Review: Brandon Coleman clearly revels in the background. Being a talented songwriter and arranger, along with killing it on the keyboard and organ, he has been at the back-end of groups like The Next Step and The Western Transient, pushing the boundaries of funk and broken beat to their very limits. He's back with his second solo LP this time, coming through on Flying Lotus' mighty Brainfeeder, and everything about this release feels utterly on-point - yessah! Taking a couple of notes and steers from the Daft Punk dynasty, along with the USA's lust for funk, Coleman's vocoder voice runs like silk across many of these playful and innovative boogie tunes, hitting us with some Cali vibes - and sunrays - from the moment "live For Today" melts into the waves of "All Around The World" and, eventually, into the longing, utterly seductive flow of "Sexy" and "Thereas No Turning Back". What is most impressive is Coleman's single-minded vision, coming through with an album that has one single sound and vision running through it. Excellent stuff.
The Victory Of The Echo Over The Voice - (2:15) 115 BPM
Sevastopol - (2:11) 112 BPM
Tsars And Hussars (feat Amir Yaghmai) - (5:00) 69 BPM
Battery Smoke - (2:16) 56 BPM
Belonging (feat Amir Yaghmai) - (3:33) 68 BPM
Pre-munitions - (2:24) 86 BPM
Shot And Shell - (1:52) 80 BPM
Country Of Conquest - (2:09) 77 BPM
Review: Alfred Weisburg-Roberts has always been impressively productive. Even so, few producers would be driven or creative enough to release 12 albums in as many years. The Light Brigade is his 13th, and offers a distinctly dreamy, sparse and evocative blend of drifting textures, eyes-wide-shut vocals, folksy acoustic guitars and complimentary electronics. According to Weisburg-Roberts, the album was inspired by the grim and bloody Crimean War, which certainly explains the album's melancholic tone. Certainly, it offers food for thought, with bittersweet, layered instrumentals - mostly of a beatless variety - flanking a trickle of thought-provoking, reverb-laden songs. Crucially, it's a stunning set that offers an immersive, heart-aching vision of the horrors of war.
Review: The fledgling DJ Paypal joins the likes of Lapalux, Martyn and Mr Oizo on the mighty Brainfeeder, and he does so with his inimitable blend of footwork-driven electronica, and mind-bending pseudo house. This extended EP features nine solid dance bruisers, starting with the jazzy drum rolls of "Ahhhhhhh" that fuse neatly into the likes of "Awakening", a gorgeous piece of nu jazz complete with the sexiest trumpets we've heard in a while, and "Sold Out" itself, a delightfully bumpy ride along a rollercoaster of percussion and starry melodies. This is jazz for the next millennium.
Review: Jazzman glitch Dorian Concept returns with The Jitters, a new album that's one take, live, and improvisational in design and borne through 'sifting for outtakes' from his last Brainfeeder transmission The Nature Of Imitation (2018). The result is an LP where previously thought 'undeveloped ideas' were given new renditions, structures and arrangements to now shine forth in a bizzaro yet freshly emboldened glory. Still very much pushing his own twist on P-funk, computer music and electro, Dorian Concept shows where he's really at in "A Mother's Lament (Alt Take)" alongside a fresh batch of sweet, leftfield and undeniably colourful vignettes.
Review: There's a pronounced split between the live incarnation of The Gaslamp Killer and his musical output, where most club kids have him down as some kind of chainsaw dubstep fanatic. However on record he morphs into a wondrous haze of 60s and 70s psych anchored to heavyweight funk. As his EPs promised, his debut album goes headfirst into a searing Molotov cocktail of psychedelic tendencies and exotic samples, from Indian strings to West coast guitars via groovy organs and hard-breaking drums. It's overloaded and messy in many places, red-lining and wild eyed, but anything less would be a disappointment right?
Review: Fresh from his Activia Benz release and collabs with Yoteghost Milk Empire and The Astral Plane, young UK experimenter Iglooghost makes his Brainfeeder debut. Sitting somewhere between classic breakcore, LA beats, juke and Binga-style 160-ism - and all wrapped up in a pixelated, technicolour 8-bit cartoon glow - it's unlike anything else on the sonic atlas right now. Highlights include the densely textured vocal loops on "Peach Rift", the cosmic trappisms of "Mamtchi/Usohachi" and the straight up 170 slappage of "Xiangjiao". Happy nu yr!
