Type in “CYRRCA musician” into Google and you won’t find much by way of a biography. 

From the thirteen-tracks in this eponymous debut, which drops February 26, 2021, one can assume that CYRRCA is Russian and goes by he. There’s deliberate privacy curated around the artist CYRRCA, which seems in line with someone who traveled around the world for several years hoping to find authentic equilibrium. Though the album is self-titled and all about one man’s spiritual wanderings, there’s a sense that CYRRCA wants his music to be far larger than himself. 

The video for each song opens with the coordinates of a sung-about locale. According to a press release, CYRRCA’s travels ranged from “The Trans Siberian Railway to the Montenegrin coastline; from Rumi’s shrine in Mevlana, Turkey to the Korean mountainside.” Modeling an album after the diary one kept during a self-imposed itinerary is a fairly simple concept, but CYRRCA takes that plan canvas to create something surprising, fun, and beautiful.

The album opens with the sparse track, “North Sea” which opens as a setting for the album and the reasons for the following journey, mainly heartache and drug dependency. What follows has a cohesiveness that calls to mind Kate Tempest’s “Everybody Down” (Check out Quip’s coverage here). Though Tempest is a more tart-tongue rapper and external facing. If Tempest is a novelist, CYRRCA is a memoirist. 

The second track, “Beograd,” the capital of Serbia or the former Yugoslavia, keenly captures the rush of the Danube and the chatter of the metropolis. The lyrics roll with kick machines and synths that create diaphanous layers, which CYRRCA incarnates in the music video. In a time when most traveling feels like a dream for a parallel universe, it’s refreshing to hear global sojourns embodied so smoothly. 

While most of the album has a somber emotional tint, what journey doesn’t have its share of unexpected hijinks and laughs? “Temple Charm” and “Fun” capture the giddier side of travel, the former with pretty hilarious dialogue about quitting smoking backed by bouncy Gloria Estefan rifts, the latter nostalgic glimpses into getting drunk and high at 17 when such descents were fun and voluntary. 

CYRRCA occasionally has the sticky earnestness of Macklemore, but it’s all in good fun and openness, e.g., “Travel around the world you’ll find/the glitter’s mixed in with the grim.”

The third track, “Namsan,” features the South Korean singer Hyojin Park for some contemplative harmonies that reaffirm that the album offers a memorable journey in and of itself. But if you’re a visual person, CYRRCA has you covered with a visual album and a telling profile in Flaunt. 

The album and CYRRCA’s journey end with the beautiful “Istanbul,” where the minarets, Rumi, and a kind cup of tea help him stabilize, rely less on external crunches and know his place within the world.

Photo credit: Jayce Castrell

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Jordan Mackampa is (currently) best known for his 2016 EP, Physics, especially “Yours to Keep” and “What Could Have Been.” Four years later he delivers his first album, Foreigner, with the same sweet soul, but with more spunk.

Foreigner opens with “Magic,” a jangly pop-funk tune that swifts one far from the COVID-19 enclosures to a tropical restaurant on Maui. Blithely repeating “I can’t get enough of your love,” for a couple dozen times, Mackampa ends the mantra with a sly, upturned smile, a bouquet of soul, R&B, and pop.

Mackampa says Foreigner has been in the works 25 years (his entire life), and there’s a lovely autobiographical quality to tracks like “Love at First Sight.” It’s one of those signposts of maturity that stay with us forever.

And why is this debut album called Foreigner?

The soul singer was born in the Congo then moved to London before he was two-years-old. With an Estuary accent, he says his Congolese roots gave him the rhythm and melody that appears in the album growing up. In England, he formed a more folky, indie style when he picked up the guitar around 11.

The emotional terrain in Foreigner is quite autobiographical, but the lyrics never get into specifics. It’s instead expressed through repetition of lyrics like “I’ll keep holding on till you let go,” as in the track “Tight,” one of the sweetest songs about a hug ever. The repetition does pop proud, and like any reliable earworm (or sermon) repetition makes “Tight” one of the catchier songs on Foreigner.

When asked what people get from his music, Mackampa replied, “a man who’s very honest with his emotions and feelings, and it comes out through his music.”

