New Tunes 11.8.2023

Hello music lovers! 🎵

Hot and wet, an almost catastrophic summer, just like the music we listen to these days :)
If in my previous #newtunes post I introduced the famous and celebrated artists on the world music scene, today will be a bit different. Musicians unknown to the general public will fight for our attention for the weekend and beyond!

It's an unknown but complex music of different genres and styles, maybe it will catch someone's attention, and I'll be glad to have shared something useful.
And whoever doesn't like something should just skip it.

Music4life!

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Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog - Connection

Ceramic Dog is a trio made up of Marc Ribot, Shahzad Ismaily, and Chas Smith. In their fifteen years together, they have more or less experimented with rock and jazz, and that's also the case in this latest album Connection, which is represented by the track of the same name. Repetitive two-tone guitars with monotonous drums and at times floating organ tell of a fading consciousness in a world of shattered beliefs and volatile bonds.
They are all established musicians and play in other bands, and Ceramic Dog is like a kind of valve through which they can channel their feelings and attitudes to the world, something they may not be able to do in other bands.
I recommend it.

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MOTORBIKE - MOTORBIKE

Motorbike is a young American punk band and their first album is called Motorbike. It's one of the proofs that after 70 years of rock'n'roll, you can still do something new, but it's really a retro permutation of existing sounds, firmly grounded in 70s punk and still sounding fresh. Just like the song of the same name that opens the album. Rough guitar riffs, each on its own channel, vocals filtered and at times unintelligible, with all the energy and immediacy of live music.
I recommend listening to the whole album.

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KNOWER - The Abyss

Knower is a new name for me, they've been around for more than five years, and they recently released their fifth album Knower Forever.
Most of all, I find it very cool that their perfectly articulated technically, structurally, and harmonically complex music is packaged in pop songs that are acceptable even for the mainstream.
I wouldn't consider them in the context of jazz, though. Apart from the fact that the musicians learned jazz theory in school, their music has nothing to do with the wider jazz movement. But it can be argued that it's excellent pop music that masks complexity with danceability and more or less accessible lyrics.
As somebody wrote somewhere - Stevie Wonder on crack :)

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Ale Hop & Laura Robles - Son de los diablos

Alejandra Cárdenas or Ale Hop and Laura Robles, are from Peru and work in Berlin.
Ale Hop builds his experimental sound worlds with a focus on electric guitar with synthesized modulations and other digital technologies to create mainly contemporary electronic music. Laura, meanwhile, travels musically in the primarily analog orbit of the rhythms of the cajón, a Peruvian folk rebel instrument.
They have found a common interest in exploring Peru's cultural history of Afro-Peruvian music in relation to Spanish colonialism and in imagining possible contemporary interpretations of this legacy.
This is how their first album Agua Dulce was born, an improvisation of the cajón with various Afro-Latin dance rhythms such as landó or zamacueca, and a fusion of the electronic elements of the noise, and drone through the electric guitar.
The song Son de los diablos is the introduction to this dark and apocalyptic album. Maybe it's not for everyone.

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Monika Roscher Bigband - Queen Of Spades

When we hear the phrase, big band, we think of the great swing bands of the 50s. Big band music and playing have of course changed throughout history. And here we have the opportunity to listen to a current interpretation of big band music - the weird big band of German jazz musician, guitarist, and composer Monika Roscher, who released her third album Witchy Activities and the Maple Death in May this year.
Monika's Bigband has formed twelve years ago and consists of eighteen musicians, using variations on the theme of composed jazz as a form - in addition to the orthodox collection of saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and rhythm section, the band also features flutes, sampler, and electronic components. The enigmatic Monika and her ensemble maneuver between progressive rock, colorful pop, and free-jazz traditions. The vocal lines are reminiscent of Björk, black midi freaks, or even Frank Zappa.
For fans, of course.

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The Maggie Pills - Bright The Brightest Light

The Maggie Pills are Australian punks from Melbourne, with their first album Hope is a Risk, from which the song Bright The Brightest Light is taken.
As the band members say, they wanted to test whether hope is still possible through these anomalies of contemporary Australian society (nihilism, empty values, the terror of time, the importance of individual choices, social destruction, pervasive corruption, individual numbness, inexorable injustice and unattainable social expectations).
But what do I know, it seems to me that these anomalies are everywhere, not just in Australia...

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MIRAR - Lisette

I know nothing, well, very little, actually, about this performer.
He's from France, Leo Watremez, one-man band, a master of acoustic jazz guitar judging by the recordings, but here in a whole new light, with two recordings so far under the name Mirar.
YouTube suggested it to me, and I was attracted by this distorted guitar sound, the so-called "thall", with its rhythmic complexity and fast, short riffs, like spikes, which are embedded in the basic structure and rhythm of the song. I'll definitely keep following this guy, and I recommend a listen to all fans of this sub-genre.

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Oxbow - Icy White & Crystalline

Oxbow, from San Francisco, is a group with a 35-year history. They've always been on the avant-garde side of guitar brass, damn musicians who don't really need anything anymore (well, some $ is useful anyway...), and they remind us of themselves after six years, when they come out with their eighth album Love's Holiday, with songs about love, relationships, family, and children.
Icy White and Chrystaline is the album's opening song, energetic, with wailing vocals, uncompromising razor-sharp guitar riffs, and a solid and steady rhythm.
Recommended.