LOVE HENRY
Molly Lewis, ØXN, Teke::Teke, Lamin Fofana, Damo Suzuki RIP, Max Porter, Stereolab and more.
Hello, Hello here’s what I’ve been listening to during February.
IN HEAVY ROTATION
♩MOLLY LEWIS (EXOTICA/CINEMATIC) Molly Lewis whose brand of cinematic exotica have made her a very dear artist of mine, have covered Spanish singer Jeanette's '74 hit "Porque te Vas". This is a well known Eurodisco/pop hit and IYKYK. Her album “On the Lips” is out now on Jagjaguwar, and this is NOT the only good thing on it. I picked this one because I started a series called Song Archeology on bsky (a twitter alternative)
♩ØXN (MODERN IRISH FOLK/INDIE): If you've been following Lankum as devotedly as I am (which you should definitely be if you aren’t), you know vocalist Radie Peat. I discovered Lisa O’Neill through a video with her and RP, who had a solo album in 2023 too. And because there’s an incredible Dublin music scene boom these days, this collab between Lisa, Radie and the Percolator peeps also had a solo album in 2023. And him too, and them too... So watch this and deep dive into the Dublin music scene right away.
♩TEKE::TEKE (JAPANESE WORLD/FOLK/FUSION): Montreal based Japanese world folk dance fusion band Teke:Teke cover Bankrobber by The Clash.
♩LAMIN FOFANA (ELECTRONIC/AMBIENT): I wrote about a late-night wake on bsky:
“I dozed off and woke up on the couch in the middle of the night on the weekend. I skipped sleep and instead fired up the computer and found rare focus. Lamin Fofana's "The Open Boat" was the soundtrack to this peaceful flowing state of mind.”
Here though I’ll share another piece that really gets you into a concentrated flow state. I’m thinking of making a playlist for these type of tunes.
UNDOMONDO DISCOVER WEEKLY
This week's playlist is relatively short, clocking in at around an hour with 15 songs, mostly w/ jazzy, soulful, and radio-friendly tracks, apart from the latest Mary Halvorson? (which is still extremely radio-friendly compared to her other stuff, IYKYK).
New single from Beth Gibbons of Portishead fame, Ambrose Akinmusire collabbing with guitar god Bill Frisell, Jungle’s Back on 74 remixed, Molly Lewis whom I shared above covering Por que te Vas, New stuff from nu soul hitmaker Jalen Ngonda, soulful hip-hop from Mo Kolours and more..
♩RABBIT HOLE #1: (CALYPSO/SOCA)
I fell into a rabbit hole of Calypso and Soca one Monday, while I was listening to Mighty Sparrow’s Marajhin - which has an Indian theme - I promptly wondered what a Trinidadian Calypso singer has to do with India and found out about this wonderful old Internet writeup from 2001, detailing years of Calypso competitions, songs and their impacts on India.
ONE had to be there, meaning anywhere in Trinidad and Tobago, to understand the impact the Mighty Sparrow's "Jean and Dinah" had on calypso as an art form when The Birdie sang that song in 1956. I was just 10 years old when it hit the airwaves-well, on the two radio stations we had at the time-but I remember it as if it were yesterday.
👀 WATCH: Watched an incredible interview with the only surviving member of the original Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Qawwali Party, with tears in my eyes.
♩RABBIT HOLE #2: (ZOUK/KADANS/KOMPAS) : This infectious groove is by Jean-Claude Naimro of Kassav' which I now learnt was THE band responsible for the Zouk phenomenon.
Zouk is a relative of kadans & kompas which are both French Caribbean music styles, and the funny thing is kadans & kompas are the same names for the same Haitian rhythm:
"Webert Sicot left Nemours Jean-Baptiste's compas band and called his music cadence to differentiate it from compas especially when he took it abroad, and so the rivalry between them created these names."
Compare and contrast: (kadans)
(kompas)
What’s funny is: “The competition between the two culminated in a soccer match between the two artists and their respective bands, which ended in a 1–1 tie.”
👀 WATCH : Stereolab: Live at Le Guess Who?
♩READ: Cassette tapes are making a surprise comeback in Japan
Taro Tsunoda, who has been running "Waltz," a cassette tape specialty store in Tokyo's Nakameguro district since 2015, notes that the business environment surrounding cassettes has "drastically changed from how it used to be when we opened."
🎚️MIX: Millie Mc Kee serves a wonderful Percussive Dub, Spiritual Jazz & Psychedelic Grooves Mix on My Analog Journal
👀 WATCH: Well this is not music, but spoken word / poetry by Max Porter on the Palestine/Israel affairs and the armament industry, and it’s one of the most moving things I’ve experienced in a while.
🥀 LIVES LIVED: DAMO SUZUKI (CAN) : It seems Krautrock originators Can are no more.
"Damo's kind soul and cheeky smile will be forever missed. He will be joining Michael [Karoli], Jaki [Liebezeit] and Holger [Czukay] for a fantastic jam!"
Born Kenji Suzuki in Kobe, Japan in January 1950, he spent his late teenage years travelling around Europe and busking. He met Czukay and Liebezeit by chance in 1970 while performing on the street in Munich as the two Can members sat outside a café.
Vocalist Malcolm Mooney had recently left Can at that point after performing on their first album, Monster Movie, and so Czukay and Liebezeit invited Suzuki to join the fold. He took up their offer and performed with them on stage that night.
His free-spirited music ignored genre boundaries. “If you’re a creative person,” he once said, “it’s important to break rules.”
See you next month!