It’s the strength and occasional weakness of the record. “What Am I” is a similarly beautiful song, but it ends up fitting into a Mackampa template that starts to fatigue. There are lovely string sections and a lonely trumpet shuffling in the corner, but there’s a danger of the constant honesty venturing into a lovely monotone. The more generous interpretation of this is, as a wise YouTube viewer of Mackampa’s view for “Magic” writes: “You literally never make a bad song.”

Perhaps crescendos will be used in the next album, or he’ll play with passagio in live performances. The track “Parachutes” doesn’t fly up or down as much as parasail for several minutes. “If ignorance is bliss, then I’d be better off not knowing you,” is pleasantly rendered, but a tired emotion we need some newness behind to take notice.

The second half of the album becomes more personal and deeply charged. In the title track, Mackampa wonders about his mother tongue, what disconnection he feels in a foreign space; the slow introduction and solitary voice eventually get a galloping fleet of drums. “I will not stay where I’m not wanted/but I don’t want to leave,” in a higher register that echoes Jeff Buckley.

The beauty continues with an imagined letter from the singer’s father. “Care for Your Mother” has the classic (if tired and gendered) troupe of the father telling the son to take care of his mother in ways that the father couldn’t. Mackampa’s spectral voice is nearly powerful enough to excuse the father.

Foreigner smartly wraps up with the poppy beat “Warning Signs.” We get a flash of casual brilliance with “I was blinded by the taste of your skin.” He couldn’t see the warning signs that this certain someone was no good for him. What a great conclusion to one’s first quarter of life.

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The 33 year-old singer MARINA (formerly “& the diamonds,” née Marina Lambrini Diamandis) has come out with a more mature and thoughtful sequence of self-love and definition that shows someone increasingly armed with the ability to widen her conception of humanity, to use music, as Susan Sontag sought to do with literature, to make us aware “that other people, people different from us, really do exist.”    

The title of this fourth album, Love + Fear, comes from the Swiss psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross who lay the groundwork for the five stages of grief in her 1969 seminal work “On Death and Dying,” and who conceived of each human action as being motivated by fear and love. “When You Don’t Choose Love You Choose Fear” goes one rephrasing of Kübler-Ross’ research into the psychology of death. The statement applies to MARINA’s entire career since her debut at 24 with The Family Jewels (2010). From the first track, “Are You Satisfied?,” charged a young woman determined to succeed on her own terms and put all of her problems to rest (not for nothing has Diamandis called that album “crazy”).

Her follow-ups Electra Heart (2012) and Froot (2015) were similarly energetic, hard-charging, and narcissistic, as only 20-somethings can be. Nearly a decade later, she seems at peace with life’s radical ambiguities with songs like “Life Is Strange” and “Enjoy Your Life.” Her interests continue to widen – fewer topics of personal betrayal and self-sabotage, more contemplations on human dignity, creation, and love.

On September 16 in Manhattan’s Central Park for the SummerStage Festival, Diamandis rocked a sheen cocktail dress and occasionally waved silver pom-poms. On the same stage of Stevie Wonder, Sia, Diana Ross, Nikki Minaj, MARINA – 5’4 but with caryatid’s regal presence – showed the result of a smart woman defining her own life.

A wide, white podium traversed the stage. Diamandis, as if winning a gold medal, climbed easily to the top slot, a refreshing image in a culture that prefers women to act shocked when they’re #1 at anything. The stage lighting was smart and succinct, showing images of beaches or MARINA’s past music videos, but mostly keeping with uniform yellows, blues, and reds, taut monochromes following Alex Katz and Barnett Newman, then occasionally flushed color-field violets.   

The audience was assertively queer. Indeed, the number of gay men likely crashed Grindr. (MARINA, well aware of her gay fan-based, changed her hit 2012 hit “Primadonna Girl” to “Primadonna Boy.”) This all begs the question, what about MARINA appeals to both gay women and gay men? For queer women, it may be her commitment to self-definition, her vim to remain a volcanic self in a world that would rather stylize gender on more clear-cut and tamable lines. Those reasons, of course, overlap with the appeal to gay men, but there’s a curious lack of camp; perhaps MARINA’s pull with the LaCroix crowd comes from her history of bangers (“Primadonna Girl”;  “How To Be A Heartbreaker”; “Oh No!”) and the recent hip-swaying hits like “Baby,” “No More Suckers,” and “Karma.

