The most notable albums this week: Fever Ray, Sleaford Mods, Maat Sax Quartet and Rumbaristas

Electronic

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Feverray Radical Romantics

Karin Dreijer makes the bizarre understandable and brings the unknown closer. Through presentation and music by the band Fever Ray, Dreijer interprets the changing states of mind. On the new, third album Radical Romantics Dreijer’s voice plays different roles. Sometimes solemn and pained but more often like a tormentor: nagging, caustic, teasing, defiant. Most tracks are slower than on previous albums, but ‘Carbon Dioxide’ has a furious dance rhythm, in which Dreijer’s voice declaims and bewitches. Fever Ray’s music is not about ‘beautiful’ but about inclusiveness: all sounds are allowed. Read the whole review.

Classic

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Size Saxophone Quartet & António Carlos Costa renascer

Sometimes it helps to leave a place and then look back, like Dubliner James Joyce, who wrote his great Dublin book Ulysses in voluntary exile. You get that feeling with Renascer, the second album by the Maat Saxophone Quartet. It is an unequivocal ode to fado, in particular the legendary Portuguese guitar virtuoso Carlos Paredes, of whom soprano saxophonist Daniel Ferreira arranged three pieces. Read the whole review.

Rock

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Sleaford Mods UK Grim

It’s almost impossible not to fall for the brutal charm of Sleaford Mods. The first impression is crushing: a singer twirls around the microphone and declaims confronting pieces of text, a litany of curses and curses rather than regular lyrics. The musician-producer stands stock-still behind his laptop, one hand in his pocket and (until recently) a beer in the other. With album number twelve, the novelty has worn off a bit and the beats have become less simplistic at most. Even so, UK Grim offers what the title promises: grim music from a torn England where street violence is rampant and the cursed Tories destroy everything. Read the whole review.

Pop

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Rumbaristas Malabares

The group Rumbaristas represents all things mestizo, the European mixing music that was especially popularized by Manu Chao. Think world beats, balkan humpa, punk approach, latin trumpets, flamenco and rumba. The album title Malabares means ‘jugglers’. The circus troupe that keeps different music styles in the air was formed around the Catalan rumbero Willy Fuego, who plays with the leading mestizo group Amparanoia, among others. The first songs sound pleasantly familiar, but soon the lack of an outspoken voice is noticeable. The men all sing in the same timbre. How nice it is when the raspy voice of Amparo Sánchez (of Amparanoia) sounds on ‘La Vida Bella’. From that moment on the record comes to life. Read the whole review.