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MAY-JUNE 23 jazz underlying her warm, lyrical mel
odies on early single ‘Aged Eyes’. Warm, nuanced and varied, Alfa Mist leads his talented core group through an encyclopaedia of moods, tones and textures over these 45 minutes. Towards the end of the record, Sekitoleko is found working with African inspirations on the beautiful ‘Apho’, featuring Tsolo musician Bongeziwe Mabandla, singing in isiXhosa over a track which moves through permutations of the jazz, South African sonics and even chamber music at points. Effortlessly recalling both the extravagant, wild compositions of Christian aTunde Adjuah and the master of tone and texture, Omar Sosa, often within the same song, this release marks another notch in the post of a decade-long career of rightly celebrated songcraft, subtlety and musicianship. Perhaps thankfully he has not yet been tamed by his sterling reputation, still eschewing genre or easy classification whilst remaining intricate and accessible. AOC Boygenius - The Record The hottest supergroup in indie music right now finally dropped their full length debut album last month as the talents of Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus combine on The Record. The trio's previous outing was the Boygenius EP all the way back in 2018 so The Record has felt a long time coming, and perhaps due to the prolonged gap and increased expectations thanks to the rapidly rising stars of all three women involved, this collection doesn't quite deliver on the hype despite offering a solid set of tracks. The Record sounds best when Baker, Bridgers and Dacus rock together as a collective on highlights 'Not Strong Enough', 'Satanist' and 'Anti Curse', yet too often the folkier tracks on here don't feel very far removed from their respective artists solo work, as in the case of 'Emily I'm Sorry', a sweet yet safe Bridgers composition that one suspects was lifted straight from Punisher's cutting room floor. You might expect Bridgers to be the star of The Record due to her indie queen status in 2023 but she seems content to let Baker and Dacus steal the show across these twelve tracks - in itself that's no bad thing when it gives her bandmasters time to shine on '$20' and 'True Blue's respectively, but craving a show stealing performance from Phoebe may leave The Record wanting just a little bit more from the LA songwriter. All in all, The Record is a pleasant listen so perhaps it's unfair to focus on the relative shortcomings of an album that delivers a decent to good collection of indie folk ballads, but considering the arsenal that Boygenius have at their command, it's only natural to expect greatness. One gets the feeling that we're still only at the beginning of these three artists' stories anyway, so there's every chance we get a more expansive version of The Record a little way down the line. AL The Bonk - Equal To Or Greater Than The Bonk Phil Christie is no stranger to righteous adulation, which seems all but sure to persist with this cut of kaleidoscopic psychedelia. The erstwhile O Emperor keysman has made for us a fascinating shawl woven of No-Wave through the blurry lens of krautrock and jazz, evoking shades of Portishead playing in a smoky French basement jazz club in the late 1930’s, and it’s wild that I feel I should qualify that it was the 30’s a century ago and not the the 30’s that is imminent. Equal To Or Greater Than The Bonk introduces itself by way of disjointed percussion and a wry drone staggering under a streetlight in the small hours. The dusty lamplit production value adds so much to the album experience as a whole, even as it looks forward to the rollicking tones of 1960’s rock in the way that ‘Soul Bossa Nova’ via the drunken, bitter eyes of Bukowski that ‘Future 87’ invokes. ‘How Shallow?’ marries a languid organ sound and desert guitar line to a driving pulse akin to Beak>, developing those soothing sounds into atonal clusters, before the beautiful drift of ‘Algebra’ takes the listener on a drunken slow dance in an empty bar. ‘Trying On Oblivion’ is possibly the heaviest track on the record, reminding me of SWANS had they switched up the stacks of amplification for a full brass and horn section. ‘The Stars Look Great’ echoes Gira as well, but at the same reflects the style of Charles Mingus. The combination of wonderful production aesthetics and the chosen instrumentation paired with such contemporary compositional appointments lends the music a timeless quality, even on modernist cuts like ‘May Feign’, grafting the grating wonder of Radioheads ‘Myxomatosis’ with jarring slices of ambience. My personal favourite ‘Lonely, the Only’ is a short, jagged Middle Eastern invoking punk dirge, flipping between a wild melody line played through the ‘Paint It Black’ guitar rig and a discordant rising vocal, to an unsettling and danceworthy close. In stark contrast yet paired beautifully against the woozy, strange dreamlike textures of ‘Needless To Say’ which close out the record on a sultry, candlelit note. Am anticipating what comes next from this gifted young composer. AOC PAGE 13