My weekly review of stuff I've listened to at the weekend:
black midi - utterly bonkers, utterly brilliant. Top stuff!
Nuha Ruby Ra - debut EP/mini-album (not sure which it fits into best). Angry, doomy art punk. Promising.
Balkan Taksim - Romanian psychedelia. A fusion of traditional music, electronica and, apparently, a touch of groove. This is really entertaining, can imagine them being good live.
Caterina Barbieri - essentially reinterpretations of a track from her 2019 album by an array of musicians so you get it synthy, guitary, bleepy (plus the other four dwarves).
Cheval Sombre - second album of the year form them. It follows much the same pattern as the last one. Gentle pych-folk songs given a trippy production by Sonic Boom. Both albums have been very good!
Lou Barlow - odd timings mean he's got a solo album a matter of weeks after the new Dinosaur Jr album. This is, as usual, a collection of lo-fi punk meets folk meets psych type songs. He seems a bit happier than usual.
Fatima Al Qadiri - this came out a couple of weeks back. She's a musician and conceptual artist so, as with a lot of this week's releases, we're talking fairly esoteric. This is a musical suite inspired by the classical poems of Arab women. It's very good as well.
Loscil - gentle, rolling ambient electronica from Canada. You kind of get lost as to which track is which but it fairly flies by, which is good.
Penelope Trappes - a bit shoegazey, a bit electronic, a tad of gothery and a lot of angst and arthouse. Intriguing rather than out and out excellent.
Can - their live in Stuttgart 75 album. By this point, their early late years, they didn't have a vocalist. It's basically 5 long tracks of improvised psychedelia. The musicianship is excellent, may take some listens to get to the bottom of it though.
Easy Life - I like this. It's kind of like a summer pop album made by Jamie T.
Album of the week: undoubtedly comes from black midi. Big pluses to Balkan Taksim, Cheval Sombre, Loscil and Easy Life also.