–Jeremy D. Larson
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DJ Nigga Fox: Chá Preto
Rogério Brandão has taken great pains over the last decade to avoid being pinned down to any one sound. The Angolan-born, Lisbon-based producer’s coiled, percussive workouts gradually morphed into more convoluted shapes and complex timbral investigations. On Chá Preto, he leaves rhythmic certainties behind, delving into a wild, spongy morass of pitch-bending synths, murmured vocals, and drum patterns hanging together by a thread. At times, it resembles a kind of spiritual jazz; at others, late-night club music caught in the act of molting into a stranger, stealthier creature. In place of the certainty of style, Brandão offers the slipperiness of unrestrained creative vision.
–Philip Sherburne
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Erika de Casier: Still
Erika de Casier is a true Y2K scholar whose third album embodies the soft chill and playfulness of the era’s slickest, most influential R&B. Her vocals are low, breathy, and Cassie-lite, puffing out smooth, teasing tracks that hug the corner of the proverbial club. Jumpy Timbaland-inspired synth flourishes dance throughout, while songs like the shimmering “Home Alone” and “Test It” glide with a shiny digipop sheen. Sharp and sultry collabs with Shygirl (“Ex-Girlfriend”) and Blood Orange ( “Twice”) carry a similar downtempo ease. De Casier is the chick in the middle of a cavernous room, cooing about a frigid partner or the quiet bliss of doing laundry on a day off, dancing to the sweet paranoias in her mind.
–Clover Hope
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Ghost 53206: FreeBandz Menace
With a name that sounds like it was spit out by a broken calculator, Ghost 53206 has fast become one of the premier life-lesson-givers of Milwaukee slap. Across 14 vivid, foot-on-the-gas-pedal tracks on FreeBandz Menace, he’s handing out enough dope-dealing tips to fill an instruction manual. Bars like, “When you dealin’ with some pape you can’t even trust your friend,” and, “Gotta keep my grass cut low in case I see a snake,” would land on the first page. He’s the wise, seasoned hustler on the block, hovering above the neighborhood chaos.
–Alphonse Pierre
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Guerra / de Paiva / Hornsby / Konradsen: Contrahouse
When leftfield house producers Guerra and de Paiva, of São Paulo’s 40% Foda/Maneiríssimo label, felt the sudden urge to infuse Balearic reggae with a tinge of easy-listening jazz, they had a brainstorm great enough to rattle National Weather Service radars: Why not call Bruce Hornsby? And so it transpired that the bluegrass musician, one-time Grateful Dead member, and Grammy-winning performer of the 2Pac-sampled mega-hit “The Way It Is” ended up providing the liquid jazz keyboard riffing for Guerra and de Paiva to finesse into the year’s most unencumbered soundtrack to moonwalking, spelunking, beery backyard BBQs, and other activities where the ground goes spongy beneath your feet. The pitched-down voice of Jenny Marie Sabel, of Norwegian indie-pop duo Konradsen, applies a ghostly echo of Arthur Russell to their woozy funk and late-night boogie, further melting the boundaries between international borders and musical genres.