Issue 109 - Burna Boy

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Crack Magazine | Issue 109

04

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Monad & ABAGA VELLI

Carlota Barrera

STYLE

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Goya Gumbani wears

06

Goya Gumbani wears

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Monad

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ABAGA VELLI SEE MORE AT CRACKMAGAZINE.NET

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F ri da y J u n e 1 2

The N a t i o n a l 1 0

BA DB A D N O T G OO D - D I I V Do pe L e m o n

y e a r s o f High Violet

Black Lips - Obj e k t x E z r a M i l l e r ( l ive) - O M 박혜진 park hye ji n - T i n a r i w e n - T r o p i cal Fuck Storm

1 0 0 g ecs - DJ Fett Bu r g e r - D J P y t h o n - F A K A - F A U Z I A - G i a n t R o o k s M i n a & Bryte - R o i P e r e z - S o c c e r M o m m y - S q u i d - S u r f b o r t Violet -

Saturday June 13

The Strokes

Catfish and the Bottlemen F o n t ai n e s D . C . - J a r v i s C o c k e r

presents JARV IS... black midi - Girl Band Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - Sampa The Great

B a r ker(live) - Beac h B u n n y - B l a c k C o u n t r y , N e w R o a d - C O U C O U C H L O E D J Assault - Easy L i f e - G i r l R a y - J o s e y R e b e l l e - M a r i k a H a c k m a n Mee t s y s t e e m - M i n i m a l V i o l e n c e - P o t t e r y - S h e e r M a g Simo Cell - SORRY

Su nd a y J u n e 1 4

Massive Attack

Belle & Sebastian - Maggie Rogers M e t r o n o m y - T h e A v a l a n c h es Amyl & The Sniffers - Weyes Blood - Yellow Days A u t o m atic - Donna Mis s a l - G H U M - J e s s i c a P r a t t - L o s B i t c h o s T h e M ilk Carton Kids

June 12-13-14 2020

Beekse Bergen (NL) bestkeptsecret.nl

more to be announced

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Digital

027

Contents

Sam Wise

Beatrice Dillon:

34

42

48

crackmagazine.net

Burna Boy:

Soccer Mommy:

Santi 58

Editor's Letter – p.29

Recommended – p.30

The Click: Makaya McCraven – p.67 Retrospective: The Knife – p.75 20 Questions: Sega Bodega – p.89

Rising: Banoffee - p.33

Reviews – p.69

Downtime: Okay Kaya – p.88

Meditations on… today's protest music – p.90

CONTENTS

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☰ ☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰ ☰ ☰ ☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰

3–5 APR THE HAGUE info/tickets: rewirefestival.nl

☰ ☰ ☰☰ ☰ ☰☰ ☰ ☰ ☰☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰

33EMYBW, Ami Dang, Anna Meredith, Arca, Bbymutha, Beatrice Dillon, Bec Plexus, Ben LaMar Gay, Blacks’ Myths, Cucina Povera, Dis Fig, Eartheater, Ex Eye, Gabber Modus Operandi, Galya Bisengalieva, Halal & Relaxer, Hildur Guðnadóttir presents Chernobyl, Hiro Kone, HTRK, Ian William Craig, James Ferraro, John T. Gast, Jon Hopkins presents Polarity, Juana Molina, Katie Gately, Leo Svirsky & The River Without Banks, Loraine James, Lorenzo Senni, Lucinda Chua, OOIOO, Pelada, Rafael Anton Irisarri & Oliver Coates, Rafiq Bhatia, Semiconductor & Eartheater, Senyawa, SOPHIE, Suzanne Ciani , The Caretaker & Weirdcore, Wume, YATTA + many more to come

☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰ ☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰ ☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰ ☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰ ☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰ ☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰

It’s not often that Naomi Campbell goes to bat for a current Crack Magazine cover star, but as we were putting the finishing touches on the February issue, this is precisely what happened. The supermodel took to social media to berate the Recording Academy for nominating Burna Boy in the antique-sounding ‘World Music’ category at this year’s Grammy Awards. “Please take the next 363 days to reassess and reflect on your perspective of ‘World Music,’” Campbell wrote in a lengthy Instagram post.

“What will this neglectful categorisation of music mean to individual cultures?”

Beatrice Dillon Square Fifths

Sam Wise Birdseye View J Hus ft. Koffee Repeat

King Krule (Don’t Let The Dragon) Draag On Burna Boy Another Story Waxahatchee Fire

The Knife Na Na Na PA Salieu Frontline

The Men Children All Over The World

☰ ☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰☰ ☰☰ ☰ ☰☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰ ☰

Cold Beat Paper

So the Grammys are problematic. What else is new? The Anglocentric music industry has always marginalised artists who sit beyond its slender gaze. Now though, that mood is beginning to change – thanks to artists like Burna Boy. His rise to global superstardom has been wholly and completely on his terms. Indeed, rather than compromise his identity or sound, usually the going rate of crossover success, the Port Harcourt-born artist has consistently used his platform to spread a message of African pride and unity. “The world finally gets to experience the greatness,” he tells Kemi Alemoru, anticipating the new wave of Nigerian stars coming through. “And this is just the beginning.”

RIN

Keine Liebe

Soccer Mommy Inside Out

Bullion We Had A Good Time Santi Raw Dinner

Sega Bodega Salv Goes To Hollywood Nicki Minaj Good Form Ploy

Move Yourself

☰☰☰☰☰☰ ☰☰☰☰☰☰ ☰☰☰☰☰☰ ☰☰☰☰☰☰ ☰☰☰☰☰☰ ☰☰☰☰☰☰ Burna Boy was shot exclusively for Crack Magazine

by Michelle Helenaa Janssen in London, June 2019

029

Crack Magazine Was Made Using

crackmagazine.net

February 2020

Of course, the most innovative and exciting developments in music happen well beyond the province of industry awards bodies or creaky academies, as this magazine attests. Indeed, if there’s a throughline to Issue 109, it’s that all the artists are committed to forging something new, fresh, by its very nature uncategorisable. Whether that’s Beatrice Dillon’s blend of conceptual rigour and dancefloor release, Soccer Mommy’s Gen Z confessionals, or Santi’s wistful pop that takes inspiration from Afrobeats, Nollywood and Vampire Weekend. Still, maybe it’s Sam Wise, the breakout star of rap collective House of Pharaohs, who articulates it best: “Ultimately, I’m trying to explore.” We urge you to do the same.

Louise Brailey, Editor

EDITORIAL

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Issue 109

030

Recommended O ur g ui d e to wh at's goi n g on i n y ou r c i ty Demdike Stare Weekender Café Oto 21-22 February

Omar Souleyman EartH 6 February

Champions of tense industrial bangers, the duo of Sean Canty and Miles Whittaker take over London’s prime alternative music incubator for a weekender of dark, dubby unease. Moving away from the horror soundtrack-indebted early material to dish out distorted ambient and anxious bangers on their Modern Love label, they’ve become masters of unexpected thrills on the dancefloor. Expect alternative throwdowns for their two-day residency.

Joe Armon-Jones Electric Brixton 6 February

FOLD with Ilian Tape FOLD 22 February

Bang Face Weekender Southport Holiday Park 12-16 March The notorious Bang Face Weekender is crammed full of the silliness you’d expect from its name. The veteran holiday park event has always maintained a devoted following, and in recent years it's had a boost in popularity with ravers ready to re-embrace the giddy nonsense it offers in the face of an increasingly capitalised, austere dance music scene. This year, experts in fun Tommy Cash, Sherelle, Altern 8, Ceephax Acid Crew and DJ Sash! are joined by naughty noisemakers Squarepusher, Perc, Helena Hauff and Venetian Snares for a weekend full of mischief and, of course, many, many bangers.

Are you officially over Dry January? Midwinter got you feeling restless? FOLD’s marathon 24-hour party – 11pm Saturday to 11pm Sunday – could be the mindless adventure you need. It would be insane to suggest you stay its course – we prefer hitting the sweet spot on a Sunday day – but it’s a tough call when the whole line-up is this blessed. Ilian Tape staples Zenker Brothers, Andrea, Stenny, Laksa and their cult artist Skee Mask are joined by FOLD regulars for a full day of storming breakbeat techno and left-field facemelters. Yeesh.

Angel Olsen Eventim Apollo 11 February

Cola Boyy The Shacklewell Arms 6 February

(Sandy) Alex G EartH 12 February

Kano Drumsheds 7 February

Sicaria Sound Fire & Lightbox 8 February

Carly Rae Jepson O2 Academy Brixton 8 February

Trilogy Tapes The Glove That Fits 14 February

EVENTS

Equally and rightly labelled as purveyors of all things weird and wonderful, The Glove That Fits and Trilogy Tapes is a match made in oddball clubbing heaven, is it not? Brokered by the fine people at Edited Arts, this one features recent TTT alumni FFT and CS + Kreme in live mode, with SOUVENIR and bossman Bankhead stepping up for DJ sets. London’s glorious licensing laws mean this one’s over by 1.30am, so don’t forget to have an early dinner and get down there. And as the event description states: mutual respect essential.

Alex G keeps surprising us. After emerging with his distinct strain of lo-fi bedroom indie, he snuck onto Frank Ocean albums, collaborated with Oneohtrix Point Never, and added (Sandy) to his name with no real explanation. His latest offering, 2019’s House of Sugar, continued this unpredictable streak, full of enigmatic sonic vignettes. Catch him as he rolls through a run of European shows, where you can join his devoted fanbase in entering his surreal, bittersweet world.

Kim Petras O2 Shepherds Bush Empire 11 February

These New Puritans Barbican Centre 23 February

Mabel Eventim Apollo 12 February

031

Max Richter Barbican Centre 17-18 February

Klein The Underworld 13 February

Sherelle x L U C Y x Jossy Mitsu x Sicaria Sound Phonox 14 February Plaid + Kelly Lee Owens Southbank Centre 28 February Since breaking away from the Black Dog label in the 90s, production duo Plaid have been a staple of the mischievous UK label Warp. Their tenth album, last year’s Polymer, heralded their return to their longtime home and came loaded with energetic bangers, melodic visceral rhythms and wombic textures. They’re dropping by the Southbank Centre’s after-hours party series, Concrete Lates, alongside Kelly Lee Owens, fresh from her collaborative release with Jon Hopkins, for a show that will surely be more thrilling than their namesake.

The 160 BPM sound of the 6 Figure Gang tear into Brixton on Valentine’s Day, ready to blow whatever sub-par box of chocolates you might have received this year clean out of the water. Sherelle, alongside crew members L U C Y and Jossy Mitsu will be shelling it down (with love), while Sicaria Sound will be providing similar firepower at the fractionally calmer pace of 140 BPM. These DJs are absolutely unstoppable at the minute – don’t miss the chance to find out why.

JPEGMAFIA EartH 27 February + 6 March There’s no doubt 2019 was JPEGMAFIA’s year. For his latest studio album All My Heroes Are Cornballs, the Brooklyn rapper – affectionately known to his fans as Peggy – shocked the world by delivering what may be his best record yet. A genre-bending, frenzied work dipping in and out of hip-hop, industrial and melodic electronic flourishes, Peggy’s provocative lyrics stand centre stage. The new king of post-internet, industrial rap embarks on a victory lap of Europe this year. Considering how wild his shows get, catching Peggy at his peak is a very intriguing prospect indeed.

