In June, Hubert Lenoir returned to announce his second album, with a track called “SECRET” that featured drums from Mac DeMarco and contributions from Kirin J Callinan, and arrived alongside a feature on the exciting Quebecois artist in The FADER. Today, Lenoir is sharing a second preview from the album in the form of the single “DIMANCHE SOIR,” which involves Future producer High Klassified, and coincides with the formal announce of the album’s September 15th release date and a new change to its title, which is now PICTURA DE IPSE : Musique directe.
WATCH: the video for Hubert Lenoir’s “DIMANCHE SOIR” video on YouTube
“Coming from a conservative background and going to school in the countryside of Quebec, a lot of my parents’ friends or partners thought I was this weirdo queer artsy no good loser and once I achieved success with my art in the last 2-3 years the whole vibe started to change,” says Lenoir of the track. “I remember being so confused by it. The song talks about social pressure coming from your family circle and materialism. How weirdly your social status and wealth can switch the opinion people have on you.”
The first thing I noticed when I heard Rochelle Jordan for the first time was how effortlessly she blends soul, R&B, hip hop, house, and (especially) trip hop. Those last two bits are what really hooked me. There are plenty of great R&B artists out there who blend soul, R&B, and hip hop, but few of them add house and trip hop elements – and fewer do it well.
Jordan does it quite well on her new record, Play with the Changes. The trip hop touches are noticeable right out of the gate on the album’s opener, “Love U Good.” Quick, electro beats and swirling synths dance around Jordan’s hypnotizing voice…and then that house beat kicks in and you’re floating on air and believing beyond hope that Jordan is actually talking to you alone. The house grooves continue on “Got Em,” which will be played all over dance clubs once they open up in a post-COVID world. Rightfully so, as the synth-bass alone is worth cover charge.
“Next to You” is another sexy track with Jordan’s pleas for more than snuggles as sharp synths and kinky bedroom beats pretty much make you want to get naked. “All Along” is a fun track with peppy beats and samples and Jordan saying she’s looking for someone she can trust and “Someone to spark me up.” Meow. Excuse me while I release some steam from under my collar.
The bass of “Broken Steel” hits hard, but not as hard as Jordan’s vocal work – which is gorgeous – and her lyrics about the daily struggles of black women to be strong every day while carrying sometimes enormous crosses that we can’t (or don’t want to) see. “Better shut my mouth. If I sing my feelings, then they’ll say I am too loud. Blend into the crowd. Once they see my color, then they’ll think that I’m too proud. They’ll think I’m super-tough and made of silver stuff, all while I’m falling apart.” Damn. You think it’s a sexy jam at first, and then Jordan puts on a pair of brass knuckles that read “TRUTH” and wallops you in the forehead.
“Count It” blends birdsong with gooey, thick bass and Jordan telling her lover, “If you ever leave, I might be lonely, but if you ever leave, I won’t be beggin’.” She’ll make it without you, me, or anyone else. The opening beats and synths of “Already” would fit perfectly onto a Thievery Corporation record, and Jordan says, “Yeah, I’m good to go. Nothing personal.” after a break-up. Her ex has offered apologies and a good time, but it’s too late. She’s already moved onto better things (a dance floor being among them, judging from this song’s groove).
Jordan soon has “Nothing Left” to give her lover (apart from sharp synth-snare drums and brooding bass) after trying, again and again, to make their relationship work. She’s finally had enough and is leaving to replenish herself. “Lay” opens with Jordan leaving a message for someone to call her back before she sings about being worried about her lover being hurt whenever he leaves her sight due to her watching too much news and seeing what’s happening to black men across the country. “Your head’s always on a swivel. I like it better when it’s on my pillow…You’re safer with me when I’m watching you sleep,” she sings.