MARINA is sexy and gorgeous to all men and women. What’s interesting is that her identity rests on being above obsequiousness to lust or to the dictates of image, which may be why she cast out “and the diamonds” (diamonds being the nickname to her fans), caps-locked her own name, and continues to demure from disclosing any updates on her love life, which clearly influenced the peace and wisdom in Love + Fear.

Curmudgeons (often straight white guys) often say that pop songs won’t be remembered in 10 years. It was then with joy to see some 16-year-olds shout “Actually my name’s Marina,” to “Hollywood,” a song that would have come out when they were nine. (Generation Z has come to know MARINA mostly through TikTok). But it’s curious why MARINA is not quite as famous in The States as the equally talented Lana Del Rey. It could be her attitude; Diamandis’ lyrics are admittedly not as vicious or adventurous as Del Rey’s. Diamandis is more kind-fabulous; Lizzy Grant is cutting-cool. But one wonders if Americans simply prefer women who aestheticize their tears. MARINA is far too active for self-pity; when she looks pretty, it’s to bite, not to be consumed. Outside of queer people and the liberally-minded, this unmalleable cuteness discomforts most Americans. 

For the second half of the show, MARINA came back out in a white pug shirt. The chords of Love + Fear are by turns ebullient, tropical, house. “Orange Trees” blends all of these elements, the lead single ultimately sounds like 2011 Skrillex coming down from molly. Her performance of “Bubblegum Bitch” proved the song remains fun, one that people will reinterpret for quite some time, including this redo with Margaery Tyrell of Game of Thrones.

Like many talented artists who come out of a pop-induced rush to play acoustically, MARINA released an acoustic version of Love + Fear. But in this tour, she only played acoustic renditions of older songs. Her stripped-down take off “I Am Not Robot” was spectacular. She followed it with a powerful re-imagination of “Teen Idle,” distilling the regret and hope in a take that recalled The Animals’ “Good Times.”

A general highlight from the concert was a rare performance of the unreleased song “I Am Not Hungry.” A crowd favorite, it seems like a turning point for MARINA repeatedly declaring, “I’m not hungry for your love.” It’s a testament to her skill, presence, and the intelligence of her fans that Central Park became surreally silent in every second.

Her powerhouse anthem from the album is “To Be Human.” The song becomes the cornerstone of not only the album but MARINA’s career, which has grown from selfish impulses (are you satisfied?) to more universal knowledge (how to thrive within the uncertainty of being human). Along with being the most layered track, “To Be Human” is informed by politics without a stifling dogmatism. “All our cracks as a society were beginning to show,” Diamandis said of her impetus to write the song, “I’ve just wanted to create this feeling of bringing people together.”   

“Soft To Be Strong” follows this good-will vein. The track would be too much on the nose if it weren’t for Diamandis’ restrained voice and thoughtful piano harmonies. Politics clearly impacts all of Fear + Love, but fortunately, Diamandis never veers into the hapless camp-activist of Barbra Streisand’s “Don’t Lie to Me.”    

Another standout from Love + Fear is the penultimate “No More Suckers.” It’s basically a declaration to keep away from leaches in your life. As she wrote in one essay that coincided with the April release of Love + Fear: “We shouldn’t just teach young girls to “be nice” — we should teach them when to be nice. And, importantly, when not to.” This is a message Diamandis has been living since she was 24, when she negotiated with nearly 10 labels to pick the one that most closely aligned with her vision. 

MARINA closed with “Baby,” a forgettable banger with the Brit electronic trio Clean Bandit, and the more heart-felt “To The End of the Earth,” which coincidentally ends this keen, compassionate, and well-crafted album.   

Dates and tickets to the Love + Fear tour here. Further thoughts and soapboxes here. 

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A Harlem store pairs wine with records, creating realness in an age of political disconnect and tyrannical clouds. This is part two the mini series.

Why pair records with wine?

