The Qobuz Guide to October 2024

Pop

Dua Saleh’s evolution may never complete fully, but the morphing of sounds on I SHOULD CALL THEM furthers the complex songwriting and lyrical expression that they are becoming known for. Above all, Chinese American Bear celebrate fun while melding styles and celebrating culture on a rollicking, spry pop release, Wah!!!. Pigeonholing Half Waif’s art only seems to drive her to create better and less distinguishable records—See You At The Maypole being no exception. Charli XCX extends Brat Summer into Brat Fall with Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat, featuring remixes from her A-list friends like Tinashe, Caroline Polachek, The Japanese House, Ariana Grande, and Troye Sivan. As Memorials, former Too Pure Records labelmates Verity Sussman (Electrelane) and Matthew Simms (It Hugs Back) sound like they’re having a ball messing around with tape loops, unexpected song structures and general weirdness on Memorial Waterslides.

Jazz

Ashes to Gold is the highly emotional five-part suite from Tel Aviv trumpeter Avishai Cohen, who leads his quartet in conveying the sorrow, despair, and melancholy he felt following the October 7, 2023 attacks. The Necks return to their one-song, longform album roots with an ambient background accentuating their always-enriching jazz palette. The sometimes breezy, sometimes skronky, but always sympa Fievel Is Glaque (Ma Clément and Zach Phillips) return with more jazz-pop experiments on Rong Weicknes. Ruth Goller teams up with German experimental duo TRAINING for wonderfully chaotic free jazz woven with microtonal moments on threads to knot. One of the final performances of Anteloper, the commanding duo of Jason Nazary and the late jaimie branch, a snippet of Damon Locks and Rob Mazurek’s New Future City Radio—a look into a bleak future that is still filled with art and expression—and a sampling of Ben Lamar Gay’s explorations in form and tempo are captured on live recordings from Brooklyn’s Public Records exclusively for Qobuz.

Rap/Hip-Hop

Chris Crack is at his silliest but threatening best on Online Shopping, one of 2024′s most entertaining rap releases. Hemlock Ernst, a.k.a. Samuel Herring of Future Islands and many other projects—revives his rap persona to tackle Studying Absence, a beautiful album about growing up in and growing distant from the American South. Futuristic trap beats mix with dance refrains and occasional R&B strays on Vayda’s audacious, risk-taking VAYTRIX. Richmond, Virginia’s Mutant Academy combines some of the best rappers the city has ever known to make the easily digestible and super fun Keep Holly Alive, and Jabee compiles some of the best underground producers and soulful beats on The Spirit Is Willing But the Flesh Is Weak, which reveals more of itself with repeated listens.

Electronic

Kelly Lee Owens vacillates between soothing drone and cutting techno beats while allowing her vocal work to shine the brightest it has in her already brilliant run on Dreamstate. It might be a stretch to call longform, krauty, sampler-based electro “accessible” but Bounds—an incredible piece of art nonetheless—is the closest Craven Faults has ever been to the term. Raz & Alfa’s idea of resistance never impinges on the sheer joy they derive from creating their particular brand of Afrobeat by way of electro on Echoes of Resistance. Glitchy, far-out sound designs are a Tristan Arp specialty, but a pool, a portal announces how close Arp has come to formalism while still staying on the fringe. Honey, a rare full album from Dan Snaith’s Caribou project, highlights both the difficulty and ease of simply dancing through it all.

Rock

Melbourne rockers The Belair Lip Bombs combine post-punk and pop rock to make some of the most searing and catchy hooks you’ll hear all year on the newly-reissued Lush Life. More of a rocker than her previous releases, on You Still Got Me, Beth Hart meshes blues, jazz and rock and roll to create one of her best records yet. Recent cancer survivor Chuck Prophet unites with Cumbia band ¿Qiensave? to make Wake the Dead, a record filled with the joy of being alive and the pain of living through it. Aggressive shouting alongside loud and fast licks does not stop High Vis from also creating infectious hooks on Guided Tour, a record of nonstop hits. Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision is three unreleased hours of Hendrix’s genius at work shortly before his untimely death. On Cutouts, the Smile step out further than the band (or previous iterations of the members working together) ever have while still being consistently entertaining and brilliant. With Jim White at the kit, Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus, Chavez’s Matt Sweeney, and Cairo Gang’s Emmett Kelly trade instruments and vocals with the freewheelin’ looseness of a garage jam as The Hard Quartet on their self-titled debut.

Classical

Father-and-son pianists Maurizio and Daniele Pollini bring us a new collection of shorter Schubert works, marking the final recorded album for the elder Pollini. Trumpeter Alison Balsom teams up with British harpsichordist Trevor Pinnock and Pinnock’s Players for Baroque Concertos. Meanwhile, Dream House Quartet—featuring pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque alongside guitarists Bryce Dessner and David Chalmin—showcases Sonic Wires, which includes compositions by Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Dessner, Chalmin, Sufjan Stevens, Caroline Shaw, and others. In Melankhôlia, Swiss-French mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti, who has roots in metal, explores melancholy as a spiritual emotion while also reaching into John Dowland’s works. On the more traditional side, Raphaël Pichon and his ensemble Pygmalion share a new interpretation of Mozart’s Requiem, while pianist Khatia Buniatishvili offers Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 20 & 23 with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.

More Favorites

The artful way Yasmin Williams stretches and warps folk guitar-playing may not be obvious at first—especially with the delicate and power-packed guest list on Acadia—but she is pushing those boundaries nonetheless. Even the Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971-1996 is an incredible collection of funky, soulful and dance-laden tracks from an under-appreciated era of Ukrainian creation. Seething, biting and spellbinding, Utflod’s riff-heavy punk metal on Efterdønn is one of the brightest and heaviest surprises of the year. The pristine recordings of Thee Sacred Souls’ Got a Story to Tell should be bottled and presented as proof that sounds can crystallize and still feel as fresh as when it were invented. Brooklyn folk songwriter Allegra Krieger performs her bruised, attentive, and often joyous look at everyday living; U.K. singer-songwriter Cosmo Pyke flexes his versatility, whether singing over building reggae and soul riffs or donning his troubadour hat to cover Dylan; and London-by-way-of-Italy’s Maria Chiara Argirò deftly builds synth- and pedal-laden electro-pop on three exclusive live EPs recorded in March for Qobuz Sessions at SXSW.

Written by Sujan Hong, Jeff Laughlin, Nitha Viraporn/Qobuz USA