Love Tempo #14
Hello! I’m Rory O’Callaghan, and welcome to Love Tempo, a monthly newsletter that collects my thoughts and findings from the world of independent and electronic music. If you enjoy what you find, please consider subscribing by using the button below.
Hot Off The Press
Five new releases you should wrap your ears around this month…
In the above image, with his assortment of analogue synthesisers and striking headgear, the signer and producer MMYYKK (pronounced “Mike”) appears to pay homage to a now famous snap of the cult musician William Onyeabor. Whether intentional or not, the music on Science, his latest offering, carries the same otherworldly charm as that of the Nigerian funk crusader. But where Onyeabor made music that was almost jarring in its strangeness, Science is all about the smooth: languid horns, gloopy basslines and tender vocals that stretch out across the cosmos.
Casual listeners of MMYYKK’s music could easily file his output next to artists like Dâm-Funk, Thundercat and Flying Lotus. But to do so would be dismissive of the unique angle from which he operates. For a start, he doesn’t live in sunny California, rather Minneapolis, Minnesota—a city known for brutally cold winters, Prince and, tragically, as the scene of events that sparked worldwide protests last year. It lends his music a more conscious edge, and on the Demae featuring ‘emiT’ he extolls the virtues of generosity; before chastising those who turn a blind eye to struggle on ‘Cold Hustle’. He’s most forthright on ‘Bout that’, where he confronts would-be allies of Black folk over their own inaction and hypocrisy. It’s a reminder that although MMYYKK’s music may be soft and woozy, his observations are razor sharp.
‘Guadalupe’ is the second single from Columbian expats Jaguar, taken from their debut album Madremonte, which was released last month via Barcelona’s El Palmas Music. Like much of the duo’s work, the song is tricky to box into one genre, rather a hybrid of their various influences: salsa, brit-funk and 80’s zouk. Shunning technical precision in favour of a looser, DIY aesthetic, they preach a hopeful message, singing over peppy horn riffs, off-beat cowbells and a thick bassline that’s folded into a driving, mid-tempo groove. The lyrics repeat the refrain “¿Será posible, Será posible?” (Will it be possible? Will it be possible?)—a call for unity in the face growing inequality, poverty and other ills back home.
Davis Galvin is a producer out of the American Midwest who makes wickedly strange dance music. They’ve had a noticeably active 2021 and this month’s Muunun marks their seventh release of the year. By my reckoning, it’s their best yet, and arrives chock-full of new ideas and delightfully oddball moments.
Take ‘Qorlii’, the EP's final track. A dense and fidgety house number, it never quite seems to settle, full of rough textures and whirring electronics that gurgle and creak like a rusty structure under too much strain. ‘Treeum’, on the other hand, is bright and starry-eyed, with slinky, iridescent synth lines that venture into trance territory. Both are killer tunes, but ‘Rissp’ is the main event here: Fast and springy techno, it sees Galvin giving their drums a distinctly hard edge, enabling them to scythe through dramatic synth stabs and across a field of dizzying sonics which seem to bounce and ricochet off its steely percussion.
A scroll through Bristolian producer Ye Ye’s Bandcamp page reveals a modest but surprisingly versatile discography: There’s jagged, acid-tinged breakbeat; a full EP of cloudy ambient; and even a handful of rowdy, rave-ready mashups. On RETURN 2, his latest release, he diversifies once again, this time delivering two minimal, sub-heavy takes on established UK dance styles.
Although ostensibly 2-step garage, ‘Fast Light’ seems content with life away from the dance-floor. It rolls along at a casual pace, following a chiming, ear-worm melody that’s pockmarked by sharp rim-shots and customary rumbles of low-end pressure. By comparison, ‘Str8 Boolin' is a rude banger. Its bounce and swagger hark back to the golden-era of UK funky, but it lacks the house-y stomp and intricate loops of toms and snares commonly associated with the genre. Rather, its icy tones and coarse blasts of square-wave bass hint at a grimier influence.
A quiet tonic to a past year of change and upheaval, Geist sees the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Shannon Lay meditate on themes of growth and transformation in the most soothing terms. As with her previous work, it’s a record that tends to look inward—its themes undoubtably drawn from lived experience. Yet Lay has a knack for writing phrases that remain just abstract enough to be applied to a number of different scenarios; meaning the listener rarely feels uninvited, instead able to transpose her ruminative folk onto their own thoughts and reflections.
The danger, of course, is that such translucent lyrics can fade into the music itself, becoming more texture than narrative. Personally, it took a fair few spins of Geist to really tune into what Lay was saying. Though depending on how you see it, this isn’t necessary a bad thing. Songs like ‘Rare to Wake’ and ‘Untitled’ offer as much comfort in their delicate instrumentation and supple, multi-tracked vocals as they do in their lyrical content. Such cosy sonics provide room for contrast too, and on the bare-boned ‘Awaken and Allow’ Lay appears most direct, urging herself and others to push past their comfort zones, to awaken, and allow a better self to emerge.
Live Report: cktrl at Hoxton Hall
When I first heard Robyn late last year, it stopped me in my tracks. A striking and deeply personal record, it made use of traditional instruments—clarinet, tenor saxophone—and arranged them in stark, lyrical compositions that unfurled as if extensions of the artist’s soul. It heralded the coming-of-age of Lewisham’s Bradley Miller, aka cktrl, who asserted himself as the latest in a line of exciting, jazz-adjacent players to emerge from South London’s fertile scene.
Just last week, I was in the capital to catch Miller’s first headline show at Hoxton Hall. The venue is grand if a little shabby, with high Victorian ceilings, two upper circles and a narrow auditorium draped in blood red curtains. On stage, a garland of pastel-coloured roses framed various instruments like a decorative bridal display. Although long sold-out, the space wasn’t packed, and it gradually filled with a trickle of chatty twenty-somethings and assorted industry types.
Around 9pm, a wordless a capella piece from four female vocalists marked the beginning of cktrl’s set. They harmonised freely for over ten minutes before the telltale sound of woodwind joined them from behind the curtained backdrop. When cktrl finally appeared, dressed in striking sky-blue attire, the vocalists dispersed and two of them took seats at pianos flanking either side of the stage. Moving front and centre, cktrl stood eyes-closed and focused, beginning to work his way through sprawling renditions of ‘As You Are’ and ‘Will The Feelings Leave’—two clarinet-based compositions lifted from Robyn.
For the next twenty minutes, it was pleasant spectacle, but perhaps not as absorbing as I’d hoped. Noticeably, the higher notes of the artist’s chosen instrument suffered from a lack of oomph, largely failing to rise above the keys that accompanied him. It was hard to tell if this was down to each instrument’s individual levels or the players themselves, but after a lengthy melange of piano and clarinet where it was difficult to latch onto either, I couldn’t help but feel a little underwhelmed.
In my eyes, what made Robyn such a special record was its potency—its ability to convey naked emotion with disarming simplicity. Thankfully, I was reminded of this when cktrl transitioned from clarinet to saxophone. The latter’s rich tones seemed to extend far better throughout the space and the two pianos were used more sparingly. After ten minutes or so, the night culminated in a performance of Robyn’s stunning title track, it’s twisting, sombre melodies managing to bewitch me (and the audience) into a captive silence.
That’s all for this edition of Love Tempo, thanks for taking the time.
As always, a Spotify playlist featuring a selection of the music featured in this issue can be found here. A handy list of purchase links can be also found in this month’s Buy Music Club rundown.
Please feel free to get in touch via lovetemponews@gmail.com.
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Catch you next month!
Rory