, in-studio.

Watch the session below :

Week of April 30: This week, Van Morrison looks back at the '30s; Hatchie looks back at the '80s; and Lisa Gerrard looks to Bulgaria.

Van Morrison’s Turn To Record An Album Of Standards

We’ve seen plenty of aging singers of the rock era dipping into the world of standards, but the new Van Morrison album, You’re Driving Me Crazy , is different. For one thing, Morrison has always had jazz in his musical DNA – it’s been evident in everything from his phrasing to his choices of band members. This is not a complete left turn for him, and the album proves that by combining oldies with Van Morrison originals which sound like they’re cut from the same cloth. The album is a collaboration with the jazz organist and bandleader Joey DeFrancesco, and the overall sound is much closer to mid-century small-ensemble jazz than it is to the lush, romantic pop of crooners like Sinatra and Tony Bennett. A good example is Morrison’s version of Cole Porter’s biting satire of well-mannered society, “Miss Otis Regrets.” It’s almost willfully weird, as Morrison slurs the lyrics together and at times renders them incomprehensible, only to float a long held tone that sounds more like a smoky saxophone than a voice.

Young Fathers’ New Video Asks “Who’s Really In Charge?”

The Scottish hip hop/rock band Young Fathers has often dealt with political subjects, as their 2015 album title White Men Are Black Men Too indicates. (Two of the three members are from West African families.) Their third album, Cocoa Sugar , was released in March, and today they released a brilliant video for the track “Toy.” The conceit is simple enough: today’s dictators are basically just children – emotionally stunted and spoiled rotten. But the video does a great job of integrating the action, and the young actors, into the propulsive, combative song itself.

Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance Meets The Bulgarian Women’s Chorus

In the mid 1980s, a recording of traditional Bulgarian folk songs began sweeping through Europe. It was called Les Mysteres des Voix Bulgares – “The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices,” and featured a female choir doing cunning and intense arrangements of old ballads, herding songs, drinking songs and the like. When the album was finally released here in the States it became an unexpected best-seller, and the Bulgarian Women’s Chorus, as they almost inevitably became known, began selling out America’s biggest concert halls. The sound of Bulgarian singing is piercing, nasal, and often with tighter harmonies than Western ears are used to (using intervals of the second rather than the third); Kate Bush, Robert Plant, Drake, and the band Dead Can Dance were among the Western musicians influenced by that sound. Now, an album is coming out called BooCheeMish , credited to “The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices, Featuring Lisa Gerrard,” and combining the singer/instrumentalist from Dead Can Dance with the current version of this much-traveled choir. Right now, you can hear the track “Pora Sotunda,” which includes guitar, bass and percussion, bringing the ancient sounds of the Bulgarian women into a setting that, if not exactly modern, at least feels timeless. That feeling is amplified by the stunning black-and-white video that goes with the song.

The album is due for release on May 25.

The 80s Are Alive And Well In Hatchie’s New Single

Hatchie is a young Aussie singer and songwriter, but everything about her new song “Sleep” screams 1980s. The synth-pop sound, the Bangles-type harmonies, the look of the video – it’s like a long-forgotten relic of the early MTV era. Hatchie – real name Harriet Pilbeam – is from Brisbane, and reached wider success Down Under with last year’s single “Try ,” which was apparently her first release. Now she’s preparing to release her first EP, which promises to be full of colorful bedroom pop. It’s called Sugar And Spice and it comes out on May 25.

Stephen Malkmus And Kim Gordon Collaborate On New Single

Although he will forever be associated with the beloved 90s indie rock band Pavement, the fact is Stephen Malkmus has spent way more time and recorded more albums with his current band Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks . The new album, Sparkle Hard , arrives on May 18, but the band has released a new single called “Refute” which features Kim Gordon, formerly of the groundbreaking band Sonic Youth. Her vocals share storytelling duties with Malkmus’s own, and together they offer a laconic but intriguing take on the classic breakup song. As Malkmus writes, “in this case the ‘wife’ is the cheater, and the omniscient narrator enters at the end to offer cold comfort.” There is, however, plenty of comfort to be found in the band’s country-tinged guitars and the way the two lead singers’ voices fit together.

