New music from Jlin, Aldous Harding and more.

SERvin’ Up! – w/c May 22, 2017

Coldcut X On-U-Sound – Outside The Echo Chamber
Aldous Harding – Party
Mountain Goats – Goths
Malik Abdul-Rahmaan – Field Research Malaysia
(Sandy) Alex G – Rocket
John Moreland – Big Bad Luv
Jlin – Black Origami
Los Straitjackets – What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding?
!!! – Shake The Shudder
Hoops – Routines
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Hello,
Footwork is the frenetic music borne out of Chicago in the 1990s the soundtrack the city’s famous street-dance battles. Like the wild but fluid and seamless movements of competitors, footwork pushes rhythm and energy to the front: it is everything. Melody is hardly par for the course, and the course is one real super rush in the right hands. Working as Jlin, Jerilynn Patton’s music sounds simultaneously furious and beautiful, such is her compositional precision and measure. Her second album, Black Origami, marches forward as well as left right, up and down, with a truly global span in her mesh of sound sources – Tibetan, Japanese, African, Indian to name but a few – in a rewiring of ritual elements to sit in her complex patterns that truly mirror the everyday. It is confronting, exhilarating and one rabbit hole you want to go down.

Malik Abdul-Rahmaan did some time in the US Air Force, which had him stationed in Japan. His Top Gun wings look to have been clipped by the hip hop scene he discovered in Japan. He delved into production there for the first time and started clocking up cool beats for rappers. He’s since notched up some great work for the likes of Ghostface Killah but his solo work takes a deeper turn. Abdul-Rahmaan has started his ‘Field Research’ series looking for his hip hop to capture the essence of a country or continent he’s visited. First up is Field Research Malaysia. Soaking up South-East Asian funk, Malaysia’s fondness for garage rock and Bollywood as well as more traditional sounds, Abdul-Rahmaan has fashioned a set of dusty beat excursions rich with the kind of life that mere crate digging for cool samples can’t reach. Field Research Malaysia shows yet again that hip hop is truly world music.

It was Sydney indie mainstay Spunk Records that brought the world New Zealander Aldous Harding’s self-titled debut, an album with more reference points than a library but still emerged a curious and compelling work of folk. The iconic 4AD label has now taken on her unvarnished charms and the follow-up comes with the extra polish you might expect from such a leap. Working with regular PJ Harvey collaborator John Parish for her second album Party, Harding has found a fine dynamic between the peculiar idiosyncrasy she invests unsparingly in her songs and her clarity of insight. Fashioning a delicately rendered chamber-folk album spooked with gothic, theatrical leanings, Harding has a tenderness writ large by a slow-burning intensity. There’s no immediate handle on Harding’s songs, but there’s a kind of magnetism at play that after a point you can’t turn away from.

Also, new tunes from Courtney Barnett, Mount Kimbie, Ribongia, Beach House, Future Haunts, Cigarettes After Sex and Jason Isbell.

Enjoy it all on 2SER,

Andrew