“This could be something, or nothing,” Jordan sings on “Something” – an agile track that has a bass line and beats that seem to move in multiple directions at once and Jordan wondering if her new beau is going to be “the one” or “the none,” so to speak. “Dancing Elephants” will have you bouncing next to them in the club. The thumps and bumps are undeniable, as are Jordan’s lyrics about wanting to keep dancing with her lover despite knowing the relationship isn’t going to last. They’re dancing around the elephant in the room. “This is all we know, this is how it goes,” she says. They’ll dance, things will seem better for a while, but that elephant will still be there in the morning. The closer, “Situation,” brings in a little bit of drum and bass music to go with Jordan’s falsetto and lyrics about realizing she’s fallen harder for her lover than she initially realized.
Jordan can not only blend musical styles well, she can also pen love songs that will make you swoon one moment and sit up straight the next. Play with the Changes is one of the best records of 2021 so far, and Jordan seems ready to be one of the Next Big Things – but part of me can’t help but wonder if she’d prefer to stay somewhat on the fringe (which is totally bad-ass).
Keep your mind open.
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Los Angeles-based artist Rochelle Jordan releases a new single, “SOMETHING,” from her forthcoming album, Play With the Changes, out April 30th on Young Art Records. Following a string of singles – “NEXT 2 YOU,” “ALL ALONG,” and “GOT’ EM,” “SOMETHING” was produced by Machinedrum and continues to highlight not just Jordan’s own personal evolution, but a path to pushing her sound forward. “I took a bit of time in 2016 to reflect back on my previous project and realized I had been sitting in the more emotional side of myself and was speaking to being hurt a lot,” says Jordan. “‘Something’ was the start of me rebelling against my more vulnerable side and learning to let go of expectations. I wanted to learn to have an attitude of ‘What will be, will be’ and that opened up the direction of where my writing would go for this project, less emotional, more nonchalant, and straight-up taking control of myself and situations. Something is a reflection of that mindset for sure.”
Machinedrum adds: “Rochelle and I have been collaborating since 2015 and have built a very strong musical relationship and close friendship since then. She’s one of my favorite artists to work with as she’s forward-thinking, incredibly talented, and has a timeless voice. ‘Something’ was one of the first tracks Rochelle and I collaborated on. I loved that she resonated with this off-kilter beat I had made. I knew we were going to do great things together based on how beautifully she wrote to the beat. I’m thrilled and honored to be a part of her journey. It’s been an amazing experience working so closely with her and KLSH on this album, I’m super proud of what we’ve done together!” Listen to Rochelle Jordan’s “Something”
Produced by Jordan’s longtime collaborator KLSH, alongside Machinedrum, and Jimmy Edgar, Play With the Changes presents Jordan as a modern heir in a lineage of powerhouse vocalists with style and imagination. After a contemplative period marked by spiritual and artistic growth, Jordan returned with a slew of ethereal soul – collaborations with Jimmy Edgar, Machinedrum, JacquesGreene, and J-E-T-S, all leading up to the radiant breakthrough that is her new album, Play With the Changes.
Defying categorization to create a project full of slinky, dancefloor-packing burners that channel her U.K. roots, Play With the Changes is reminiscent of Jordan’s childhood nights spent listening to her brother’s 2-step hymns from the other side of the wall. These are songs of experience: grappling with depression, homesickness, and struggles with an industry that rarely has room for true originals – especially ones who write all their own music. But they are unmistakably songs of triumph. Pre-order / Pre-save Play With the Changes
Los Angeles-based artist Rochelle Jordan announces her new album, Play With the Changes, out April 30th on TOKiMONSTA’s Young Art Records, and today presents new single/video, “NEXT 2 YOU.” For Jordan, a desire for sonic expansion has long been embedded into her fusion of futuristic and ancestrally soulful R&B. To hear a Rochelle Jordan song is to absorb a blend of sampledelic 90s pop, vintage UK house and garage, 31st century electronic bangers, airy late night ballads, and progressive hip-hop. On Play With the Changes, Jordan showcases not just her own personal evolution, but a path to pushing sound forward. Produced by KLSH, Machinedrum, and Jimmy Edgar, the album presents her as a modern heir in a lineage of powerhouse vocalists with style and imagination: everyone from Whitney Houston to Celine Dion, Aaliyah to Amerie, Kelis to Mariah Carey.
