Steve Gunn - "The Unseen In Between"
(Matador / Beggars, since January 18th)
The invisible in the midst of Steve Guan's gentle but always bubbling Americana folk music is her Anglophilia. He does not hide them at all. You meet her right in the first, lightly battered and knocked out on the corpus guitar recordings of "New Moon": A longing breath of the summer of love, who was actually the "Season Of The Witch" unfolds, a Donovan tribute, such as they could not be flawless. But then, in the lush reverb, a wafting, second guitar layer is added, the "How Soon Is Now" quoted by the Smiths, then a reverberant prairie harmonica, as Johnny Marr 1989 on the The The album "Mind Bomb "played. "Smiling skulls, ghosts are grinning / Power lines spark their singing / Drone song blues makes me want to go," Gunn sings with his full, but always pale voice. A magical blues drone. From eternity, for eternity.
That's pretty well combined with the magic of Steve Gunn, formerly guitarist of Kurt Vile's touring band The Violators. Born in Pennsylvania, Brooklyn-based, the Brooklyn-based musician is an old-school troubadour who uses the wires of his genre derived from the past to perform as virtuously as he eloquently lures his guitar strings into cascading chords. His journey from the north of England to the west of America takes the "vagabond" deeper into the lonesome roadside diner of his mind. The disarmingly skeletonized folk song "Stonehurst Cowboy" honors Gunn's recently deceased father; "New Familiar" reaches into the mystery nebula of Sixties psychedelics to fathom discontent over the political state of the world.
The change from the intimate to the grand gesture is flowing in Gunn and therefore unobtrusive: "Morning Is Mended" reduced to tender fingerpicking from the morning haze of the Appalachian Mountains and is, at the very end, followed by the unevenly opulent Schwermutsrevue "Paranoid", a fictitious outtake from the golden Stones phase between "Beggar's Banquet" and "Sticky Fingers". With shaky singing he again evokes the "Hurdy Gurdy Man" from Scotland. In the text, Gunn admires both his existence and his sound, which permeates spaces and times in such a sad yet consoling way, "It's a thing that swings," it's a pendulum / refracting gold bloom. You've got to pick up every stitch. (8.0) Andreas Borcholte
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Sneaks - "Highway Hypnosis"
(Merge / Cargo, from 25th January)
The first seconds sound menacing. A whispering choir chants the title of the third album by Sneaks: "Highway Hypnosis". You can hear hissing hi-hats reminiscent of a dark horror core, a scream in the background. Sneaks - the name sounds like a band, but it's the solo project of Eva Moolchan. The 23-year-old comes from the punk scene of the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. On their previous releases bass and drum computer, punk and post-punk were often heard with ethereal vocals in short, one to two minutes long songs.
Direct, insistent and to the point, Sneaks' tracks are also on "Highway Hypnosis" - the longest is just under three minutes long - but this is also the only commonality with Moolchan's previous releases. In "Beliefs" she sings "All I wanna do is start again". And she does that by making extensive use of the tools of bass-controlled music: various varieties of club music, footwork or jungle, as well as various hip-hop beats can be heard, always gloomy, often with dub impact.
Listened to on the radio
Wednesdays at 23 o'clock there is the Hamburger Web-Radio ByteFM a listening-mixtape with many songs from the discussed records and highlights from the personal playlist of Andreas Borcholte.
Their lyrics sound like part of lethargic rhythms, like claims, whose meaning threatens to get lost in the beats of the beats. "Money Do not Grow On Trees", she sings about, a phrasing. "Saiditzoneza", probably originally a sentence, is reduced to a word and is repeated again and again for almost two minutes. Sneaks here alienates her voice to a monotonous children's choir, whose scary mantra penetrates to the last corner of the auditory canals. In "Holy Cow" the punk guitar comes after all. The "song" is 55 seconds long, and then "And We're Off" is actually reminiscent of the previous work of the ex-punk artist.