Egyptian Lover Jazz Cafe 14 February

Sleater-Kinney O2 Academy Brixton 26 February

Floating Points Printworks 21 February

Big Thief Eventim Apollo 27 February

ReBalance: Nilüfer Yanya Union Chapel 8 March Club Glow Peckham Audio 22 February

Cabin Fever kicks off the first of three monthly parties in fine style by inviting two of NYC’s most revered underground producers and DJs – Anthony Naples and Huerco S. Both are known for their ranging, skewed approach to house and techno, which veers from dreamy ambient to thumping, party-starting bangers. In short, expect a wild, carefree ride when they touch down in Elephant & Castle. Support comes from Phonica’s own Nick Williams, while the second room sees French whizz-kid Simo Cell and Rhythm Sister boss Jessica at the controls.

You’re in safe hands with this lot.

Nérija Village Underground 18 February

Maurice Fulton The Jazz Cafe 21 February

Novelist Village Underground 16 February Proudly and fiercely independent, Novelist is committed to doing things his own way. Since bursting through in 2014, Novelist never really made the jump to the mainstream, nor did he give the impression he ever really wanted to. Following 2019’s debut album Novelist Guy is his newly-released Inferno EP, and the rapper will also be unleashing a new track every week as part of his #52WeeksOfFire series. A firm reminder of the integrity and fearlessness that makes Novelist such a captivating young artist.

EVENTS

The Club Glow team rock up to the newly opened Peckham Audio with a slew of heavyweight affiliates in tow. Working on the mantra of “looking back to look forward,” the crew build and release music in that classic 90s style – breakbeats, diva vocals, tape packs – but with up-to-date production and one eye on the hardcore continuum as it lives and breathes. For their first event, they have Bristol badboy Borai heading up proceedings alongside Club Glow founders Denham Audio, responsible for the one-two punch of Make Me and No Good that spawned a million desperate ID requests.

Gunfingers at the ready.

Cabin Fever: Anthony Naples, Huerco S Corsica Studios 15 February

TATE TATEMODERN MODERN 1313 FEB – 11 MM AYAY2020 FEB – 11 2020

TATE A SH E S A SH E S C A RI BS’ L E A P C A RI BS’ L E A P C H A RLOT T E C H A RLOT T E CO L D BRE AT H CO L D BRE AT H EN D C REDIT S EN D C REDIT S E XO D US E XO D US GI RL S, T RIC K Y GI RL S, T RIC K Y

SOU THWARK u u SOU THWARK FREE FOR TATE MEMBER S FREE FOR TATE MEMBER S Supported by the Steve Mc Queen Exhibition Supporters Circle, Tate International Council and Tate Patrons Supported by the Steve Mc Queen Exhibition Supporters Steve M Queen Illuminer 2001 Courtesy the artist, Thomas Gallery, Circle, Tate International Council and Dane Tate Patrons c

London and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York © Steve Mc Queen

Steve Mc Queen Illuminer 2001 Courtesy the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery, London and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York © Steve Mc Queen

I L LUMI N ER I L LUMI N ER MEE S MEE S O N C E U P O N A TIME O N C E U P O N A TIME S TAT IC S TAT IC WE S T ERN D EEP WE S T ERN D EEP WEIG H T WEIG H T 7 T H N OV. 7 T H N OV.

How can you describe Banoffee?

“I want people to struggle with it,” admits the Melbourne breakout. Her genre-hopping music is testament to that desire. She first made a name for herself in lo-fi bedroom ambience, then on 2017’s Ripe, her swirling verses were broken up by the dissonant jerks of super-producer SOPHIE. Last year’s Muscle Memory bore a darker sensuality still. Now, ahead of debut album Look At Us Now Dad, it feels like she’s jumped out of the bedroom window and landed on her feet.

Words: Sean O’Neill

SOPHIE contributes again on this month’s single Count on Me, and

Banoffee counts her as a friend – one she met in Australia, who then eased her subsequent move to Los Angeles.

“There were a couple of people who took me in and became like my family,” she reminisces, also referring here to pop avant-gardist QT. “The day I moved, they called, like, ‘Where are you? We’re going out for breakfast.’”

Elsewhere, she’s worked with PC Music’s abrasive umru, and will be welcoming deliciously explicit rapper CupcakKe onto a remake of Ripe. The album sees her open up to the world outside, and she puts it all down to the move: “Melbourne is about spending time on your own, being a bedroom

033

Banoffee

producer. LA is a place to collaborate.”

It sounds like an alt-pop West Coast fairytale, until it doesn’t. Last October’s cut Tennis Fan was the proof. It’s a hip-swinging kiss-off to a fake friend (voiced by Empress Of). But it’s also a meditation on using opiates and benzos to get through a day in Los Angeles. The chorus taunts, “You can take that lean and Ativan/ Just to help you survive it”, but it’s less of a subtweet, and more of a self-reflection.

“I reference these vices because to be honest, when I first moved here, that’s how I survived. I just took a bunch of drugs.”

Yet for all its darkness, the track has a chorus like the sunkissed sister of MØ’s Scandi-anthems. Is this longtime experimentalist now experimenting with pop stardom? She’s certainly sat through a masterclass. Last year, while Charli XCX supported Taylor Swift on tour, Banoffee joined her troupe. “I felt like I was this student coming along to learn about that world,” she reminisces.

Upcoming tracks suggest she’s picked up a few things. On Contagious, layered sing-talk vocals meet icy, arpeggiated synths. But where she might once have basked in empty space, you’ll now hear an 80s drum fill.

She says with admiration for the new trade, “Writing pop music is actually much harder. Try to write a song that the majority of the world can get stuck in their heads, versus people who appreciate a certain sine wave.”

But she knows there’s no need to choose, either. Like all popstars of the future, Banoffee is on her way to mastering both.

Look At Us Now Dad is out 21 February via Cascine

Sounds like: Rhythmic post-pop Soundtrack for: The quieter, looser variety of the afterparty

Our favourite song: Fuckwit Where to find her: @banoffeemusic

MUSIC

File next to: Japanese Wallpaper, Caroline Polachek

034

Burna All MUSIC

The Nigerian powerhouse has always believed in himself. In the wake of his global breakout album African Giant, the rest of the world is finally catching up

035 MUSIC

Boy: Rise

Sunglasses: Gentle Monster Jacket: Barena Top: Napa by Martine Rose

036 There are some shows that feel like just another date in an artist’s tour diary. But Burna Boy’s sold out Wembley show last November felt more like an inauguration. Somewhere between bursting out of the mouth of a supersized gorilla, drifting down in a harness to perform to a mostlyblack crowd of dedicated fans – many of whom knew every word and Pidgin inflection – and the high energy appearances of peers-slashcollaborators Wizkid, Stormzy and Dave, one thing became clear: African Giant is more than an album name. It is the title Burna Boy is taking as he’s sworn into office as Nigeria’s global superstar.

In keeping with the ceremonial atmosphere, there were even speeches honouring his chieftaincy. One was made by his mother, Bose Ongulu, as she unexpectedly presented him with his MTV EMA award mid-performance, and the other when he was handed a commemorative plaque for being the first Nigerian artist to sell out Wembley Arena. Weeks after the show, as the decade drew to a close, he racked up another impressive accolade: a muchcoveted Grammy nomination.

“That’s something I've basically spoken into existence,” Burna Boy, real name Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu, says reflecting on the moment he knew he was in the running for Best World Music Album. In this case he actually sang it into existence, in the title track of African Giant: “Can't nobody do it better‚ check am and see/ I know say one day e go better‚ I go carry grammy.” Perhaps that’s why during the aforementioned frenzy of affection and awards at his concert his expression was full of joy, tinged with a little humility – but certainly not shock.

He’s exactly where he told himself he’d be.

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“Everything in this world, including you, was an idea. It was either your idea or somebody else's idea, but

before it became a reality that’s what it was.” His assured voice deepens as he expands on his personal philosophy, one which certainly seems to be working. “It depends on who is speaking and how much the person believes in what they're saying. That's the real power of the tongue. Do you understand?”

It’s a question he asks a few times throughout our conversation. Mostly because he makes a lot of analytical statements – his own little Burnaisms that span how he looks at life, his identity, and the diaspora at large. Even over the phone, I can tell he’s exhausted, speaking in a low voice after performing back-to-back shows during December, Nigeria’s busiest party season. Despite this, the 28-year-old musician seems to possess the wisdom and conviction of someone much older. Perhaps you could attribute this to the years of hard graft that preceded his success, a success that an international audience might mistake as sudden when it was anything but. “Performing has always been a part of me,” Burna Boy says, revealing that he used to dance on restaurant tables during Sunday lunch with his family. “But I wasn't really professional until 2010.”

Born in the seaport city of Port Harcourt, the majority of Burna Boy’s childhood was spent in Lagos State before moving to London to complete his studies. A resident until the age of 20, he calls London his “second home” despite having his visa rejected when he tried to re-enter years later; something that was only restored as late as 2016. “London taught me to be realistic," he laughs. “It taught me patience.” Throughout his youth, it was his tight-knit family that laid the foundations for the artist he was to become. “I was exposed to a lot of different sounds in my childhood,” he recalls. His mum, a lecturer, would listen to French music, Ivorian music group Magic System and Anita Baker.

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His father, who ran a welding business, was into reggae. His uncle would listen to Naughty by Nature and “rap stuff”. “My grandad was Fela [Kuti]'s manager,” he adds. The Afrobeat pioneer is one of the most influential Nigerian musicians in history, an artist who used his music to take aim at the country’s corrupt elite and spread messages of African unity, socialism and resistance. “He was all about African pride,” he concludes, clearly relishing the familial connection to an icon.

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“Every time I go on any stage it feels like I've gotten just a little bit closer to achieving unity”

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Words: Kemi Alemoru Photography: Michelle Helenaa Janssen Styling: Ade Udoma Styling Assistant: Isaac Luutu Grooming: Lai Zakaria

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039 Full look: Louis Vuitton

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040 It’s not hard to see how these experiences have moulded Ogulu into Burna Boy. His 2013 studio debut L.I.F.E., released on Lagos label Aristokrat, was heavily influenced by pan-African sounds and marked him out as one to watch in Nigeria.

Subsequent releases have continued to build on his distinctive musical identity, a blend of Nigerian music, dancehall, rap and R&B, sung in English, Pidgin, Igbo and Yoruba. Indeed, while almost all of the music coming out of Nigeria is erroneously dubbed Afrobeats by outsiders – whether that be Tiwa Savage’s R&B-tinged sound, the sunny melodies of Afropop, or the slightly more underground alté scene – Burna coined his own term for his output: Afrofusion. It’s a term that embodies and honours Burna Boy’s rich mix of musical influences.

As an interest in African music began to spread beyond the continent’s borders, Burna Boy’s clear vision caught the attention of the right people. He jumped on tracks for UK and US artists as diverse as Fall Out Boy – a band he says he listened to as a teen – to J Hus, Jorja Smith and Future. Own It, a collaboration with Stormzy and Ed Sheeran released at the tail end of last year, went on to become the UK’s first No. 1 of 2020. He even got the Beyoncé seal of approval when she tapped him for a song on The Lion King: The Gift, which she curated and executively produced. Still, the most potent expression of Ogulu on his own terms is, of course, African Giant, his colossal fourth studio album and Grammy-nominated global breakthrough. Released in July 2019, it shot to Top 20 in the UK charts and was ranked as one of Billboard’s Top 50 albums of the year. The album bounces between club-ready bangers with infectious beats like Killin Dem and Gbona, and love songs for your Netflix and chill playlist like Gum Body and cheaters’ anthem Secret. He also demonstrates his own curatorial ability by cherry-picking collaborators from across the globe, inviting the likes of Jeremih, Damian Marley and fast-rising Nigerian rapper Zlatan to the project.

