With the wildfires across Los Angeles County still burning, many indie labels (including Pure Noise Records) and arts organizations have rallied together to support musicians impacted by the devastation.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Krept & Konan are uniting their community in another way. The legendary UK hip-hop duo announced the launch of their wholesale supermarket, Saveways–Britain’s first inclusive grocery store.
Speaking strictly about the music, several recording artists unveiled their tour dates, including Amaria. In March, the “Back To Me” singer will kick off her first-ever headlining bid, The Free Fallin’ Tour. As far as projects are concerned, dozens of albums or EPs hit streaming platforms. This week, our top independent recommendations include the returns of The Weather Station, Benjamin Booker, Ela Minus, and Yola, a re-imagination of Boilermaker’s discography, a solo debut from Eric Cannata, and goodies from Kathryn Mohr, Mogwai, and Nate Curry.
Some of the album synopsis featured below were provided by their respective record label.
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Benjamin Booker - Lower
Benjamin Booker’s new album, Lower, mixes experimental hip hop, dream and noise pop, and singer-songwriter music into something entirely his own. Booker’s lyrical exploration of pain and longing has been persistent through the changes. Booker doesn’t abandon his signature fuzzy Americana-inspired garage rock and soul sound heard across past work. Instead, he crafts an amalgamation of what is left between the fringes. To stream or order, click here.
Source: Fire Next Time
Boilermaker - Not Enough Time To Get Anything Halfway Done
From the frayed loop of San Diego's white belt '90s scene, Boilermaker provided a subtle counterpoint to the Gravity-obsessed post-hardcore landscape. They called it Leucadia-core, a hybrid of major chord riffs, emotive yelps, angular bass chug, and pounding rhythms, building and releasing with the Swami tides. Not Enough Time To Get Anything Halfway Done compiles the trio of Terrin Durfey, Tim Semple, and Richard Sanderson's complete discography. To stream or order, click here.
Source: Numero Group
Ela Minus - DÍA
Ela Minus' 2020 debut acts of rebellion felt intentionally small, as if pounding inside the club with late-night reverie. Minus’ new follow-up, DÍA is both introspective and expansive. The broad sweep of its songs reveals more of Ela as a person and producer than ever. DÍA is a record about becoming, from a process that entailed self-discovery at a deliberate pace to songs that seem to collectively ask where we go from here, long after we’ve been broken but long before we intend to be broken forever. To stream or order, click here.
Source: Domino Records
Eric Cannata - Holding Onto The Holy
As the founding member of Young the Giant, Coma Culture, and American Pets, Eric Cannata has been a fixture in music. However, the guitarist, songwriter, and producer is finally stepping out on his own. On his debut solo album, Holding Onto the Holy, Cannata explores togetherness and how to love life while the world falls apart, sparked by his relationship with fiancé and musical collaborator Connolly. During ten days of Covid quarantine, the project had its genesis, impelling Cannata to use a scratchy throat and an old microphone to find a new voice, and Holding Onto the Holy was the result. To stream or order, click here.
Source: Industry Houseplant
Kathryn Mohr - Waiting Room
Kathryn Mohr exists in a liminal space of auditory dissociation. Mohr’s new album Waiting Room exists in this same void. Over the course of a month in eastern Iceland, within the walls of a disused fish factory surrounded by remote nature. Mohr spent hours immersed in the writing and recording of this album in a windowless concrete room lit with a string of multicolored light bulbs (seen in the album artwork), taking breaks to wander the factory or disappear up the shoreline—field recorder in hand. What came out of those recording hours are songs inspired by horror as extravagant as limb amputation by a faulty elevator and lyrics as maze-like and misguided as the torturous love and fears they depict. To stream or order, click here.
Source: The Flenser
Mogwai - The Bad Fire
Mogwai’s eleventh studio album, The Bad Fire, is cause for grand celebration. Pulled from the working-class Glaswegian term for Hell, this album (produced by John Congleton) reflects band members' difficult times. Mogwai’s music may be challenging to describe, but it is easy to experience. At punishing volume, it can annihilate your body, leaving you as little more than a head that should, by right, fall helplessly to the ground. Yet the music contains an updraft, a sense of beauty encased in the onslaught. This holds you up, suspended and empowered, reminding you that paradise is your birthright. This is especially true of The Bad Fire. It may have been created in dark conditions, but all that is transcended by the act of four musicians working together here, now, at the moment – the only place where Mogwai exists. To stream or order, click here.
Source: Temporary Residence Ltd
Nate Curry - Left Field
A man in love can accomplish anything. For singer and songwriter Nate Curry, that includes releasing a studio album. On Left Field, instead of running away from the sweeping emotion of love, he proudly wears it on his sleeve. From romantic love, self-love, and paternal love, Curry musters it all up to deliver his most vulnerable project. "This album is full of all the words that we would want our mothers and sisters to hear from the people they love, but in the most artistically challenging yet soothing way possible," says Nate Curry. "With the addition of marriage, relocating to LA from Sacramento, and the birth of my son, this project reflects how I have processed these huge changes in my life with optimism and as much joy as I can find." To stream or order, click here.
Source: Cássio Sound
The Weather Station - Humanhood
The Weather Station's highly anticipated follow-up to 2021’s Ignorance is here. Although she is still deep in thought on Humanhood, The Weather Station works through a crisis of meaning. Within the confusion, the experience birthed the songs that would be molded into Humanhood, a narrative album that, listened to front to back, transcribes the journey from dissociation back toward connection. Much of Humanhood is a riveting and honest document of what it means to be lost, to be hamstrung by confusion, unease, and grief for a period so long you begin to wonder if there is an end. Humanhood emerges as a tether offered up here for anyone else feeling disconnected from the vertiginous reality of right now. To stream or order, click here.
Source: Fat Possum
Yola - My Way EP
Freedom is bliss; for Yola, that’s what her new EP My Way is all about. On My Way, Yola reminds outsiders of her genre-fluid ethos, drawing inspiration from progressive R&B, 70-80’s soulful pop, 90’s R&B, neo-soul, and UK broken beats. “‘My Way’ is not about creative dictatorship,” says Yola. “It’s about being free to do what the songs need because I don’t need to guide people towards allowing me agency, free of any restriction, so I can tell my story more fully than ever. This is me most musically free and maybe a little nostalgic.” To stream or order, click here.
Source: S-Curve
