Joshua Abrams
Natural Information

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery for the Wilde at heart, but for the Weyes mind it’s a natural note in the songbook of life. For the first recorded Weyes Blood music since her 2016 breakthrough album Front Row Seat To Earth, Natalie Mering shares A Certain Kind b/w Everybody's Talkin', a double a-side 7" of cover songs close to her home but recognizable under any roof with a hearing heart at its hearth.From her DIY days self-releasing CDRs through her ascent as a defining voice of a new folk tradition, Natalie Mering has always possessed a proclivity for exceptional taste. Whether influenced by her bloodline of musicians or the cast of curious coastal characters she encountered while exploring life and sound, Mering always took special care to acknowledge the artists that shaped her music in live Weyes Blood performances.A mainstay of Weyes Blood’s early years on stage, Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’” as imagined by Harry Nilsson for the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack is finally memorialized on A Certain Kind b/w Everybody's Talkin'. As a native Californian transplanted to the east coast, Mering identified with Neil and Nilsson's forlorn feeling of east coast isolation and longing for days in the rays. "I'm going where the sun keeps shining. Through the pouring rain. Going where the weather suits my clothes.”Originally recorded on distant shores from where midnight cowboys roamed the same year of 1968, Soft Machine’s “A Certain Kind” was often confused as a Weyes Blood original when Mering introduced the Robert Wyatt penned fusion ballad to her live set. A recording residency at the famed Galeria ze dos Bois (ZDB) multidisciplinary space in Lisbon, Portugal, enabled Mering and her touring band to track the soul-searching rendition of the song present on the record.A Certain Kind b/w Everybody's Talkin' is not only a capsule of Mering’s care for those artists and songs that have helped define the Weyes Blood sound but also a discovery of a different kind — the words and melodies become Mering’s and ours through her intimate interpretation and commitment to seeking culture’s fringes for deeper meaning.

CrossOver highlife with afrobeat and funky influences !

RADIO TARIFA was created at the end of the 80s by three musicians: Fain S. Dueñas, percussions, guitars and arrangements, Benjamin Escoriza, singer and lyrics writer, from Granada, and Vincent Molino, in the wind section.Produced by Juan Alberto Arteche in his studios, El Agujero, and released in 1993, "Rumba Argelina" was presented as an eclectic work with Arabic, Oriental, German Medieval, old Andalucian music and some themes composed by Fain with lyrics written by Benjamin Escoriza. This first CD included also Flamenco and Andalucian Folk songs.

For fans of spiritual and cosmic jazz, the release of a new studio album from the Sun Ra Arkestra is big news. While the legendary ensemble has continued to perform worldwide since the passing of bandleader Sun Ra in 1993, the vast majority of their releases have been either live albums or archival recordings. Swirling, then, is a significant step forwards for the collective under the stewardship of Marshall Allen. Musically, it's as far-out, poetic, otherworldly and exciting as you'd expect, with new versions of live favourites such as 'Door of the Cosmos', 'Rocket Number 9' and 'Satellites Are Spinning' being joined by interpretations of lesser-known Sun Ra compositions and fresh Allen originals.

ELECTRIC JALABAEl Hal The FeelingStrutElectric Jalaba comprises six accomplished musicians with an empathy that feels telepathic and a groove that immerses. In Arabic, the mother tongue of Moroccan-born singer and guimbri player Simo Lagnawi, a leading practitioner of Gnawa music in Britain, they call this indefinable quality, “El Hal” – “The feeling”. “It’s the feeling that comes when we’re playing and totally forgetting where we are,” says producer and bassist Olly Keen. “The feeling of being grabbed by the music and lost in the groove.”El Hal is the new third album from Electric Jalaba and their first release in five years. It’s a multi-faceted work that finds the band tighter than ever, deploying a vast cache of influences across nine tracks improvised and developed in their south London studio then deftly produced by Keen. Some tracks pay homage to the origins of Gnawa music, whose repertoire of Arabic-language praise songs contains remnants of West African dialects – Bambara from Mali, Fulani and Hausa from the Sahel region – that point to a centuries-old migration.

Another afro banger ep from Voilaaa !