Okkervil River excels at wistful, melancholy, intimate songs, yet there’s possibly an undercurrent of happiness to these latest creations on the forthcoming record, In The Rainbow Rain . Somehow singer/songwriter Will Sheff both reflects on this new world we live in and celebrates being alive. The new songs are inviting and soothing, with mellow Motown-style arrangements, controlled electric guitar bursts, ambient background vocals and 80’s-sounding production elements. Okkervil River’s Will Sheff joins us for a stripped-down live performance in the studio.

Watch the session here :

Some time ago, Malian singer, songwriter, guitarist and actress Fatoumata Diawara did a wonderful and daring thing – inspired by her friend Rokia Traore, she bought an acoustic guitar, and taught herself to play it. Since then, Fatoumata has put out her debut record, Fatou , collaborated with Damon Albarn's Africa Express, and contributed vocals to albums by Cheikh Lô, AfroCubism, and Orchestra Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou. Her forthcoming record, Fenfo translates as “Something to Say”, and she’s here to play some of those new songs, in-studio.

Watch Fatoumata Diawara perform "Fenfo" in-studio:

Fatoumata Diawara: "Don do" | In Studio:

This video for the album’s first single “Nterini,” was directed by Ethiopian photographer and contemporary artist Aïda Muluneh, and filmed in the remote Afar region of Ethiopia, to which archaeologists have traced the origin of humanity.

Week of April 23: This week, a gem from the Prince archives, a throaty tale from Okkervil River, and guitar music from Botswana that has to be seen to be believed.

From Prince’s Archives, A New/Old Version Of “Nothing Compares 2 U”

Saturday was the second anniversary of Prince’s untimely death. Fans knew that there were untold hours of sound and video in his archives – but they also knew that the wrangling over his estate would complicate efforts to release any of it. So on Friday, when the Prince Estate put out the previously unreleased, original studio version of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” it was a welcome surprise and a bittersweet reminder of what we lost when he died. The song is best known in the hit version by Sinead O’Connor, but Prince’s own version has some subtle differences. Electric guitars wander in and out, sometimes pushing the song towards power ballad territory, but for me, the most striking moment passes quickly: at the end of the first chorus, the chord seems to resolve, to actually end the musical line; this is a contrast to the other choruses, which, like the Sinead version, have an open-ended feel – a question rather than a statement.

Confusingly, the estate paired the recording with some previously unseen rehearsal footage, of what is clearly a much faster, funkier song. Prince displays some serious dance moves (this was obviously well before his hips began troubling him), and the band looks to be in great form. Makes me wish we could hear that music sometime…

Okkervil River’s New Song Is Kinda Disgusting, But Kinda Great

Shortly after human beings began to sing, they probably started making “list songs.” You probably know more of them than you realize – “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is one, Pink Floyd’s “Eclipse” (the ending of Dark Side of the Moon ) is another – and one of the oldest surviving song texts, the “Hymn to Inanna” from the ancient Sumerians, is just a list of that goddess’s many possessions. Well, add Okkervil River to the list of list song purveyors, but this might be the most unusual list song yet. It’s called “Famous Tracheotomies,” and it delivers exactly what the title promises. Frontman Will Sheff had an emergency tracheotomy when he was a toddler (he has alluded to this before, in the band’s brilliant 2013 album The Silver Gymnasium ), and he begins the song with a briefly gruesome description of the procedure. But then the band kicks in and Sheff is off and running, detailing the laryngeal woes of actor Gary Coleman, Motown star Mary Wells, pickled poet Dylan Thomas, and best of all, Ray Davies. I don’t mean that Davies had the best tracheotomy – it’s just that his procedure occasioned the best part of the song, wherein Sheff explains how the young musician’s tracheotomy led directly to the writing of The Kinks’ early hit, “Waterloo Sunset” – whose melody the band then duly quotes.