Following singles “GOT EM” and “ALL ALONG,” “NEXT 2 YOU” is an alluring R&B track backed by a 2-step beat and radiant, celestial synths. The accompanying video was directed by Lissyelle Laricchia. “When KLSH first played me this beat, I thought it was so jarring and unconventional that I fell in love with it,” says Jordan. “It really took me back to the days when I obsessed over Deadmau5 and Artful Dodger, but this was a very futuristic sound I hadn’t quite heard before. It’s as strange as it sounds, as it feels, and is as beautiful and unique as I love for my music to be. As far as the lyrics go, the song is about what it says. I’m trying to get next to you.”
Born in London to British-Jamaican parents, Jordan and her family relocated to the eastside of Toronto in the early ‘90s. Her father, a drummer, encouraged her love of art and instilled an appreciation for Northern soul, and Jamaican reggae and dancehall. Bleeding through the walls of her childhood bedroom, the adolescent Jordan soaked in the record collection of her older brother: funky UK house, nocturnal drum and bass, garage, and all the gospel samples contained therein.
Jordan’s first releases ROJO (2011) and Pressure (2012) revealed an effortlessness to her left-field R&B sound, blending sultriness with grit, confidence and a playful experimental streak. After relocating to LA, Jordan’s career swiftly elevated. She toured with Jessie Ware, collaborated with Childish Gambino(Donald Glover) on his 2014 Grammy-nominated album, Because the Internet, and landed a stint doing voice over work for the Adult Swim show, Black Dynamite, where she appeared in a memorable episode featuring Erykah Badu, Chance the Rapper, and Mel B. of the Spice Girls. Jordan’s first complete statement, 2014’s 1021, produced the acclaimed singles “Lowkey” and “Follow Me.” Pitchfork named the latter one of the most essential post-Drake Toronto tracks, calling 1021 “one of the best Canadian contemporary R&B albums of the last five years.”
After a contemplative period marked by spiritual and artistic growth, Jordan returned with a slew of ethereal soul – collaborations with Jimmy Edgar, Machinedrum, JacquesGreene, and J-E-T-S. It all led up to the radiant breakthrough that is her new album, Play With the Changes.
Defying categorization to create a project full of slinky, dancefloor-packing burners that channel her U.K. roots, Play With the Changes is reminiscent of Jordan’s childhood nights spent listening to her brother’s 2-step hymns from the other side of the wall. These are songs of experience: grappling with depression, homesickness, and struggles with an industry that rarely has room for true originals – especially ones who write all their own music. But they are unmistakably songs of triumph. Pre-order / Pre-save Play With the Changes
Play with the Changes Tracklist: 1. LOVE U GOOD 2. GOT EM 3. NEXT 2 YOU 4. ALL ALONG 5. BROKEN STEEL FT. Farrah Fawx 6. COUNT IT 7. ALREADY 8. NOTHING LEFT 9. LAY 10. SOMETHING 11. DANCING ELEPHANTS 12. SITUATION
Keep your mind open.
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Audiovisual artist, vocalist and experimental producer DEBBY FRIDAY has shared her new single & video “RUNNIN”.
Shedding the previous layers of noise and catharsis, the Vancouver-based artist drives home a snaking synth-rap jam that’s primed with electric potential. Speaking about her thrilling new single, she says:
“This new record is about pure expression. I don’t feel like I need to exorcise anything from myself anymore. I wanted to to push myself in different directions and see what would happen and I think I accomplished what I set out to do. “RUNNIN’” is a cheeky song that has DEBBY FRIDAY themes present, but now I’m having so much more fun.”
A trippy experiment in exposure techniques, “RUNNIN” is brought to life by its own hypnotic video, which was shot on 35mm and directed by FRIDAY and Ryan Ermacora. Filmed near Hope in British Columbia, the visual was inspired by the colour palette of tinting techniques in early cinema, and shot using multiple exposures on one roll of film.
