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Listened to - new music: A soul brother awakes

2019-08-27T16:38:08.480Z


With his touching new album R & B-insider Raphael Saadiq finally becomes a soul classic. Also: Zero Years Nostalgia with !!!, Indie Rock Exercises by Jay Som and Space Swing by Salami Rose Joe Louis.



Raphael Saadiq - "Jimmy Lee"
(Columbia / Sony, since August 23)

Chances are, in recent years, you've come to love Raphael Saadiq's work without your name telling you. Together with Solange, he wrote one of her most memorable songs, "Cranes In The Sky", and produced her groundbreaking album "A Seat At The Table". With Mary J. Blige he wrote her song "Mighty River" for the movie "Mudbound" and got an Oscar nomination. In the Marvel series "Luke Cage" he not only played with but also sang some songs.

The list goes on forever: Raphael Saadiq is what's called an Artist's Artist: since the late '80s, when he was touring with Sheila Es Band and Prince, Charles Ray Wiggins from Oakland has a dazzling reputation as a singer, guitarist Bassist, producer and songwriter and is revered in the music industry as a legitimate successor to Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. However, unlike his mentor Prince and those other big stars he follows, Saadiq always kept in the background, putting his skills at the service of a band (in the nineties: Tony! Toni! Toné, later: Lucy Pearl) or of a distinctive sound (as in 2002 on his Motown homage "Instant Vintage").

"Jimmy Lee," Saadiq's first own album in eight years, marks an astonishing turning point. It sounds like a cliché, but the 53-year-old has never been heard as personally as on this 43-minute classic album. Even if he does not put himself in the foreground. "Jimmy Lee" pays homage to his brother, who died in the 1990s from drug addiction and HIV infection. Saadiq, who had previously lost two more siblings, still needed to transform his feelings for a life in the limelight, under pressure, seduced by drugs and fame, into impressive soul songs.

But Saadiq would not be the great soul interpreter he is if he did not make the private tragedy of addiction and loss a universal story about African American culture, repression, marginalization, and racism. In its best moments, the sad Minneapolis funk of "This World Is Drunk", the Edwin-Starr-liable "Kings Fall" or the expansive gospel "Rikers Island", where it goes with rhythmic chain rattling against the unjust justice system, stretches "Jimmy Lee" is actually after soul classics like "What's Going On" or "Innervisions".

Musically, "Jimmy Lee" stands out comfortably from contemporary R & B productions, most of the songs Saadiq composed on bass and guitar, a retro earthiness that you can feel, even if nothing really sounds old-fashioned here. In the first song, "Sinners Prayer" Saadiq brings together many of his early influences and influences from the eighties: The intro quotes the "Nightshift" of the Commodores, the verse reminds Howard Hewett and Shalamar, the bass and the vocal harmonies in the middle section pick up the jazz radio and Pop from Level 42 from the Moth Box. "So Ready", the band's secret hit, is celebrated by Michael Jackson, and towards the end, Saadiq's uncle, the honorable reverend E. Baker, performs in a nostalgic ritual.

The other prominent guest comes to the very end, in "Rearview". It's rap superstar Kendrick Lamar, who, together with Raphael Saadiq, is ultimately beating the circle to the other big, awakened soul albums of years past. "Jimmy Lee" may work through a personal, painful past, but it also touches and pervades America's sorrowful present. A triumph. (9.5) Andreas Borcholte

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Raphael Saadiq
Jimmy Lee

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Smi Col (Sony Music)

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!!! (Chk Chk Chk) - "Wallop"
(Warp / Rough Trade, from 30th of August)

Is it possible that we are in a time loop? In which the repetition cycles get shorter and shorter? That "retro" now only a few years ago? Did the zeros replace the nineties? It looks like that. Friedrich Merz almost became a politician again, Zlatko is back in the "Big Brother" house, skinny jeans were somehow never gone. And it sounds like that, a couple of music albums are clear signs: Hot Chip have released a new album, LCD sound system at least a live album, and now comes even !!!

It is already the eighth (!!!) album of the Americans from Sacramento. Insane. "Wallop" is the name of it, so "beat up". And that nostalgia does not have to be bad at all, proves the working of this late summer work. Here, as always, you will be greeted, rattled, panned, sung virtuoso, sung in speaking. And yes, sorry, it is rumored.

Listened to on the radio

Wednesdays at 23 o'clock there is the Hamburger Web-Radio ByteFM an intercepted mixtape with many songs from the discussed records and highlights from the personal playlist of Andreas Borcholte.

!!! is pronounced "chk-chk-chk". But whether this "chk" is really as pronounced as the book by Wolfgang Herrndorf is unclear. What we know: Founded in California in 1996, now based in New York. The first album was released in 2001. And since then, the band around singer Nic Offer makes funky dance punk, but elegant. After the change to the British pop label Warp came something like a kind of breakthrough in Indie-Dancehausen: 2007 appeared the best album "Myth Takes", a good time! It was the year of the dolphin and the year in which the VAT rose by three percent, what the time !!! celebrated, today no longer remember.

