Shadow walker, moon stalker, black author, librarian, contrarian

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's top 50 albums of 2023

#18 : Madres - Sofia Kourtesis

The itinerant Peruvian producer minted an instant Balearic classic, destined to be played in full in beach bars at sunset for a decade or more. Avoiding the heavy-handed emotional manipulation by some producers of this type of deep, songwriterly dance music, Kourtesis doesn’t overegg the drama and moves you – in every sense – with the certainty of her melodies and grooves. The synths shift in soft eddies, but there are sharp glints of light on the surface: the Villalobos-esque trumpet stabs on Habla Con Ella, say, or the stuttering vocal sample on How Music Makes You Feel Better. That latter track name might as well be this enriching, soul-filling album’s subtitle. 

Another one I've never heard of - The Guardian makes it sound like it's not going to be a million miles away from Kelala's recent offering.

And it's not a million miles away and, once again, there's the argument I don't really have a use for this but I actually found I got into it a lot more than I was expecting - there's quite a lot of life and variety to it.  It is quite Balearic, so if you like that kind of sound I'd definitely check this out but it also manages to feel a bit South American as well - it's well done. It also sounded absolutely lovely over headphones.

Wikipedia doesn't have an awful lot on the album, but it does include the nice fact that the album is titled after her mother and the track "Vajkoczy" after the neurosurgeon Peter Vajkoczy who saved her mother's life after a cancer diagnosis.  The critics were very nice about the album, although one of them somewhat bizarrely said something along the lines of "she's lucky the album is as good as it is" - I'm not sure quite what all that's about.  The album didn't hit the main chart here but did make some of the random smaller charts - it feels like it deserved more recognition.

"Customers also listened to" Keita Sano, DJ Shadow, K-Lone and Huxley - I've heard of Mr Shadow but that's it for that list.  But I'd never heard of Ms Kourtesis before (Peruvian DJs not being my specialist subject) and this is a great little dance album - check it out if you're into that sort of thing.

#17 : Sundial - Noname

“Build and destroy, build and rebuild”: the Chicago rapper mulls over the challenges and opportunities, the hypocrisies and epiphanies, of post-BLM America in the year’s most piercingly intelligent hip-hop album (and it was a crowded field). She imagines new modes of living outside a society that has never cared for her people, and the euphonious boom-bap and neo-soul backings keep the mood positive. But she isn’t suckered into Pollyannaish utopian thinking, always provoking her own community, and bracingly frank when assessing toxic relationships or beauty standards. 

The sisters are taking control here - that's five female vocalists in a row.  And I have, of course, no idea what I'm going to get here - or even how you pronounce her.  "No name" (which would be a silly name)?  "No nah may"?  "Non ah me"?  The possibilities are endless...

I don't mind this at all - it's like rappy poetry.  She's got a nice soft delivery to the words but she doesn't hang about - there's some proper velocity to the delivery so you need to concentrate to pick it all up (and I can't claim I always did so).  I was quite reminded of the Sault albums we saw a couple of years ago - it's all quite clever stuff.  There's no danger of me ever listening to it again, but I quite enjoyed it whilst I did so.  That's quite the album cover as well, isn't it?

Wikipedia tells me it's pronounced "no name" (her real name is Fatimah) and the creative path didn't run smoothly for the album - she recorded a load of stuff in '21 and scrapped it all, then she recorded a load more stuff and decided to release "Balloons" as a single.  Unfortunately, this track features Jay Electronica who proceeded to make some unsavoury remarks so that also got cancelled and lead her to consider binning the album as well.  But she didn't (phew!) and the critics were pretty keen on it, although the words they chose to describe it somewhat surprised me - "daunting", "ethically complex and contrary" and "rife with Socratic lines of moral questioning".  I thought it was quite an easy listen, so I guess I really wasn't paying attention.  Commercially, it just scraped into the UK Album download chart (#99) - this isn't the main chart though.

"Customers also listened to" Mick Jenkins, Reason, Smino and amaarae - one of whom we'll be meeting quite soon.  I'll be quite surprised if I ever meet Noname again but it was a pleasant enough visit while it lasted - the girl's got lyrical skillz and a nice turn of phrase.

#21/20/19 - Three albums I like, but...
#16/15/14 - Some very interesting sounds