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From London via Corsica/Occitania
Recommended if you like Arooj Aftab, Maria Callas, the choral tragedy of Prioritise Pleasure-era Self Esteem
Up next New single Dieus Sal la Terra out now
Idrîsî Ensemble are a useful corrective to the stereotyping of medieval music as smooth, pious and sleepy. Hearing the howls of this London-based group – sometimes powered by up to 19 members – you’re reminded of song’s inexhaustible capacity for conjuring fresh pain.
In 2016, Thomas Fournil, a Corsican composer studying at the Guildhall School of Music, became increasingly obsessed with the ancient music of his homeland, with its pre-modern musical notation and florid, trembling embellishments. He assembled a group of college friends to try out what he had found.
What he envisaged was far from a historical re-enactment. For one, Fournil recast these male-dominated repertories for mixed voices; today, Idrîsî’s distinctly individual female voices – drawn from pop, jazz and multinational folk traditions – are one of the group’s central draws. There’s a political strain running through their work too. They celebrate the trobairitz, the frank, subversive female troubadours of 12th century Occitania, and recent release Dieus Sal la Terra, a paghjella created by Fournil for mixed voices, was sung “in solidarity with those struggling to remain on the land they know”.
Their relationship with their practice is only getting deeper. Like Corsican singers, they often sing in a horseshoe shape, arms linked, without sheet music. Over drones from a portative organ (a handheld instrument with a funky side bellow) and vielle (a medieval fiddle), they unfurl expressive, ornate vocal lines. Where other vocal ensembles in Britain value pure blends, their sound is coarser, spikier. Individual improvisation is crucial, and when they all decide to move in unison, it’s with a reluctant heaviness: weighed down by pain from long ago. Hugh Morris
This week’s best new tracks
Underscores – Tell Me (U Want It)
After Music and Do It, that’s three perfect singles in a row from what promises to be one of the pop albums of the year. The hyperpopper’s latest skips along in bovver boots, its sweet melody offset by brostep flourishes.
The Womack Sisters – You Went Away Too Long
With heavyweight music genes – Bobby Womack and Sam Cooke are among their relatives – this Daptone-signed trio deliver a handsomely upholstered vintage soul ballad, its chorus charged with hurt and disappointment.
Friends& – Man of Constant Sorrow ([android] w [autism] [phishes] to [network] @ [the city upon a hill]) ([bOyFrIeNd_qUeSt_bEgInS])
The Canadian collective have put out Folx, an album of 112 tracks, many just one or two seconds long. This 1.53 effort is a highlight, with AI voices and samples of My Little Pony and O Brother, Where Art Thou? colliding in twee-core bliss.
Terror – Still Suffer
After a quarter-century of centrifugal mosh pits and somersaulting stage-divers, the US hardcore band sound as energised as ever, vocalist Scott Vogel venting about his shame and self-doubt.
Squarepusher – K2 Central
The first fruits of Tom Jenkinson’s ambitious upcoming album, Kammerkonzert: this is essentially a concerto for bass guitar, with a typically fiendish and funky bassline surrounded by stately orchestration.
Maria BC – Rare
From her new album, Marathon, out today, this is a spellbinding ballad anchored in a sure-footed vocal melody sung in Maria BC’s Vashti Bunyan-ish tones, backed by a gently heaving mass of noise.
John Carroll Kirby – Suntory
The zen guru of urbane Los Angeleno lounge jazz, Kirby returns in a waft of incense and quality hair products. His new one features gentle piano figures emerging through a soft veil of synths.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
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