Ill Considered
8

Tenderlonious is back with an album of lo-fi, smudged house music beats and experimental vibes from the 'lockdown' studio sessions from his home in South London. Killer release seeing 22a on a slightly different tip!

Bristol based band Cousin Kula announce their debut album Double Dinners. With co-signs from the likes of BADBADNOTGOOD and newly signed to Rhythm Section, Cousin Kula have created their own musical universe of otherworldly pop serenity with vastly distinct, but complementary elements: “the possibilities of jazz, the emphatic energy of club culture, and the sonic tapestries of psychedelia” CLASH Magazine remark.Living and recording together, nestled in the sun-drenched hills on the outskirts of Bristol, Cousin Kula are masters of their craft, and also of restraint; widely regarded by their fans for their superior live show. Having performed live in various bands for the past 10 years since their early teens, not being able to hit the stage during lockdown took its toll on these musicians. Ever resourceful, however, Cousin Kula began a series of their own home-made live sessions, which lead in turn to a Boiler Room Session and further a request from XL signees BADBADNOTGOOD to record a live adaptation of their new single.Now, Cousin Kula flutter into the collective consciousness with a timeless slice of psychedelic soul on debut album Double Dinners. The latest band to emerge out of the buoyant Bristol music scene,they have stripped back all excess baggage for their most accomplished recordings to date. Existing on a similar plane to contemporaries such as Connan Mockasin, Mildlife, Toro Y Moi, Mac DeMarco and HOMESHAKE, the band caught the attention of renowned tastemaker Bradley Zero with their 'Casa Kula Cassette' EP at the end of 2020, with the Rhythm Section founder swiftly taking the 5 piece under his wing, with him commenting:“The band balance an outsider approach with more hooks than you can shake a stick at... the result being a gently beguiling sound that effortlessly draws you in, revealing more character with each listen.”

MELODIES RECORD CLUB 002: BEN UFO SELECTS BY LAURIE SPIEGEL/OLOF DREIJERBen UFO is up next for volume two in melodies's new series of DJ and Artist curated 12” mini compilations, Here we have two tracks which have been staples in Ben’s DJ sets at different times, but neither were originally produced with a club setting in mind, which is why they’ve never been available in this format before. The first press comes with a folded A2 insert with words from and about the Artists.On one side, we have “Drums” from Laurie Spiegel’s 1980 experimental electronics album “The Expanding Universe”, a collection of tracks produced between 1974 and 1976 using a computer playing the actual sounds by controlling analog synthesis equipment under control of the GROOVE hybrid system developed by Max Matthews and F.R. Moore at Bell Labs. Drums is a percussive seven minute computer generated workout inspired by Laurie’s interest in African and Indian musics, and which brings to mind the most far out kosmiche music of the period to modern day techno. A connection Ben has tried to make explicit by including it in his first BBC essential mix back in 2013.On the flip we have a track by Olof Dreijer from the Swedish band the Knife who’s work you might also be familiar with under the moniker Oni Ayhun. Back in 2009 his artist friend Adnan Yildiz curated an exhibition called “THERE IS NO AUDIENCE” in Montethermoso, dedicated to public imagination. Adnan commissioned a single piece from Olof called “Echoes from Mamori”, that played on loop during the exhibition and was subsequently released only on CD. A contemporary piece more clearly indebted to house music, Olof built the track around arpeggios generated using sounds of frogs he recorded in the Amazon and birds around Berlin, fed into a sampler.

Face A :Musique berbère du haut-atlas.El Hussain Safir,Chant et bendir.Lahcen Akil.Lotar.Lahcen Bouri.Chant et violon.Face B;Antoine ELIAS : Keyboards, NIMB, vx.Anatole PETIT : Drums, vx.Enregistré a Tamlate ,vallée de Dades.Février 2016.Artwork Krystian Trog.Enregistrement et mixage,Lutch et Clodo Misére,Master,R.Cuvillier,Production,Olivier et Lucien.

