Nozinja – ‘Xihukwani’

Tayyab Amin: An adventure through colourful landscapes, rolling synth hills and breathtaking moments at the top, surveying the world around. It sounds like the love of living. (7)

William Skar: ‘Xihukwani’ slows Shangaan’s breakneck canter down to ‘80s electro-pop pace, and the results are just sumptuous – a vision in MIDI. Warmwave, anyone? (9)

Son Raw: Sounds as colorful as the artwork looks, although I can’t help but wish there was a vocal as exuberant as the synth lines here. As is, it’s the kind of joyful celebration of music that drives crowds to madness during Nozinja’s live show. (8)

Brad Stabler: I wish there was more of an indication of what the record is going to sound like, but if the rest of Nozinja’s LP is as elated to be here as this it should be a (10).

Claire Lobenfeld: I think Dianmarca said it best on FACT at BBOX last Friday: this is the perfect combination of goofy and sexy. There could be a little bit more refinement to the synths, though, and at times this teeters a little too close to chintzy for my liking. Regardless, this is a great way to get Shangaan out to more people with the Warp look, as it seems like Kwaito has always kind of been the South African dance sound de rigeur. Between this and Trevor Noah landing the look as host of The Daily Show SA had a pretty swell week. (8)

Mikey IQ Jones: As much as I love Nozinja and the Shangaan sound, this feels too monosyllabic compared to much of his past work, and suffers as a result. I’m beginning to worry that signing to Warp now brings about some kind of creative fatigue that seems to be infecting so many talented contemporary producers. I can’t hate on this completely, but I’m not putting it on a pedestal, either. C’mon, Nozinja – please prove me wrong and let this be a transitional track on a powerhouse album. (6)

8

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Rihanna – ‘Bitch Better Have My Money’

Claire Lobenfeld: The constant intellectualising of this song bores me to tears. Rihanna is not an anti-capitalist icon for the 21st Century — she is beacon splayed atop wads and wads of cash with her own damn face printed on it. Leave recession realpolitik to someone who didn’t sign the Tidal Declaration last week. This is a song for a legs-planted, hip-thrusting, spilling-a-drink-you-can’t-really-afford mean-mugging in the club. The only treatise it needs is penned by the DJ. Do I like it? It doesn’t even come close to my Riri Top 25, but I’m certainly less mad at it as I was on the day it dropped. (6)

Brad Stabler: Last week’s radio rip featured the drums from ‘St. Anger’, so I was all ready to fire a verbal sawed off in this one’s direction. And then we got a way, way better rip, which revealed a way, way better tune. It’s dirty, the beat lurches with intent, and I can’t wait to hear it played it out this spring and summer. And this is coming from a Rihanna hater. Kudos. (8)

Mikey IQ Jones: I stopped caring before the chorus even hit, and to be honest, that really disappoints me. The whole song is vapid, it sounds incredibly lazy, and Rihanna just sounds completely ragged here. There are ways to approach a topic like this in song (and production) and have the final product hit harder than a sock full of quarters across the face; instead, I get some asshole flicking Monopoly dollars folded into paper footballs at my face. (3)

William Skar: Rihanna’s had 10 years to win my love and trust, and I’m still leery of her (the flubs vastly outweigh the bangers) but you can’t really argue with this. It’s thunderingly catchy, rolls like a Panzer, and sounds perfectly calibrated to rouse a club (if not Jimmy Kimmel). (7)

Tayyab Amin: The way these heavier beats are floating to the surface of popstardom feels just right – talking about Beyoncé’s ‘7/11’ as well as ‘Bitch Better Have My Money’ here. We’re getting them through Rihanna, through Beyoncé, as opposed to any washed up corny artists clutching at straws to stay relevant. This is all impact and like ‘All Day’, it’s about seeing it and feeling it more than just hearing the record. I gotta point to this piece by Doreen St Felix, which says, “But as a black woman whose artistic inventiveness outpaces her peers and music executives by what feels like whole years, she will also perpetually be owed.” Rihanna really has been outpacing everyone, and she makes us feel it: “Where y’all at? Where y’all at? Where y’all at? Where y’all at?” (10)

6.2

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Daphne & Celeste – ‘You and I Alone’