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Most importantly, African Giant is an album with a marked sense of purpose. The record has moments of evoking his musical hero – and his granddad's old friend – Fela Kuti, most notably through Afrobeat rhythms and narratives of inner city struggle on Wetin Man Go Do. Elsewhere, Dangote details his hunger to work towards success in the same way as Nigeria’s richest man Aliko Dangote.

He even uses the music video – over

10 million YouTube views and counting – to disseminate a stat about Nigeria’s 23.1 percent unemployment rate, stating that it should be “a priority for any government” to empower the workforce. The outro on Spiritual includes a sample of the acceptance speech his mother gave at the BET Awards when he won Best International Act. “And the message from Burna, I believe,” Mama Burner said, addressing the crowd in LA. “Would be that every person should please remember that you were Africans before you were anything else.”

is orated by director Jide Olanrewaju and lifted from his documentary A History of Nigeria, traces how, in 1899, Britain bought the country’s territory from The Royal Niger Company for £865,000. “Actually, there's one additional detail that bears mentioning,” Olanrewaju declares on the track.

“So let's establish a simple truth: the British didn't travel halfway across the world just to spread democracy.

Nigeria started off as a business deal for them.” As the song’s jangly guitar and mellow percussion swells into the fore, Burna Boy’s melodic coos directly acknowledge the wilful deception of

experience the greatness – and this is just the beginning. There are so many incredible new artists and producers coming out. You lot aren’t ready!”

When I ask where he sees himself within Nigeria’s growing music scene, he says that it’s for us to assess. So here it goes: what Burna Boy offers is a rock star energy, writ large in his style and the pageantry of his shows (“where I’m happiest, I morph into an adrenaline junkie,” he admits). Compared to other Nigerian crossover success stories, say Afrobeats hero Wizkid or pop superstar Davido, Burna’s effortlessly cool demeanour and unfiltered opinions furnish him with a harder edge. The Coachella organisers got a taste of just that in January last year, when he took to Instagram to berate the size of his name on the poster. “I really appreciate you. But I don’t appreciate the way my name is written so small in your bill," he wrote, in a post that was later deleted.

"I am an AFRICAN GIANT and will not be reduced to whatever that tiny writing means. Fix tings quick please.” The subtext to the US industry was clear: widen your Anglocentric gaze.

But for all of Burna Boy’s rapidly growing recognition beyond Nigeria, it’s his home continent that occupies his mind the most. “I hope Africa [feels united like] a country one day. For me that's the most important thing that has given me motivation,” he reflects. “You know, when people go to work every day and hope they can get a new car or something, this is what I hope. Do you understand?”

“I feel like a lot of my people don’t really understand the situation we're in right now. We must go back to the beginning and understand how we started as a people,” he explains.

“Nigerians are the kings of suffering and smiling but everybody is going through their own things. These things are caused by our situations, by the hand we've been dealt, and our inability and unwillingness to change it.” For Burna Boy, who spends his spare time watching historical documentaries, music is a tool to educate his fans.

Take the brief history lesson that introduces Another Story, which details the potted history of modern Nigeria. The opening sample, which

British colonialism: “They wanna tell you another story/ Since 1960 them dey play us.”

Burna Boy’s message of African solidarity comes at a time when Nigeria is assuming its position as a cultural heavyweight on the continent.

Its music industry generated $39 million in 2016, according to a PwC report. This is expected to grow to $73 million by next year. A new generation of artists are riding the wave of Afrobeats. Their influence in the UK can be read in emerging interest in genres like Afroswing, Afrowave and Afrobashment. Burna’s response to this development? Of course, pride. “The world finally gets to

Spend any amount of time with Burna Boy and it becomes clear that he’s an artist looking at the bigger picture of connecting black people to our shared culture and ancestral homes, and making Africa a united entity, culturally and politically. I’m reminded of something he said at his Wembley show, back in November, when he told the crowd to research their history because “any tree without roots will fall”.

“Every time I go on any stage it feels like I've gotten just a little bit closer to achieving unity,” he explains. “The greatest achievement is, and always will be, the lives you’re able to touch while you’re on this Earth.”

African Giant is out now via Atlantic Records

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“The world finally gets to experience Nigeria’s greatness – and this is just the beginning”

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Words: Nicolas-Tyrell Photography: Michelle Helena Janssen Styling: Ade Udoma Grooming: Karla Q Leon

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The south London artist rose from the underground as part of rap outliers House of Pharaohs. Now, he’s making his own mark

Sam Wise is instantly recognisable.

His wide grin is on full display as he shares a laugh with his publicists at Nando’s in Brixton – but I’m too far away to catch the conversation, and more importantly, the joke. Once seated at the table, Wise unzips his Perry Ellis jacket – the second thing you notice, after the grin, is his exuberant dress sense. He tells me his style is futuristic and “ahead of the curve”. It won’t be the last time that the 22-year-old will acknowledge his sense of difference in our interview.

Raised in Kennington, south London, as one of six siblings, Sam Wise is no stranger to operating in a tightknit clan. As an artist, he came to prominence as part of House of Pharaohs, the London-based rap collective who’ve made a name for themselves by doing things their own way. Comprised of six rappers – Wise, Danny, Kev, Bandanna, Blaze and AJ, as well as in-house fashion designers, managers and dancers – retaining creative control has been their MO from the very beginning. According to Wise, the crew came together when original members Bandanna, Blaze, AJ and Wise – some of whom are former Brit School students – were in secondary school. “Bandanna and Blaze were already doing music. One day I just opened my door and there were guys everywhere. That’s when we formed.”

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Wise remembers attending a house party, not long after they established the collective, dressed in “skinny jeans and bandanas” – something which prompted awe and intrigue from other partygoers. It was an early sign of the group’s sense of extravagance, a quality which they would cultivate through their music and visuals. For evidence, you only have to look to their 2014 video debut, Roll It Up. From then on the group spent time together, in studios, or members’ houses,

fuelling each other’s development in a supportive and open environment.

“Every single one of us was free, on our own shit. Back then, not everyone was as fluid as we were,” he remembers.

“We were quite the spectacle.”

The hard work slowly, but surely, began to pay off. They started gaining traction outside of their inner circle and pirate radio stations like Pulse88. In 2017, their loungey trap cut Rwm [run With Me], from the Real Faces EP, was picked up by Frank Ocean who played it on his high profile Blonded Radio show, boosting their hype even further.

Wise attributes their success to the nurturing habitat that the group has created. “It’s a blessing having your individuality as a member of a group, but still having the space and support of your brothers. It’s an understanding.

We come together as a group, but when we need to take a step back, we focus on ourselves and our crafts.”

This comment makes sense; running parallel to the group’s grassroots rise was the growth of Sam Wise the solo artist. He set his stall out clearly with Lizzie – a sleepy piece of lo-fi hiphop that has notched up 1.2 million plays on Spotify. His face lights up at the mention. “Lizzie!” he exclaims, “shoutout 4STRINGSZ.” He’s referring to the south London producer, electric violinist and composer responsible for Lizzie’s distinct sound. “We were in a studio here in Brixton, ironically, and I said [to 4STRINGSZ], ‘This is it, exactly the energy I want to capture in my music!’ I instantly started writing and formed the hook very quickly.”

The producer earmarked the track at Wise’s request, and Wise began writing the rest of the song on the DLR that same evening. “This was one of those tracks that had a solid hook and I knew that all the pieces fit together, so I had to continue.” He was nearing Canary Wharf when he finished the rest of the lyrics.

If Lizzie distinguished Sam Wise as an artist in his own right, then 2019 EP Sorry You Were Saying strengthened his aptitude for collaboration. The project includes standout joint effort Follow the Leader, a lingering trap song shared with drill artist Blanco, who, like Wise, also grew up around Kennington. Across the chorus, the pair trade verses about the daily struggles of growing up in the area. “Gun smoke, heater/ Head loss, amnesia/ Think about it, it’s deeper,” raps Wise, while Blanco’s affecting rhymes on the effects of gang violence and government indifference are delivered with the calm precision of a rap elder.

“Blanco has a real ability, there’s real thought behind what he does. We’re

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addressing that we’re from the same ends, seeing this war with gangs going on and telling the story from different perspectives,” he says, with a marked poignancy in his voice.

The London Borough of Lambeth, where Kennington is situated, has among the highest rates of gun and knife crime in the capital. It’s an issue that has affected the black working class communities of the capital in particular, dominating the cultural conversation for years. Fingers point to an amalgamation of root causes: government failure, the closure of a vast majority of youth clubs, austerityindebted police cuts. In 2018, UK drill – a derivation of the pioneering Chicago genre – also came under fire, when Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick named the style of music as a factor in the rise of knife crime in London. Reflecting on this, Wise addresses the longstanding debate about whether drill is interlinked with violence – but not without hesitation. “I didn’t wanna act like a bad man here or give off a ‘let’s ban drill’ vibe either. I just wanted Follow the Leader to be me and Blanco.”

It’s clear from our conversation that Wise considers the impact of his words, and the same attitude runs through his creative output. He’s quick to attribute Missy Elliott and Busta Rhymes as quintessential influences, pointing to the hyperactive Ella Violetta-directed video for Towndown, lead single from Sorry You Were Saying. “My environment pushes me to push boundaries. People think that you have to be a certain type of person.

But I want to challenge the status quo.”

There’s a childlike glint in Wise’s eye when he says this. He also reveals that one of his long term goals is to become more in touch with his emotions. “I’m a curious person by nature,” he admits, flashing that grin again. “I like to know things. I’m getting back into reading and also retraining my body. Ultimately, I’m trying to explore.”

“People think that you have to be a certain type of person. But I want to challenge the status quo”

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Sorry You Were Saying is out now via Sam Wise

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Electronic experimentalist Beatrice Dillon creates dynamic tracks out of contrasting forces

“My life is pushing tiny blocks of audio around and it doesn't work in real time”

Words: Oli Warwick Photography: Ortiz Arenas

It’s a mild January morning when I meet Beatrice Dillon outside of London’s Somerset House. As she leads me into the maze of artist studios inside the building, her demeanour is breezy and affable, chiming with the upbeat tone of her debut album Workaround, released on revered Berlin label PAN. “I was keen to make something that was bright and optimistic,” she confirms. “I started reading about

colour theory and how colours resonate together. [British painter and op art pioneer] Bridget Riley’s essays made me appreciate colour in a way I hadn't for ages. I'd been too lost on texture.”

It’s no surprise to hear Dillon speak in visual terms – she studied fine art at Chelsea College of Arts. But while her rediscovery of colour guided the effervescent musicality and human warmth of Workaround, it’s balanced out by the exacting geometry of her production. Needlepoint percussion and shapely synths pivot elegantly around the organic contributions of the record’s guest players. It’s just one of many dichotomies that define Dillon’s work, and one which became a central theme for the new record. “Rather than trying to humanise the computer to meet the human player, I quite liked the idea of keeping the computer rigid and stubborn,” she explains.