Earlier in the evening, Lombardo looked at the bond between picking a record and picking a wine.

“I think of selling records like selling wine because there’s some objectivity to this is a good region, maker, or year, but there’s a subjective taste and preference for that choice, too.”

Everyone at Cinderblock People was drawn to those kinds of involved, human decisions. There’s a tangible presence to record and wine curation that’s spotty when you stream music you don’t own.

Records imprint presence; how they’re recorded is of equal importance to what’s recorded. If they’re scratched or dinged up, their past markings are encoded to present listenings. A record conveys shifting moods and atmospheres. When someone speaks or sings or plays on a record, you’re not only getting their sound; you’re getting a sense of where they’re coming from, what the room smelled like, or whether they closed their while singing.

Back in the analog world, where you recorded mattered. Hence the rise of Electric Lady in New York or Trident Studios in London. Nowadays, record studios are interchangeable. DJs swap tracks from other continents. Some pop stars have never met the person rapping on their album. In the digital world, people don’t have to talk directly or ever touch the same soil to make music. But they do in the analog world. For good and bad, making records forces people to own up to where they come from.

Iceberg Slim was a product of his time. His misogyny is pervasive throughout Reflections. In the last song on side A, “Broadway Sam,” there’s a pungent homophobia that, as a gay man in 2018, I choose to laugh off for its own fear-driven logic. Sam was a pimp turned drug addict who, after a certain Mabel – “the broad who slew him” – refused to give him all her money, had to pimp himself out to men, dying, Iceberg Slim reports, in gay shame.

Iceberg Slim’s “Mama Debt”

Lombardo turned the record over. Charnay introduced the Trabun Syrah from Cachapoal Valley of his native Chile. The 2013 wine reflects Iceberg Slim’s evolution from a “prancy” boy to one rule through deception and violence, as told in Side B’s “Durella (du Fontaine)” and “Mama Debt.”

Side B begins with Iceberg Slim “stalking hoes right in the middle of the square.” Another pimp sells him pot; they admire the others’ gaudy flair and rainbow suits.

They see Durella, a master prostitute and free agent; she has the looks and class that need no middleman. To win her over for personal and professional reasons, Iceberg Slim treats her to peacock eggs, cocaine, and enormous steaks. The two partner up (she nicknames him Candy) and it’s all fun and games until Durella plays her hand against him.

Indeed, the first Syrah (Alain Voge Cotes du Rhone) was easier to take in than the fuller bodied, spicer Trabun Syrah. Either way, “We can safely say that Syrah is the pimp of wines,” Charnay said.

Iceberg Slim lands in jail. A therapist asks if he hates his mother. No, he says, and wonders if it’s ever possible to repay a “Mama Debt.” When he hears his mother is dying, he’s granted a brief visit. On her deathbed, he tells her he’s, “quit the pimp game….I’ll play the square way to keep ole wolf at bay.” But she doesn’t believe him.

She starts talking about Jesus, seeing him, or just hallucinating. Iceberg Slim says Jesus is playing her, just like the white people who kept her down all her days; the same force that left him little choice but to become a pimp. As Reflections closes, Iceberg Slim declares, “Living ain’t much; dying is grand.” With “death on her breath,” his mother is the model of redemption and resistance within a usurious, racist world. Reflections ends with the once smoother-talking Iceberg Slim shuddering with a mournful realization: “Ain’t no way to pay a mama debt.”

The Cinderblock People Community

In truth, learning so much about wine and records (and Iceberg Slim’s gritty past) can be tiring. Yet I left Cinderblock People feeling a more tangible connection to the world. I had a greater notion of other person’s life stories; the obstructions people commonly face that I’m able to dodge. I was grateful for the earth finding these grapes. I was grateful for their technology which, when all your voice memos could be lost in the next Apple iPhone upgrade, seems more permanent. It’s a distinct way of feeling the world, wine and vinyl. It’s a way of finding and respecting roots.

Which is the lofty ambition of Cinderblock People. As Lombardo and Weill put it on their website: “Over the years, the name seems to make more and more sense given we live and work and play in a complex and diverse city. We are urban warriors, for better or worse: Cinderblock People trying to thrive in a harsh, but fertile environment.”

