What's Good (Week of 12/15)
Welcome once again to my weekly round-up of What's Good, where I give you a bunch of good music to float out to your weekend with. A little lean this week on account of the holidays, but there's still some dope shit, including
New Albums
- Fat Jon
- Nolan The Ninja
- Small Professor
- Vic Spencer
- Tom Misch
New Singles
- Kit Sebastian
- Larry June
- lilith
- NAHreally
- Silas Short
But before we get into the music, we'll take a look at some Bonus Beats from around the web.
Bonus Beats
Nilüfer Yanya and her band stopped by the KCRW studios for a live set of songs from this year's excellent My Method Actor.
Ross Olson
And Ross Olson spoke with Nilüfer for Passion of the Weiss about her career, the process of writing with her creative collaborator Will Archer, how to approach live performance, and more.
14 years after the last time they performed under the Nudedragons moniker at Seattle's Showbox venue, the surviving members of Soundgarden reunited for the SMooCH benefit concert, raising money for Seattle Children's Hospital. Shaina Shepherd was on vocals, and Guns' & Roses' Duff McKagen joined for “Kickstand”, as well as a cover of “Kick Out The Jams”.
Portland spitter Wynne gave us a more intimate take on “Rug Burn” with a live performance, complete with string and harp accompaniment.
Elmattic
The homey Elmattic went long on ELUCID's REVELATOR, discussing—among other things—what artistic movements it sits alongside:
“Psychedelic” means consciousness-expanding, bright neon colors, fucking hippies, trippy and hallucinatory. I feel like whoever said REVELATOR is psychedelic hasn’t dropped enough acid. I would not drop acid and listen to this record. It’s already overwhelming in input, data, emotions, impressions, chaos on the edge of spilling over, spilling out. You wanna Frank Olson yourself and jump out a window on a massive freakout? Because nah, I’m good.
So then the Dad Bod Rap Bod guys, I think, said they felt it was “impressionist.” Yes, the Impressionists were all about breaking with naturalistic realism (because photography had been invented). Smudges, smears, showing what things feel like rather than what they look like. But the Impressionists were also all about small light brushstrokes and getting out into nature: REVELATOR is definitely not that either. It smashes the child on the hard concrete. It’s heavy impasto, messy smears of layered paint.
ELUCID is coming here from later, more radical avant garde European/Russian movements, ones which encompassed art and writing and music: the Symbolists, Surrealists, Imaginists, Suprematists, Futurists, Ego-Futurists, Cubo-Futurists, Cubism, and stuff like that which sound like Divine Styler/Kool Keith/Mike Ladd supergroups. (We’ll skip the whole part where some of the Futurists ended up becoming enthusiastic Mussolini fascists.)
Man like Son Raw wrote for TRENCH about how the labels Butterz and Boxed helped Grime survive and thrive after the mainstream left it for dead.
Alan Chazaro
Alan Chazaro spoke with Blvck Svm all about everything surrounding his latest album michelinman, including the restuarant tour he took for his Bvck Of House performance series.
Genevieve Artadi, chiquitamagic, and Louis Cole got together for a studio session, running through a set of four songs.
Music
lilith - ryder feat. V V N (Out now. Purchase: Bandcamp, Stream: Tidal | Apple | Spotify)
Jimmie D & Nicholas Craven - RIP Cissy Houston (Out now. YouTube loosie for now, but I'm sure it'll get a proper release.)
Kit Sebastian - Enkaz (Out now. Purchase: Bandcamp, Stream: Tidal | Apple | Spotify)
Blu & Exile - A Song Called Precipitation (From Love (the) Ominous World, out now. Purchase: Bandcamp | Vinyl, digital, and merch via Dirty Science, Stream: Tidal | Apple | Spotify)
Larry June - Treasure Island (Out now. Stream: Tidal | Apple | Spotify)
Duncecap & steel tipped dove - Light Pollution (From The Need To Know, out now. Purchase: Bandcamp, Stream: Tidal | Apple | Spotify)
Conductor Williams - Necessary Cherry feat. Wiki (From CONDUCTOR WE HAVE A PROBLEM 3, out now. Purchase: Bandcamp | Vinyl via Conductor Williams' site, Stream: Tidal | Apple | Spotify)
Sleep Sinatra - Regina's Son (From the deluxe edition of The Spirit of Baldwin Ave., out now. Purchase: Bandcamp, Stream: Tidal | Apple | Spotify)
NAHreally - Left With A Sense (From Secret Pancake, 1/10/25. Preorder: Bandcamp, Stream: Tidal | Apple | Spotify)
Domo Genesis & Graymatter - Sunsets Over Inglewood (Out now. Stream: Tidal | Apple | Spotify)
Silas Short - My Conversation (Out now. Purchase: Bandcamp, Stream: Tidal | Apple | Spotify)
Small Professor - as if i was blanka (From i had to be a pharoahe in the past, out now. Purchase/Stream: Bandcamp)
Nolan The Ninja - wurk (From GROT!, out now. Purchase/Stream: Bandcamp)
Vic Spencer - Greatly Alleviated (From Being The Bigger Person Sucks, out now. Purchase: Bandcamp, Stream: Tidal | Apple | Spotify)
Tom Misch - Falling For You (From Six Songs, out now. Stream: Tidal | Apple | Spotify)
Kelela - Far Away (From Raven, out now. Purchase: Bandcamp | Warp, Stream: Tidal | Apple | Spotify)
Sideshow - SANG & OR feat. Jwles (From F.U.N. T.O.Y., out now. Purchase: Bandcamp | 10k Global, Stream: Tidal | Apple | Spotify)
Fat Jon - Behind The Hand Secret (From Obscurity Continuum, out now. Purchase: Bandcamp | Limited vinyl via Sichtexot Records, Stream: Tidal | Apple | Spotify)
Playlists
TIDAL
BNCMPR
YouTube
That does it for this week. Be sure to share this with your folks, and don't hesitate to let me know what you're listening to this weekend down in the comments. Take care, and make good choices.
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