Dillon muses fondly about the ability to create artificial worlds within computers, which is precisely what she did on Workaround, starting with two demo tracks for tabla virtuoso Kuljit Bhamra, avant-garde cellist Lucy Railton and UK bass maverick Untold to play along to. Once she had recorded these musical elements, she discarded the demo tracks to untether the musical material while safe in the knowledge that everything was clocked to 150 BPM – the tempo she stuck to while collaging the gathered sounds into new pieces.

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“It sounds like we were in the room and there's this real vibe,” she says.

“I think it’s quite an interesting way of saying, ‘Let's not be fooled by music

and people jamming together.’ My life is pushing tiny blocks of audio around and it doesn't work in real time.”

Dillon is quick to play down Workaround as a concept record – these ideas are more her personal curiosity than a grand manifesto. But they do lend the recording process a sense of scientific investigation, in contrast to the warm and immediate music you hear when you hit play.

Similarly, Dillon’s passion for music overall teeters between giddy emotion and forensic analysis.

“I love pop music,” she declares early on in our conversation. “Really good pop music can work on that level where it's totally throwaway, but when you break it down it's super complex.

I’m neither pop nor academic. I’m somewhere in the middle.”

She’s also clear on what she doesn’t like: ambient music in particular, declaring it “boring and totally unstimulating.” She does however have space in her heart for softer sounds – in particular the tender undulations of pedal steel guitar as played by Jonny Lam on track Workaround 2.

Dillon clearly appreciates delicacy in sound. Her rhythms are marked out by slender figures of percussion with crisp high-end. As she talks about such sounds, she gestures to the top half of her body, setting us off on another diversion about cymatics and the way different frequencies affect different parts of human anatomy. Cymatics – a phenomena where matter physically reacts to sound passing through it – is a topic that came up in Ecstatic Material, an installation Dillon and

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“I’m neither pop nor academic. I’m somewhere in the middle”

While Dillon has had one foot in the club music world since first emerging around 2014, her art school roots have seen her undertake gallery-focused projects and commissions. As well as regular exhibitions in Somerset House, in 2017 she created a multichannel sound installation in the Peak District and performed for Jorinde Voigt’s exhibition at Lisson Gallery in London. “Financially and mentally it's quite difficult to just rely on touring,” she says. “It's really nice to have studio time to work on something on a whole different level, that isn't at three in the morning. It's a different set of questions that you get to ask.”

That’s not to say Dillon’s left-of-centre productions are bereft of club music tropes, and her appreciation for all kinds of electronic music spills out of her expansive mixes and radio shows.

But her approach to DJing eschews

Indeed, her performances have their own fluid logic. To join the dots between her selections, Dillon analyses her music collection for pathways between pieces without relying on syncing rhythms. “I spend a lot of time imagining how things will sound on the sound system and what you can over-emphasise. I do a lot of ridiculous EQing. You've got to rely on other tricks if you can't beat match!” she laughs.

Of the many musical passions she expresses as we wind through more than two hours of conversation, the overarching obsession for Dillon is that of dub. “Obviously dub is the pinnacle of minimalist art, I think,” she claims at one point. Dillon’s music channels her love of Jamaican music to varying degrees of intensity. Workaround’s stepper’s tempo and heavily submerged sub-bass speak to sound system attitude, but the reference is subtle and instinctive. “There's no point in me trying to make a dub record,” Dillon states. “Maybe it's more interesting to ask the question, ‘What is the decision making that led to that music?’ And then apply my own palette.”

The traditional path towards dub’s shaping of space is a liberal dose of reverb and delay, so Dillon went in the opposite direction and took away the safety net of lingering effect trails.

Instead she used stark silence as her way of denoting space in the music, bringing the considered elements in her tracks into sharp relief. “I'm well aware things can go horribly wrong with what I do, like putting a kick drum with a cello. Reverb can glue things together, but also make everything quite woozy. Not using reverb, there's this sobriety where you can hear things more clearly.”

You’d be forgiven for getting a sense of academic formality from the aesthetic of Dillon’s releases. Her collaborative album with Rupert Clervaux was called Studies I-XVII for Samplers and Percussion, while her cassette of live set excerpts with Gunnar Wendel has the sharp title Index Tape for Performance and a sleeve design to match. It’s a stylistic approach that belies the playful nature of the music inside.

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traditional rules. First and foremost, she’s never learned to beat match.

“I did various radio shows and was always making mixtapes for friends, so my DJing was more learning how to put music together as a narrative,” she reveals.

“It's always dodgy if you have to say there’s a lot of humour in my work because obviously people aren't picking up on it if you have to say it,” she laughs. “It's not meant to be too serious. I don't want to make music about music but... oh, I'm tying myself up in knots here,” she continues, while literally tangling the cord on her hoodie, “but when you have been a record collector, it's quite difficult to get to you.”

Straddling the divide between meticulous experimentation and unfiltered sonic expression, Dillon’s work continues to yield fascinating, thrilling results. There have been sacrifices along the way though, such as when she sold all her records eight years ago to outrun her own “over-schooling”.

“Because of working in record shops and being mad about music I had an insane number of records,” she admits. “One day I was like, ‘I can't do anything.’ Every time I have an idea I'm like, ‘Oh, I know what I mean, I mean that record over there.’ Then you put that on and you're lost in that and it's impossible to get anything going.”

She shakes her head at the scenario. “I think it's an important distinction to be an artist or to be an admirer of art,” she argues. “I always thought they were one position, but the more I get into this the more I realise they're not.”

Workaround is out now via PAN

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visual artist Keith Harrison created for experimental music touring initiative Outlands Network in 2019. The final piece was an array of 19 speaker cones holding different substances from glycerin to salt. Each speaker was fed a sound that would make the substances form stunning patterns in a visual manifestation of cymatics. It was a project of precise science, but the end result was accessible and fun.

It’s a neat metaphor for Dillon’s broader artistic approach.

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Soccer Mommy captured a generation with her candid songwriting. With her second album, Color Theory, she holds her darkest fears up to the light

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Words: Lauren O’Neill Photography: Arthur Comely Photography assistants: Connor Egan and Conor Rollins Stylist: Kendall Blair Stylist assistant: Giacomo Decastro Hair and MUA: Emily Wood

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Sophie Allison is a Gemini, so by her own admission, things can get a bit dicey when she hasn’t got anything to do. “Me getting bored means something bad is going to happen,” she reasons faux-conspiratorially, her bright blue, photo-ready eyeshadow creasing at the sides as she laughs. To avoid chaos, then, she prefers to keep busy – and that attitude is why we’re sat in the windowless side room of a north London warehouse space, talking about her upcoming second album, Color Theory.

Allison is better known as Soccer Mommy – the pop-rock alias she plays under alongside her band – and is about to release Color Theory, despite hardly having taken a break from touring her debut record, Clean.

Released in March 2018, Clean was an instant success. Allison’s knack for wrangling diaristic revelations around slacker rock hooks immediately anointed her as an unflinching voice for a disillusioned generation by indie fans and critics alike, in the tradition of artists like Liz Phair and Alanis Morissette.

Allison’s sensibilities have been honed even further on Color Theory, which ties together chunky, grungy sounds with bubblegum, movie soundtrack pop (“I have this natural desire to mix darkness with pop. Somehow just smash ‘em together. It’s probably because I’m a Gemini sun and a Scorpio rising,” Allison informs me matter-of-factly) and is influenced by a wide range of artists, from Tori Amos to Fishmans. The record sees Allison older and at peace with the heartaches that dominated Clean, squaring up to more existential topics like depression, sickness and death with her signature precision. I wonder, when dealing with subjects this difficult, whether a desire to contain Gemini impulsiveness is all that keeps Allison working. Surely there must be some hope for catharsis, too?

Allison nods, her hair brushing her shoulders. “I don’t speak to people about [these issues] in general. I’m not really good at that; I’m more of a closed off person, especially when I know something’s dark, and it’s a lot to be talking about. I’m very wary of feeling embarrassed or exposed.” So, for her, the songs are “a way that I feel like I can get all my thoughts out so I can stop trying to pin down how I feel.

It’s like journalling or something, to get through your thoughts.”

By anyone’s account, the ideas covered on Color Theory are, as Allison puts it, “a lot”. It’s a catalogue of many of its creator’s preoccupations, moving through a three-act colour spectrum of her design – there’s blue, then yellow, then grey. The blue section, she explains “is supposed to be sadness”; it’s followed by the yellow part, which is energised by the anxiety of paranoia and physical sickness, including her mother’s own illness, which is unpacked on the late 2019 single yellow is the color of her eyes.

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“It’s good to realise that just because things are OK doesn’t mean it leads to happiness”

The yellow section is opened by the track crawling in my skin. Immediately the pace of the record hurries, and in general, the ‘yellow’ songs are faster and more sprawling, mirroring anxious thought patterns. “At the time when I was writing falling and yellow is the color of her eyes, I wasn’t sleeping, so I was hallucinating and hearing things, and I was really paranoid, and was constantly on edge – kind of experiencing a bit of hypomania,” Allison explains. “So it’s this high tension, paranoia, anxiety section.”

Finally, there’s grey. The album’s grey end, as Allison sees it, is “this little cocktail of darkness and decay and death. A song like gray light is just me reflecting on seeing my mom sick.

She’s not better now, but she’s up and she had surgeries and stuff, and she’s healed from them and doing well. But there were times when she was fresh out of surgery which were really rough: just seeing death there, and fearing my own death. The other songs in the section are generally about darkness and evil in the world that’s trying to take you, or make you succumb to it.”

For all of her career so far, Allison has made exclusively personal music about her own mindset and experiences.

When you have been so candid, it must

be frustrating to feel like people are not listening, and are instead judging you on superficial characteristics: namely, for being a rock act who is also a woman.

Early on in our conversation, I ask whether, now that she’s more established, she’s still being hit with the “Women in Rock” label.

When she broke through in 2018, she was grouped in as part of an invented ‘scene’ of young women coming into guitar music alongside Snail Mail, Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and other musicians with whom her work bears only a vague generic resemblance. Allison sounds disappointed, noting that it’s something she’s still questioned about all the time.

I apologise for bringing it up, even in a sympathetic context. “No, it’s OK,” she says, in the very specific voice you use when something is not really OK at all – but she elaborates anyway, taking the opportunity to nail her colours to the mast once and for all.

“People still ask me about it. I think the difference is now, I’m at a place with a standing. Before, I hadn’t been in a press cycle, so I didn’t realise how I felt about it. But two months into Clean I was able to be like, ‘Oh I completely see where this is going. And it’s not good.’ It’s awful and I hate it.”

The good news, however, is that despite the clichés thrown her way, Allison is steadfast in overcoming them through her lyrical originality and creative growth. And certainly, Color Theory, conceptual as it is, tells the listener more about Allison as an individual and a musician than ever before. In her words, Color Theory, like life itself, is a “slow degradation” which sees her examining her most deeprooted concerns. “It’s supposed to

be this idea of all the things that have degraded me over time. Like I’m some kind of cassette or a piece that has travelled through time. Like we all are.”

By the end of the record, there’s no real resolution as much as there is an acknowledgement and acceptance of darkness. “It’s good to realise that just because things are OK doesn’t mean it leads to happiness,” Allison muses as we come to the end of our time together. “There are all these things that have been eating at you. You’re like, ‘This is not temporary, this is full life shit.’”