The new Okkervil River album, In the Rainbow Rain , comes out this Friday. Last Friday, Will Sheff performed this and two other new songs in the Soundcheck studio – that podcast will be available on Monday, April 30.

The Incredible “Guitar” Music Of Botswana

There’s a reason I’ve put quotation marks around the word “guitar” in that headline. The musicians in Botswana, in southwestern Africa, play the guitar – but they turn it into a completely different instrument. Just watch this video, which has been circulating on Youtube and astonishing guitarists for almost 10 years: the first thing you’ll probably notice is that “Ronnie” (only name given) plays the guitar with his left hand on the fingerboard as if were a piano. Watch as he rolls his palm down the frets at one point. But then look at the strings themselves; the first (highest) string is missing, and so is the fifth (second-lowest). This leaves three strings close together for melody and chords; and the low E string (here tuned to an F) functions as a standalone bassline. A simple but brilliantly effective way of turning the guitar into essentially two instruments.

Among the people who fell in love with this video years ago was record producer David Aglow. He ultimately went to Botswana determined to bring some of these amazing desert-blues guitarists to a wider audience. This Friday, he’ll release a compilation called I’m Not Here To Hunt Rabbits: Botswana Guitar Music . Find out what Ronnie’s real name is; hear some of the bluesy, raspy vocals of these local musicians; and discover a style of music that developed on the edge of the Kalahari Desert that is unlike anything else you’ll hear.

The Mouse Outfit Is Back In The House

The Mouse Outfit is essentially a live hip hop band that works with a rotating cast of emerging rappers and producers in and around Manchester, England. The band was founded by keyboardist Chini and bassist Defty, and their music is built on a mix of jazzy riffs and classic soul. Their first two albums were massive in the UK, and they’re about to release a new effort called Jagged Tooth Crook . The first single, called “Repeat,” features guest rapper Dubbul O as well as regular Mouse Outfitters Ellis Meade (who also edited the video) and Sparkz . The song is a good indication of the album’s overall mood: laid-back, breezy, and soulful.

The album comes out on May 4.

Colombian Band Monsieur Periné Wants To Dance With You

In 2015, Monsieur Periné won the Latin Grammy for Best New Artist, although as often happens in “new artist” categories, they’d been plying their trade for a few years already. That trade is a mix of traditional Colombian rhythm, mid-20th -century gypsy jazz, and modern Latin pop. And winning the award seems to have been a tough act to follow, because it’s taken three years for the band to return to the studio. Once again, they invited Eduardo Cabra (half of the all-conquering Puerto Rican band Calle 13 ) to produce, and the new album, to be called Encanto Tropical , is due later this spring. For now, they’ve released the first single, called “Bailar Contigo” (“Dance with You”), and while it skews more to the pop side, it still uses some traditional string and percussion instruments and has strong roots in tipico Latin music – as the video, of the band members cavorting in a lush tropical jungle, suggests.

Monsieur Periné plays the Highline Ballroom on Saturday, June 16.

A Song For Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy Fans, From A Perfect Circle

“So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish” is the new single from A Perfect Circle , the on-again, off-again musical project that features musicians from Tool, Smashing Pumpkins, and Ashes Divide. The album came out on Friday and this track’s title will be familiar to anyone who’s read the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy series by the late Douglas Adams. It’s the title of the fourth book in the series, and it’s how the dolphins – now revealed to be the most intelligent life-forms on planet Earth – say goodbye to the humans who’ve been cast aside in the name of Galactic Progress. The song has suitably apocalyptic imagery, bemoaning the time and money we spend on things that don’t really matter (a list that includes both plastic surgery and politicians), and nods to the Adams book with the line “all the dolphins have moved on.” But that line is just an alternate version of a line in the rest of choruses that bids farewell to Gene Wilder (“Willy Wonka”), David Bowie (“Major Tom”), Prince, and others. The band is known for more of a hard rock sound, but this song (despite its valedictory mood) has more of an upbeat 80s/alternative rock feel.

