FRESH RELEASES 37
Discover the best music releases, every week
We have selected 8 of our favourite just-released records:
Appino - Humanize
(Woodworm Publishing, 2023)
The project is ambitious: 14 songs and 9 interludes (which are now called skits) to compose a work of general reflection on humanity, whose title comes from the name of a function of some musical software (that of "humanizing" by adding small inaccuracies). The record also collects interviews with ordinary people sought in prisons, schools, and day centers. These fragments contribute to a complex framework through which we can try to understand more about humanity.
Marco Castello - Pezzi della Sera
(Megghiu Suli, 2023)
In the increasingly crowded and too often increasingly homogenised scenario of Italian music, an original voice is that of Marco Castello, a Syracuse singer-songwriter with a very personal streak and crystal-clear talent. Castello arrives at the second album, “Pezzi Della Sera”. A personality out of the pack, a vision always focused on the praise of slow life. Still, unconventionally, he is an intelligent and critical look at his land and the too many clichés about art and life.
Roy Werner - Imagine My Surprise
(Moon Glyph, 2023)
Roy Werner’s “Imagine My Surprise” is his first eponymous album after working under the G.S. Sultan moniker. To realize Roy’s hazy & peculiar electronic delirium, he brought in great collaborators: Cole Pulice, Patrick Shirohishi, Les Halles and many more. The sonic palette is as eclectic as ever. It incorporates vibraphone, bells, flute, alto & tenor saxophone amongst his stretched and mutating electronics. There is a flurry of sonic exploration across the album’s two sides, embracing the surreal, the mellow and the peculiar.
Quade - Nacre
(AD 93, 2023)
Avantgarde, Folk, Psychedelic… Bristol’s four-piece outfit Quade’s debut album. The recording and production of the record was collaborative, with the band drawing upon the services of Jack Ogbourne and Larry ‘Bruce’ McCarthy – two divergent pillars of Bristol’s music community – for engineering and mixing, respectively. Traipsing between gothic expansiveness and cosmic psychedelia, the record cannot be pinned down into one recognisable place.
Pale Jay - Bewilderment (Instrumentals)
(Karna Chief Records, 2023)
Dusty boom-bap beats, soulful harmonies, and lush string arrangements define the essence of the instrumental version of Pale Jay's debut LP ‘Bewilderment.’ As a trained jazz pianist and beatmaker, Los Angeles-based Pale Jay, with contributions from labelmates like Okonsk, has created an instrumental version of the songs, showing the profound exploration of introspection and identity, feelings of loss and hope alongside retro vibes of R&B and soul.
Canva6 - Cco2
(Presto!? Records 2023)
Presto!? is the label founded by Lorenzo Senni in September 2008, which specialises in furthering the evolving exploration of digital and new technologies. Marco Farina, alias Canva6, fits perfectly into the label's catalogue: an abstract electronic artist exploring and researching new digital worlds. His debut, "Ten Minutes To Midnight," was a controlled emotional detonation - "Cco2" feels like a more curious dig into a just-discovered synthetic world, where the air is made of glitches and light is made of synth pads.
Dj Manny - Hypnotized
(Hospital Productions, 2023)
Footwork is not a music genre, it is a distinctive culture and way of life. Teklife was the collective that generated it, and DJ Manny is its catalyst. Blending elements of R&B, minimal techno, jungle, and dubstep, Manny creates hyper-rhythmic US-style tracks that are cool to dance or listen to. "Hypnotized" is fresh pure feet-off-the-ground material!
Peace Vaults - I & II
(Crypt of the Wizard, 2023)
The Black Metal is out - it's out from its bubble, style-definition elements, and purity segregation. This hasn't happened yesterday, but it's a decade-long process. And for the love I have for the God of good music, this is a beautiful fact. Why? Artists like Peace Vaults can compose a record that is hostile and persuasive at the same time. Melodies, screams, rhythms, all surrounded by a rebellious black punk nerve and a post-punk lethargy. It's like if Sonic Youth were playing in Norway in 1990.