I can’t help but think that it’s in coming face-to-face with our full life shit – the stuff that’s there, inside of us, not going away – that the most freedom can be found. As we finish a conversation where she has addressed topics that would floor most people with openness and forthrightness, I think that it’s very likely that this is what Color Theory has done, at least in part, for Sophie Allison. “I’ve reckoned with it, and I can now say that I can have closure, in a way,” she says pragmatically. Perhaps her disarming willingness to face up to herself – even the most feared parts – will help her listeners to achieve the same.

Color Theory is out 28 February via Loma Vista

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“I’ve always pictured this sickly yellow as meaning physical illness, and I’ve always associated it with madness in women,” Allison says. She was inspired by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 19th century short story The Yellow Wallpaper – a rite-of-passage for many young women, which she read in high school – where yellow is not brightness and summertime, but “repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slowturning sunlight.”

Santi

Words: Felicity Martin Photography: Michelle Helena Janssen Styling: Ade Udoma

There’s a photo from a Santi show in Lagos that looks like a Renaissance painting. Each body in the crowd is a work of art: limbs splayed, teeth bared, a mosh pit forming a perfect circle, and Santi, clutching the mic, ready.

Something’s been brewing in Nigeria for a while, and people overseas are finally paying attention. The alté movement has captured a new generation. Less of a genre and more of a cultural movement, it’s found Lagos’ cool kids shunning the conservatism of their parents’ generation and creating new sounds, fashion and art. Along with Odunsi and Lady Donli, Santi, the 27-yearold Nigerian rapper born Osayaba Ize-Iyama, sits at the forefront of this subculture, merging the connective tissues of dancehall, Afrobeats and rap into a genre all of his own.

The cultural wave Santi is fronting hasn’t made for plain sailing, though.

“There are people at home who don’t really like what we do,” he says, speaking on the phone from Lagos (he divides his time between Nigeria’s commercial capital and Dubai). He’s referring specifically to his Monster Boys collective, which includes fellow Nigerian producers Genio and GMK. “[What we do] goes off everything you’re meant to do, you know – go to school, get a job, don’t have dreads or dress in a certain way.”

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Santi’s video output in particular has been met with resistance. The visuals he’s directed – for the likes of GoldLink, Tyler, the Creator and himself – are littered with symbolism, inspired by the 90s Nollywood horrors of his youth, like the insidious films of controversial Nigerian pastor Helen Ukpabio. “I don't think there's one

video I’ve dropped that hasn't gotten backlash,” he admits. “People say, ‘He’s promoting violence, Santi is the devil!’” Shrugging off the horror genre on standout single Sparky, Santi dealt with dark themes with more realism, delivering trigger-fast snapshots of life and death with the friendship, joy and betrayal that comes in between.

The style betrays another set of influences. As well as films about demonic possession, Santi grew up on The Sopranos and the films of Martin Scorsese, works which taught him how to tell a story through interesting, welldrawn characters. Intriguingly, Santi’s next project is a TV show. “That’s where my heart is right now. In Nigeria, we have never had a show about high school, sexuality and drugs. I feel like the kids need a safe space, something to explore and escape to.”

Pushing boundaries is something he’s been familiar with since his youth. The nonconformist attitude of Santi’s sound reflects the diversity of the music he grew up on: Billy Ocean, Phil Collins, Yellowman and “lots of Fela [Kuti]”. It was discovering Vampire Weekend, though, that “changed my life,” he says, amazed that they used highlife guitars and similar chords to the church songs he’d listen to on Sundays. Later, Adam Young’s twang on Owl City track Fireflies and the drawling chorus of Len’s Steal My Sunshine would form the blueprint for Santi’s unique vocal style.

The wistful, almost dreamlike quality of Santi’s music has made it an unlikely candidate for mass appeal, but points to a changing appetite for pop music. Low-key bubblers like Rapid Fire and Sparky have been played by experimental DJs and producers like Anthony Naples and Ben UFO, as well

as the wider reaches of the rap elite.

In 2017, Skepta asked Santi to play a private homecoming party in Nigeria for him and a select group of fans. “There aren’t many people I look up to in the world, but I look up to Skepta a lot,” he beams. “When I met him, it was just natural. He heard my song and fucked with it and asked me to perform at his show. He probably has no idea how much I bumped him before we met. I don’t really know that many people in the industry ‘cause I’m always locked in, but he’s a really great guy.”

Skepta’s seal of approval is just one example of Santi’s ever-expanding fanbase. Last year’s debut album Mandy & the Jungle, an accomplished work that shoots Afrobeat and dancehall rhythms through a lo-fi prism, featured high-profile collaborations with US rappers GoldLink and DRAM, building on his global draw even further. Moving forward, however, Santi promises a new direction for his sound.

And the message to his doubters is simple: “To them [a new direction] is being rebellious, but to me, it's just being myself and doing what I'm meant to do.”

Mandy & the Jungle is out now via Monster Boy

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Coat: Monad Trousers: ABAGA VELLI Shoes: Magnum

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Top & Bottom: Louis Vuitton Shoes: Santoni

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Makaya McCraven In his own words, Chicago drummer Makaya McCraven looks back on the moment he decided to take a chance on himself

When I released In the Moment, the process of creating it shaped the next few years for me. Scottie McNiece, head of the label International Anthem, and I started a music series in a small lounge space. During the same period, I was doing a lot of production, making beats of my own, but that was never part of my career – it was more of a hobby or experiment. It's something I have been doing for years, since high school even.

Are you going to let those feelings cripple you, or motivate you? You have to learn to have a healthy relationship with yourself as you try to grow.

Of course, those feelings of self-doubt and imposter syndrome are still a huge thing. I constantly doubt myself and question my choices. But I try to find strength in order to bear my work to the world, warts and all. It's a challenge, but that's OK. All artists – and anybody who is striving for excellence and mastery of their craft – are going to have to deal with those feelings. What matters is how you respond to them.

I realised it was cool for me to follow my creative desires, that I shouldn't hold myself back or be afraid of doing something, even if nobody else is doing it. I had to block out some of the outer noise and work on the music I wanted to work on, and that was inspiring to me. To expose the thing that I was doing on my own as part of my professional output, that was a powerful choice.

In the Moment was released about five years ago now, and I've worked as a musician since I was 19 years old.

Stepping out and doing something different in search of my own voice really had the strongest benefit, both personally and professionally, and all I did was do something that I was passionate about.

We’re New Again: A Reimagining of Gil Scott-Heron is out now via XL Recordings

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One day I looked at the music I was making in my spare time and said, ‘You know what, I'm gonna sample myself’.

That was a life-changing moment for me. It was a real epiphany when I realised I should be releasing the music I worked passionately on in my own time and on my own terms, not pressured by what I thought I should be doing.

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Lives

Eurosonic Nooderslag Groningen, Netherlands 15-17 January

There’s a sense of elation in the air at Moth Club on the night of Big Joanie’s sold out hometown headline show. Debbie Smith from Echobelly is DJing to an audience dotted with more young black and brown femmes than is perhaps typical at a rock show, and everyone is smiling and bopping around, waiting for the London three-piece to take to the golden stage.

When members Steph, Chardine and Estella come through the crowd, a fan hands them a bouquet. It’s fitting that they’re given their flowers, because tonight feels like a celebration – of punk and feminism in the wake of a renewed era of bleak politics; of black women thriving in what writer Melissa Harris-Perry once described as a “crooked room” (hence Big Joanie’s single of the same name). But, as much as any of that, this is a celebration of genuinely excellent music.

The group’s set draws mainly from their 2018 debut album Sistahs. The furious Fall Asleep obtains rich embellishment from a micro Korg; Token sounds extra angular in a live setting; How Could You Love Me, with its Shangri-Las-esque verses, slows things down to a waltz befitting of the glittery setting.

The music is interspersed with engaging conversation, too. The rollicking Used to Be Friends is prefaced with a great takedown of Labour MP Jess Phillips. There’s a call to support trans people. At one point, Big Joanie urge other punks of colour to start their own bands.

It’s clear that Big Joanie’s focus is squarely on community. “Empowerment” is a word that has become increasingly redundant in its co-option by capitalism, but at Moth Club, it’s hard not to feel emboldened with joy, strength and hope for a better world. ! Tara Joshi N Nick Paulsen

CTM Festival Various venues, Berlin 24 January-2 February A year on from its landmark 20th anniversary, CTM returns in a suitably curious mood.

The theme, ‘Liminal’, offers a counterpoint of sorts to 2019’s ‘Persistence’, seeking to explore the transitory and unknown through music, art and critical discussion. With an ambitious schedule that included unconscious live performances, trans technology and audio lifted from climate change data, CTM leaned into its inquisitive nature.

At Panorama Bar, DJ Plead kicks off proceedings in a typically upbeat manner. His signature rhythmic odysseys, punctuated by punchy tabla and tom beats, ricocheted off the walls of the iconic venue, jolting even the stiffest bodies into movement. As Pearson Sound’s Lola sluggishly rang out, Plead brought the room back up to a simmer, unleashing two of the UK’s most loved dubstep hits – Caspa and Rusko’s remix of Where’s My Money? and Benga & Coki’s Night. The floor maintained that buzz for the rest of the night.

Downstairs in the main room, Afrodeutsche premiered a new A/V show in collaboration with Bhatoptics, mixing warped images of her face into unsettling loops as the music swung from meditative ambience to clattering, polyrhythmic jackers.

Bristol heroes Giant Swan followed after a brief but high-tempo interlude from CTM cocurator Opium Hum, delivering their pummelling techno-punk to a heaving dancefloor.

There was also plenty to see outside of the club, with Karel van Laere’s performance of The Non-Present Performer standing out as an immediate, if slightly unsettling, highlight. For this piece, the Dutch filmmaker and artist was hypnotised on stage before his limp body was lifted, guided and contorted by four dancers. The aim of van Laere was to see if it was possible to perform without being conscious of it. To a crowd as curious as they were bemused – myself included – van Laere carried out a heart-rendering presentation that prompted the audience to scratch their heads with confusion, laugh absurdly, and finally, for some, be moved to tears.

While the extensive programme of talks, discussions and workshops kept the mind racing while the body recovered, it wasn’t long before it was time to head back to Berghain for the final stretch. Composer Lyra Pramuk’s performance was pure catharsis as her manipulated vocals swirled around a captivated audience on the dancefloor, while Friday saw Gigsta – in her now-infamous crocodile onesie – tear up Panorama Bar with a potent mix of bass music. Chilean DJ and producer Valesuchi was similarly on top form, pumping the crowd with lilting techno, breakbeats and flashes of dembow.

As CTM moves beyond two decades in the game, the festival’s output remains stimulating as ever. A Berlin institution established to ignite, inspire and entertain, it has never failed to deliver just that. ! Steve Dores N Stefanie Kulisch

! Ben Horton N Ben Houdijk

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Big Joanie Moth Club, London 23 January

For a first-timer, Eurosonic Noorderslag’s format can feel a little overwhelming. In addition to a five-day industry conference, the festival (known to most as ESNS) is also home to the European Festival Awards and the Music Moves Europe Talent Awards, as well as a dizzying array of live events looking to nourish the 40,000-plus visitors who descend on the picturesque city of Groningen each January.