Louisiana-based Lost Bayou Ramblers are a swinging punkass party band who mix Cajun melodies on fiddle, accordion, guitars, and some electric sounds. They just won a regional roots Grammy for their record, Kalenda , but they’ve also done an original score for ROUS , a film about Nutria Rats and Louisiana’s coastal land loss, and contributed to the score for Beasts of the Southern Wild . Fresh from the French Quarter Festival in New Orleans, the Lost Bayou Ramblers join us in the studio.

Watch the full session here:

As bands go, Anna & Elizabeth have quite the origin story. Anna & Elizabeth began thanks to a broke down car and a shared desire to explore the traditions of Appalachian roots music. The immersive, intimate combination of Elizabeth LaPrelle’s deep mountain voice (from Virginia), Anna Roberts-Gevalt’s modern one (from Vermont), their sweet harmonies, and minimalist arrangements is striking. The duo’s latest record, The Invisible Comes to Us , co-produced by Anna and Benjamin Lazar Davis (avant-pop outfit Cuddle Magic), draws on old-time traditions of home, porch, and kitchen music, and incorporates experimental pedal steel player Susan Alcorn and drummer Jim White (The Dirty Three), along with electronic elements. It brings Anna & Elizabeth to play some of these sparse, haunting ballads, stories, and lullabies for us, in-studio.

Watch the complete live session :

Week of April 16: This week, new works by Kamasi Washington and Jenny Hval; a new video from Brooklyn-via-San Juan group Balún, and some musical advice on Making America Great Again.

Balún Offer Sunny Glimpse At Their New Record

I’ve become a fan of the Puerto Rican-born, NY-based composer Angélica Negrón in recent years. She’s written chamber music and orchestral works that have an element of whimsy and a sense of fun – not things we often associate with “serious” music. (For example, her piece “Me He Perdido” (“I’ve Gotten Lost”) used robotic sound-making contraptions along with the American Composers Orchestra, and her recent piece “Turistas ,” written for the Bang On A Can All-Stars, was built on the rhythms of reggaeton, bomba , and other Puerto Rican popular sounds.) Angelica is also one of the three core members of Balún, a band that has just released a new single called “El Espanto” (“The Fright,” or “The Ghost”). It’s mostly a languid, sunny number, but just when you think you have the song pegged – “oh, it’s Caribbean-tinged electro-pop” – it changes, as the saxes add a bit of Downtown skronk and the whole thing ends with a breakbeat-driven excursion into what sounds like IDM (intelligent dance music – the style associated with Aphex Twin or Squarepusher ). That’s a lot of ground to cover, but then this band has already covered a lot of geographic ground, as they’ve all left Puerto Rico and taken up residence in Brooklyn.

Prisma Tropical is due to be released on July 20. Watch for a live Soundcheck podcast around that time, too.

Now It’s Frank Turner’s Turn To Make America Great Again

The folk/rocker Frank Turner is not nearly as well known here in the States as he is back home in Britain. Which is a shame, because he really loves this country, and if more people knew songs like “I Am Disappeared ,” they might love him right back. Turner’s music often responds to social and political situations, and you won’t be surprised to learn that his next album does just that. It will be called Be More Kind , and while the album doesn’t come out until May 4, the single “Make America Great Again” has just been released, along with a simply wonderful video made by Turner in Austin, TX. From the title, you might be expecting something sardonic, or ironic, but instead you get something as genuine and funny and moving as the people who take part in it. Frank sets up the video himself – then just enjoy a reminder of what made America great to begin with: Americans.