Born in Nigeria, raised in Montreal and now based in Vancouver, FRIDAY released her debut self-produced, rap adjacent EP, BITCHPUNK in 2018. In 2019, Deathbomb Arc ushered in her second, critically acclaimed EP, DEATH DRIVE, which throbbed with eroticised electropunk fervour and cleared a path for self-actualisation. The project was accompanied by FRIDAY’S first music video and directorial debut for the lead single “FATAL”, which was subsequently nominated for the 2020 Prism Prize Award.
Having swapped Montreal’s heady nightlife scene for Vancouver’s scenic mountain views two years before, FRIDAY spent much of last year in lockdown figuring out this new direction in her life. “I was going through another change that involved so many other things – internally and externally in the world – and I felt like I needed to create something to represent that rebirth. Making a short film had been on my bucket list for a while.”
Conjuring elements of folk horror in its bewitching depiction of nature and isolation, the eight and a half minute film BARE BONES is an ode to the cycles of change, building upon FRIDAY’s self-mythology. “I like things that have a little bit of a creepy vibe to them,” she offers. “I like things that are just a little bit unsettling, because I think it brings you back to yourself in a visceral way. It reveals the subconscious.”
“RUNNIN’” celebrates rebirth, and the next stage of DEBBY FRIDAY’S evolution. Working with producers Cayne and Andrew of Big Kill, this track marks FRIDAY’S first studio outing, having previously produced everything from her bedroom.
I don’t know if there’s an award for Most Fitting Album Title of 2020, but Partner‘s new album, Never Give Up, might win it if there is. It seems that everyone has shouting this for the entire year. Everyone is fighting a battle. This has been true throughout all time, of course, but internal and external battles seem, and often are, magnified in this year no one will be sad to see leave.
Thanks heavens we have bands like Partner (Josée Caron, Lucy Niles, Simone TB) to recharge our batteries with massive riffs and songs about sex, rock and roll, and being comfortable in your own skin.
I love that they open Never Give Up with an introduction song – “Hello and Welcome,” which has Caron and Niles sharing vocals about how happy they are to be rocking off our collective socks. The breakdown on it is like stomping the gas pedal on a 1970 Plymouth Road Runner. “We’re Partner…We’re not foolin’ around,” Caron sings. Those riffs certainly aren’t. “Rock Is My Rock” is full of power chords and hand percussion s Caron and Niles sing about how rock and roll not only keeps them afloat through hard times, but how it can shake us out of the funk this crazy year has dropped on the world like an oppressive net. “I wouldn’t want to imagine a world without rock,” Niles sings. Who can argue with that?
Caron’s vocals take on a bluesy swagger on “The Pit,” a song about letting go of anything holding you down. “Honey,” a song about Caron’s guitar is, appropriately, full of big guitar riffs. “This guitar sounds like honey going down,” they sing, and they’re right. It does. “Big Gay Hands,” a favorite in their live sets, is a strutting, sweaty, sexy track about hotties and the hotties who love them.
“Good Place to Hide (at the Time)” reminds me a bit of Rush, who are known influences on Partner, with its echoing vocals, switching time signatures, and space-rock riffs. “Roller Coasters (Life Is One)” is a piano-first rock opera ballad about navigating through the madness of 2020 and the world in general. “At the heart of each day lies a brand new, scary, sweet surprise,” Caron sings.
“I couldn’t remember my postal code if I tried,” Partner sing on “Couldn’t Forget” – a peppy song about memory and self-deception with some country twang for good measure. Simone TB’s drum lick on “Here I Am World” is slick, reminding me a bit of the opening beats on Blondie‘s “Rapture.” Caron sings about grabbing “each scrap of joy” and Niles reminds us that “each day is a precious gift.” It sums up the theme of the album, and the best way to get through this nutty year, quite well. The record closes with the chugging, powerful “Crocodiles,” in which Partner warn us that many beasts (often ones self-created) lie in wait around us to catch us up in their maws if we let them.
Never Give Up is the metaphorical shot in the arm we all need right now and easily one of the most uplifting albums of the year.
