Tony Stamp reviews jungle-soul fusion from Nia Archives, the uninhibited Aotearoa folk of Mali Mali, and Eddie Chacon's ongoing RnB comeback.
Sunrise Bang Ur Head Against Tha Wall by Nia Archives
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It’s clear by this point that no genre will ever truly fade, and reports of the death of jungle have been exaggerated for over twenty years now. Still, it’s heartening to see how it’s subsisted, sectioning off sub-genres to lose some of the machismo and muck around with the format.
One British producer has built a formidable reputation over the past few years, and at the age of 24, just released her third EP, continuing to merge UK soul and her own vocals with familiar, tumbling clusters of drums and bass.
Nia Archives has only been releasing music for a few years, but has already won BBC Music’s Introducing Award for Artist of the Year, an NME Award for Best Producer, and was nominated for a Brit Award for Best Rising Star, among several other accolades.
She’s a DJ as well as a singer-songwriter and producer, an artist who seems able to preternaturally fuse these things together with ease. Previously she’s used her voice as one part of a mix aimed firmly at the dance floor, but on this EP, Sunrise Bang Ur Head Against Tha Wall, it’s pushed to the forefront, creeping towards pop songwriting, albeit accompanied by familiar clattering rhythms.
On ‘No Need 2 Be Sorry, Call Me?’, Nia Archives is joined on vocals by Maverick Sabre, approaching something like a traditional duet. Lyrics on the EP are centred around relationships - call it breaks and breakups - and that creates an interesting friction between the energy of the music and the sometimes-sad words.
On ‘So Tell Me’, the combination results in one of the best pop tracks I’ve heard all year, even though it’s a series of verses with no chorus. There are familiar drum n bass touchstones - the eerie synth lead and descending drum fills - but it’s powered by an incredible vocal melody, the kind you want to go on in perpetuity.
The one track not featuring Nia Archives' voice is the first, which samples a vocal from the 2005 track 'Baianá' by the Brazilian band Barbatuques, and speeds it up to jungle tempo.
I once read a local critic describe drum and bass as sounding like "a drum kit falling down some stairs". That was a long time ago, but still feels apt - indeed many of the breaks Nia Archives samples on Sunrise Bang Ur Head Against That Wall are the same ones used back then.
But the genre is fascinating in its malleability within a set format. Adding soul vocals to the mix is nothing new - artists like Roni Size were doing it in the 1990s - but Nia Archives sets herself apart with the strength of her songwriting, not to mention her voice and formidable production skills. It’s an impressive package, and she’s just getting started.
Spirit Tide by Mali Mali
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With some artists, you can feel them reaching for possibilities they hadn’t realised were there. That’s the sense I get from Ben Tolich, who’s been releasing music as Mali Mali for around ten years and has just delivered his fifth full-length album.
As in the past, you can draw comparisons to folk music, even the kind of acoustic pop Crowded House made their name on. But there’s a sense that Tolich is unfettered by song structure or any sense of what he should do, and seems to be chasing each impulse in the moment - particularly vocally. That results in songs that are delightfully unpredictable.
In press for this record, Tolich states his aim of doing more with less, sonically, acknowledging he’s said the same thing for the past few albums. On Spirit Tide that results in sparse arrangements that always feel full, making use of reverb to create space, and leaving room for his voice to do what it wants.
On ‘Piano Ringing On’ he’s mostly accompanied by the instrument of the title, as well as a choir of his own voice piping in from the background. It holds your attention with startling lines like “Midnight I awoke on a hospital bed, calling out, gasping for breath”, and then the song coalesces around a simple melodic hook.
The music of Mali Mali has been compared to local folk adjacent mavericks like Pumice and Alastair Galbraith but operates in more accessible territory than either of them. There are avant-garde impulses, but this feels closer to the likes of Anthonie Tonnon in terms of delivery if not arrangement.
Moments like the refrain “I know you love her” suggest a more straightforward version of Tolich’s music, but it’s those woolly edges that hold much of the charm.
Drums for the album were recorded externally, but otherwise, Tolich made the record in his home studio. He said it was a painstaking process, but you get the sense he was able to linger on some sonic details, and that extends to almost-ambient tracks like ‘Atua Peruperu’ named after a place in Cape Reinga where in 1928 TW Rātana said he heard the spirits of the dead.
That song hints at some of the overarching themes on Spirit Tide, as does the album’s title. Tolich dwells on stories about death alongside imagery of coastal Aotearoa. Water is mentioned frequently, from the sea to rainfall.
There’s a song called ‘Everything’s a River’, and lyrics about rocks on the shore, and the lines about passing on are also graceful, like “You stepped out of ninety long winters”, on ‘The Sentence’.
The more you listen, the more you realise how Tolich is tying the two things together: life as a conduit to a resting place, like a stream feeding the ocean. It’s thoughtful, and generous, buoyed by music that feels similarly free-flowing.
Sundown by Eddie Chacon
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At the recent Beacon Festival in Auckland, LA singer Eddie Chacon addressed the audience in between songs. The crowd wasn’t huge but he was clearly grateful and thanked us for listening after he’d been away for a while.
Chacon is approaching 60 and stopped making music altogether for ten years. In the nineties he had topped the charts in the duo Charles and Eddie, with their hit ‘Would I Lie To You’. His career resumption and reinvention have been particularly satisfying, updating a particular brand of RnB with help from an in-demand pianist slash producer.
In a 2020 Guardian interview about his comeback album Pleasure Joy and Happiness, Chacon talks about the inferiority complex he suffered for years after becoming what he thought of as a one-hit-wonder. When his partner in Charles and Eddie, Charles Pettigrew, died aged 37, Chacon stepped away from his studio and didn’t return to music for ten years.
In that same article, he says he always wanted to make one album where he was honest with himself, going on to say “It’s taken my whole life to get there”.
A few years later, he’s done it again, reteaming with producer John Carroll Kirby for Sundown.
According to Kirby part of his role as producer was getting Chacon to convey the meaning behind what he was singing about. The song ‘Comes and Goes’ is a good example, as he sings “I had everything. Comes and goes”.
Kirby has played keys for a long list of artists including Harry Styles, Frank Ocean and Solange. On that first record, he assembled instrumentals on vintage gear and invited Chacon to sing stream-of-consciousness lyrics over them. For Sundown they headed to Ibiza for two weeks to lay down the bones of these tracks, and the results are similarly meditative, wistful and nostalgic but never ponderous, and always with a strong sense of groove.
The word I want to keep using when describing this music is ‘slinky’. Kirby has latched onto Chacon’s sense of soul and given it an appropriate home in these minimal, moody compositions. Every day during recording they listened to 'Greeting to Saud' by the late jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. According to the liner notes its appeal was that “simplicity wins out over virtuosity every time”.
External contributions came in the form of drums, percussion, brass and flute, as heard on the track ‘Far Away’, and in ‘Same Old Song’, but like everything here, they’re tasteful in the extreme.
Sundown was released on Stones Throw Records, founded by DJ Peanut Butter Wolf, and home to albums by J Dilla and Madlib. On paper, it might seem like an odd fit for Eddie Chacon, but once you hear the music it makes perfect sense.
It’s no doubt helped by John Carroll Kirby’s modern production touch, but the singer’s presence looms large and is the heart of the album.
Speaking about the prior record to The Guardian he said “I finally felt like I’d done something good”.
It’s now clear that wasn’t a one-off, and this partnership is one we should hope continues.