Despite all the echoes of different styles and genres, Sneaks' songs never seem off-beat, but always hard on the ground. Although leaves a "Highway Hypnosis" now and then a bit baffled - but when music overwhelmed, that is usually a good sign. ( 8.2) Diviam Hoffmann
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Future - "Future Hndrxx Presents: The Wizrd
(Epic / Sony, since January 17)
No, it's not a magic piece, even if the title suggests it. But a remarkable achievement. Future manages to sound the same after seven albums and countless mixtapes as on his debut mixtape "1000". And so in 2019 not really fresh.
However, this is less the blame than Nayvadius DeMun Wilburn born in Atlanta rapper. But hip-hop itself, which has changed since Futures first album "Pluto" from 2012 at rapid speed. The coke-and-champagne bass music, freed of all ups and downs, which he probably made more sustainable with early singles like "Tony Montana" than most others has been mainstream for years, has since been regularly expanded by younger, fresher performers and renewed.
Future, on the other hand, has never reinvented anything. Rather, he used the old soft-rock artifice to corrode something rough, savage and adventurous so that one could slide into the result as in a preheated pair of slippers. Trap sounded to him like the guitars on Roxy Music's "Avalon": hovering, unobtrusive, but cuddly. An unleashed bass provided the necessary buzz in the club. That worked: with "Mask Off" Future 2017 put the most frequently played song on Spotify.
He should not rely on "The Wizrd". Although it delivers plenty of feed for the streaming machines with its 20 songs, Futures seventh album in seven years can not be distinguished from its predecessors even with a practiced ear. For almost exactly one hour he reports on the same triplets of parties, drugs, women and, well, drugs.
There is nothing more to report from "The Wizrd" with the best will. Nevertheless, this album will be very successful again. Why? Because Future understands and operates in the mechanisms of the streaming economy, like a car manufacturer: a new model every year, but the brand essence remains perceptible. Does that sound dreary? It is. (3.5) Dennis Pohl
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Anna Aaron - "Pallas Dreams"
(Radicalis Music, from 25th January)
Céline Meyer, aka Anna Aaron, imagined her last album "Neuro" like a submarine - and unfortunately it sounded hermetic as well, a hard but at the same time undefined contrast to her furious debut "Dogs In Spirit". With her theatrical folk, the Swiss was celebrated in her homeland as the next Sophie Hunger. But Hunger's Label Two Gentlemen, which also hired Aaron, perhaps wanted too much of the then 20-year-olds too fast. For "Neuro" the record company hired the British producer David Kosten, Aaron threatened to lose.
After a seemingly agonizing separation process and a creative break, as they say in Switzerland, Aaron now returns to the Basel indie label Radicalis, her third album "Pallas Dreams" took them almost single-handedly with her brother Alain. It is not the great liberation, rather a gentle wound care, in which again and again flash pain and passion. Out of the submarine, Aaron appeared in a world of almost electronic sounds - and slid through them hungrily and thirstily like the "mosquito" over the garbage mountain "Smokey Mountain" in Manila in the song of the same name.
Andreas Borcholtes playlist KW 4
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Playlist on Spotify
1 Sneaks: Money Do not Grow On Trees
2 Steve Gunn: New Moon
3 Yungblud: Loner
4 Culk: fist
5 Lana Del Rey: Hope Is A Dangerous Thing For A Woman Like Me To Have
6 Radiohead: Ill wind
7 Anna Aaron: Mosquito
8 Ariana Grande: 7 rings
9 Loyle Carner feat. Rebel Kleff, Kiko Bun: You Do not Know
10 Future: Is not Coming Back
Especially here and in the previously released single "Why Not", Aaron's phrasing about spinning piano or percussion sounds reminds a little too much of avant-garde electronics like The Knife or Fever Ray. More convincing, more original, are these dreams of the goddess of wisdom, Pallas, when Aaron's "Dogs In Spirit" talent for great song gestures and sultry melody beats comes to life in this now artificially fragmented music. For example, in the dramatic "New Things In Your Blood" or reduced to minimal house, in "Last Time We Met". "Shifting Shapes" is the bravest pop song on the album. The form finding remains interesting. (6.5) Andreas Borcholte
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Rating: From "0" (absolute disaster) to "10" (absolute classic)