Keep your mind open.
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Animal Drift Animal, the first album from Affect Display (AKA Damien Smith), is a lush sonic soundscape that sounds not unlike what you’d hear while dreaming of electric sheep.
Lead single “Until the Light Hits the Door” starts off sounding like something you might hear in the score of a modern psychological thriller but then transforms into slightly goth, slightly ambient trance music. “Flight or Fury” pulses like an alien menace on a haunted moon, blending Ennio Morricone and Vangelis influences.
The subtle sonics of”Transference” are suitable for meditation, your morning tea, making out, or taxiing down the runway on your flight to wherever you’re going to quarantine for two weeks. “Dauen” is full of bright synths, strange samples, and beats that sound like they were recorded in an empty Olympic pool (and I mean that in the best way).
“Flock” builds around a drone that could be some kind of machine Smith recorded in the field for ambient sound. Stuttering drum beats stumble around a swelling guitar line and Smith’s robot overlord vocals. “Red Blue In-Between” starts off with psychedelic guitar (!) and then becomes something like an instrumental Sisters of Mercy song with its fierce drumming and slithering synths. The closing track, “Floating Pictures,” has touches of synthwave, city pop, and ambience for a nice finish.
It’s a lovely record and one that is suitable for so many different situations that it’s impossible to list them all. Let’s hope Smith keeps up these sonic explorations and unearths more treasures for us.
Keep your mind open.
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Earlier this year Toronto’s Hannah Georgas shared a pair of singles “That Emotion” and “Same Mistakes,” — the first released in early March just before the scale of our pandemic crises had become clear, the second a month ago at the height of quarantine. The first sampling of a forthcoming collaboration with producer Aaron Dessner of The National, the singles received a rapturous response from outlets like The FADER, Stereogum, The Line of Best Fit, Clash, American Songwriter, BrooklynVegan, Exclaim, World Cafe and Consequence of Sound who dubbed her “a new generation’s Feist.”
Today, Georgas is announcing of her new album All That Emotion, a full length collaboration with Dessner that is due out September 4th on Brassland & Arts & Crafts. and sharing her new single “Dreams.” LISTEN to “Dreams” here“I have been thinking about what this album represents to me and it is resilience,” says Hannah. “It’s about finding hope and a way out the other side of tough situations. The hardships we go through make us grow into stronger people. The album is about healing, self reflection and getting up again at the end of the day.”
Of newly released single “Dreams” she writes: “In my past, I have let my insecurities play into relationships and have pushed people away because I have felt like I’m not deserving of love. This song explores the idea of breaking down those barriers of insecurity and being more open.”——Hannah Georgas began creating the album ALL THAT EMOTION about a year after the release of her celebrated 2016 album FOR EVELYN—starting with an intensive process of writing and demoing songs in her Toronto apartment, and finishing with a month long retreat in Los Angeles. She began the record making process in the middle of 2018 when she traveled to Long Pond, the upstate New York studio & home of producer Aaron Dessner of The National.
“Before each session, I would make the long drive from Toronto to Hudson Valley in Upstate New York.” Says Hannah. “It was really special getting the opportunity to work in such a remote space with Aaron and Jon and I was always itching to get back whenever we had breaks. At the same time, I appreciated the space in between and coming back with fresh ears.” Hannah continues, “Aaron and I agreed the production needed to bring out the truth in my voice. During these sessions we musically found a new depth and, vocally, a delivery that was more raw and expressive, allowing the emotional texture of each song to shine through.”
The writing of the album found Hannah creating her most personal album to date. “ALL THAT EMOTION’s album cover is an old family photo,” says Hannah. “I love the image because it captures this calm confidence. It looks like people are watching a performance and it seems like he’s diving in without a second thought. Similarly, I find that it parallels the approach needed within art. The calm confidence of expressing yourself without the thought of consequence, regardless of anyone watching.”
