A Week in Records: Lee Bannon, Sleaford Mods, Prefuse 73...
As the music world is battered into line with a new international album release date each Friday, our Music team present a weekly digest of five recommendations, from Ninja Tune stalwart Lee Bannon to latter-day firestarters Sleaford Mods
ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Lee Bannon – Pattern of Excel [Ninja Tune]
Turns out this’ll be the last album from the artist formerly known as Lee Bannon; from now on he’ll be working under the name “¬ b”, a characteristic move from a producer whose most persistent trait has been perpetual self-reinvention. At present, ambience is in and jungle is out, the dark atmospherics that haunted the edges of Alternate/Endings now taking centre stage in the form of solemn, largely beatless soundscapes... <<read more>>
Sleaford Mods – Key Markets [Harbinger Sound]
Jason Williamson: lyrical clusterbomb, full of bon mots – often expletives – and prescient observations deployed at dizzying speed. Check him out on Face To Faces, a caustic dismissal of the “daylight robbery” of modern politics. Or there’s Bronx In A Six, which glowers witheringly at those who “pretend to be proud of [their] own culture,” and responds venomously (“FUCK CULTURE”). It feels like adrenaline injected straight into the heart... <<read more>>
Prefuse 73 – Every Colour Of Darkness [Temporary Residence]
Prefuse 73’s music is like an unscratched itch. Guillermo S. Herren belongs to that small band of producers, including Flying Lotus, who take a hip-hop beat and deconstruct it to the nth degree, broken and battered into a bewildering tornado of glitches... <<read more>>
Adrian Younge presents – Twelve Reasons To Die II (starring Ghostface Killah) [Linear Labs]
"Ayo I’m back blowin’ dust off the vinyl, I got twelve more reasons to die, snap your spinal," Ghostface Killah raps, announcing the second installment to 2013’s Mafia/comic book/revenge fantasy Twelve Reasons To Die. II is sonically satisfying, with Nocentellite guitars, unfussy in-the-pocket drums somewhere between ?uestlove, Stanton Moore, and Zigaboo Modaliste, and what might as well be Dracula at the organ, all product of producer and composer Younge’s excellent ear, pulpy sensibility, and stable of influences from Ennio Morricone to Isaac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield... <<read more>>
Qluster – Tasten [Bureau B]
Labels such as 'neo-classical' don’t always assist. It doesn’t do justice to the stark, abstract, and at times ambient beauty a work such as Tasten (German for 'feel,' 'to grope for') exudes. Nine instrumental pieces played on three Steinway grand pianos, with Krautrock veteran Hans-Joachim Roedelius a professorial, slightly unhinged presence, the swirls of melody and motif here coalesce across a number of configurations, the spaces between each piece blurred, pleasantly ill-defined... <<read more>>