Q: Soul, PRESENT
This record is a blast. It’s a nerf gun shooting orange sponge bullets across an 80s simulation of robot dances and 1999 party people. It’s R&B bubblegum that laces its shoes and smiles; owing as much to ‘Nova Heart’ as Morris Day while rippling out from The Weeknd without any of the bandages or make believe. ‘Incapable Heart’ reminds me suspiciously of post-cool UB40, but singer Q argues through delicious singing and simple unvarnished electronics that even the smile offensive of ‘Red Red Wine’ and other songs from that saccharine game — you could include Phil Collins’ Genesis in there, too — has a sustaining aesthetic value. The old saw is that the 80s are to 2000s kids what the 50s were to my generation, but, musically, the pop songs of those two formative decades are pretty easy to hop into and recreate. And celebrate. It’s refreshing when the cynical choice isn’t always the first one made.
Listen and purchase HERE
Witch Prophet: Gateway Experience
A wet, dreamy album that, with its double bass and horn, sounds the way the surf feels passing over your toes: summoning calm and delight, feet pressed fresh into the sand. Unlike the Q album, there’s not an over-arching sense of having to please on ‘Gateway Experience,’ and mood seems to count as much as melody in Etmet Musa’s languorous delivery. Songs like ‘Bird’s Eye View’ and ‘Dreaming’ sound like a child stepping carefully down a long set of carpeted stairs, guided into depths of the (also carpeted) basement by Musa’s Alice Coltrane/Roberta Flack cool whisper. There’s a baked-in sense of comfort in the spring-echo production, and the compositions are lean and well-tailored, clocking around two to three minutes each. Also, any album with a Zaki Ibrahim cameo is a bonus. Someone should play this on loop over the Ontario Place tannoys. It’ll make whatever’s coming a little easier to take.
Listen and purchase on Bandcamp HERE