On the album, you’ll hear about bad habits and prayerful families—right and wrong love—mistakes and moving on—casual cruelty and most of all, change. Plotting the boundaries of where to place this music it’s emotionally fraught but warm & fuzzy. “An indie-minded avant-pop artist” was the Boston Globe’s formulation for her charms. Think of Fleetwood Mac meets The National; Kate Bush-sized passion with the earthiness of Cat Power or Aimee Mann. The album grows inside you and sticks to your insides. The songs are big tent anthems, rough at the edges but relatable.
Hannah continues: “I still have long conversations with my friends over the phone, talking about love and relationships, pain and heartbreak, our upbringings and the hardships that come along with that.” In an era of social media quips and hollow memes, maybe it’s this kind of one-on-one contact a form of communication worth getting back to?
“In this way, I get a lot of lyrical inspiration through the individuals I interact with in my everyday life,” she says. “Then music becomes the forum where I work out these feelings, embrace and express pain and love, joy and anger, frustration and fear and hope. It’s where I can be uncensored, not hold back, and say what I want to say. In that way, making music is a cathartic and cleansing process. It’s always the best feeling when someone tells me my music has helped them out in some way. That keeps me going.”All That Emotion will be released September 4, 2020 on Arts & Crafts/Brassland. It is available for preorder here.
Track List 1. That Emotion – video 2. Easy 3. Dreams – video 4. Pray It Away 5. Someone I Don’t Know 6. Punching Bag 7. Same Mistakes – video 8. Just A Phase 9. Habits 10. Change 11. Cruel
As the story goes, Laurence Hélie was riding high many years ago after releasing two critically acclaimed folk-country albums. She was a bright star in the Quebec music scene and then she just…stopped.
She went into what she described as a “musical depression” and was done with music. It was so deep that , according a recent press release, “guitar strumming made her skin crawl.”
Then, for reasons even she can’t explained, she began singing and playing, now songs filled with anger and fury. She channeled her love of 1990’s female-led bands like The Cranberries and Mazzy Star into something outside of her folk-country comfort zone. Going there inspired her to change her musical identity to Mirabelle and create Late Bloomer.
The album lets you know right away that this won’t be a folk-country experience (but hints of her former genre are there). The opening synth bass of “One in a Million” flows into Hélie’s breathy vocals about not blaming someone for turning off the light of a relationship. The beat is slow country blues, but the synths are an ambient creek running past her back yard. “Betty” starts with early 90’s bass sludge and mixes in what sounds like harpsichord as Hélie’s vocals bounce along the beat with ease with fuzzy guitars to help her glide along.
The bossa nova groove of “Phénomène” is delightful, as are Hélie’s French vocals. “My head is full of black clouds. I’m done with all the noise in the background,” she sings at the opening of “Wall.” Aren’t we all done with that noise? It’s a lovely jam track with electronic beats and guitar strumming that definitely won’t make your skin crawl. The feel of “Rose White” reminds me of some of Zola Jesus‘ works, and Hélie’s love of Cranberries lead singer Niall Quinn is evident in her vocals on the track.
“Teenage Dreams” would’ve been an alt-rock hit in the mid-90’s. Just listen to that chugging riff and those bright synths and tell me I’m wrong. The opening acoustic guitar and bass of “Daddy Long Legs” sounds inspired by some of Alice in Chains‘ songs. “Cheated” is a soft ode to “going through the motions” in a relationship and how temptation is everywhere, and sometimes great to taste, but the feelings afterward can be “like a car crash.”
By contrast, Hélie sings, “You don’t know how good it is to feel.” at the beginning of “Magic Spell,” letting us know she made it through the heartbreak from the previous track. The closer, “Don’t Forget to Breathe,” is advice we could all use. Being present is always the best choice, but admittedly is often easier said than done. The song is brooding and even a bit spooky (“No amount of scented candles can make it undone.”) with piano chords that almost sound like a funeral dirge.
Late Bloomer is a fine record, and the title is a fine reflection of this moment in Hélie’s career. She’s found her voice again and a new way to express it. We could all be so lucky if we ever enter into a depth that seems insurmountable.