This first wine-record pairing, one of many Charnay and Cinderblock People have planned, fosters community in a time where more New Yorkers are happy to sling around pre-furnished apartments. We’re entering a digital cloud. Everything can be outsourced – how you cook, how you clean, your friends, loves, and family, even. In a time where you can rent the runway, rent out your bed, stream anything on Spotify with the illusion of ownership, have all your clothes or books or wine selections curated and packaged and delivered to you, simple acts like pairing records to wines can give you a rare sense of being an autonomous being ready to experience things with guides, not dictators.

If the medium is the message, records suggest that where and when something was recorded is just as important as the content itself. Streaming, as convenient as it is, has no concept of the past; its connection to Earth is false and shrouded in numerals. Businesses nowadays, especially in SaaS [Software-as-a-Service] are all about “agile methodology” and “decoupling services.” It’s simply easier to extract value if people and products remain divided, disparate, and ready to procure a “synergy.” I’m starting to see why records are making a comeback. There’s a want for roots, connection, for something heartfelt, thoughtful, and real.

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A Harlem store pairs wine with records, creating realness in an age of political disconnect and tyrannical clouds.

Cinderblock People, a record store in northwest Harlem, is wedged between Chanel Beauty Salon and public housing towers to the east; Manhattanville Coffee, CUNY City College, and a “juicery” make up its western border.

For the store’s first wine-record pairing party in late September, a dozen people of varying races, ages, and frequented subway lines fit comfortably in the U-Haul sized space. They were gathered to hear a 1976 record by Iceberg Slim, the intellectual pimp turned bestselling author, born Robert Lee Moppins Jr. (become Robert Beck).

“It’s a very conceptual thing and requires a bit of imagination,” said sommelier Jonathan Charnay, standing near a table of cinder blocks that holds the store’s prized record player. “Please enjoy, and see if you can relate to this idea of pairing wine to music.”

Charnay, a beverage director at the Japanese restaurants Masa and Tetsu, is a Cinderblock regular. From his apartment in Harlem, he’s been pairing wine and records since the early 2010s. His Instagram features David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust” paired with a 2011 pinot noir by Clos de Tart; the “Strangers Things” soundtrack with a blended 1983 red from Bordeaux; Metallica’s “Metal Up Your Ass” with a 2013 Schrader cabernet sauvignon.

Patrick Lombardo, co-owner of Cinderblock People, has been scrounging up stray dollar bills to visit record stores since he was a teen on Long Island. After the election of Donald Trump, he and his partner, Emily Weill, needed to do something that bred community and goodwill, even as the larger world seemed set on ravenous disconnect.

“This album is wild,” Lombardo said, introducing the record. There’s definitely an unvarnished truth to it.” He read from Iceberg Slim’s Pimp: The Story of My Life, his 1967 account of his 25 years as a pimp around Chicago:

“The account of my brutality and cunning as a pimp will fill many of you with revulsion, however, if one intelligent, valuable young man or woman can be saved from the destructive slime; then the displeasure I have given will have been outweighed by that individual’s use of his potential in a socially constructive manner.”

Throughout the 70s, Pimp was found in black-owned barbershops and gas stations. Bookstores (mostly white-owned) thought the material was too smutty. But the lack of reviews and mainstream (i.e. white) attention didn’t impede the book’s success. Pimp and future fiction (Mama Black Widow: a Story of the South’s Black Underworld; Airtight Willie & Me) would sell six million copies by the time Iceberg Slim died in 1992. The likes of Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, Chris Rock, and Dave Chappelle grew up devouring his work. In his recent Netflix show “The Bird Situation,” Chappelle used Pimp to explain his standing with Comedy Central, a move that sent publishers scrambling to print fresh copies, and launched Pimp to #15 on Amazon.

In the mid-70s, Iceberg Slim worked with the Red Holloway Jazz Quartet to produce Reflections, a spoken word funk album that serves as an abridged version of Pimp.

Charnay chose two Syrahs to accompany the A and B track.

“Syrah as a grape produces wines that are really elegant and at the same time very savage,” he explained, filling up clear plastic cups. “On the attack, you’re going to find something that is very compelling and very smooth, but on the finish, you’re going to find more spiciness, a little earthiness.”