A Musical Left Turn From Jenny Hval

Norwegian singer, songwriter, and soon-to-be novelist Jenny Hval has made her reputation on the back of several albums that take the pop song format and twist, distort, and otherwise disrupt it. She’s become known for her frank and challenging sexual imagery, and her last album, Blood Bitch , made for bracing listening. So her new single comes as a bit of a surprise. “Spells” is a slice of electro-pop that may have a hint of Pink Floyd in it; its repeated line “you will not be awake for long” could, in almost any other Jenny Hval song, evoke a strong feeling of dread. But here, it might just be an invitation to dream. It’s from the forthcoming EP called The Long Sleep , which is due on May 25.

Then in October, she reverts to her usual form, if the blurb for her debut novel is any indication: Paradise Rot “presents a heady and hyper-sensual portrayal of sexual awakening and queer desire. A complex, poetic and strange novel about bodies, sexuality and the female gender.” The book will be published on October 2.

Kamasi Washington Drops Two New Singles

Sax player and composer Kamasi Washington has achieved a level of visibility that is unusual for a jazz musician these days. Much of that is down to his collaboration with Kendrick Lamar on the rapper’s last two albums, To Pimp A Butterfly and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Damn . But he also received rave reviews for his 3-disc album called, appropriately, The Epic . Washington is part of a lineage of jazz musicians aiming for a cosmic, spiritual sound (see John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, and Sun Ra, for starters), and has been a regular on festival stages, including Coachella in 2016. Now, he’s preparing to release a new album, called Heaven and Earth , and has released two songs, of which “Fists of Fury” seems to be the A-side, and “The Space Traveler’s Lullaby ” the B-side. The latter track, as the title indicates, might be of a piece with his earlier work - a sprawling, yes, epic example of orchestral/big band jazz, with wordless chorus and strings and long passages that seem to nod at minimalism, film music, and more. But “Fists of Fury” has a harder edge to it, at least lyrically. The image of helping hands, friendly hands, caressing hands, turning to “fists of fury” is a poetic response to the persistent racial divide in our country; the music, with its classic Latin rhythmic underpinning, is just as poetic.

Heaven and Earth comes out on June 22.

Damien Jurado’s New Song Stirs Up a Quiet Storm

Damien Jurado ’s new single tempers his usual folk/rock leanings with some quiet R&B. “Allocate” sees Jurado surrounding his velvety vocals with bowed strings and a slowly unfolding rhythm section of keyboard and percussion. “Allocate” is a strange title; it’s a word suggesting logical assignments of things, but the song is full of wisps of often melancholy thoughts – “once I was lost and I never came back,” he sings at one point. The song comes from Jurado’s forthcoming album, The Horizon Just Laughed , which comes out on May 4.

Damien Jurado plays at Brooklyn’s Murmrr Theatre on May 24.

In the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, during the 1960’s and ‘70s, the sounds of American jazz and James Brown-style funk rocketed through the clubs there, combining with Ethiopia’s own exotic scales to produce the golden age of Ethiopian pop. The New York-based 7-piece band Anbessa Orchestra draws from this era and aims to take the listener on a musical journey from Addis Ababa to Brooklyn, with the loping grooves, buoyant brass lines, moody organ, crisp guitars, and solid percussion. Their new album is called Negastat, which means “Kings,” and it is full of Ethiopian-style, horn-heavy funk. And the Anbessa Orchestra is here to play some of it in-studio.

Watch the full session here :

The folk-rock outfit The Lone Bellow crafts passionate, acoustic-based Americana that hints at elements of blues, country, and roots music. They’ve recently moved from Brooklyn to Nashville, (let that fact be read into, musically) and the band in their touring configuration, joins us to perform some of their songs built around warm, twangy guitar riffs and beautiful three-part harmonies, from their latest record, Walk Into A Storm .