Review: Since his debut for Brainfeeder back in 2015, Iglooghost has opted for quality over quantity, which is an effective strategy to pursue given the competitive scene in which he operates. Having said that, a tune like "Bug Thief" comes out as the winner next to most pieces of music that you place it next to; a slight hint of AFX nuttiness encircles the air, but this is very much the producer's own creation from start to finish. High-tech, glitchy drum infusions burst to life amid frenetic medleys of aqueous sonics, and the result is something that sounds like it could be from either the US or the UK - the trick is simply to think of it as future music.
Review: Familiar to labels like Smalltown Supersound and Ninja Tune, legendary Norwegian eight-piece Jaga Jazzist arrive on Brainfeeder with a deep dive into post-rock, jazz and psychedelic themes and synth wave influences. Presenting their first studio album since 2015's Starfire, Pyramid is the result of a reclusive two week recording session deep in the Swedish woodlands, resulting in the group's first ever self-produced record. With the 14-minute-long and classically jazz "Tomita" the crowning track on Pyramid, find some pumping night drives in "Apex" to the retro-active yet futuristic jazz-electro-funk of "The Shrine" or the spacey, new age synth and cosmic jazz in "Spiral Era".
Review: Mitchel Van Dither has been synonymous with the Kindred Spirits label up until now, an imprint that we have just so much time and respect for. He has, however, been branching out as of late, and his adventures have landed him a spot on Flying Lotus' mighty Brainfeeder. Two EP's containing tunes from Fool have already been released on the label, but the album format expresses their depth much more clearly, and with more freedom. Objectively, Fool is Brainfeeder through and through, a little work of art to fit in perfectly with the rest of this ever-surprising and always on-point catalogue. Recommended.
Review: Dutch producer Mitchel van Dinther aka Jameszoo presents his new Flake EP; the follow-up to his debut album released via Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder. Brand new single "Rolrolrol" (feat. keyboardist Niels Broos) is some of the most organic 'future beat' you'll ever hear. Again it is an enjoyable blend of jazz and off kilter electronics. Van Dinther was rewarded for his adventurous attitude in the studio by Gilles Peterson who bestowed upon him the "John Peel Play More Jazz" Award at the Worldwide Awards 2017.
Review: Mitchel Van Dinther, AKA Den Bosch-based Dutch producer Jameszoo, teams up with the Netherlands' Grammy-winning jazz orchestra Metropole Orkest and conductor James Buckley for this long player on Flying Lotus's Brainfeeder label, and the results will please those who like their sounds on the leftfield/experimental side. Ambience morphs into easy listening on opener '(flakes)', '(lose)' has a cartoonish feel, '(soup)' brings the moody, smoky jazz club vibes, '(flu)' injects a little James Bond glamour, '(meat)' starts as a sparse modern jazz workout before building to a euphoric, almost gospel-ish climax, and on it rolls for four more out-there jams that flit back and forth between Frank Zappa and 1970s Radio 2 with ease!
Review: Brainfeed, the LA label run by Flying Lotus, does what it wants and right now and it wants to put out a mammoth 17-track, three-volume album of jazz music yet to be heard on earth. Featuring a 32-piece orchestra, a 20-person choir and ten other instrumentalists from South Central called The Next Step, The Epic by Kamasi Washington is a remarkable journey of the outer reaches of the jazz galaxy. A future classic has landed.
Review: Ninja Tune are chuffed to bits, having secured a kind of talent jackpot for this, their latest release. Daedelus is a celebrated Californian electronic muso Alfred Darlington who here teams up with jazzy heroes Kneebody (featuring his old high-school pal and saxophone virtuoso Ben Wendell). The resulting long player, Kneedelus, is remarkable fusion of their two worlds: the authentic and the artificial, in other words a 'multi-headed beast straddling rock, jazz, and electronic music'.
Review: Lapalux made something of a splash with his 2011 debut full length, Nostalchic, so hopes are naturally high for this follow-up on Flying Lotus's acclaimed Brainfeeder label. Apparently inspired by the experience of hypnogogia - the transitional state of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep - Lustmore is a decidedly picturesque set, if one that's naturally drowsy. Full of wonky, off-kilter rhythms, woozy electronics, eyes-closed melodies, tipsy saxophones and evocative vocals (most notably from Andreya Triana), the album sits somewhere between lucid electronica, slack-toned wonk-hop and dreamy ambient moods, a fitting sound given its' subject matter.