Side A of Reflections is titled “The Fall (The Game).” Charnay paired it with Syrah, Alain Voge Cotes du Rhone, 2016. Blazed jazz-filled Cinderblock People, and everyone, Syrah in hand, bowed their heads. Iceberg Slim’s voice rolled out like a stretch limo: nonchalant, crafted, luxurious, tawdry. His insight is caustic and careening, filtered as it is through profanity.

“I’d like to tell; of how I fell; and the trick fate played on me./ So gather round; and I’ll run it down; and unravel my pedigree.”

Right out of the gate, he establishes a mythical setting. One Saturday night, the abstracted “game” stalks its prey, and “The weak were doom to pay.” The prose is delicious. Dwight Garner for The New York Times rightfully called the writings of Iceberg Slim “Mark Twain meets Malcolm X.” There’s a distinct literary quality that’s easy to forget once Pimp modifies its author. But his talent springs up in front of a microphone. With rhyme – couplets, slant, and internal – it’s the sort of control you’d find in Alexander Pope or Molière. But the setting, of course, is totally alien to the Canon.

The omnipotent “Game” has drawn his dad into jail; his mom can’t sleep as their house is foreclosing. People kill for bread; “drunks rolled for their poke.” Even as a boy, he was encouraged toward misogyny. For him, “that sidewalk Jezebel” is the only way a black boy in the 30s could pay rent: “I was branded a beast; and I sat at the feast…. I made my play for female prey; at the time I was just a boy.”

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Is Saya her real name? A shout-out to the dance-music aesthetic from Bolivia? No one really knows. And that’s part of the appeal of this 21-year dashing scarlet from Toronto and LA. Her image is subtractive, only appearing exactly how she wants. Her Instagram is rightfully popping and her Twitter is golden. But for any more info, you’ll have to contact her management.

That kind of control appears in her latest EP, Chills & Thrills, released a couple of weeks back. Chills & Thrills delivers on its title. The fun-loving EP is a bit like a merry-go-around decked out with bling, replete with Rolls-Royce waiting in the parking lot. Each of the five tracks here is a delicious hedonistic spiral. Think Lana Del Rey retro chic with Lorde’s refined moods and Camila Cabello’s swag and humor.

Everywhere on this EP, the lyrics are delicious: infinity rhymes with divinity; there are Vanilla Sky references and Fifty Shakes inflections; “My body’s your language written all over your skin like a blanket.” Saya’s often billed as an R&B singer, which she excels at, but there are so many pop, funk, and hip-hop elements, even tropical, it’s a treat to see her combine everything to make her own element.

Seductive is the operative word here, and one can imagine many a baby conceived to the dripping with “Paradise in Trouble.” As Saya sings with a confident aplomb, “Why you pulling out like it ain’t tight/ like my body blessings ain’t giving you life.” It’s presented with a sort of cheeky confidence that keeps this rather forthright question from being ludicrous.

Chills & Thrills is all about Saya embracing her sexuality. That’s apparent even without reading the essay she published last August with the release of “Ice:”

“My visuals and lyrics are often of a sexual nature. It is something I am passionate about; I am fascinated with the human condition and our desires as human beings – what we lust for, what drives us, what weighs us down… I want to make music for everyone, but I always try to come at it from an empowering perspective….We should celebrate women who can confidently express themselves instead of shaming them.”

There aren’t any music videos for Chills & Thrills just yet, but you can get a sense of her visual. aesthetic with Cold Fire, where she plays a dominatrix.

Eschewing doubts, hedonism espousing, Chills & Thrills is the perfect EP to listen to whenever and wherever. If you have the chance to see her perform April 13 at Baby G in Toronto, don’t walk.

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Punctual (DJs Will Lansley and John Morgan) are slowly building a melodic and beautiful empire. After their debut single “Eva” turned out to be a smash hit last year, the British duo has released a pop-smart EP, Fading Youth, featuring four well-crafted songs.

The first track, “Fading Youth” is bubbly, yet overflowing with summer swag. It whirls with warped trombones, sinuous synths, and echoed-snaps. The lyrics showcase an understated tango between the singer and the omnipresent “girl” of summer anthems.

