Every month, AVRA MUSIC collect the best of the new music from across the musical spectrum into a playlist that reflects the diversity and creativity of the moment.
Joe Armon-Jones - The Leo & Aquarius (feat. Jehst)
Though UK-jazz superpower Ezra Collective have lead the genre’s renaissance in the capital, their man on the keys has been the light from within the light. Seemingly having mastered the infectiously genre-blended groove of this current wave, Armon-Jones stabs and pulses around the beat, breaking the track in half for Jehst to rap over a hard-swung hip-hop beat, before sliding back into the groove again. Exhilarating.
Foals - Cafe D’Athens (TSHA Remix)
With a reworking of Foals’ deep cut, up-and-coming DJ and producer TSHA adds remixing to her already impressive musical CV. After earning her break on Bonobo’s Fabric mix, here TSHA inflects the percussive buzz of the original with a mixture of atmospheric melancholy and hard-wired techno stabs. This owes little to Foals, though, turning their track on its head whilst also extracting the best parts of the original, as all good remixes should.
Brockhampton - NO HALO
After parting with founding member Ameer Van over sexual assault and misconduct allegations, cancelling a tour and delaying their album release, the structural integrity of ‘boyband’ BROCKHAMPTON seemed in turmoil. They reemerge, however, with new album GINGER that is as tender as it is brash and brazen. Opener NO HALO is a vulnerable but hopeful return pinned to the cross of a 90s R&B guitar hook, an agitated filtered beat and Deb Never’s luscious, harmonised falsetto hoping: “I’m sure I'll find it’.
DIIV - Blankenship
The Brooklyn quartet’s last album Is The Is Are had a notoriously troubled half-life, bookended by mental health issues for lead Zachary Cole Smith that not so much as ‘hung over’ the album, but perforated it entirely. Blankenship comes ahead of a new album that promises a tighter, less-murky sonic identity, where Smith turns his lyrical voice outwards to face the climate crisis.
Catch the playlist here