An active guitarist since the 60s, Sonny Vincent first came to prominence on the New York punk scene in the mid-70s with his band Testors. Since then, until very recently, he has released a plethora of albums, alone or with various groups. He also strummed his six-string on a handful of albums by former Velvet Underground Maureen Tucker. Originally released by Hozac Records, this compilation has the good idea of bringing together tracks recorded with Distance, Fury and Liquid Diamonds, before Testors was formed. As the archetypal asocial saved by his instrument, you can hear it in his music. If you think of the great guitarists of the time, led by Jimi Hendrix, with their dirty, saturated sound, there’s an extra dose of violence that immediately brings to mind the Stooges, the heaviness of Black Sabbath or the urgency of Motörhead. An artist that many of today’s guitar bands would listen to. To our delight, the explosion of the 70s never ceases to shake us.
It’s been a long time since I chose records on the basis of their cover art, but this one caught my attention, as well as the length of the tracks. It only took me a few seconds to feel in my element. Formed near Toulouse, this trio offer mature, dense prog-metal. Starting out with garage rock, they have evolved to achieve a harder sound on their third studio album. We could go through all the fringes of metal explored in the different tracks or in their development. From doom to drone metal, the rhythm is relentless, sometimes metronomic, sometimes tribal, reminiscent of the best parts of Sepultura’s Roots, but it can also be haunting. The guitar sometimes dominates the space, sometimes tears it apart, and the vocals, all in English, are often close to howling or incantation. The sparing synthesiser notes and quiet moments are welcome breaths of fresh air in this relentless deluge of metal. The year 2024 begins for me with an album I’ve fallen in love with.
This young girl from Rennes grew up in a family where music was always present. She took up the violin and then the piano, and became interested in a wide range of means of expression: literature, theatre and film, which she studied at university. Her second EP differs from her first in that it has a more pop, accessible feel, and in the lyrics she gives more space to other people. With her voice, whose tessitura contrasts with her youthful physique, she sings, in a falsely detached way, about shaky encounters and relationships, the lack of self-confidence that breeds a certain malaise. The music creates a contrast with this melancholy, featuring rhythmic pop driven by synthesiser melodies. The combination of the two is reminiscent of a sort of female Étienne Daho. Even if we regret the short format of this record, which can leave us wanting more, the icing on the cake is the final track: a cover of Radiohead’s magnificent ‘Creep’ sung in French. A real treat.
It is agreed that jazz is a music of crossbreeding and that its crossing, with other styles, could generate lasting movements, such as free-jazz, or sub-genres of hip-hop. However, the marriage with electronic music remains less frequent and to my knowledge seeing a big band in residence in a techno club is a first. Even if it can count up to thirty musicians, the soul of this group is above all the expression of the trombonist Roman Sladek and the composer Leonhard Kuhn. They have enjoyed international success and have published more than ten albums, each with a supporting theme. On this disc, it is the compositions of Gustave Malher, which served as the basis for their work and the result is quite astonishing: we find the energy of fanfare music with brass in the forefront, a gently funky groove carried by beautiful guitar or solo instrument parts, the rhythm is worthy of trendy house clubs and combines acoustic and electronic percussion. It’s difficult, when listening to such a record, not to be drawn into tapping your foot and nodding your head. This is enough to cheer up the most jaded people.
Specialist in short albums, Shabazz Palaces is basically a hip-hop duo which includes the rapper Ishmael Butler, who was part of the group Digable Planets and the multi-instrumentalist of Zimbabwean origin Tendai Maraire (the latter having left the project a few years ago). Through their discography, they offer a hip-hop that can be described as avant-garde and which seems to owe more to DJ Spooky than to Kayne West. Their music looks towards the future, without being too experimental and demonstrates a mastery of the fundamentals of their style. Less based on rhythm than many productions put forward by radio, this record is down tempo to the point of sometimes evoking trip-hop. The flow of the rapper and the many guests works wonders on this musical setting and reinforces the heavy and sweaty atmosphere that emerges from the pieces. A late-night record, which deserves attentive listening with headphones to appreciate all the work of these sound adventurers.
