FromLondonRecommended if you likeKing Krule, This Heat, Wu-LuUp nextDebut mixtape, Lightning Hit the Trees, out 11 July
Parade’s recent debut single offered music that was very hard to put your finger on, not least because its two tracks sounded absolutely nothing like each other. The first, Picking Flowers felt like the work of a female singer-songwriter who had dispensed with verses and choruses and was backed by a band on the verge of falling apart: woodwind, keyboards and guitar clashing, drums fading in and out of the mix, everything soaked in dub-influenced echo. Then it seemed to turn into a completely different song midway through. The second, Que?, offered a male rap-adjacent vocal over a chaotic sprawl of distorted guitar and drums before collapsing into noisy abstraction then stopping dead.
It was the work of an eight-piece collective – all its members have other careers, both musical and otherwise (their ranks include a fashion designer and a visual artist) – formed in Brighton, but now dotted around south London: they apparently record in a disused shipping container and their social media presence consists of a solitary Instagram post. Their forthcoming mixtape Lightning Hit the Trees offers more of the pigeonhole-swerving same: music that veers from lulling and acoustic to nightmarish and noise-laden, from free jazzy improv to soundtrack atmospherics to prog-flecked post-rock, every one of its 29 minutes packed with ideas. How it might cohere live is an interesting point – it could easily just devolve into a mess – but there’s something hugely appealing about Parade’s disinclination to stay still, or provide an easy point of comparison.Alexis Petridis
Teyana Taylor – Long TimeOn her first release in five years, the actor/musician ethers an out-of-date relationship (“and the truth is, I didn’t end when it was over”), her cold poise blooming into gothic, vogue-ready house.LS
Cate Le Bon – Heaven Is No Feeling“You smoke our love like you’ve never known violence,” the Welsh musician sings witheringly on the first taste of her seventh album, atop a sea of dazed sax and murky, liquid guitar.LS
Kathleen Edwards – Say Goodbye, Tell No OneYet another hard truth:the Canadian songwriterfaces up to a relationship gone sour – how “you can get blisters from your favourite shoes” – on this wistful Americana epic.LS
Kasst 8 – Land of the ScousersProudly heavy Merseyside diction powers this rap track, which harks back to classic grime and garage with its lo-fi drums, ersatz strings and horns, and pirate-ready flow.BBT
Editrix – The Big EThe New York guitarist makes thoughtful, knotty solo records, plays with Bill Orcutt and has a discordant, rumbling punk band in Editrix: in this skittish duck-and-diver, Eisenberg sings of aliens with joyful sharpness.LS
Laicositna – Sit & GoIt’s unusual to hear a British MC use such a fragile flow, so far off the mic. It makes this tale of rejecting help and love all the more affecting, further enhanced by the lulling hook melody.BBT
Lippard Arkbro Lindwall – At Last I Am FreePowered by Ellen Arkbro’s unblinking organ tone and Hanne Lippard’s bald recitation, this trio’s devastating cover of the Chic ballad goes toe-to-toe with Robert Wyatt for the crown of greatest ever.BBT
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