If Fading Youth is a couple lounging in a hammock, the lead single “What I Love” is an infectious yacht party. Backed by a scintillating drumline, it’s not a summer stomping song that will yield yells of “more cowbell,” but a more restrained track, something for the VIPs to enjoy while looking at the sweaty GA goers. It’s also a bit hard to dislike the video.

“Mela” will have to fend off inspiration correlations to Major Lazor’s “Lean On” for its obvious sampling of Indian vocalists and rhythms. (Mela is a hindu festival). But “Mela” keeps the Punctual backbone of fun but sedate rhythms, a quality that will lend itself well to future remixes.

With that said, it’s one of the more action packed tracks on this EP. But like “Fading Youth,” “Mela” has an ending that’s unsure of itself.

The last track, “Real” featuring the singer Fabien, is a bit too similar to “Mela” and “Fading Youth.” It trails at the end and at times is a little pedestrian. It entices remembrance but not entirely.

But ultimately, Fading Youth is a solidly enjoyable EP for the road, party, or bedroom. They’re just beginning their DJ sets in the UK; hopefully demand for these pop hits will be enough to sail them to North America in the future.

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True to their literal name, TUFT is a collection of guitars, surfing percussion and melodic vocals.

The L.A. based band, formerly called, Hi Ho Silver Oh, will release its first album, Look Look, on April 8th, and if you want to give your cerebellum a pleasant tickle, you can pre-order it through the band’s Twitter.

The ten tracks of Look Look are surprising in range and in their ability to never quite leave the core meaning of the band: a fun yet somber reckoning of life and love.

Does TUFT offer here something we haven’t heard before? Not quite. But they’re talented practitioners of the adult-indie rock genre that will get your head a’nodding. This is clear from the first single “Constant,” an interesting song, but one without a driving hook and with a clear debt to Arcade Fire.

A definite highlight is the 6th track, “Spools.” It starts slow, but like any good ride down a slide, picks up fast. It could easily be a melodic summer festival jam. It’s a rare instance when the female vocalist and bassist, Roxy Radulescu, really shines. There’s a live version here.

The title track is the most intriguing one off the album, with catchy electronic choruses and overlapping rhythms similar to the pounding intensity of its name, “Look Look”. Flighty string instruments leap through this sonic mindstorm with the pounding, occasionally discordant noise of an artist who embraces urban life. Björk circa “Army of Me” would be proud.

Lyrics get intriguing and angrier with “No Wonders” and “Lanyards.” “VCVC” is a misplaced country song with angry guitars thrown in and the occasional throat singing. The album closes with “Nothing,” a somber ballad that finally features lead guitarist and singer Casey Trela’s aching voice.

There’s not much new going on with Look Look, but it’s still all very good.

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Best known for his music in the opening credits of Mad Men, RJD2’s (née Ramble Jon Krohn) sixth album, Dame Fortune, is an atmospheric record punctuated with glimpses of those grand choruses of his previous album, More Is Than Isn’t, with its driving single, “Her Majesty’s Socialist Request,” and the incredible 2002 hit, “Ghostwriter.” 

The album begins, appropriately enough, with “Portal Inward,” a standard electronic song with as much action as a staid lake. The BPM quickly gets flipped upside down and the album is off to a confident pace by the second track, “The Roaming Hoard.” One of the most notable songs and catchiest choruses comes with “Peace of What,” which understandably is the first single from Dame Fortune. With vocals from Jordan Brown, it’s perhaps the only track where the vocals seem necessary.

RJD2 has done some great work with rappers like Sugar Tongue Slim and slam poets in the past, but for this record, some of the best tracks – the funky “The Sheboygan Left” and the sonically curious “Your Nostalgic Heart and Lung”- don’t feature a vocalist.

Other highlights of Dame Fortune include the creeping rhythms of “New Theory” and the beautiful cello release of “PF Day One.” The second track in particularly has the starlight melodies that meld electronica and jazz. The Philadelphia native said that hip-hop remained a major influence for this record, and every track does seem encased with a hat-tip to hip-hop, most obviously with “Up in the Clouds,” featuring RJD2’s frequent collaborator, the rapper Blueprint.