Watch the full session here :

Watch The Lone Bellow's performances from 2015 in The Greene Space at WNYC/WQXR :

Singer, songwriter and guitarist Mary Chapin Carpenter re-imagined and rearranged songs from her 30-year catalog, along with the brand-new title track, for her most recent record, Sometimes Just the Sky . That title comes from a speech given by Patti Smith, where she "touched on both hard and beautiful aspects of life." The country music prize-winning Carpenter, who is now based deep in the Virginia countryside has spent her musical career “exploring depths of language and emotion,” using “compelling chordal voicings and finger-picking that produces unique sounds.” (Peter Cooper, Artist Notes) Mary Chapin Carpenter joins us to perform a few of these songs in-studio.

Watch the session live below:

Week of April 9: This week, new/old music from Lithuania, psychedelia from France, and deep wonderful weirdness from wherever Sophie is from.

PREMIERE: Ancient Lithuanian Folk Meets Modern Production, From Abraham Brody

Although he’s American-born, violinist, vocalist and composer Abraham Brody has been living and working Lithuania for several years, immersing himself in the ancient folk song traditions of that Baltic republic. When he performed for us in the studio last Fall, he used a looping station to layer both his voice and his fiddle, but the overall sound remained an organic, acoustic one. Now, he’s employing a more contemporary approach in this video, for his arrangement of the song “Plauke Pylele” (“The Swimming Duck”). He writes that Lithuanian folk tales “often portray the woman as weak, or as the 'prize' of the valiant man.

Here the roles are reversed, the man vainly searches for the woman, a kind of other-worldly being, who through struggle gains her freedom and leaves him behind in the desolate landscape.” The song is Lithuanian, but the setting is Icelandic, and the sounds owe something to the repeating structures of the so-called Minimalists like Terry Riley and Philip Glass, as well as the electronic music scene. Layered violins, ominous piano chords, and rustling percussion support Brody’s wistful singing and the video’s ambiguous imagery.

Abraham Brody performs at National Sawdust on Thursday, April 12.

Beach House Release Third Single from Next Record

The Maryland duo known as Beach House has been teasing us all year with little glimpses of their keenly anticipated seventh album, to be called 7. They’ve just released the third single from the album, a shoegaze-style song called “Dark Spring.” Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally’s vocals are woven into a harmonically simple but texturally dense web of keyboards and atmospheric guitars – there are words, but the mood is entirely created by the song’s dark, dreamy landscape. That landscape is echoed in the track’s video, shot in high-contrast black and white, which goes from startling to sensual.

Beach House plays United Palace Theater in NY on August 22, and a sold out show at Brooklyn’s Kings Theater on August 23. The album 7 comes out on May 11.

Sophie’s New Song Is Weird Or Wonderful – Or Both

How you feel about producer/singer Sophie’s music will depend on how much you like mainstream electronic dance music – and how much you like to see it put through a blender. Sophie made her name as a producer for starlets like Charlie XCX , but she has been dropping singles recently that deal with commercialism and identity. The latter is an especially key topic for this Scottish-born, LA-based musician, who shrouded her own identity in mystery for several years and only with her recent video for the song “It’s Okay To Cry ” presented herself (whether as a transgender woman or as a gender non-conforming person is still deliberately unclear , but the press release revealed her preferred gender pronouns: she/her). Now she’s dropped a new single called “Faceshopping,” which reminds me of a Billboard interview she once did where she was asked what genre her music was; her answer was “advertising.” This track takes a delightfully dim view of advertising, especially as it preys on people’s worries about their appearance, and it also subverts every trope you might expect to hear in an electronic pop song. The video is deeply weird and unsettling, at least to me – I suspect some people will simply find it weird. But Sophie pulls no punches in getting her message across and isn’t afraid to provoke extreme reactions at either end.