Brad Stabler: I didn’t know Ween was scoring music for home-brewed Dreamcast games. No disrespect intended towards the Dreamcast. (Abstain)

William Skar: There’s something off-puttingly gentrified about this: between the Ghost Box shout-outs and the deliberately shonky production, ‘You And Me Alone’ sometimes feels like little more than a messy aggregation of muso tics. But: great story, great chorus, and a well-applied sense of mischief. So it’s just – just – a win. (7)

Mikey IQ Jones: This is cute as a novelty, but novelty’s pleasures wear away quickly, and removed from the context of their former career as minor region-specific pop stars, this is shrouded in the same stale-weed indie-friendly art-pop stench that I get from acts like Julia Holter, Peaking Lights, and Dan Deacon. It’s far too self-aware to enjoy without cringing or feeling slimy, and no hate on you if you enjoy it, but c’mon, people – this is weak. Why is everything in Singles Club this week so boring? (3)

Tayyab Amin: I’m having a bit of a Singles Club existential crisis as I try and find the words, which I guess amount to ‘utter bemusement’. It’s quite catchy, but not that catchy really. They sound better singing solo, actually it’s nice hearing them sing together, actually sometimes it’s not. What are they talking about? It’s mainly curiosity keeping me listening to such an oddity; that said, it’s very charming. (6)

Claire Lobenfeld: There are a lot of cool little esoteric details in the beat, but my god I can’t really stand this. I’ve never been an indie-pop person because it’s the perfect confluences of both genre’s preternatural preciousness and I outgrew Mates of State at 14. I need a Sky Ferreira palette cleanser, please. (2.5)

Son Raw: Either Daphne & Celeste had zero traction where I’m from or I was just too busy listening to DMX and M.O.P in 1999 to care. Either way, I have no frame of reference for this but it’s simultaneously less annoying and less exciting than the combined 30 seconds of their older work I watched on YouTube. (5)

4.8

Fetty Wap/Baauer/Dubbel Dutch – ‘Promises’

Brad Stabler: This is the best turn for Fetty Wap in months and that beat is incredible, but I have no idea how it would go over at a party. I’d like to think that if this was saved for last call it would kill and send everyone home on a high note. Peak hours, though? I see nothing but polite statues with goofy grins. A solitary, headphone-assisted (8)

Tayyab Amin: Blatantly a banger. I’m all about that tonal change mid-verse too. The sampled laughter keeps making me check my other browser tabs for noise though. I guess if the club was dead and someone played this the atmosphere wouldn’t sound as dry. (7)

Claire Lobenfeld: NOPE. (0)

William Skar: News of a new Baauer release tends to induce a 360 degree eye roll, so I’m equal parts pleased and troubled to report that ‘Promises’ is, well, rather good. Fetty Wap sings from the pit of his gut, and the slippery, supple instrumental is reminiscent of another tears-of-a-bro classic, Major Lazer’s ‘Get Free’ (7)

Mikey IQ Jones: The hook is strong, Fetty sounds compassionately moving and that off-kilter, vaporous and honking twinklebeat is hypnotic in an unexpected way. Of everything I’ve heard this week, this was the one tune that I actually wanted to replay as well. It’s not exactly a spring/summer classic, but it’s catchier than ‘Trap Queen’ and delivers a “keep your head up, think big, stay grounded” message that says volumes if you’ve any idea how fucked up a landscape Paterson, NJ is in reality and how difficult it can be to escape from it. (6)

Son Raw: You’re better off listening to something off Fetty Wap’s Zoo Style. (6)

5.7

Actress – ‘Bird Matrix’

Mikey IQ Jones: There was much on the divisive Ghettoville that I enjoyed, and I applauded the stark greyscale soundscapes explored throughout, but even in Actress’s best and most colorful work we’ve always suffered supreme issues with editing – more specifically, an egregious lack thereof. Many of even his best tracks go absolutely nowhere after a while, just continually circling around as they clap, blip, and thump like wind-up robot toys until either we lose interest or he does. ‘Bird Matrix’ feels like the rotting corpse of a creature of flight; an ugly being with aesthetic beauty re-contextualized by decay, but with no means to travel and a damaged structure. One sometimes gets to a point after seeing enough dead animals that they begin to grow numb to the pain and fallen majesty they represent. (4)