!!! are still a bit too noisy today to hear them casually and to have breakfast with Cini-Minis. The hit "Off The Grid", for example, is something that one desperately wants to see played on a festival meadow, or even by Lars Eidinger in an Insta story. Domino, on the other hand, fits in well with Urban Outfitters unobtrusive Buffalo shoes. So not much has changed. !!! lolling, marauding, still beating around in all sorts of musical styles. There are wonderful seconds, where everything is right, until then with a change of style everything is torn up again. Just like in real life. Trapped in the decades. (7.2) Laura Ewert

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!!! (Chk Chk Chk)
Wallop

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Warp (rough trade)

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Jay Som - "Anak Ko"
(Lucky Number / Rough Trade, since 23rd of August)

Actually, it all reads about as exciting as the instructions for use of a yoga mat: After two albums, the Californian musician Melina Duterte did not quite know what to do with her Jay Som baptized solo project, it is said in the promo note to the third Album. So she prescribed a radical change as a self-medication. For a week she was alone in the desert to meditate there and comb her phone for friends who could help her. Is there actually a factory for such stories somewhere?

That's it. Ultimately three types of guitar, bass and drums went to the phone, as well as Laetitia Tamko aka Vagabon, who now contributes her great vocals on "Amak Ko" in some songs. Because Duterte has learned in the mindful cross-legged between cacti, especially one thing: let go. While her previous albums "Turn Into" and "Everybody Works" were still created in her home living room, "Amak Ko" is a real band plate.

That benefits Dutterte's music. In the new line-up, she finally seems to have the resources to formulate her musical ideas to the end. And by no means does she lack that.

"Anak Ko" sounds like Duterte hacked into the browser shortly after their desert trip "Alternative Rock" and decided to put everything into their new record, what appeared to be references on the screen. In the course of only 34 minutes of music you will find all sorts of old acquaintances. "Superbike" sounds like Alanis Morissette in the rehearsal room of The Sundays, "If You Want It" and "Peace Out" oscillate somewhere between Snail Mail and Elliott Smith, "Nighttime Drive" channels the beautiful sadness of The Shins and Pavement. The Cranberries or the soundtrack of the next best high school Rome Com are also never far away. And in the final "Get Well" then even a good old pedal steel guitar hugs.

That's all very well done. But does such radical change sound? And should one expect this in 2019 at all from a young rock musician? In the end, "Anak Ko" delivers exactly what it promises: nine songs that carry 60 years of genre history, transform them and translate them into the present. Mission accomplished. (7.5) Dennis Pohl

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Jay Som
Anak Ko

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Lucky number

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Salami Rose Joe Louis - "Zdenka 2080"
(Brainfeeder / Goodtogo, from 30th of August)

A name that sounds like a tangible sandwich creation in honor of boxing legend Joe Louis: You expect meaty stuff , at least. The music of Salami Rose Joe Louis, however, which in truth is Lindsay Olsen, could not be more ethereal and whispered. Olsen used to work in an asbestos laboratory and comes from the village of Crockett in the north of the Bay Area around San Francisco and Oakland. She is currently the only woman in the portfolio of the pioneering neo-jazz / future hip-hop label Brainfeeder by musician and record company boss Flying Lotus, apart from Georgia-Anne Muldrow, of course, but the publishes here anyway, sometimes there and constantly ,

That alone - and this name - does not make "Zdenka 2080" yet a special pop event. First amazing, then irritating, then irresistible is Olsen's pop design sung and filtered through many membranes and filters, best described as 1940s swing and easy-listening from space: it plugs, rolls, winds and lingers A dazzling soundtrack through a total of 22 short tracks, as if an artificial intelligence in the distant future had developed a retro penchant for salon jazz of the 20th century and would then practice shy-childish songs à la Marilyn Monroe.

Andreas Borcholte's playlist KW 35

MIRROR ONLINE

Playlist on Spotify

1. Raphael Saadiq: The World Is Drunk

2. Howard Hewett: Stay

3. Commodores: Nightshift

4. Missy Elliott: Throw It Back

5. Shari Vari: Out Of Order

6. Kim Gordon: Sketch Artist

7. Salami Rose Joe Louis: Nostalgic Montage

8. Jay Som: Peace Out

9. Bonnie Prince Billy, Bryce Dessner: Beast For Thee

10. Faber: Generation YouPorn

This is quite close to the concept of Salami Rose Joe Louis, because based on dystopian novels by Octavia Butler and Gene Wolf Olsen invented a science fiction world that endowed them with spheric sounds. In short, the earth in 2080 is gone, and the rich have made their escape with a spaceship. The album follows a young woman left on earth, who discovers a kind of interdimensional portal, an octagonal room with as many paintings created by an artist named Zdenka.

It is depressed and paints very dark pictures, which is stupid, because this track two sung "Octagonal Room" turns out to be an earth brain, whose thoughts and emotions are controlled by just those pictures. So the earth woman travels through the paintings, looking for the artist, to make her more positive. About as. And all in just 44 minutes.

Let's put it this way: If, in the end, it's like any good narrative, "To Be Continued" and everything flickers and bleeps like inside a Moog synthesizer, then you're in the best of hands and you can hardly wait for the sequel. Fun fact: There's a sugar factory in Olsen's hometown of Crockett, so smell marshmallows and caramel all day long, she says. No wonder she knows how to make sweet addictions (secretly longing for salami). (7.8) Andreas Borcholte

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26.08.2019, 12:51 clock
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Salami Rose Joe Louis
Zdenka 2080

label:

Brainfeeder (Rough Trade)

Price:

EUR 14,99

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Rating: From "0" (absolute disaster) to "10" (absolute classic)

Source: spiegel

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