A Short, Strange Trip From Melody’s Echo Chamber

Melody’s Echo Chamber is the work of the French singer and songwriter Melody Prochet, and it is obvious from her work that 60’s-style psychedelia is alive and well. Working with members of the veteran Swedish prog rock band Dungen , she is preparing to release her second album, Bon Voyage, on June 15. But the first track has just come out, and it’s a doozy. “Breathe In, Breathe Out” is a trippy number that features Prochet’s whispery vocals and several abrupt changes of sound. The singing here is in English, although other tracks on the album will be in Swedish or French; and the animated video for the song takes us beyond this world entirely.

A$AP Rocky’s Latest Will Sound Familiar To Moby Fans

NY rapper A$AP Rocky has just released a song called “Forever,” which will immediately have Moby fans saying “hey, that’s ‘Porcelain,’ only sped up!” Indeed it is, and it serves Lord Flacko’s purposes well (that’s the nickname - the other nickname - that he gave himself, hence the jacket he’s wearing in the video), leaving plenty of room for his boasts about fame and the trappings that come with it. But he also pauses to shout out to Frank Ocean and the late A$AP Yams; and about halfway through, the song turns thoughtful - meaning he raps over essentially an unadulterated recording of Moby’s biggest hit. Watch the video and see if you can pick out Moby himself (hint - if you haven’t seen him by the time you hear him sing, you’ve missed it).

The New York-based band Innov Gnawa performs the traditional healing music of Morocco: Gnawa - a trancey, rhythmic music that is played on an array of unique instruments — from the lute-like gimbri (sintir), to the metal qarqaba (castinets) with which the kouyos (chorus) keep time and pound out clattering, hypnotic rhythms. One of Innov Gnawa' s innovations is to collaborate with modern electronic acts like Bonobo, but they've just released a new record, Aicha , and they'll be performing at the 10th Annual Brooklyn Folk Festival this weekend. Innov Gnawa performs in-studio.

Watch the full session here :

Week of April 2: This week, new music from The Weeknd, Sons of Kemet, and Brazilian Girls.

A Musical Manifesto From Sons Of Kemet

The London saxophonist/composer Shabaka Hutchings has become an important figure in British music. He leads several bands, including the oddly-built quartet known as Sons of Kemet (Kemet is the ancient Egyptian name for Egypt), which features his sax, tuba, and two drummers. The music is a kind of jazz creole – a combination of jazz, hip hop, Caribbean music, and social commentary. On Friday, the band released Your Queen Is A Reptile , a seething rebuttal of British monarchy worship in which Hutchings suggests some women who were worthy of the title of queen – queens who were made, not born. A few are familiar names: “My Queen Is Angela Davis,” for example, or “My Queen Is Harriet Tubman.” Many are not: “My Queen Is Mamie Phipps Clarke” celebrates the life of an American psychologist with an infectious New Orleans/Caribbean-flavored rhythm, and some Jamaican-style toasting courtesy of the English MC known as Congo Natty.

After Ten Years, Brazilian Girls Return

The quartet known as Brazilian Girls has no Brazilians in it, and only one girl. But then, the group has always had a perverse streak: when they formed here in NY in 2003, they gave themselves a name that they knew would be almost impossible to google at the time. (That has definitely changed, but in the early years a search returned page after page of… I’ll call them ‘dating sites,’ before you got to the band.) They have also refused to be pinned down musically, drawing on modern electronic dance music but also on traditional dance music of the mid-20th century from Latin America and from the ballrooms of Europe. And they haven’t made it easy to work together either – the four members all live in various cities in America and Europe, which helps explain why it’s been ten years since their last record. But on April 13, Brazilian Girls return, with an album called Let’s Make Love . Singer Sabina Sciubba is multilingual, and in the band’s new single, “Balla Balla,” she sings in English and Italian. The song is tons of fun, careening between modern electronically-enhanced dance music and something that sounds like the score to a black-and-white film from the 1940s.

Brazilian Girls play at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on May 5.

The Weeknd’s New… EP? LP?

