New Tunes 9.6.2023

Hello music lovers! 🎵

Friday is here and from the treasure trove of contemporary music-making, I've dug out some suggestions of new tunes and sounds from well-known and lesser-known musicians for the weekend and beyond.
#newtunes is on again!

As usual, if you don't like something you can skip it or comment.

Music4life

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Bob Dylan - I'll Be Your Baby Tonight

"Shadow Kingdom", Dylan's last album, is actually a 50-minute black-and-white concert recording made during the pandemic. It was released as a streaming event, and this week the soundtrack is released as an eponymous album subtitled "The Early Songs Of Bob Dylan".
Thirteen well-known songs with new arrangements with an up-to-date backing band. The selected song "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" is from the "John Wesley Harding" album and is a bit more in the rockabilly style. It still sounds fresh and exciting after fifty years and shows what a superb singer-songwriter he is.

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Lava La Rue - Renegade

A 25-year-old queer woman with the real name Ava Laurel is descended from Latvian and Jamaican immigrants from West London. She's been on the music scene since 2018 and it's been great to watch her develop her creative potential. First rapping, singing and playing instruments (guitar, bass, synth), then designing by creating creations for the band Lazy Oaf and directing by directing music videos for the band Wet Leg.
And of course she's back to music, advocating a return to the hippie love years of '67 and the raver love years of '89 in reincarnated cutting-edge indie pop. I'm sure she's a new star on the rise.

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King Krule - Flimsier

Archy Marshall, or King Krule, has released the opening song for the soon-to-be-released album "Space Heavy". Flimsier is rich with hazy synthesizers, and buzzing guitars from "one of the most original songwriters of his generation" (so says The Times), whose baritone is here reduced to a whisper. Prepare an atmosphere of calm before the coming storm called "Space Heavy".

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Jon Batiste - Be Who You Are

If you want sweet and poppy pop music that heralds summer and sunshine and happiness and more, here's Jon Batiste, who, with his musician friends (Camilolo, J.I.D, Cat Burns, and others) and with the generous help of Coke Studio, has presented a song that celebrates the power of staying true to ourselves, because the real magic happens when people are authentic and accept each other's differences.
Oh, and he's also promoting Coca-Cola...

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Gráinne Duffy - Well Well Well

A new musician for me, "Dirt Woman Blues" is her fifth studio album. Originally from Ireland, she works and performs in America, where she has certainly found her feet.
American music critics are hailing her as the heir apparent to Rory Gallagher, and Duffy is indeed bravely carrying the torch of the Irish blues legend's musical legacy. Of course, it's not easy or simple, but her story continues.
The album's opening song "Well, Well, Well" is a special blend of Irish mystique, her lovely vocals, an incredible groove, an outstanding band and above all great lyrics.

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CEL - Eiweißangriff

The CEL is an artistic duo, a self-proclaimed laboratory for discovering musical blends of styles from early German New Wave and Krautrock. "Gegenwelt" or Counterworld is the second album by German multimedia artist Felix Kubin and Polish percussionist Hubert Zemler. The resulting union of the Hamburg experimental scene and the Warsaw School's expertise has established a link between contemporary electronic music and the musical legacy of the German alternative scene. Using sound elements from the Cold War era, they stand in the context of today's broader social developments, which are, among other things, marked by geopolitical polarization.
It's a kind of product of nostalgic values in a newer form, which sounds unique and refreshing in the context of today's music.

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Asher Gamedze - Locomotion

South African percussionist and composer Asher Gamedze released his album "Turbulence and Pulse" in May this year, distributed worldwide by the Chicago-based label International Anthem, which preserves the legacy of spiritual and political brass band music.
Asher's central thesis is that the conventional way of teaching history misleads us, that history becomes something that happens to us rather than something we co-create. He draws a comparison with the playing of music, where the poetic English term 'keeping time' is something that is the responsibility of all the musicians present, not just the director or leader. The synergy of all the participants justifies the naming of the album "Turbulence and Pulse" with its thematic display of groundedness, stability, and the discipline around which curious nonchalance accumulates.
Contemporary jazz, which absorbs all kinds of styles and genres, allows for this way of thinking about music, discovering new sonic images, and pushing the boundaries of creativity forward.

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Ital Tek - The Mirror

Brighton-based electronic producer Alan Myson has been releasing music under the name Ital Tek for over a decade. The album "Timeproof" is his eighth in a row, exploring the intersection between dubstep jungle, ambient, and footwork.
For Myson, the most important part of the music is its emotive quality, which in practice means that he mostly starts creating songs around emotive melodic progressions and builds them around them in the end. The percussion is given a supporting role, which is definitely audible, as his songs often seem emotionally intense and melodically divided.
We hear synths modulated in such a way that they are audibly harder than the textures around them. We move through layers of sound shapes and textures, which he intertwines in an extraordinary way and so that we cannot remain indifferent to the sounds he produces.