Find out what the CL Music Team is jamming to rocket launch the work week. Click here to check out previous entries.
Leilani – Jamaican Queens, Wormfood (2013, Notown); and Javelin, Hi Beams (2013, Luaka Bop)
I've been jamming on several albums that dropped last Tue., March 5, and these two — both duos warping pop music into intriguing sonic stews — are the ones I've returned to the most frequently. Detroit 'trap pop' duo Jamaican Queens (Prussia former Ryan Spencer and producer Adam Pressley) take their influences from Southern hip hop, electro, dub, downbeat and alterna folk music, filter it through a Detroit lens of scuzz, and put it all together on debut full-length, Wormfood. Javelin is a NY/LA duo that's been buzzing hard and Hi Beams is their sophomore full-length. Unlike their previous recordings, which were cobbled together at home and via laptop, Hi Beams was mixed using "proper microphones, a vintage mixing desk, an array of amplifiers, real plate reverb – in the traditional sense a 'studio album.'" It's odd pop/electro music with whirring synths, fuzzy guitars, some vocoder-fied vocals, beat-driven production, and plenty of sample and sound blips. Right now, I'm particularly addicted to Javelin's "Friending" and "Water" by Jamaican Queens; listen to the latter after the jump along with the rest of this week's MM entries. Reviews of both albums forthcoming.
This article appears in Mar 7-13, 2013.