Toronto’s Abel Tesfaye, better known to millions as the R&B singer The Weeknd, has created some slickly-produced electropop hits in recent years, like 2016’s “Starboy” with Daft Punk . But early on, his music was slower, and darker. This past Thursday, he returned to that sonic world with a 6-song release called My Dear Melancholy, (the title includes that comma, which makes punctuating this sentence a bit of a challenge), which seems a little long to be an EP and too short to be an LP. His record label hedged its bets by referring to it simply as a “project.” The guest list is quite short, and features the French techno producer Gesaffelstein, with occasional cameos by one of the Daft Punk guys and some of Tesfaye’s Toronto associates. “Call Out My Name” seems to be the lead single, but the track that caught my ear was this one, “I Was Never There,” one of the Gesaffelstein collaborations. It has a strong downtempo groove, and the sense of melancholy in The Weeknd’s layered vocals is set in relief by some eerily oscillating electronics.

… But You Were Hearing Sirens: The Strange Lure of Ed Pastorini

Strange Lures by Ed Pastorini

Chances are, you’ve never heard of Ed Pastorini . That’s entirely his fault. Ed has never played the game – you know, the one where you make music and then hustle to make sure people hear it, or pay other people to do that for you. He leads his occasional band, 101 Crustaceans, and on even rarer occasions, writes solo songs for his voice and piano. This is the kind of music that passes like a rumor from one obsessive fan (usually a fellow musician) to another. I fell hard for one of those songs, called “Strange Lures,” when Chris Rael sent me a copy many years ago. Chris was hustling to make sure I heard his music, but he couldn’t help sharing what Ed was doing. That must’ve been around 2001 or 2002, but it is only now that Ed Pastorini’s solo piano songs have finally been released. The album is called Strange Lures , and it is full of lyrics that can be precisely detailed but also elusive, and lyrical chord progressions that nonetheless have a dissonant bite to them. The title track, for example, uses a gently rocking piano part to support a sad but gripping tale of the fallout from mental illness – “a phase is just a phase to me/a pretty song is just a pretty song/but you were hearing sirens,” he sings in his rough-edged voice (and listen to the fraying in the line “to snap a rope that’s already frayed”). The song ends with a truly strange sequence of chords which repeats, allowing the strangeness to morph into something weirdly beautiful.

James Bay’s New Video Has A New Sound

The English singer and songwriter James Bay hit it big right out of the gate with his platinum single “Hold Back The River ” in 2014. He made his reputation with a smooth blend of pop and blue-eyed soul, and maybe a touch of Nashville mixed in. But some of the songs on his new album sport a more guitar-based, rock-oriented sound. One of them, “Pink Lemonade,” was part of his Saturday Night Live appearance, and he’s just released the video for it. Between the glittery shirt and the sci-fi imagery, I’m getting a vintage David Bowie vibe on this one.

The album is called Electric Light , and it comes out on May 18.

A Chilly Soundscape from Birds of Passage

Birds of Passage is essentially a one-woman band: Alicia Merz, from New Zealand, creates slowly unfolding electronic soundscapes inhabited by her own whispery vocals. This is not your standard voice-up-front/instrumental-background songwriting; it’s closer to the idea behind Brian Eno’s groundbreaking albums of the 1970s, where the distinction between foreground and background is intentionally blurred. This Friday, she’ll release her first new album in four years. It’s called The Death of Our Invention , and includes icy, ambient works like this one, “Demons In Our Midst.” The title is pretty ominous, but the song itself seems pretty chilled out about the whole thing. In fact, as Merz’s layered vocals accumulate in the second half, the song finds something that might actually be warmth.

Toronto-based Charlotte Day Wilson is a singer, multi-instrumentalist (she plays piano, saxophone, bass, and guitar), and producer who draws on her classical background to make bedroom-intimate, yet intensely emotional tunes that are influenced by everything from R&B to electro, to jazz revival. She joins us in the studio to perform songs from her self-released records and hopefully will talk about how she aims to change the entire studio production industry to help younger songwriters and support women.

Watch the full session here :