The premise of ESNS is simple. Comprised of two festivals – Eurosonic, a vast showcase of artists from across Europe, and Noorderslag, which caters exclusively to Dutch talent – each runs as a non-profit with the laudable aim of championing European music.

As a university town, Groingnen has an outsize number of established gig venues, including the historic VERA, which plays host to some of the most anticipated sets of the weekend.

The abundance of heavier music proves a welcome surprise throughout the weekend and fares no worse in some of ESNS’ less purposebuilt venues (which all sound excellent, a credit to the festival’s production team). Italian shoegaze specialists Rev Rev Rev play an earth-shattering set in a snooker hall, and Scalping provide one of the weekend’s standout moments in Kokomo, a chintzy student club temporarily plunged into the void by the Bristol band’s lurid live visuals and barrelling techno-punk.

However, ESNS’ bill is by no means limited to guitar music. Stylistically worlds away, but just as arresting, is breakout MC Alyona Alyona, who spits in her native Ukranian over chestrattling 808 kicks. Perhaps the most singular performance of the weekend was the brilliant Mart Avi, whose otherworldly avant-pop evokes a timeless quality reminiscent of Bowie or Depeche Mode.

Many of ESNS’ most compelling live shows come from the home side. Ascendant pop soloist Naaz delivers a captivating acoustic set on Friday afternoon before delivering a showstopping headline set at the Music Moves European Talent Awards. Saturday’s Noorderslag event revealed a concentrated snapshot of the Netherlands’ buzzing scene. Altin Gün’s Turkish psych jams mark them out as a must-see across this year’s festival season; Lo-Fi Le-Vi charmed with their cheery bedroom pop; and Pip Blom’s riotous performance spurred a storm of thras hing bodies.

Eurosonic Noorderslag successfully avoids the pitfalls of other showcase-style events. Far from being a self-congratulatory industry trap, its focus is very much on propelling artists forwards and outwards, with a spirit of optimism and collaboration that feels, well, distinctly European.

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American Nightmare Life Support Heartworm Press

Makaya McCraven and Gil Scott-Heron We’re New Again XL Recordings

Soccer Mommy Color Theory Loma Vista

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On her 2018 album Clean, Sophie Allison demonstrated an ability to conjure up a cathartic response to the shackles of adolescence. She was confused but confident, presenting stories of resistance to love and growing up with a refreshingly candid lens. Color Theory sees Allison enter a grittier trajectory, starting with its warped, crackling production. Enlisting the help of her live band, Allison recorded to tape and used samples from floppy discs, resulting in a decaying, nostalgic feeling that’s a far cry from the homely sheen of Clean.

Most of Color Theory’s songs were written during a particularly strenuous touring schedule and see Allison tackle narratives of uncertainty and trauma with a considerable lyrical dexterity. Opener bloodstream delivers lines with an anguished, existential cry; standout track circle the drain highlights the debilitating effects of depression, where Allison is “chained to her bed” and talks of “mould in her brain” while lead single yellow is the color of her eyes is a devastating account of watching a loved one’s health decline.

Allison has a knack for confronting heavy subjects with a self-aware smirk. Here, she ruminates on the small pockets of beauty against a darkened exterior, presenting both the rainbow and the grey sky. Soccer Mommy is one of Gen Z’s most gifted storytellers. !

Sammy Maine

To Chicago-based drummer and producer Makaya McCraven, sampling is more than just a chance to chop and screw a familiar melody – it is a means of memory. McCraven has spent recent years sampling his own gigs, making his records a reprocessed version of his live performance. This self-remixing style makes him a perfect choice for a posthumous reimagining of Gil Scott-Heron’s final release, I’m New Here.

As well as both musicians hailing from Chicago, McCraven’s father Stephen also drummed with Scott-Heron’s proto hip-hop affiliates The Last Poets and it’s his punchy phrasing which is sampled on New York Is Killing Me. It’s here that the cross-generational interchange so important to jazz is made explicit, with Scott-Heron’s inimitable, painstricken growl holding together the differing timeframes.

If nothing else, We’re New Again situates Scott-Heron’s minimal original record and subsequent Jamie xx remixes back within this jazz and blues tradition. McCraven’s touch is marked yet respectful, leaving breathing space for ScottHeron’s spoken interludes while improvising with other Chicago luminaries like bassist Junius Paul and guitarist Jeff Parker to breathe life into the muchplayed I’ll Take Care of You, as well as expand on the plaintive monologuing of I’m New Here.

Few of the 18 tracks exceed three minutes and so the record keeps up a jittering momentum.

Yet, it is still Scott-Heron’s masterful storytelling which keeps us engaged, the memory of which is now preserved anew by McCraven in their hometown’s current and thriving scene. !

Ammar Kalia

Caribou Suddenly Merge Records The title of Caribou’s seventh record came from his youngest daughter, who became obsessed with the word during infancy.

In many ways, it’s the perfect choice. Because Suddenly is, essentially, a record about family and domesticity. The opening track, Sister, features a sample of Snaith’s mother singing a nursery rhyme to his sister when she was a baby. Then there’s the warm glow of Home, the first single, on which a Gloria Barnes sample is used to create a gorgeous, lived-in vintage soul track.

The album’s title works in another, more literal sense too. Suddenly is laden with songs which begin one way and then shift, as if Snaith is trying to make sense of, or even replicate, the challenges that life throws at you. This has personal resonance, as Snaith has disclosed that this record is about an unexpected change that occurred, out of the blue. You and I captures him in a state of mourning, lamenting over a motorik beat that, “now you’ve gone and I’m out here waiting”. When the track's chorus erupts, augmented with a sample and a devastating lyric (“You can take your place up in the sky,”) the emotional sucker punch is complete.

Of course, Snaith’s work has always been based on personal connection – Swim and Our Love took themes of divorce and loneliness and cut them into bright, danceable shapes. But the intervening five years since Our Love provide a different emotional tenor on Suddenly. For the first time Snaith sings on every track, heightening the connection between artist and listener to stunning effect.

Crucially, Snaith’s meticulous attention to detail remains. The warped, pitch-shifting piano line of Sunny’s Time is interrupted by a chopped-up sample before ending like a mangled cassette in an old stereo. Like I Loved You appears to slowly stretch out the notes until they’re so distorted they fall apart. Those seeking classic Caribou signifiers will be rewarded, too: Ravi is Snaith at his most glistening and euphoric while Never Come Back is a true arms-inthe-air floorfiller.

Ending with the yearning beauty of Cloud Song (featuring the heartbreaking lyric “If you love me come hold me now”), Suddenly charts the emotional fallout that occurs when life truly sideswipes you. A record where Snaith has laid himself bare. The result is his richest, strangest album yet. !

Danny Wright

The recent influx of new material from Boston hardcore trailblazers American Nightmare has been met with nothing but enthusiasm from younger fans, who have spent the last two decades trying to scratch the itch of the band’s 15-year absence by trawling blogs for every release by any affiliated project.

Still, the whole pull of American Nightmare is that they don’t sound like anyone else.

With bruised lyrics delivered via high-speed riffs and flawlessly timed beat-downs, they achieved the perfect synthesis of nihilism and fury that combines the physicality of youth crew with the tortured aesthetics of British post-punk.

It’s a specific shtick, to be the Bauhaus of 21st century hardcore, but perhaps because they’ve only released three albums since 1999 it’s yet to get old.

This year marks American Nightmare’s 20th anniversary, which they’re celebrating with a two-song EP featuring new track Life Support and a cover of Left for Dead by fellow Boston legends The Lemonheads.

Stylistically, Life Support leans more towards rock in general than the specific strain of hardcore the band is known for.

Wesley Eisold’s over-it vocals and their distinctly blown-out bass tone anchor it firmly in American Nightmare territory, but the main thrust of the track comes from an upbeat garage rock riff, a ripping solo and a gang chant of “Too young to die, too old to live/ I needed you now like I needed you then”. These changes make their faithful take on the jangly Left for Dead a good pairing, as they beef out the original with a primal energy and a healthy dose of gloom.

Overall, and in spite of the odds, it’s perhaps the first American Nightmare release that could legitimately be described as “a bop”. !

Emma Garland

Kennebec Departure Night Time Stories Throughout his career, composer and producer Eric Phillips has written music for feature films, nature documentaries and national parks. Although his Kennebec project sits outside of his work as a soundtrack composer, you can still hear the cinematic, widescreen vision he’s perfected. Fittingly, the album’s genesis begins with Phillips’ relocation from New York City to the idyllic Olympic Peninsula. The result has the quality of being a score to an imagined film, an ode to the beauty and solace he found in the Pacific Northwest, to its sweeping landscapes and lush rainforests.

There’s a hushed euphoria to the whole record; it’s a dreamy, glistening soundscape where classical guitar, ngoni, kalimba, piano, flutes and more weave in and out of the light, with subtle electronic touches and nods to Balkan-influenced sounds.

It is, ultimately, a record that is as much about texture as it is about melody.

On single Seasons Change Phillips sounds like early Four Tet, possessed of the same stuttering, wistful quality of My Angel Rocks Back and Forth.

Wellspring and Yesterday, Tomorrow are beautifully delicate moments of introspection countered by soaring strings, while A Monsoon sounds just like that – an exhilarating deluge of sound. Sure, there are moments, most notably on Kalahari, when it can feel a little too much like incidental music for a nature documentary, but for the most part this is a record that paints images of picturesque views and idyllic vistas. Incredible scenes, as they say. !

Danny Wright

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Moses Boyd Dark Matter Exodus Records Given the ream of credits already to Moses Boyd’s name, it’s hard to believe that Dark Matter is his first full-length solo album. Or perhaps it’s a wonder he ever found the time to make one at all. He’s held down BBC radio residencies, scored fashion shows and shared studio time with everyone from Sampha to Kelsey Lu to gqom pioneer DJ Lag. Boyd trained as a jazz drummer, but where that comes through most on this record is in the freewheeling, collaborative sensibilities of the record’s movement. Pieced together from sketches and fragments over the past two years, Dark Matter distils the broad church of his influence.

There’s grime in the punchy horns, skittering hats and the snap of the snare on opener Stranger Than Fiction. Only You layers muffled saxophone stabs into a euphoric trance riff, cut through with reverb-drenched vocal snippets. Ezra Collective founder Joe Armon-Jones joins on keys for 2 Far Gone – his opening, measured concert hall solo exploding into life at the addition of silky two-step drums. Shades of You recalls the dark garage mutations of the early noughties that would eventually become dubstep; its squelchy bassline and rattling drums akin to early Skream and Benga. There are shades of Tony Allen in the drumming on Y.O.Y.O. and BTB. Dancing In the Dark builds with so much poise that it takes on a deep, meditative roll; Obongjayar’s throaty vocals a perfect foil to the squealing sax and pounding drums.

Producer albums can often be noodly, navel-gazing affairs – either succumbing to an obsession with studio gear, or seen as an opportunity to flex a contacts book. This isn’t one of those. Everything feels acutely considered, from the makeup of instruments, to who’s playing them, to how the sounds are treated once recorded. Here, it all matters. !

Will Pritchard

CocoRosie Put The Shine On Marathon Artists

Obongjayar Which Way Is Forward?

September Recordings Having grown up in Nigeria and moved to London when he was 17, Obongjayar’s music is hard to pigeonhole, with his reference points taking in everything from Afrobeats and funk to more abrasive electronic textures and straight-up rap.

