Ali Shaheed Muhammad
DJ/Producer/Composer Ali Shaheed Muhammad is a hip-hop icon. As one-third of legendary hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest, his influence and impact on the musical landscape is still felt today. The soft-spoken and contemplative Brooklyn native began a life of music at an early age, spending years DJing parties in his Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood before co-founding Tribe in 1985. The group’s socially conscious lyrics and unique production style is as innovative today as it was two decades ago.
Automatic
Automatic — Izzy Glaudini (synths, lead vocals), Lola Dompé (drums, vocals) and Halle Saxon-Gaines (bass) — synthesizes a new strain of retrofuturist motorik pop. The band’s music takes aim at corporate culture and extravagance, weaving deadpan critiques into cold wave hooks. Automatic captures the tense energy of our current moment, where questions are plentiful, but answers are scarce.
Sessa
Sessa, the São Paulo musician known for his enchanting debut album Grandeza, returns with an expansive collection of songs built with reverence for the deep historical traditions of Brazilian music, now adorned with elegant strings, cascades of hypnotic rhythm, and his graceful backing choir. While Grandeza was about the softness of the human body, and the drunkenness of being in love, Estrela Acesa is about love’s fragility, and the hangover of it all.
Yaya Bey
Yaya Bey is one of R&B’s most exciting storytellers. Using a combination of ancestral forces and her own self-actualization, the singer/songwriter seamlessly navigates life’s hardships and joyful moments through music. Bey’s new album, ‘Remember Your North Star’, captures this emotional rollercoaster with a fusion of soul, jazz, reggae, afrobeat and hip-hop that feeds the soul. Bey’s ability to tap into the emotionally kaleidoscopic nature of women, specifically Black women, is the essence of the entire album. With themes of misogynoir, unpacking generational trauma, carefree romance, parental relationships, women empowerment and self-love, ‘Remember Your North Star’ proves that the road to healing isn’t a linear one – there are many lessons to gather along the journey.
Mary Lattimore
Mary Lattimore is a Los Angeles-based harpist. She experiments with effects through her Lyon and Healy Concert Grand pedal harp, concocting half-structured improvisations which can include both ambient glitter and unsettling noise. Her first solo record, the Withdrawing Room, was released on Desire Path Recordings in 2014. The solo recordings that followed, At the Dam and Collected Pieces, were released by Ghostly International. Mary has also recorded synth + harp duo projects with Elysse Thebner Miller (And the Birds Flew Overhead) and Jeff Zeigler (Slant of Light) and has co-written reimagined scores for the 1968 experimental silent film Le Revelateur, directed by Philippe Garrel (who approved of the project), and the Czech New Wave classic Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, and performed these scores live throughout the US with Jeff Zeigler and the Valerie Project, respectively. She has contributed and written harp parts for such artists as Kurt Vile, Thurston Moore, Sharon Van Etten, Meg Baird, Steve Gunn, the Clientele, Hop Along, Jarvis Cocker, Karen Elson, Ed Askew and Quilt.
They Hate Change
Dre and Vonne first came together in front of the apartment complex where they both lived as teens. Dre (he/him) had just moved down from Rochester, NY; Vonne (they/them) was trying to sell him bad weed. It was clear from the start that the two listened to music differently from most people—they’re sonic omnivores, obsessive deep-divers, lovers of rare and radical sounds. Starting as kids trawling the internet for tracks, they’ve been collecting music from around the world and across the decades, amassing a shared sonic knowledge so deep that “encyclopedic” barely begins to cover it—not just the East Coast hip-hop that Dre grew up on, or the hyperlocal bass-music variants like jook (the Gulf Coast’s twerkably raunchy answer to house) and crank (think “Miami bass meets NOLA bounce”) that Vonne grew up on, but also drum ‘n’ bass, Chicago footwork, post-punk, prog, grime, krautrock, emo, and basically any genre on the map.
