Weekly Music Roundup: Danger Mouse & Black Thought, Sylvan Esso, Eunbi Kim

Week of Aug. 15: This week, Danger Mouse & Black Thought collaborate, finally; also, First Aid Kit hit the dance floor and Sylvan Esso goes glitchy.

Danger Mouse & Black Thought Collaborate With The Late MF Doom

Cheat Codes is the long-promised, long-delayed collaboration between uber-producer Danger Mouse (The Grey Album, Gnarls Barkley, and many more) and Black Thought, the rapper/MC from The Roots. Chock full of samples, most of them quite obscure, and featuring a guest list that includes Run The Jewels, Joey Bada$$, and A$AP Rocky, Cheat Codes is maximalist hip hop that, on balance, was worth the wait. The album is presented as a mostly continuous flow, and while picking a single track to focus on here is tough in theory, in practice the song "Belize" stands out for two reasons: the first is the appearance of the late rapper MF Doom, the masked marvel of alternative hip hop who died in 2020. Danger Mouse worked with Doom so this is probably an outtake from a session they'd done years ago, but it suits this track well. The other reason the track shines is the production: its mournful French horn riff (has that phrase ever been written about a hip hop song before?) and its "away from you" hook set up a fascinating tension between the propulsion of the rappers and the melancholy of the music beneath it.   

First Aid Kit Unveil A New Sound

Swedish sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg have been making records as First Aid Kit for over a decade, and during that time they've moved from a surprisingly convincing Americana sound to something closer to pop. In November, they'll release their fifth studio record, called Palomino, and if the new single "Out Of My Head" is any indication, it will be their most unabashedly pop album yet. "Out Of My Head" is meant, they say, "to feel like an old rock song from the 80s. We were inspired by Fleetwood Mac, Kate Bush and Tom Petty." But you may also find yourself thinking of Robyn and other recent purveyors of "sad dance" music, as the song has a club-ready beat. One thing that hasn't changed though is the sisters' emotionally-charged harmony vocals.   

Sylvan Esso’s New LP: The Sound Of A Band Coloring Outside The Lines

Sylvan Esso is the duo of singer Amelia Meath and producer Nick Sanborn. Their initial sound was striking for the way it combined Meath’s folk vocals with Sanborn’s strong pop instincts. Their second album was more dance-oriented, and it seemed like the duo had decided to aim for a more mainstream sound. Until Friday, that is, when their third album, No Rules Sandy, came out. Restless and relentlessly experimental, this album finds Sylvan Esso warping and pushing the boundaries of what a pop song might be, drawing on skittering breakbeat rhythms and warbling electronics, and occasionally processing Meath’s vocals. Opening track “Moving” is a good example – because for all its strange, and strangely alluring, sounds, Sylvan Esso never actually lets the pop world go, as the lovely harmonies in the chorus show. 

A Neoclassical Tribute To A Mother’s Comfort

Pianist Eunbi Kim put together a four-night residency in The Greene Space, New York Public Radio’s ground-floor performance venue, back in May of this year, and gave us a preview of the music on her beautiful new album It Feels Like. Working with a handful of contemporary composers, including Daniel Bernard Roumain and Angélica Negrón, Kim’s project deals with themes of identity, cultural clashes, and finding one’s own way in a confusing world. A standout track is this piece, “Mother’s Hand, Healing Hand,” by Pauchi Sasaki - a richly emotive blend of post-minimalism and lyricism.  She wrote it for Kim’s piano, surrounding it with silky threads of electronics, and some judiciously-used strings. 

A South Indian/Jazz Take On A Trippy Beatles Tune

The Alaya Project is a California trio that combines the classical music of South India – the so-called Carnatic tradition, which is quite different from the more familiar Hindustani tradition of the north – with elements of jazz and funk. Their new debut LP consists mostly of original tunes that inventively blend Carnatic sax, Western keyboards, and percussion (both drums and the vocal percussion so essential to Indian classical music). But there IS an outlier – a version of the Beatles’ “For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite.” Alaya keeps the woozy calliope-gone-off-the rails feeling of the Fab Four’s original when playing the tune, before setting out on a sax and drum excursion into Carnatic music. When they return later to the familiar melody, you might find yourself wondering if The Alaya Project had somehow made a version that’s even trippier than the original.