5 Albums You Need To Hear
Burnt Sugar, Natalia Lafourcade, Masma Dream World, Mean Mistreater, Tungu/Mia Zabelka/Stefan Strasser
Every fourth Tuesday of a given month, I’ll be reviewing five new albums. Usually they’ll all be within one genre: classical, jazz, or metal (defined broadly, of course). This first batch, though, is all over the place. The only thing they have in common is that they’re all brilliant in their own way. Let’s dive in, shall we?
Burnt Sugar’s double live opus If You Can’t Dazzle Them With Your Brilliance Then Baffle Them With Your Blisluth, first released on two CD-Rs in 2005 and now available on Bandcamp, documents key portions of several gigs from spring and summer 2004, including one — from the Vision Festival, the group’s first appearance there — that I was actually present for. Dubbed “Himatsuri (Fire Festival)” on disc, it’s a roughly 45-minute, slowly evolving performance that balances horns, strings, and some unearthly vocalizing, and the lineup was absolutely stacked, including Matana Roberts on alto sax, Mazz Swift on violin, and Shahzad Ismaily on banjo and bass. It was easily the most exciting thing I saw at the VF that year.
Well, now they’ve released a second volume, which features performances recorded in Detroit and Ohio in 2022, plus some studio additions from 2024. Over the years, Burnt Sugar transformed from a genreless improvising ensemble to a shit-hot funk-rock band with a wild streak. They did shows where they tackled the music of other artists, albeit never becoming a mere “cover band”, and there are versions of Steely Dan’s “Black Cow” and the Ohio Players’ “Pain” (here retitled “Back Pain”, because they’re playing it backwards) that couldn’t be anyone but Burnt Sugar. But it’s the original conduction/composition/improvisations here that prove that even in the absence of co-founder Greg Tate (bassist Jared Michael Nickerson is leading things now), they still sound like no one else.
Have I really been listening to Natalia Lafourcade for more than 20 years? Amazingly, it’s true; I remember seeing the video for her song “En el 2000” in 2002 and being instantly captivated by her voice, energy and wit. I bought her self-titled debut, and have been a fan ever since. She’s a composer as much as a songwriter, transitioning from the alt-rock of Casa (credited to the band Natalia y la Forquetina) to the Björk-ian art-pop of Hu Hu Hu to the traditional and acoustic sounds on Hasta La Raíz and De Todas Las Flores. In between, she’s honored her roots on tribute albums like Mujer Divina — Homenaje a Agustín Lara and the two-volume sets Musas and Un Canto por México.
Live At Carnegie Hall preserves a concert from October 2022 on which Lafourcade was joined by several guests, including Jorge Drexler, David Byrne, and Omara Portuondo. She was supporting De Todas Las Flores, so you get really beautiful versions of nine tracks from that album right up front; later on, she plays songs from Hasta La Raíz and the two volumes of Musas, and the classic “Cien Años”, which she recorded with Pepe Aguilar on Un Canto Por México, Vol. II. It’s a fantastic show, the arrangements gradually swelling from acoustic guitar and piano to near-big-band lushness (she’s got some killer horn players with her) and climaxing with a 13-minute version of “Mi Tierra Veracruzana” during which she introduces the entire ensemble. This is on streaming services now, and will be available in physical form in April.
Masma Dream World is the performing name of Devi Mambouka, a vocalist and electronic musician from Gabon whose first album, 2020’s Play At Night, spooked and enthralled me. Her new release, PLEASE COME TO ME, is even darker. In keeping with its cover art, it has the feel of someone telling you ghost stories long after midnight, and her sound palette — warped field recordings, amniotic sub-bass frequencies, harsh whispers and moaned lamentations coming from corners of the sonic field — is that of a horror film. Track titles like “Seeking Your Protection”, “O, Dark Mother”, “Without a Body”, “The Island Where the Goddess Lives” and “What If It Was True” add to the disquieting vibe.
Most of the pieces are glacially slow: sampled drones lying atop subtly echoing percussion and the occasional underwater boom. Mambouka’s voice cuts through the gloom here and there, frequently wordless, whispering imprecations or yelping like a frightened child calling for Mama. When there’s a loud, active element, like the desert reed instruments keening on “Seeking Your Protection”, it’s twice as jarring as it would be in any normal context. This sounds like Mick Harris remixing a collaboration between Jarboe and Diamanda Galás for the WordSound label. If those references make sense to you, you’re the audience for this creepy-ass album.
Mean Mistreater’s debut, Razor Wire, was one of my favorite rock/metal releases of 2024. A five-piece from Texas, they make hard-drinking, headbanging, Camaro-flipping music that would have been the perfect soundtrack to that shitty Road House remake with Jake Gyllenhaal. On the follow-up, they’re somehow even tighter and more pissed-off; Razor Wire packed eight tracks into 27:03, and Do Or Die does it in 26:45!
Vocalist Janiece Gonzalez is the immediate draw — her voice is that of someone shouting at you from across a crowded bar, five seconds from throwing a punch or a bottle. But guitarists Alex Wein and Quinten Lawson deliver the goods, too, ripping out high-speed riffs, stinging solos, and the occasional quick flourish of twin-guitar harmony over the jackhammer rhythms of bassist Theron Rhoten and drummer Terry Irwin. If you’re a fan of Judas Priest circa Stained Class/Hell Bent For Leather/British Steel, Bon Scott-era AC/DC, early Motörhead and/or Joan Jett, you’re gonna love Mean Mistreater.
Last year, Burning Ambulance Music released Irrational Thinking Of The Subject, an amazing, indescribable album by Ukrainian bassist, producer and electronic musician Sergey Senchuk, aka Tungu. Collaborating remotely with a wide range of improvisers and avant-garde musicians from around the world, he created an immersive sonic collage that sounded like nothing else I’d ever heard, one I think you’ll love as much as I do. (Buy it here.)
Well, Tungu has returned in 2025 with The Confidence Of One Swimming Against The Current, an album-length collaboration with Austrian violinist and electronic musician Mia Zabelka and German multi-instrumentalist Stefan Strasser, heard here on piano, synth, electronics, and guitar. Its 17 short tracks are often much louder and noisier than those on Irrational Thinking; there are vocals here and there, some eerie and distorted instruments, and even some programmed rhythms. But a track like “Cellular Resonances” is a pure noise blowout, sounding like a collaboration between Merzbow and C. Spencer Yeh, while on “Imminent Disaster”, Zabelka’s violin rises to a level of shrieking intensity that brings to mind free jazz players like Billy Bang or Leroy Jenkins.
Each of these records is completely different from the others, but I love them all, and I think if you’re the kind of adventurous sonic omnivore who would read a newsletter like this one, you will too. Happy listening!
That’s it for now. See you next week (or on Friday, if you’re a paying subscriber)!
To be led to Masma Dream World-- fantastic! Checking her Instagram, she's being followed by the likes of Robert Aki Aubrey Lowe, Aaron Turner and Moor Mother. Wendy, I'm home!