Dame Fortune is more of a meditative or happy-go-lucky record. People looking to party or lose their mind with a torrential anthem RJD2 has supplied in the past will be disappointed.

But whatever your mindset, this is a very enjoyable record from a talented multi-instrumentalist who builds, as his Instagram proves, complicated songs from nothing.

RJD2’s current tour dates are listed here.

The post RJD2 the deconstructionist. Review of “Dame Fortune” appeared first on Quip Magazine.

Frankie Cosmos: Greta Kline played an early, unadorned show at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn, a venue she’s been coming to since she was 14, when the iconic site of all things anti-folk was still based in Manhattan. This was her 5th of 6th show at the CMJ Marathon, and the only one she played without a band, presumably because the show was at 4 and not everyone can quit their day jobs. The crowd was mostly students, the unemployed and those (such as yours truly) who ducked out of work early. Unaccompanied, Kline showed that she can still be captivating with her idiosyncratic voice and a moody guitar. Her self-deprecating lyrics also help everyone stay focused. Here’s a personal favorite from the show: “I’m the kind of girl buses splash with rain.”

There’s something strangely adult and childish about Frankie Cosmos. You could call it twee, but she seems to have too much awareness and kindness to be camped in with a word like that. She’s a fun, talented musician and creative force that the Knitting Factory is so great at bringing together.

Lewis Del Mar: The Rockway Beach native is an asskicker. He drew a sizeable crowd to The Studio, the basement floor of Webster Hall that is reserved for more rocklicking bands that don’t often fill up the room. Del Mar showed last Thursday that he knows his way around a loop machine and combines a dizzying number of genres to make a pleasing sound that is unearthly. He veers toward country, dubstep, and lo-fi punk without entering any of them. This mash-up is probably nowhere more apparent than in “Loud(y).” Live, he showed off his vocal chops and his latest musical innovations. Think Hozier with hashish and Prince albums around the room. 

Empress Of: If you didn’t love Empress Of before her cover of “Hot N Cold“, seeing her live will seal the deal. Empress Of (Lorely Rodriguez) is an all around amazing performer. She has a soulful, classy voice, and is a great live performer, from Terminal 5 (capacity 3k) and Cameo Gallery (200 capacity).

She wore an army jumper skirt and like many people who actually produce their own music, had tennis shoes on as she danced and worked her way around synths and a looper. Rodriguez wrapped things up with the ever catchy “How Do Yo Do It,” which is pretty much a Donna Summer song restructured for the 21st century. Rodriguez has some serious talent, especially compared to many female DJs who try their hand at singing. You will definitely be hearing some comparisons to Grimes. 

The post Three great bands from CMJ Thursday: Frankie Cosmos, Lewis Del Mar, and Empress Of appeared first on Quip Magazine.

The Icelandic six-piece band, Mammut, played a free show at Rough Trade in Williamsburg. Based off appearances, it looked like Friday’s audience was in for a treat. Lead singer, Alexandra Baldursdóttir, wore a burlap poncho with a giant orange circle in the middle. She looked like a cross between Björk and Sissy Spacek. The comparison to Björk seems even more valid when you hear her sizzling screams, which tip-toe on the edge of control.

Mammut has a lot of power in their lyrics, vocals and harmonies, and it will be a band to watch and a treat to see how they further develop.

Another unexpected delight was Stolen Jars, which played in Pianos’ main room. Though six people in all, Stolen Jars is led by Cody Fitzgerald and Molly Grund, they maintain a long-distance working relationship, Grund in college in Connecticut, and Fitzgerald a recent Brooklyn transplant. Their performance of “Folded Out” was downright awesome with Matt Marsico on drums and Connor McGuigan on guitar, wowing the crowd. Fitzgerald is a fantastic guitarist in his own right, as he showed later in a few shredding sessions. 

They like to “re-orchestrate everything,” in Fitzgerald’s words, which helps explain the favorable reception they received throughout CMJ: everywhere they played they kept us guessing. Takeaway: a funner version of Chairlift stuck in 2015.

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