This Week's Playlist #16 - The "My friends got talent" edition

Week #16 - The "My friends got talent" edition

TL;DR: I'm running a weekly newsletter with 5 songs and a short description of it, and a matching Spotify playlist if you want to subscribe.

For the non-Spotify readers, there is a Youtube link for each of the songs on the cover.

Hello everyone!

Happy week 16 :-)

This week's focus is on some of my friends who released some new music in 2022. Show them some likes/streams/love/support :-)

Dowdelin - Sime Love: Dowdelin (a play on a Creole word meaning slow and idle) is a four-piece coming from Lyon in France. They have roots in Guadeloupe, Martinique and Armenia (where I met David, the keyboard player when I lived there).

They call themselves "Afro-Futurists". This song is the first single of the new album, which came out last month. It's an explosive mix of Afro-Caribbean groove, Creole-language vocals and more European sounding electronics. 

• Full Album: Lanmou Lanmou (2022)

Das Yukon - Boundary: Das Yukon is an international collection of musicians located in New York, Pennsylvania, California and London. (Andy, the guitar player and I are supporting the same East London non-league football team). They initially formed in 2010 in Tokyo and reconnected in 2021 across 4 cities, 3 time zones and 2 countries.

Their latest album, "Rearranged", is a collection of melancholic yet catchy art rock tunes. It was recorded entirely remotely from one another across their various locales, with audio files flying across the Atlantic.

• Full album: Rearranged (2022)

Jean Jean - Prey Trigger: Jean Jean is from Paris, a very math-rock noise band. This new single, the first for a while, moves away from the rock roots towards a more juggernaut electronic music beat with a furious finish. The new album is out after the summer.

Kav - Animal brain: Kav is London born songwriter Pierce Kavanagh (and Scott, one of my office mates, on guitars). His latest single 'animal brain' evolves somewhere between The National, Frightened Rabbit (and maybe Stereophonics). It brings with delicate vocals before erupting into the resounding rock verses and unapologetically cathartic choruses of "I need to train my animal brain".

The Free Association Syndicate - Calmly Narrated Tragedies:

The Free Association Syndicate is one of the many nom de plumes of producer Charif Megarbane (a fellow Lebanese former colleague). He is one of the most prolific musicians I know of (with more than 100 releases on his Bandcamp page).

He composes, plays and mixes bluesy rock / grainy funk, and old European film scores, with influences from world music, from Middle eastern influences to afrobeat. This is the first track of his latest record.

Until the next time, Godspeed!
Thomas

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Previous episodes

• Week #15: Happy Easter

• Week #14: Famous bands I started to listen to at the age of 40

• Week #13: The Number of the Beast edition

• Week #12: The Fat of the Land edition

• Week #11: The Modern Soul voices

• Week #10: Heavy metal goes pop music

• Week #9: The Mask edition

• Week #8: RIP Mark Lanegan

• Week #7:

• Week #6: 

• Week #5: The readers’ digest

• Week #4: 

• Week #3: Albums for 2022 2/2

• Week #2: Albums for 2022 1/2

• Week #1: Happy New Year