I got my first mosquito bite the other day, so I’d like to declare that summer is officially in action. These past few weeks have had a sweltering music release schedule, and in the midst of a bevy of the best albums June has had to offer — including releases from SOPHIE, Rico Nasty, serpentwithfeet, and The Carters — terrific new songs continue to emerge. Here are some of my favorites from the past few days.
Kamasi Washington: “The Space Travelers Lullaby”
The 144-minute runtime of the incredible new Kamasi Washington album Heaven and Earth is broken into two themed halves: Earth and Heaven. (You see what’s going on here.) While the impressive depth, variation and caliber of Heaven and Earth makes it difficult to pick a favorite song, one stunning highlight is “The Space Travelers Lullaby,” the first track from the second half, Heaven. It absolutely soars, bringing us up with it into the swirling cosmos. Washington will play The Sylvee on Nov. 2.
Ariana Grande feat. Nicki Minaj: “The Light is Coming”
I’ve been spending a ton of time listening to Ariana Grande’s albums lately. What can I say? They’re wildly replayable and stuffed with bops. Her next album, Sweetener, won’t be released for another month and a half, but its first single, “No Tears Left to Cry,” is already one of her career highlights. The new Pharrell-produced, Nicki-featuring single “The Light is Coming” is the kind of hyper-produced pop song that’s perfectly engineered for enjoying in 2018 — it seems to be optimally mixed for phone speakers, and it kind of sounds like a jump rope rhyme produced like a Radiolab episode. It’s totally nuts in a way that I love, and its beats are already cut up enough that a remix from, say, Jlin or DJ Taye could bring this awesome track up to a perfect 10/10.
Steve Hauschildt feat. Julianna Barwick: “Saccade”
Here’s a collaboration that’ll send fans of the genre to the moon: Steve Hauschildt, formerly of the luxurious, glistening ambient band Emeralds, and Julianna Barwick, an ambient pop musician whose transcendent, murky, gorgeous work has been getting increasingly incredible over the past decade. The track has a more pronounced rhythm than many of Barwick and Hauschildt’s songs, which scoops these two stars out of the sky and brings them almost fully into deep house club mode.
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