Brad Stabler: Expecting Actress to zero in on just the really good shit is something that every fan – even begrudging ones – has long since given up on. But this is trying even for him: 13 minutes of a terrific build and all kinds of melodic easter eggs nestled in for those who stick it out. But that’s the catch: with all the musical treasure this could’ve been an amazing seven minutes. But it’s Actress, and trying to pry apart why he does what he does is like trying to peel back a curtain that’s been superglued to concrete. I wish I tolerated Actress less. (6.5)

Claire Lobenfeld: Twells, you’re a real twat for putting a 13-minute long song on the list this week. But the track is murky and meditative enough that it gave me a bunch of time to marinate on what exactly is a BIRD MATRIX: Top quadrant is Nicki Minaj, bottom quadrant is Superhead. Left quadrant is Amber Rose, right quadrant is Khloé Kardashian. I’d like to believe I’m matrixing somewhere in the top right, but I’m on the wagon for April so maybe I just fell off the chart completely. And no, this song sounds nothing like a bird call, but it kept my interest for THE ENTIRE QUARTER OF AN HOUR JOHN MADE ME LISTEN TO IT. (6)

William Skar: ‘Bird Matrix’ is very much Actress in Silver Cloud mode – a slight, off-grey watercolour that chugs on and on without peaks, troughs or swerves. You’ll know how you feel about Actress by now – and this more than delivers – but I could see a less partial listener zoning out by the halfway mark. (7)

Son Raw: Perfect end credits music. Now all we need is a script for a David Cronenberg-directed, post-apocalyptic body horror flick starring Idris Elba and we’re set. (7)

Tayyab Amin: Cement mixers and giant concrete blocks, shifting and morphing, a brutalist maze waiting to be lost in. What sounds like the crunch of brush on snare shakes me like a rattle each and every strike. Submerged in rainfall, clear skies and broken signals, alone but never lonely. Actress’s music is to grow to, introducing itself as an aesthetically pleasing puzzle that gradually unfurls itself, revealing more to and of the listener the deeper they go. (9)

6.7

Minor Science – ‘Glamour’

William Skar: Love this – an inspired synthesis of Dick Raaijmakers, ‘Numbers’-mode Kraftwerk, and the more taciturn end of the Hessle catalogue. (8)

Brad Stabler: Moody and twitchy like a sober loner canvassing a dance floor lit by candles, but the real fun comes when you mess with the tempo. Slides in and out of Tectonic, Rinse and LIES material like a champ. I’m hooked. (8.5)

Tayyab Amin: Yeah I dig this. Love the barrage of kicks as random bubble tea synths ping overhead. Clearly the DAW used to make this was Puzzle Bobble. It’s sorta downcast at the sametime, a bit like being really upset whilst an over-excited puppy hops up to your waist. (7)

Claire Lobenfeld: Like riding Space Mountain when you’ve taken too much recreational lithium – conjuring too many slow motion comets, but also making me want to barf. Where am I? (5)

Mikey IQ Jones: Minor Science’s Trilogy Tapes EP presented an alternate reality in which a producer can take the cues of an artist like Actress and enrich them with a stronger desire to edit, nourish, and push forward. This, unfortunately, left me somewhat flat. Stripped so bare as to almost sound malnourished, it feels more like a chameleonic DJ tool than a composition as engaging on its own. Again, like nearly everything else this week, it wasn’t bad, but just wasn’t that remarkable, either; unlike everything else this week, ‘Glamour’ shows some of the greatest promise to shine in the company of more likeminded brethren. (6)

Son Raw: I know this is meant to be played on a very loud system for very intoxicated people but you can’t expect the pills to do ALL the work – the music’s got to have SOME energy. I like static and bleeps as much as the next man but they’re no substitute for personality. (5)

6.7

Final scores:

Nozinja – ‘Xihukwani’ (8)
Actress – ‘Bird Matrix’ (6.7)
Minor Science – ‘Glamour’ (6.7)
Rihanna – ‘Bitch Better Have My Money’ (6.2)
Fetty Wap/Baauer/Dubbel Dutch – ‘Promises’ (5.7)
Daphne & Celeste – ‘You and I Alone’ (4.8)