Cola
Deep in View is the debut album from former Ought members Tim Darcy (vocals, guitar) and Ben Stidworthy (bass) alongside Evan Cartwright (drums). Titled after philosopher Alan Watts’ anthology of the same name, the record is built on a foundation of elegant guitar grooves and knotty rhythms, offering commentary on modern life and technology through curious lyrical vignettes, where quotidian objects and scenes are never just as they seem. Deep In View is equally a product of introspective songwriting as it is a consideration of the abstract landmarks of an increasingly media-mediated society. It also presents the most concise and melodic songs Darcy and Stidworthy have written to date.. The album sounds streamlined and intentional, as the rhythms of the punchy and exuberant guitar parts, urgent basslines, and unexpected drum patterns all tangle with each other in an elegant dance. At the center of all these elements is Darcy, whose characteristically wry voice shifts from detached to decisive to distressed, throughout the album’s course. Both enigmatically dense in meaning but precisely intricate in sound, Deep in View is an album that sparks novel interpretations with every listen, like an art object that takes on new shape with each angle from which you hold it.
The Muckers
The Muckers’ debut album, the aptly titled ‘Endeavor’, came on the heels of frontman Emir Mohseni’s journey – nothing short of an odyssey – as an immigrant taking refuge in New York City from his native Iran to have the right to perform rock music. ‘Endeavor’ received critical praises with Jack Saunders gushing on his BBC1 show: “It is a wild ride of loose hectic guitar playing, you won’t be able to get enough of it I promise,” and Rough Trade heralding the record as one of their Albums of the Year 2021. The album was also nodded by their peers including Tame Impala’s Jay Watson & POND’s James Ireland who remixed their track “So Far Away,” turning the signature guitar-heavy sound of The Muckers into a velour-smooth slice of electronic heaven. In the face of adversity, The Muckers have never let up their ambition, cutting through the noise with what Rolling Stone praised as “a call to fans to kick the dust off of their souls and boogie.”
King Hannah
Liverpool’s King Hannah (Hannah Merrick & Craig Whittle) create music that flows with an eerily captivating energy. Singer Hannah Merrick’s trademark of rich, sultry vocals constructs a landscape of spellbinding and iridescent splendour. Their music builds with a dark, gritty, captivating allure, showcasing King Hannah’s unique, majestic grace and exquisite ability to create soundscapes with a truly compelling ethereal power.
June McDoom
June McDoom is an emerging singer-songwriter based in New York City. Her unique approach to folk music incorporates influences of early soul, reggae, and vintage analog experimentation into a new world all its own. June McDoom’s eponymous debut EP is a collection of songs that collage virtually everything important to her. Growing up in South Florida in a Jamaican household, McDoom was raised around reggae music, which echoed throughout her childhood home. Later, she discovered and nourished her own deep love for folk music and songwriting of the 1960’s and 70’s. While studying in NYC for a degree in Jazz Performance, her musical palette expanded to include the more intricate influences of jazz and early soul. Realizing that her favorite vintage folk music lacked artists with similar identities as her own, it became increasingly important for McDoom to carve a unique musical space – to push folk music towards a new and different audience.
Annie Hart
Annie Hart is a multi-instrumentalist minimal composer and songwriter. Her music runs the gamut from post-New Wave/Krautrock; ethereal ambient music based on classic synthesizers; and composed chamber music for small orchestral ensembles. She also has an accomplished history in film scoring for both short- and feature-length works, including for IFC, Universal Pictures/American High, Miu Miu, and Cross Pens. She rose to fame as part of synthesizer trio Au Revoir Simone and their collaborations with David Lynch, Air, and many others. Her speciality is composing and recording synthesizers in a warm, natural way that emphasizes their secret humanity.
The Bobby Lees
Iggy Pop, Blondie, Henry Rollins, Mike Watts…just a few of the Punk icons who have shown support for Woodstock, NY based band THE BOBBY LEES. Their upcoming album BELLEVUE will be released October 7th 2022 on Ipecac Recordings (The Melvins, Mr. Bungle, Faith No More) and was produced by multi-grammy winning producer and mixer Vance Powell (Jack White, Chris Stapleton, Beyonce). Their last album SKIN SUIT was produced by underground punk-legend Jon Spencer of the Blues Explosion and was released via Alive Naturalsound Records in 2020. Henry Rollins said “The Bobby Lees Skin Suit album is wild and different. I dug it immediately. Dangerous music is good for you”.