Il fut l’un des grands hérauts du Gwo ka Moden dans les années 1970 et 1980. Redécouvert en 2016 par Digger’s Digest et le label Heavenly Sweetness, le Guadeloupéen Edmony Krater revient avec un nouveau disque, An Ka Sonjé, où il explore ses souvenirs d’enfance et de nouvelles inventions musicales.Il aura fallu attendre la réédition de son mythique album Ti jan pou vélo pour que l’on puisse redécouvrir tout le talent que possède Edmony Krater. Surnommé le Sun Ra de la Guadeloupe, le chanteur, percussionniste avant-gardiste et trompettiste (paie ton CV d’enfer) avait collaboré dans le passé avec le regretté Claude Nougaro mais on s’est réellement intéressé à son art grâce au label parisien Heavenly Sweetness qui a eu la brillante idée de le mettre sous un piédestal. Trente ans après son dernier disque, il nous présente son nouvel album intitulé An ka sonjé.Ce que l’on remarque directement chez Edmony Krater, c’est tout simplement le fait qu’il reste attaché à ses traditions gwoka les décennies passantes. An ka sonjé ne déroge pas à la règle et nous embarque les yeux fermés sur l’île de la Guadeloupe avec son mélange de jazz, funk et ragga sur des morceaux vivifiants et exotiques à l’image de « Nou kontan », « A pa jôdi » mais également « Mi yo rivé » et « Lagè » qui sont de purs délices venus d’ailleurs et qui fondent sous la bouche. Avec comme principal moteur le tambour Ka et les harmonies pianistiques de son collaborateur Franck Souriant sans oublier ses cuivres chaleureux et ses basses funky, le musicien guadeloupéen nous étonne et nous évade à coup sûr.

Today sees the phenomenal, London based 8-piece band Kokoroko anounce their long-awaited debut album Could We Be More via Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings.Could We Be More is an expansive and ambitious album that speaks to the force of Kokoroko. Each song possesses the energy which so naturally underpins the heartbeat of Kokoroko’s identity - deftly moving through afrobeat, highlife, soul, and funk across the album’s 15 tracks and taking inspiration from a plethora of other influences from within the West-African and Caribbean communities that the band grew up listening to - the album gifts the listener feelings of homecoming and joy.Speaking on the origins of Could We Be More, band members Sheila Maurice-Grey and Onome Edgeworth explain: “I think home has hugely informed the way we write and play our music. Everyone comes from different backgrounds but the thing that unites us in Kokoroko is that we all have a similar love and appreciation for afrobeat and highlife, whether that’s Ebo Taylor or Pat Thomas,” Sheila says. “It’s that feeling when you’re younger and you hear something and you feel some ownership over it. For me, Nigerian music and soul was played in the house a lot so I felt I had ownership over it so when I heard it elsewhere, there was a certain pride and energy filled with it. Recreating a piece of music that fills you with pride, ‘this is a piece of me and this is what I came from,’” Onome adds.Kokoroko have come to represent all that is blissfully sweet about London’s improvised music scene - an echo of the past that has taken on new forms while still sounding new and entirely original. The band are a vibrant example of the shape of things to come for British music: having released just 7 tracks (1x EP and 3x singles) in their short career, they have quickly developed a huge cult following with 60Million+ Spotify streams to their name and a classic record already under their belt in 2018's intimate viral masterpiece ‘Abusey Junction’.As they release their similarly immersive debut album, Kokoroko’s return feels particularly poignant. The collective are already winners of ‘Best Group’ at the Urban Music Awards 2020 and the Parliamentary Jazz Awards 2021, have been lauded in the NPR Austin 100 list, been crowned One To Watch by The Guardian, played across the globe at the likes of Glastonbury, Meltdown Festival, Elbjazz, Jazz a la Villette, We Out Here, SIM São Paulo and BBC6 Music Festival (to name a few), performed a raucous session for Boiler room and made their BBC Proms debut in the Royal Albert Hall; all up front of their debut record, which is as, progressive and musically versatile as you would expect from the eight different personalities within Kokoroko.With equal support across BBC Radio 1, BBC 6Music, Jazz FM, CLASH, Crack, The Observer, Evening Standard, Mixmag, Trench, gal-dem, Loud & Quiet, Rolling Stone, NATAAL + many more - what Kokoroko have achieved in the past four years is nothing short of remarkable.