J-Slow
A compilation of late-70s experimentalism, French hip-hop noir and terror-inducing minimalist beats are the order of the day for Getintothis’ Patrick Clarke on his latest new music round-up.
Every time the hazy flow of Mad Brains pops up it feels like too long since we last heard from the Widness rapper. This time round he’s featuree on WYN, the new E.P from French rapper J-Slow, Cash Mire, available as a free download from his website now.
As welcome a return it is from the Merseysider on the track, it’s a welcome signpost to check out the rest, an opaquely atmospheric listen sprinkled with noir piano and sax and topped with J-Slow‘s own insouciant flow.
Left-field London producer Crypt Thing, meanwhile, dropped his latest, most uncompromisingly sparse track Shodan last week, cut from the EP of the same nae and his first for label Squareglass
The track excels itself purely by being so damn unsettling; old-school sci-fi horror tones and eerie detached spoken word samples bristling in and out of earshot atop ominious thumps and chimes. It’s enough to induce an anxiety attack, and all the more brilliant for it.
Finally, I’m around four decades late to the music of Vivien Goldman, finally, whose remarkably unprecedented recordings from the late 70s and early 80s that preceded her later career as a journalist and broadcaster have this month been plucked from relative obscurity by Staubgold recordings.
Sampled in years to come by the likes of The Roots and Madlib, the collection, Resolutionary, compiles her work as a solo artist, with avant garde new wave outfit The Flying Lizards, and in Paris-based duo Chantagne, between 1979 and 1982. It’s an impeccable, pioneering body of work, lyrically astounding and boundary-pushing musically with twists of formative post-punk, afrobeat and reggae to be savoured.
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