Into the magic land: this week at South
It's a strong week of new releases, make yourself comfortable...After thirteen years away, Boards of Canada return with Inferno, a sprawling and uneasy record deepening the darker atmosphere of Tomorrow’s Harvest while holding onto the melodies and mysterious broadcasts that made them so influential in the first place. Paul McCartney’s The Boys of Dungeon Lane turns inward, reflecting on childhood in post-war Liverpool and the earliest days spent alongside John Lennon and George Harrison before Beatlemania. This one on limited pink vinyl, which is already sold out at source.
Elsewhere, Gigi Masin’s Movement finds the Venetian ambient pioneer balancing melancholic synth textures, gentle rhythmic motion and luminous electronic drift, while Danalogue, best known from The Comet Is Coming, launches his solo project with the cosmic electronics and widescreen synthesis of Teleportations. Kurt Vile returns with Philadelphia’s Been Good To Me, another warm and understated set of jangling guitars and loose, reflective songwriting rooted firmly in his home city. The Sleeves, the new duo of Jack Cooper and Tara Cunningham, strip things right back into sparse, intimate songs built around silence, space and intertwined guitars, while Mabe Fratti and Bill Orcutt’s Almost Waking drifts through fractured improvisation and fragile melody into something strange and hypnotic.
Brian Jackson’s Now More Than Ever revisits the music he created alongside Gil Scott-Heron with help from Black Thought, Moodymann and Masters At Work, reconnecting songs like “The Bottle” and “Winter In America” with contemporary urgency and dancefloor energy. Joey Quiñones’ Inna Soul Steady Situation pulls together Chicano soul, reggae and oldies influences into a warm and deeply personal record shaped by East LA sound system culture. We’ve also got anniversary editions of The Smashing Pumpkins’ Gish and Danzig’s first two albums, all returning on new coloured vinyl editions.
→ Recommended
Orange Juice’s debut still feels impossibly fresh more than forty years on. Beneath the jangling guitars and sharp pop hooks there’s something quietly radical happening; post-punk awkwardness colliding with Northern soul, disco rhythms, scratchy funk guitars and Edwyn Collins’ wry, romantic songwriting. It’s the looseness and warmth running through the whole record that really lasts. One of the defining records of early ’80s independent music, and still endlessly influential. First pressing right here.