But the idea of merging different cultures, and exploring his identity within them, is fundamental to Obongjayar’s artistry. This EP spiritually connects with the artist’s African roots, shot through a prism of Western urbanity. On Santigold-esque opener Still Sun, Obongjayar sings from the bottom of his chest about the ups and downs of city life, but by next track Dreaming In Transit his vocals start to lighten. The powerful rallying cry – “Don’t turn your backs on us/ Look what you’ve done” – is delivered in a high-pitch falsetto, seemingly channelling the still-raw anger prompted

by Grenfell. Throughout the album, Obongjayar demonstrates impressive emotional clarity, consistently giving you a window into his soul.

This is music made for people unsure of their place in the world, who perhaps consider themselves to be on the fringes of a white society, with the ticking hi-hats and flashing synths present on God’s Own Children and Soldier Ant giving off the feeling of being chased and encircled by vultures. Both tracks are an exhilarating rush, and when Obongjayar later talks about flooding the streets in defiance, you feel compelled to go join him. Obongjayar's potential is limitless, and it's exciting to imagine where he'll go next. !

Thomas Hobbs

Tame Impala The Slow Rush Bella Union Kevin Parker is a master of creating those ever-elusive afterparty vibes. With his Tame Impala super-project, he has gradually evolved from chugging desert rock to exultant balearic dance-pop, cementing himself as the voice of a generation stuck somewhere between nostalgia and sincerity. Latest offering, fourth studio album The Slow Rush, does much to step up the shimmering melancholic sound that Tame Impala has become synonymous with.

The Slow Rush may disappoint Tame Impala’s early fans with its wholehearted embrace of beats, bright synths and unabashed pop. But that’s not to say it’s one big party. Songs like On Track are maudlin and washed out, even if Is It True? sounds squarely aimed at the more wistful reaches of the dancefloor. One thing is clear, though: the record’s production values are high, which unfortunately means some songs feel overworked. We may be deep in the Auto-Tune renaissance, but tracks like Posthumous Forgiveness are less Frank Ocean and more Peter Frampton. Elsewhere, the unappealing moment of One More Year’s hands-inthe-air breakdown of the constituent time periods of a year – “52 weeks! 4 seasons! One reason!” – veers on cringeworthy, but is quickly rescued by its perfectly serviceable house and Italo grooves.

The Slow Rush borders on pastiche at times, but it makes a successful pitch for festival headline slots and Instagrammable mornings after. !

Jon Clark

CocoRosie’s divisiveness has always been at the centre of conversations about the American freak-folk sister duo. There’s the tone-deaf levels of African American cultural appropriation – despite both sisters being white – their often affected vocals, and their tendency to flip to embarrassing nursery rhyme rapping without warning.

If you can get past the aforementioned faux pas, some of Bianca and Sierra Cassidy’s previous six studio albums do have redeeming qualities: the pair are able to pen genuinely catchy pop melodies and create vivid atmospheres with their diverse instrumentation (they’ve been known to use harps, wind instruments and even children’s musical toys).

Put the Shine On, their latest full-length release, has some of these qualities, but doubles down on everything that’s grating about the band. Warbling trip-hop ballad Did Me Wrong reaches new peaks of inanity with lyrics like “Paddywhack/ Paddycake/ What’s my little baby’s fate?” There’s also Hell’s Gate that bewilderingly lifts elements from traditional slave song: “From the cracking of the whip/ Nanny worked down at the shop/ Lived in Hell’s Gate”. These misguided experiments are the only breaks from Sierra’s default vocal stylings – somewhere between Björk and Joanna Newsom – but falling short of either, plunging into gimmick.

A rare success is the woozy, hypnagogic ballad Slow Down Sun Down, which echoes The xx or Easter’s most weightless tracks. But the contrast between CocoRosie’s successful moments and their shortcomings points to their main issue: an unwillingness to employ any kind of quality control, and a tendency to lean into quirkiness that feels wilfully self-indulgent.

Seven albums in, this seems unlikely to change. !

Steve Mallon

07 05 Phase Fatale Scanning Backwards Ostgut Ton The music of Hayden Payne, aka Phase Fatale, lives in a world outside of techno’s linear, forward-facing trajectory, tracking back to the styles which laid the groundwork for the genre. Nods to punk, EBM and early electro are all obvious and equally prominent in new album Scanning Backwards, but there’s a polished vibrancy at play, too.

Standout track Mass Deception is a bruising slow burner informed by the sheets of noise that lurk beneath the percussive pulse. Though there are times that the LP feels more like a selection of insights into Payne’s palette than a fully cohesive album, this is no bad thing.

The distinct sonic hallmarks of Berghain – where Payne is a resident – have played a crucial role in the crafting of the record. “All tracks on the album, no matter the style, were tailored to sound a certain way in Berghain,” he has revealed, pointing to the way frequency affects the body when you experience a set at the storied Berlin club.

There’s certainly a lot here tailored for the needs of the dancefloor – particularly standout closer Splintered Heels, which is full of the rich, industrial menace that you could imagine pushing Berlin’s famed institution to its aural limits. It’s in these moments that the album truly succeeds – reminding you of the thrill of losing yourself on the floor. !

Thomas Frost

Spinning Coin Hyacinth Domino On a superficial level, there’s a sense of taking the band out of Glasgow, but not being able to take Glasgow out of the band, to Spinning Coin’s newest album. The follow-up to 2017 debut Permo, a brooding, crunchy guitar record, Hyacinth looks to brighter pastures while retaining their scuzzy edge.

With two members having decamped to Berlin, the evidence of an enriched vein of songwriting is swiftly apparent.

Perhaps due to the change of creative scenery, or the full-time acquisition of keyboard player and backing vocalist Rachel Taylor, whose influence is felt everywhere; her sharp ear for melody lifting some of the gloom that enveloped Permo.

This is most evident on the chirpy guitars of Get High, the quiet temperament of Despotic Sway, and the charming pop breeziness of tracks Black Cat and Slips Away.

Over the course of 13 songs, however, there are points in which they slip into autopilot – the airy guitar pop of Laughing Ways in particular sounds like Real Estate-bynumbers. Still, Hyacinth is a more colourful realisation of the sound they were trying to capture on their debut. In that context, they succeeded. !

Joe Goggins

REVIEWS

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King Krule The laureate of dread surveys a world awry on his rawest record to date

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Words: Dean Van Nguyen

Dive into Man Alive! at your own peril.

Marshall wields chaos in the palm of his hand, melding together a powerful concoction of garage rock, hip-hop, jazz and all the influences that once inspired London multi-instrumentalist Tom Vek. On first inspection, the album sounds forged in pretty much the same mould as Marshall’s classic 19-song intergalactic iliad The OOZ. Yet the leaner, meaner Man Alive! chisels the still-only-25-year-old’s singular style down to its most focused form.

The result is a collection of doomed compositions that push that distinctive voice front and centre. This is soul music – that is, music for marching souls off to Hades.

Future historians will find it almost impossible to place Marshall’s music in a specific time period. Though you could broadly cast him as a rock artist, his arrangements are extremely rough around the edges, with a homerecorded feel that doesn’t adhere to any identifiable trend. Man Alive! is as rickety as an old wagon on wooden wheels. The bass is turned way

up – and I mean way up – and the guitars are tweaked with little care for traditional timing. It creates a tension that Marshall thrives in.

Take opening track Cellular: the swirling, inexpensive electronics could almost be the sound of over-the-air broadcast signals as a spaced-out Marshall finds himself enthralled by a French woman on his TV screen.

Shifting his focus to his more hi-tech mobile phone – and the power it grants him to witness global massacres “in the palm of my hand” – the song is reminiscent of Thundercat’s Bus in These Streets. (Remember how the LA funk bohemian unpacked the corrosive nature of smartphones?

“From the minute I wake up I’m staring at the screen/ Watching the world go insane.”) But Marshall’s analogue orchestration runs counter to the slickness of an iPhone, reminding us of the possibilities and dangers of this sci-fi technology.

There are other muscular moments – the propulsive Comet Face features some very avant-garde brass work reminiscent of Bowie in Berlin. Yet Man Alive! is often at its most enthralling when Marshall slips into a more surly, jazz-noir style. Underglass has an underground venue at midnight feeling, with gentle horns complementing the lazily strummed guitars and Marshall’s passionate vocal performance.

Perfecto Miserable sounds like a love story being played out in the imagination of a lonely man. And although it’s not clear if he’s using

audio manipulation software on (Don’t Let the Dragon) Draag On, his voice is tuned so low, Marshall almost sounds like Frank Ocean when he slows his voice to a crawl by screwing with the speed of the recording.

Among the highlights, Man Alive! features one of King Krule’s greatest ever songs. Stoned Again catches him in a drugged-out frenzy. The bassheavy drum beat pulls influence from antique trip-hop as Marshall screams, screeches, gyrates. A lot of songs capture substances in a lot of different ways but Marshall gives us the height of a bad trip. It’s an encapsulation of his singular style – the vocals feel off the cuff, performed with intensity and spirit, with the music desperate to keep up with this force of nature, unsure of what the man himself is going to do next.

King Krule Man Alive!

XL Recordings

REVIEWS

Archy Marshall’s voice is buried in seven layers of dread. His larynx is an instrument that sounds not of flesh and blood, but cast in stone. At full power, you can picture his baritone shaking the walls of the London underground.

When restrained, he sounds like Death singing a lullaby. As King Krule, his music can sound like the hymns of the last remaining soul on this planet, depicting the loneliness and desperation of trying to figure it all out.

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The Knife The Knife’s unsettling third album forever skewed the landscape of subversive pop “Scandinavian” once meant a certain thing in pop: clean, bright, peppy. As the millennium turned, the Stockholm juggernaut let loose by Denniz Pop and Max Martin went global, drawing a line from ABBA through Ace of Base to Robyn, and beyond to Britney and the Backstreet Boys. Sweden became the top per capita exporter of music perfectly constructed for world domination, drawing endless critical parallels to IKEA furniture.

The Knife’s 2003 second album, Deep Cuts, with its retro, rainbow sleeve and rushing, bubbling singles, appeared to fit loosely into this tradition. Frustrated at the low sales of their eponymous debut, Gothenburg brother-sister duo

Olof and Karin Dreijer had decided to live up to their national reputation and “make pop music, because we wanted to reach more people”.

The ruse worked almost too well. A cover by fellow Gothenburger José González of Deep Cuts’ radiant, pulsing love song Heartbeats leaned into melancholy sentimentality, and in 2005, the song was picked up for a Sony advert. Reluctantly, the Dreijers took the fee, reasoning they could use it for their third album, which was already skewing darker and closer to their own taste. But in their hearts, they still felt, in the words of Karin, that it was “dirty money”.

A persistent unease at the tension between commercial and artistic forces runs through Silent Shout like the after-effects of a nightmare. The title, Karin said, reflected stifled expression: “When you dream and really want to scream something, nothing comes out”. The voices that did emerge were shapeshifters, their provenance and intent obscured by dramatic pitchshifting. On the opening title track, Karin’s voice is doubled at different heights, like a sinister doppelganger haunting her over needling, flickering synth arpeggios and softly subaqueous drum pads. In Na Na Na, the reverie of a woman who, despite domestic security, dreams of mace and chemical castrations, her vocal is tweaked into airy, eerie swoops. On Marble House, a codependent duet more mausoleum than love palace, she trades words with Jay-Jay Johanson, both warped and blurred, neither man nor woman.

