Multicultural Sounds travels the world for contemporary reinventions of cultural staples. This post is a miniature celebration of a couple of globe-trotting musician and producer Diplo’s latest works.
Bonde do Rolê
Turning genre-mashing into a gun-slinging festivity of high delights are the theatrical Bonde do Rolê, who have a new album coming out later this summer on Mad Decent. Come June 26th, the world shall see Diplo’s production chops at work on Tropicalbacanal, which will also be fucking bananas in terms of guest starrage: Caetano Veloso, Das Racist, The Death Set, and plenty of others help the band usher in what the press release describes as “the fresh wave of avalanche tropical (the bossa nova of modern Brazil).”
Continued below, another Diplo special, in the form of beats on “Knock Out” featuring South Korea’s G-Dragon and TOP, from the boy bad Big Bang.
SPECTRAL HYPNOSIS
A recurring series, featuring mesmerizing songs for one to lose sense of time and space, mind and body. Here, we start off a bit rowdy with Tassels and sink slowly into the enchanting mellow instrumental shores of Grapefruit and Lyonnais.
Tassels
Vancouver-based producer Sean Orr will soon be releasing a new LP, the brilliantly artworked Pressure Mounts, on Dallas’ Pour Le Corps. This 2:13-long track is a whirlwind of experimentation and unconventional sound bites which curiously leave one hungering for more. Pressure Mounts drops May 29th, and the full tracklisting is available at the bottom of this post.
Tassels – “Shake Them Shackles”
Grapefruit
Analog synths and Tangerine Dream vibes combine for Portland electronic artist Grapefruit’s latest record, which you can buy HERE on Field Hymns. Choosing a track to highlight was certainly a difficult task, so I’ve decided to take the liberty of offering you three, because… why the hell not? For download and stream is the entrancing closing track “Aleatoric Tone Tunnels”, along with “End Scene” and the music video for “Phase Accidents”. Expect an interview with Grapefruit soon!
Grapefruit – “Aleatoric Tone Tunnels” – DOWNLOAD MP3
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Coinciding with bright spring threads come a fascination with brightly-colored, geometrically-minded embroidered works! In this post, we examine works from artists who painstakingly thread through paper to vastly different ends.
Shaun Kardinal
This year, Seattle’s Shaun Kardinal has taken a bold leap from minimally embroidered postcards to more involved pieces set upon multi-layered collages. By reconstituting rare pages from 1950s LIFE magazines, Kardinal explains what he calls “a long-time fascination with radial compositions and mandalas” in his Connotations. Expect a joint interview between him and Erin Frost within the month.
Before bands started reuniting to be cool, Gainsville, Florida punk stalwarts Hot Water Music gave a quick hiatus the middle finger it deserves. The quartet put out a few live 7″ in past years, but Exister is the band’s first full length in eight. The question remains as it always does with all punk — a musical genre that doesn’t really age the best — do Hot Water Music still have the energy to pull the whole act off?
