Mauro gave us a fantastic article in March on the rhythms of his home country Dominican Republic and as we loved his writing so much we’ve asked him to review a few records that we’ve been listening to between us… Mauro is a songwriter, musician, electronic producer, and freelance creative currently based in London. He is one half of experimental jazz duo Error Subcutáneo.
Los Wembler's de Iquitos - Lamento Selvático (Names You Can Trust)
"The sound of the jungle!" screams the lead vocalist at the top of his lungs, expelling air like solar flares. The huge 60's wave of psychedelic electrics hit Peru especially hard, birthing experiments such as its Peruvian chicha and this "cumbia amazónica" as the singer brilliantly puts it. Like most Latin American music, there are influences from across the region, ranging from guaracha patterns to merengue riffs and syncopating semicorcheas within the beat, reminiscent of Brazilian pagode vocabulary. 'Mi Caprichito' is an everyday love story about a young lad who asks for his bird's hand in marriage, even if the mom is not too fond of him at first. The young lad is also timidly aware of her dad's distaste for him, and I can't get enough of it, including that tape crackle. Hot!
Yukino Inamine - Ohshima Yangoo Bushi (Tower Of Dub Recordings)
After retrieving her sanshin as a keepsake from an older relative, young Yukino added her voice to it and angels came swooping down from the ozone layer. On this fascinating collaboration with dub producer Harikuyamaku from Okinawa, the air is rife with nostalgia, and the drafts of harmonic dissonance are tamed with elegance. Her clean, silvered voice finds its flow on top of a variation of the sakura pentatonic scale, and Harikuyamaku sails the ship with subtle melodics and three-dimensional percussion, not to mention incredible mixing techniques. Like a remora on top of a shark, this oriental dub works best with a good sound system, as well as an appetite for oddball groove.
BUY HERE
Speaker Music - Percussive Therapy
An overdriven assembly line of thoughts, Deforrest Brown, Jr. holds great interest towards the repurposing of cultural artefacts from post-industrial societies as a form of power redistribution. A futurist at heart, his obsession with systemic frameworks is obvious with his distorted, mechanical patterns and screeching metallics, all of them brimming with sheen and awe. As if exposing corruption through surplus, (of volume or otherwise), his ethos is what gives the EP its distinct, expansive sound. Aside from the outright Detroit influence, Deforrest's input replaces effort with concept, and falls into panic consistently.
BUY HERE
Village of the Sun feat. Binker & Moses - Village Of The Sun (Gearbox)
A journey that ends where it keeps on restarting, there is an idea of a better time, plaid and douce, nonetheless after its lost some of its effervescence. I love the flashes of broken beat textures and Michael Brecker references, but the limited improvisational phrasing leaves a lot to be desired. The formulaic climaxes are also evident, but 'Ted' piqued my interest quite a bit (being such a huge Nintendo fan), and it's certainly the go-to track on this critically acclaimed 12". (Editor’s note - ‘Ted’ appears like a hybrid of spiritual jazz and Octave One era Detroit techno!).
Moodymann - KDJ-49 (KDJ US)
Long gone are the days of '[Logo]' and 'Oceans', where house aesthetics in Moody's productions reigned supreme. Twenty years after Forevernevermore, Moody's works feel more like an ode to Black culture rather than his usual club-oriented expressions. His music has always existed within this universality, but this is where KDJ-49 unequivocally succeeds, constructing a sample-based manifesto of Black resistance with the classic storytelling devices of the Detroit legend: spoken word, field recordings, gospel passages, disco Moogs, abrupt MPC cuts, and many many more. All of these tools accompany cryptic, literary coding across the record, my favourite instance of this being on 'Taken Away', which has heavy moments that make reference to death, police brutality and the current socio-political climate in America.