Enlarge image
Musician Moonchild Sanelly
Photo:
Aart rips
Album of the week:
Every revolution needs its pop stars to conquer the world: Sanelisiwe Twisha, who releases her music under the Western-sounding artist name Moonchild Sanelly, is setting out with her second album to become the figurehead of the Amapiano sound, which is booming primarily from South Africa.
advertisement
Moonchild Sanelly
phases
Label: Pias/Transgressive (Rough Trade)
Label: Pias/Transgressive (Rough Trade)
approx. €22.53
price query time
06/10/2022 2:47 p.m
No guarantee
Order from Amazon
Order from Thalia
Product reviews are purely editorial and independent.
Via the so-called affiliate links above, we usually receive a commission from the retailer when you make a purchase.
More information here
The deep house variant, which emerged from the kwaito house of the nineties and is enriched with traditional African instruments and rhythms, has exploded in recent years, especially on the Internet, on YouTube and in countless TikTok clips.
With Moonchild Sanelly, the now globally successful style receives a personality who already cooperated with Beyoncé on her »The Lion King« soundtrack and with her trademark, a deep blue Afro curly hair and imaginative, partly self-designed costumes, has everything you need needed for icon formation.
But does she also have the hits that are also necessary for the leap from the scene and insider circles into the big Western pop world?
Sanelly, who comes from Port Elizabeth but soon moved to the vibrant fashion and music scene there after Durban, offers more than enough material on »Phases«: the double album comprises 19 tracks, which on the one hand showcase her musical versatility, but on the other hand her personal one Story of self-discovery and empowerment told.
It's a break-up album that culminates in confidence and strength.
Sanelly was recently left by her partner, model Gontse More.
The two women even had marriage plans.
In the first half, »Phases« shows how Sanelly doesn't let her private disappointment get her down.
"Undumpable" is a defiant anthem marching in the rabid gqom electroclash style, "Demon" is an elegantly voguing suada of jealousy and revenge with rapper Sad Night Dynamite - a dancefloor attack.
Sanelly is also familiar with the modern trap rap and grime genre.
She lives out her sexuality uninhibitedly in the lyrics and sometimes describes herself as the »President of female orgasm«.
»Strip Club« (with UK rapper Ghetts) celebrates the often marginalized erotic dancers and sex club hostesses as heroines who need to be rewarded for their work: »Come to the strip club, come give the girls cash«, she demands in a suggestive chant .
After this rather inexorable impact, the worst wounds are treated in a series of beautiful ballads, in the dub-driven "Over You" still defensive: "You fucked with the wrong one", in "Too Late" and "ULi" suddenly no longer sex bomb-like , but very vulnerable with a cute girl's voice.
Most impressive, however, is the part of the album that is devoted entirely to the liberating Amapiano and ghetto funk rhythms: "Covivi" and "Soyenza" (with South Africa's scene star Sir Trill) are powerful dance tracks, "Yebo Teacher" and that funny »Chicken«, like many other tracks sung in alternation between English and Xhosa, want to educate to sex-positivity and use South African folklore, but also a modern electro sound, trained on global role models like MIA.
She would love to be a bird, circling around freely and carefree in the air all day long, she sings in the almost children's song-like final piece "Bird So Bad": Moonchild Sanelly has probably just entered the phase of take-off with her inspiring album.
(8.2)
Listened briefly:
Eli Preiss - »LVL UP«
In the popular »Super Mario« computer games, Princess Peach is considered a cute featherweight.
However, when you send her onto the track in the series' kart racing games, the seemingly harmless character becomes a furious fighter.
So it's no wonder that the Viennese rapper and passionate »Mario«-diddler Eli Preiss describes herself as »Princess Peach« on her debut album »LVL UP«, which is interwoven with numerous gaming references: She is well on the way to becoming one of the still to become a few female stars in the male-dominated German rap scene.
Preiss, 23, succeeds in creating a sensual and at the same time confidently feminist blend of hip-hop and R&B that has rarely been heard in German-speaking countries.
She doesn't need much more than her voice, her self-confident, sometimes introverted and vulnerable lyrics, the efficiently set beats, warm synth sounds and a few nerdy computer game noises.
Actually, she wanted to make a career with songs sung in English in the USA and emulate role models like Billie Eilish or alternative R&B singer Abra.
But Corona thwarted their plans.
Preiss chose her mother tongue – and rap.
A godsend, because her easygoing, slightly hungover rhyme flow, from which she keeps breaking out into soul singing, is so compellingly intimate it's like bedroom indie pop band The xx had strayed into hip-hop.
In tracks like "Slide" and "Gameboy" Preiss is a lascivious seductress, in the second half of the album the toxic masculinity in German rap is torpedoed:
"The train has left for you / you old bags can pack up, new wave, new track," raps Austria's new rap princess.
(7.8)
Rickolus - »Bones«
If you want to emulate Springsteen, you should know what you've got: No problem for US songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Rick Colado, who presents his very personal - and very convincing "Greetings From Asbury Park" with "Bones", just join in Memoirs of his youth from Jacksonville Beach, his hometown in Florida.
"Beach Town" is his "Growing Up," complete with piano and saxophone epic.
Might look bold if it weren't so casual.
As a singer, however, Rickolus is more reminiscent of Ben Folds, Ryan Adams, and sometimes of Jonathan Richman in the faster pieces ("Keep Dancing").
"Mary Manhattan" rolls and carries like an older Strokes song, the warped ballad "All Night Diner" stretches after Tom Waits.
Does he also find his own groove between all these competently processed influences and obvious homages?
You could find that out on the Tocotronic tour, among other things, where Colado plays the opening act at some concerts.
Bassist Jan Müller is a big Rickolus fan.
Rightly so.
(7.5)
Horsegirl – »Versions of Modern Performance«
Much like Rickolus, the three Chicago teenagers from Horsegirl seek comfort and solace in the sounds of the past.
Their debut album sounds like a collection of songs that could all have been written between 1986 and 1999.
What saves them from sheer nostalgic stupidity is an unashamed - and ultimately fresh-looking - urgency reminiscent of role models like Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo, Built To Spill, Breeders, or other alternative greats whose music for millennials like classic rock must work.
Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley even do the musician trio the honor of playing on two pieces, it was produced by indie rock intimate John Agnello, the label was the renowned Matador, where many of the Horsegirl role models released their records in the nineties.
Sonic offspring.
(7.2)
Guido Möbius – »A Million Magnets«
The Berlin avant-garde musician Guido Möbius is a magician of pedal effects and has been releasing a wide range of experimental music between noise post-rock, cosmopolitan folklore and (sometimes absolutely danceable) electronics for around 20 years, most recently with the trio Gordan and the duo GAMS Oft submits to him harsh noise looped to the rhythm, to which he plays bass or guitar runs and then lets them run free - at concerts he likes to jump on his equipment table like a rock star and lets the feedback waver with relish.
Alongside a number of other guests, he was able to win drummer Andrea Belfi for his new album, who transforms tracks like »Schlucht« into an untidy, exciting scree course.
But also more ambient pieces such as »Windjammer« or »Feed Me Fog«, which clatters beautifully in the fog of sound, fascinate with the meanwhile unmistakable, mischievous drone drive of the sound shaman Möbius.
(8.0)
