Nacho Pezzati’s new album Swerved taps into the moody ambience of the UK north-west underground, ratcheting a tangible and thrilling sense of unease
From Barcelona, SpainRecommend if you like Space Afrika, Shackleton, PurelinkUp next Swerved out now
Swerved, by Barcelona-based producer Nueen (Nacho Pezzati) is a bassy, moody, darkly ambient album that travels through R&B, drill, cloud rap and dub without any obvious changes in its grey-black weather. But this is slowly churning music, on the brink of rot. By the 10th track, Copicat, the unease is tangible; after a slow, agonising ratcheting build of fanbelt hi-hats, the album’s only drop arrives with the weight and power of a cloudburst. It’s thrilling.
Swerved follows Nueen’s 2024 Hyperdub debut You Said You’d Hold My Hand Through the Fire with rapper Iceboy Violet, and fans of the north-west underground will recognise many of its themes. On Atmosphere Is My Style, a drawling Loraine James touches on the dislocation and confusion heard in Rainy Miller’s music. Two tracks featuring Manchester’s RenzNiro hit swaggering and confessional notes, similar to his recent album No Weapon Shall Prosper, and Swerved as a whole feels bathed in the humid ambience of Space Afrika. Nueen synthesises all these approaches, and takes stock, before breaking new ground.
The paths he heads down are guided by impressive vocal features. Cloud rapper XzavierStone pulls the sound in an Auto-Tune R&B direction on two tracks, and Baltimore singer Dawuna moans through the hot’n’heavy highlight Shm, which sounds like a lost D’Angelo joint. (Check out the latter’s Bandcamp-only African Family Laptop Musick for more.) Nueen breaks into new territories for an established sound without disrupting an album’s subtle cycles: through heating, simmering, and cooling. Hugh Morris
Ceebo x Blanco – Gets Like Dat
Two British MCs on rich, riveting form: the flows are as energised as a club track but the beat is mournful, as each of them gets candid about the fear and paranoia of failing in the rap game. BBT
Kali Malone – Heavy With FruitThe heady Colorado composer jettisoned theory for intuitive emotion on her new album, recorded on the organ at Bach’s resting place. Heavy With Fruit flickers like embers, the dying molten core of something. LS
Kiko Mizuhara – Feelin’ WeeJohn Carroll Kirby lays down puckish, squelchy keys under the Japanese-American actor-model’s cheeky song about love’s elusiveness, synths pinging to life like daisies bursting at warp-speed through the earth. LS
Corto.alto – Noblehill (ft Jacob Alon)
Mercury-nominated for his 2024 debut, the Scottish jazz artist closes out his new album Some Small Fortune with this extraordinarily deft ballad, Jacob Alon swooping through a pattering rainshower of strings, piano and breakbeats. BBT
Diiv – Kid“Everyone is a little kid,” Zachary Cole Smith whispers on fragile shoegaze that – despite producer AG Cook’s synth toybox puckering away in the background – invites a typically cosy, satisfying kind of wallowing. LS
Piss – Time Loop at Hot SlitThe uncompromisingly named Vancouver punk band make good on signing to Sub Pop, singer Taylor Zantingh howling “women don’t come” over thrashing guitar and drums that viscerally stumble under their own weight. LS
Silvan Strauss – That’s Who?!? (Fast Barista)
Fans of Squarepusher’s electro-skronk opus Music is Rotted One Note will thrill to the Hamburg drummer’s joyous new LP Sprinting, with acid jazz played with the breakneck pace and brittle funk of Chicago footwork. BBT