Label: Rabid Records Original release date: 17 February 2006

Long before gender and its construction dominated cultural conversation, manipulating her voice allowed Karin to inhabit multiple viewpoints on personal politics and trauma. In One Hit, she inhabits a grotesque boor, an epitome of toxic masculinity. Neverland’s pounding, relentless beat, on the other hand, hammers home the fear of its narrator, “dancing for money”, who knows that

"nothing is more fatal than an angry man", but admonishes themselves for feeding "the hand that bites me".

Those same hard-edged, nervy rhythms and trance arpeggios bring wild exhilaration on the likes of The Captain, We Share Our Mother’s Health and Like a Pen. Often, the bracing effect evokes a mythical, icy far north, especially on the expansive chorus of Forest Families, which was inspired by the Dreijers’ upbringing in Gothenburg’s rural outskirts. Karin said the ideal listening situation for the album was “a car. Driving fast, away from the city. Definitely at night”.

Though Silent Shout was a deliberate attempt to veer away from the mainstream, looking back, it seems more like it pulled the mainstream toward it. Without overstating its direct influence – The Knife were inspired by many of the wider forces that have shaped pop in recent years, from early techno and trance to Southern hip-hop and grime – it feels like one of those outrider records that picks up early on a change in the air. Following its release, artists such as Lykke Li, Niki and the Dove, Tove Lo and Denmark’s MØ emerged, nudging Scandi pop towards Nordic noir, while witch house took the template of cold electronics and pitch-shifted vocals and ran with it. Then pop as a whole took a darker turn, influenced by dubstep, EDM and murkier, slower strains of hip-hop and R&B. The Knife continued to go their own determinedly difficult way, until they didn’t. For the extravaganza tour of their final album, Shaking the Habitual, they remade some of Silent Shout’s tracks as “Shaken Up versions”. Brilliant though the busier reworkings were, they underlined the stark power of the originals. Silent Shout feels timeless, almost elemental, and truly one of those albums where an artist absolutely nails their essence in one cohesive statement. And, thank god, it helped finally rid us of those IKEA similes.

REVIEWS

Words: Emily Mackay

Design: CokeOak Words: Anna Tehabsim

Downtime:

Okay Kaya

Okay Kaya’s debut album Both was full of titillated wittiness. She sung about IUDs, flipped a Matrix reference into a BDSM anthem and delivered the perfect line: “Do you dance like you fuck, or do you dance like you make love?” all the while channelling a certain choral opulence. Now, Norwegian-born, New York-based Kaya Wilkins is pivoting to feelings on her latest album Watch This Liquid Pour Itself, a cocktail of revelations on anxiety, average sex and Jon Bon Jovi. For Downtime, her vision is similarly wide-scope, as she picks some of her favourite pastimes below.

A. B.

Loading Mercury With a Pitchfork

By Richard Brautigan This is a special book of poems – perhaps today they would be tweets. I like all of Richard Brautigan, I like his voice when he reads Trout Fishing in America onto a tape and calls out the cables like they “look like some kind of Frankenstein Munster”.

The snail sex scene in Microcosmos

By Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou I’ve tried to explain to many people that this scene is pretty much an exact depiction of my sexuality. The song! The moss! The full blown unity!

Yes please.

Bird of Prey

By Edvard Munch I have this hanging in my kitchen at home. It’s a poem by Edvard Munch in Norwegian, which roughly translates to:

REVIEWS

A bird of prey Has taken abode inside me Its claws sticking to the inside of my heart Its beak buried in my chest Its wingspan darkening my state of mind.

Okay Kaya appears at Pitchfork Berlin on 8 May

C.

089

a g e d o B a Seg

SU SOUN PERIOR D QU ALIT Y

TRUE

BASS TON E

‘A rev olutio - COKn of synth EOAK esis’

2O QUESTIONS

Sega Bodega’s sound is difficult to pin down. As cofounder of NUXXE, the independent London label bending electronic music into strange new shapes, his work has centred around the innovative and unexpected. Take his latest single Salv Goes to Hollywood – a work that bounces around propulsive industrial clanks, meandering ambient and melodic R&B flourishes, in just three minutes. Over the phone, Sega – real name Salvador Navarrete – keeps the same energy, as he hops around subject to subject, and talks us through his biggest fears, weird DMs and his favourite memes.

Salvador is out 14 February via NUXXE

1.

2.

3.

What’s your ideal date?

Start early, walk around and end up in a picnic situation.

Favourite day of the year?

Christmas because you don’t have to talk to anyone and everything just stops.

Most romantic thing you’ve ever done for someone?

I wrote a song for someone once, it’s called Mimi.

4.

5.

8.

had to do?

Quit drinking alcohol.

12.

“What if...I answered your question...with another question...haha jk...unless?”

13.

14.

What’s your worst habit?

15.

Favourite song of all time?

Don’t go outside. Nothing bad can happen to you if you don’t go outside.

16.

Favourite food?

What’s your biggest fear?

17.

What’s inspiring you right now?

Must-follow Instagram account?

@the_biggest_mood_ever

A symbolic death – like, a few days before my birthday or album release date.

What’s the weirdest DM you’ve ever received?

18.

been given?

Once I had a problem and my mum suggested I picture my problem as a jacket, and to envision myself taking the jacket off and throwing it away.

Visualising that helped me get over my problem.

What makes you feel nostalgic?

Familiar smells.

I forget to eat a lot.

Every You Every Me by Placebo.

Steak.

Honestly, I’m not inspired right now.

What’s your earliest childhood memory?

I was about four years old and on a flight.

It had been raining on the ground, but then when we flew up over the clouds, I looked outside the window and remember being utterly confused by how it was suddenly sunny. It was like I went to a different planet.

9. What’s the best advice you’ve ever

Words: Rachel Grace Almeida

What’s the biggest realisation you had in 2019?

I think I’ve had a slow career. I realised it’s OK if I take 25 years to get to where I want to be.

I don’t appreciate it when I receive messages from people telling me what they want to do to me, sexually, in graphic detail.

1O.

What’s the weirdest party you’ve ever been to?

I was once at a party where someone decided – unsolicitedly – to start reciting an entire poem he’d written, which was weird.

Favourite meme?

6. Best survival tip for 2020?

7.

11. What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever

19.

R&B or hardcore punk, for the rest of time?

Hardcore punk.

2O.

What piece of advice would you give young Salv?

Quit drinking alcohol a lot earlier.

today’s protest music Words: Cameron Cook Illustration: Jude Gardner-Rolfe

Cameron Cook considers the changing tune of protest music – and whether it’s enough in our fraught times.

After Donald Trump was elected as the 45th President of the United States of America, a platitude began to circulate: “Well, at least music will be good again!” The assumption that there must be suffering in order for art to be meaningful is, of course, problematic. But like a lot of ironic Twitter dunks, it also contains a grain of truth.

For as long as there has been sociopolitical hardship, people have sung about it. And those songs, whether tackling the subject of a specific government regime or exploring broader themes of identity in the face of systemic oppression, have been a source of hope to generations.

Though the lyrics may change from country to country and situation to situation, the sentiment remains the same: we, the people, have fucking had it.

However, as a new decade dawns, and with the world teetering on the brink of total disaster, we find ourselves in a period with little protest music – at least not by its traditional definition.

Nothing to equal Woody Guthrie’s fascist-killing guitar, Billie Holiday’s strange fruit, Bob Dylan’s answers blowin’ in the wind, or Janet Jackson’s rhythm nation. In 2020, there are glimpses, little sparks of outrage that fly into the night, but none that have lit the stack on fire. It’s surprising, when the current atmosphere is so ripe for a rallying cry. Perhaps what we consider protest music has changed.

OPINION

Like many American millennials, the first time I was confronted with any sort of real-life protest was during the Bush Administration. While I had always considered myself leftist during my teenage years, the utter shock of 9/11, the Iraq War and the upward swing of the gay rights movement gave me a set of contexts

to turn my ideology into action. No suprise, then, that the Bush years yielded the century’s first canonical protest music: Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising, a career comeback opus from a man who had come to embody salt-of-the-earth Americana; Bright Eyes’ furious 2005 track When the President Talks to God; and Peaches’ Impeach My Bush, which infused the movement with feminist subversion.

Fat Mike of NOFX successfully ran Rock Against Bush concerts and compilations. Green Day’s American Idiot, which was the seminal pop-punk band’s first No. 1 record, sold over 16 million copies, and was adapted into the most American of all mediums: a blockbuster Broadway musical.

That’s not to say that there was no backlash. In 2003, when Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks – who were then New Country royalty – addressed a crowd of their own fans and stated that “we are ashamed that the president is from Texas,” the band’s career instantly imploded. So why does it feel like more artists were speaking out then than it does now?

There’s been a subtle yet lasting trend of pop musicians embracing the personal over the political. The most emotionally affecting music will always deal with universal experiences like love and loss, but in an era where every last detail of an artist’s private life can become public domain, there is a tendency to control that narrative.

For example, Beyoncé’s Formation, one of the past decade’s defining songs, ushered a refreshed image of black womanhood into the spotlight, searing the image of the world’s biggest pop star descending into flood waters atop a New Orleans cop car into our collective consciousness. But the rest of Lemonade deals with the personal and introspective, not the generational – or at least not directly.

There is still a faction of artists who confront oppression with more

brash, traditionally activist methods (slowthai’s “Fuck Boris” campaign comes to mind) but this seems like the exception rather than the norm.

We need more artists willing to throw the proverbial brick through the establishment’s window.

Of course, the nature of fame has changed dramatically in recent years, and social media opens up every artistic statement to the floor. When asked in an interview if he believed Britain was “still racist,” Stormzy, who has done a stellar job of weaving strong political activism into his creative voice, replied: “Definitely, 100 percent,” – a quote that kicked off a full week of abuse from anonymous online pearl-clutchers and mainstream media outlets alike. The album he was promoting, Heavy Is the Head, is not shy in its theme: the cover features Stormzy holding a bullet proof vest emblazoned with a Union Jack. It’s so easy for bad actors – trolls and tabloids alike – to commandeer a conversation that could have been an opportunity for wider discussion, forever lost in the white noise of “Stormzy hates Britain” takes.

So where are the fingers that we should be pointing to the people at the top? Where is Lady Gaga’s bold-faced anti-Trump opus? Kacey Musgraves openly supports gun law reform, has a massive LGBTQ+ following, and is about as outspoken as a country artist can be. Could she bridge the gap between mainstream pop fans and country’s notoriously conservative fanbase? Taylor Swift, an avowed Dixie Chicks fan, stayed tacitly silent during the 2016 US presidential campaign – and so far in 2020 – which makes her an unlikely candidate for leading any sort of revolution.

Sometimes it seems that the idea of music-as-activism has been all but abandoned. That the cruelty we witness daily has become so normalised that we’d rather give in to candy-coloured Instagram fantasies than have our heartstrings plucked by masterpieces like Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Universal Soldier, or our skin scorched by Nina Simone’s Mississippi Goddamn.

Protest music may still be alive, but like so many aspects of our culture, it has become more nuanced, more complex, and as a result, sometimes more difficult to identify. We need strong, uniting voices now more than ever.

Music, like freedom, never truly dies: it can only be temporarily stifled.

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