Weekly Roundup: Brian Eno And Beatie Wolfe, Damon Albarn's Africa Express

This week, Brian Eno and Damon Albarn unveil new collaborators, and a posthumous release from Marianne Faithfull. Also, Nadah El Shazly and Patrick Watson.  

Brian Eno And Beatie Wolfe Release TWO Collaborations

Brian Eno’s first four albums of songs, made in the 70s, remain landmark works on the road that leads from rock into more experimental territory. His four albums in the Ambient series, from the late 70s to early 80s, pioneered the genre we now call ambient music. So it’s fitting that when he collaborated with singer and multimedia artist Beatie Wolfe, it would go in both of those directions. The pair have just released Luminal, a collection of mostly easygoing, midtempo songs, and Lateral, a collection of atmospheric soundscapes. The two first bonded over a talk they gave at South By Southwest in 2022 about art and climate, and also share an interest in art that crosses between aural and visual. Wolfe handles much of the singing, as on the lilting track called “Suddenly,” but Eno’s hand is evident in the subtle, lush production that surrounds her voice; and when the wordless chorus joins her on the song’s refrain, it suggests that the two sonic worlds represented by the two albums are not so far apart after all.  

A Posthumous EP From Marianne Faithfull

Burning Moonlight is a four song EP from singer Marianne Faithfull, who died earlier this year at 78. Two of the songs are from the folk tradition, including “She Moved Thru’ The Fair,” which she has sung throughout her career; the other two, including this title track, are things she co-wrote herself. “Burning Moonlight” harkens back to Faithfull’s earliest days, and strikes the plaintive, twilit mood of her breakout hit, “As Tears Go By,” written for her by the Rolling Stones. The song’s recurring image of “walking in fire” seems well-suited to an artist whose career had more than its share of peaks and valleys; and Faithfull’s beautifully weathered vocals fit the song’s elegiac mood much better than the pure, angelic voice she had when she first began her career some 60 years ago.  

Africa Express Stops In Mexico

Damon Albarn, the frontman of Blur and Gorillaz, co-founded Africa Express in 2006 with some leading West African musicians. Since then, the lineup has changed and the band has done some surprising projects – including a version of Terry Riley’s groundbreaking piece In C, generally considered to be the first Minimalist work; still, the sounds of West Africa have been consistent throughout. But the next Africa Express album, due in July, sees the troupe going to Mexico.  Africa Express Presents… Bahidorá will include contributions from Mali’s Fatoumata Diawara, Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Joan As Police Woman, and more. The new single “Soledad” (“loneliness”) is sung in Spanish by Damon Albarn and trans activist Luisa Almaguer, and includes production from the Mexican Institute of Sound. Pretty sure that’s a Cuban tres, a small guitar-like instrument, at the start of the song, and throughout the track, you get a languorpous, organic blend of traditional Latin American sounds with contemporary downtempo production.  

Nadah El Shazly’s Album Bridges East and West

Egyptian singer and songwriter Nadah El Shazly has established herself on Cairo’s bustling experimental music scene (after starting out in a Misfits cover band, so that’s quite a big step), and she’s just released an album called Laini Tani, a striking, mostly nocturnal blend of the traditional, improvisatory style of singing known as mawal with moody, electronic pop. The album rouses itself in the final track, “Ghorzetein,” which has something approaching a dance groove, although it’s still a somewhat ominous one. Both the song and the video have an almost David Lynchian mix of the sensual and the uncanny.  

Canada’s Patrick Watson Has An “Uh Oh” Moment

Patrick Watson is a Montreal-based singer and songwriter whose band is also called Patrick Watson. Their sound is a distinctive, cinematic blend of indie rock, cabaret pop, and chamber music that has made Watson (the man, not the band… I think) a favorite of film directors and TV music supervisors. He’s just announced a new album, called Uh Oh, due in September, and released this single called “Peter And The Wolf.” The song has nothing to do with the famous Prokofiev composition of the same name, but the album does seem to be a response to a pretty big uh-oh moment for a singer: Watson lost his voice. At least for a while. So many of the tracks feature guest vocalists that Watson has admired, both well-known (Martha Wainwright) and unknown (his local barista). But evidently he recovered, since it’s Watson himself doing most of the lead vocals on this eerie, bilingual track.