New Music Reviews (9/11)

Each week, Music Director Chris Sanley and Associate Music Director Alex Ruder share brief insights on new and upcoming releases for KEXP's rotation. These reviews help our DJs decide on what they want to play. See what we added this week below (and on our Charts page), including new releases from James Blake, Romy, The Chemical Brothers, and more. 

James Blake - Playing Robots into Heaven (Polydor)
On his sixth full length album, the London based musician and producer returns to his electronic roots. On Playing Robots Into Heaven, Blake expertly weaves in house, dubstep, ambient, glitch and techno sounds with an avant-garde approach that is still well suited for the dancefloor. — CS

Romy - Mid Air (Young)
The highly anticipated debut solo album from The xx vocalist, Romy Madley-Croft, is a triumph. Throughout Mid Air, she delivers a tantalizing collection of instant queer club anthems, with hypnotic beats, sparkling production and a flawless vocal delivery. — CS

The Chemical Brothers - For That Beautiful Feeling (Republic)
The legendary English electronic duo are back with 11 tracks of pure techno bliss on their 10th studio album, For That Beautiful Feeling. The electric energy is palpable as they deliver joyous electro pop w/ infectious hooks that keep you coming back for more. — CS

Anjimile - The King (4AD)
The Texas born singer-songwriter makes his 4AD debut with his sophomore album, The King. The powerful nature of this album achieved with primarily his voice and an acoustic guitar is an impressive feat, as the folk artist and producer Shawn Everett employ some brilliant effects and filters to shapeshift those instruments into an array of different sounds. Throughout the album he explores the heavy theme of being a Black trans person in America. “If ‘Giver Taker’ was an album of prayers, ‘The King’ is an album of curses." — CS

DAIISTAR – Good Time (Fuzz Club)
The debut album from this Austin, TX-based band is a consistently solid set of psych, shoegaze, noise-pop, dream-pop, and garage rock that’s accented by lead singer Alex Capistran and her sweet vocal melodies that weave within the band’s densely swirling concoctions. — AR

Yussef Dayes - Black Classical Music (Brownswood) 
London based multi-Instrumentalist Yussef Dayes is making a big statement with his long awaited nineteen-track debut solo album. Black Classical Music is a sprawling opus with guests galore, highlighting Dayes’ masterful drumming and exploring every sonic nook and cranny of jazz music. — CS

NCY Milky Band – Our Gurus 2 (BMM)
For their 4th album, French quartet NCY Milky Band unveil the second installment in their Our Gurus series where they apply their psychedelic and groovy sound to cover tracks by their heroes. On this round they tackle classics from Aphex Twin, Pierre Henry (the composer behind the Futurama theme song), Karriem Riggins, Ohbliv, Charles Stepney, Giles, Giles & Fripp, Laurent Petitgirard, Galt MacDermot, and Bobby Boyd Congress for a rad sonic trip through their inspirations within psych, hip-hop, jazz, and avant-garde realms. — AR

Alabaster DePlume – Come With Fierce Grace (International Anthem)
Culled from the same improvisatory sessions that yielded 2022’s album GOLD, the latest album from London-based bandleader, composer, saxophonist, poet, and activist Alabaster DePlume is another free-flowing set of evocative jazz compositions featuring distinctive vocal contributions from Guinean vocalist Falle Nioke, Momoko Gill, and Donna Thompson sprinkled within the album’s rich instrumental tapestry. — AR

Marina Zispin - Life And Death: The Five Chandeliers Of The Funereal Exorcisms (Night School)
Marina Zipsin is a collaborative project between UK-based musicians Bianca Scout and Martyn Reid. The duo’s debut release is a solid set of icy, melancholic, dreamy synth-pop with a romantic 80s-tinted sheen. — AR

Bastien Keb – The Only Angel I Ever Saw Wore Black (Def Pressé)
UK vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Bastien Keb continues to paint captivating soundtracks for imaginary films on his 5th full-length album. Weaving through sweet electro beats, woozy funk ballads, warped slow-motion soul, anthemic acoustic folk, and smoky instrumental vignettes, all with the help of a whispery French narrator along the way, the wide-ranging highlights on The Only Angel I Ever Saw Wore Black exist in a lane that is uniquely Bastien Keb’s sonic world. — AR

GAIKA – Drift (Big Dada)
The latest album from Brixton, UK-based multi-disciplinary artist GAIKA is an enveloping, gauzy, and psychedelic journey that boldly stitches together leftfield grime, 90s-inspired grunge rock, murky trip-hop, provocative post-punk, dark wave, and more for an adventurous genre-blurring brew. Drift marks GAIKA’s debut on Big Dada Records following releases on Warp, Naafi and Mixpak, and it features a distinctive instrumental highlight right towards the end with the top-shelf beat “AND THERE GOES THE CHALLENGER.” — AR