Rogério Brandão has taken nice pains over the past decade to keep away from being pinned all the way down to anybody sound. The Angolan-born, Lisbon-based producer’s coiled, percussive exercises steadily morphed into extra convoluted shapes and sophisticated timbral investigations. On Chá Preto, he leaves rhythmic certainties behind, delving right into a wild, spongy morass of pitch-bending synths, murmured vocals, and drum patterns hanging collectively by a thread. At instances, it resembles a type of non secular jazz; at others, late-night membership music caught within the act of molting right into a stranger, stealthier creature. Rather than the knowledge of favor, Brandão provides the slipperiness of unrestrained inventive imaginative and prescient.
Erika de Casier is a real Y2K scholar whose third album embodies the comfortable chill and playfulness of the period’s slickest, most influential R&B. Her vocals are low, breathy, and Cassie-lite, puffing out easy, teasing tracks that hug the nook of the proverbial membership. Jumpy Timbaland-inspired synth prospers dance all through, whereas songs just like the shimmering “Residence Alone” and “Take a look at It” glide with a shiny digipop sheen. Sharp and sultry collabs with Shygirl (“Ex-Girlfriend”) and Blood Orange ( “Twice”) carry an identical downtempo ease. De Casier is the chick in the midst of a cavernous room, cooing a few frigid accomplice or the quiet bliss of doing laundry on a break day, dancing to the candy paranoias in her thoughts.
–Clover Hope
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Ghost 53206: FreeBandz Menace
With a reputation that sounds prefer it was spit out by a damaged calculator, Ghost 53206 has quick develop into one of many premier life-lesson-givers of Milwaukee slap. Throughout 14 vivid, foot-on-the-gas-pedal tracks on FreeBandz Menace, he’s handing out sufficient dope-dealing tricks to fill an instruction guide. Bars like, “Whenever you dealin’ with some pape you may’t even belief your buddy,” and, “Gotta maintain my grass lower low in case I see a snake,” would land on the primary web page. He’s the smart, seasoned hustler on the block, hovering above the neighborhood chaos.
Guerra / de Paiva / Hornsby / Konradsen: Contrahouse
When leftfield home producers Guerra and de Paiva, of São Paulo’s 40% Foda/Maneiríssimo label, felt the sudden urge to infuse Balearic reggae with a tinge of easy-listening jazz, that they had a brainstorm nice sufficient to rattle Nationwide Climate Service radars: Why not name Bruce Hornsby? And so it transpired that the bluegrass musician, one-time Grateful Lifeless member, and Grammy-winning performer of the 2Pac-sampled mega-hit “The Approach It Is” ended up offering the liquid jazz keyboard riffing for Guerra and de Paiva to finesse into the yr’s most unencumbered soundtrack to moonwalking, spelunking, beery yard BBQs, and different actions the place the bottom goes spongy beneath your toes. The pitched-down voice of Jenny Marie Sabel, of Norwegian indie-pop duo Konradsen, applies a ghostly echo of Arthur Russell to their woozy funk and late-night boogie, additional melting the boundaries between worldwide borders and musical genres.
