New Music Friday: Stream projects from Bizhiki, lol k, and more

The supergroup behind Unbound, an album a decade in the making, sought to make music that could not be detached from a specific place. On their first full-length as Bizhiki, Indigenous artists Joe Rainey and Dylan Bizhikiins Jennings join Bon Iver’s S. Carey, marrying traditional and powwow singing with an alternative electronic soundscape; it’s an album that “goes back to when the spirit of the Bizhiki was forged on the banks of the Chippewa River,” according to a press release. For Rainey, of the Red Lake Nation of Ojibwe people, and Jennings of the Marten Clan, the music is made with the philosophy of reciprocity: between Gichigami (or Lake Superior) and themselves; between ambient instrumentation, emphatic candidness in their lyrics, and intense but intimate vocalizations. And with a balance of tender yet unrelenting messaging —“She’s all we have / Just give us back our land,” Bizhiki says in “She’s All We Have” — Unbound feels both fully realized and the beginning of something important. — Hannah Sung

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

The warm, radiant orbit of Mica Levi’s genius has helped cultivate some ear-turning acts that share her playful yet meticulous approach to art. Their band Good Sad Happy Bad (f.k.a. Micachu & the Shapes) released one of the best indie rock albums of 2020 with Shades, and one of the group’s members, CJ Calderwood, has now joined up with Junior XL for their debut album as lol k. climbing/holding/falling opens with the haunting drone of an electric organ, the same one you’ve heard on countless Levi records, before something new kicks in: an insistent electronic drum pattern and vocals somewhere between free association and pure freestyling. lol k consistently find new ways to surprise throughout the album as they elide and combine genres, whether it’s the gothic death march of “Doombox” (punctuated with a flute that sounds like it’s being blown through a plague mask) or a shockingly sexy Jersey club smash with “Severed Tail.” All these elements conspire to create a project of experimental tinkering that swims like a dolphin between the deep end and shallower pools, swirling the tides together. — Jordan Darville

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

The music made by Brutalismus 3000, Berlin’s most tongue-in-cheek techno duo, can feel like nightmare fuel. Theo Zeitner, a former film student (yes, that is a Pasolini reference in the EP title) programs drums like he’s scoring a Mad Max movie in hell, while Victoria Vassiliki-Daldas screams her vocals in a mixture of English, German, and Slovak. It’s overwhelming but never too serious — their world is closer to an EDM fluro-rave than Berghain. Their BPM-maxxing combination of gabber, techno, and punk works perfectly in EP form, where the density doesn’t have the time to become a dull thud. “Baby G” adds buzzing guitars to anvil-heavy percussion while “Scee” is the sound of a marching band being dragged to hell. It’s on “badthiings (rip avicii)” that they reach something of a mission statement. Vassiliki-Daldas issues a warning that feels like more of a Bat-signal, “bad kids are running through the streets,” she shrieks, “yeah they’re running to the beat.” — David Renshaw

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music

Just Cause Vol. 1 is a 29-track, two-and-a-half-hour collection of unreleased odds and ends, demos, and brand new music from some of the most exciting experimental artists alive. Curated by Cody DeFalco (Terrorbird Media) and Evan Welsh (Bayonet Records), the project is billed as the first in a series of charitable compilations; proceeds from Vol. 1 will go directly to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. Here, we have the dreamy debut single form whait, the creative partnership of more eaze and Wendy Eisenberg (everyone’s favorite New York power couple); a haunting, eight-minute string piece from MIZU; a short-form power-pop banger from This Is Lorelei, the king of short-form power-pop bangers; a warped industrial ballad from Amiture; a hair-raising operatic demo from LEYA; a baroque trap song from Andrea Schiavelli and Frances Chang; gauzy bardo city pop from Matt Evans; a choral drone bath from Ben Seretan; demented live improvisations from Lucy Liyou X Nick Zanca and Amirtha Kidambi X Darius Jones (Angels & Demons); et al. Amid this tapestry of gorgeous, diverse sounds, the most direct evocation of the album’s purpose comes on track two, OHYUNG’s languid “Elegy For Gaza.” The piece is a lushly looped and layered textural melange that grows heavier with each repetition, its weight a subtle yet visceral reminder of the unbearable oppression the 2 million souls still trapped in the world’s worst war zone face daily. — Raphael Helfand

Buy it: Bandcamp

Growing up in Rio de Janeiro, Oruã frontman Lê Almeida has seen and experienced his fair share of violence, oppression, and social inequity. Hyperconscious of Brazil’s colonizer history, its ruthless eradication of Indigenous traditions, and its bloody involvement in the slave trade and a string of subsequent uprisings, Almeida and his self-described “working-class krautrock” band use their new album, Passe, to make sharp sociopolitical statements against a medley of pleasant psych-rock riffs, fuzzy tapes, dreamlike synthesizers, and twinkly percussives. While songs like “Miragem” and “Real Grandeza” incorporate that lo-fi garage grunge into a series of catchy ‘70s-inspired melodies, their clever yet severe lyrics are a much different story. — Sandra Song

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

Rapping in his native Faroese, one of the world’s least-spoken tongues, Silvurdrongur (Silver Boy) makes a strong case for the language as a vehicle for bars, and for the small yet shockingly varied Faroe Islands music scene. On the 13 tracks of nú æt eg eftir ánni (now I am named after the river) — each named for a different “drongur” (boy) — he builds a bizarre, magical-realist world that’s also grounded in the sinister realities of our own. Like the best Del Toro films, the album threads this needle with wondrous, hypnotic soundscapes that provide a strange, disarming setting for Silvurdrongur’s venomous bars. Highlights include “Sóljudrongur” (Buttercup Boy), “Apurdrongur” (Monkey Boy), “Brúðardrongur” (Bridal Boy) — which ends with the fried, Bladee-evoking ad lib “hauntology vibes” — and the glacial island posse cut “Sólardrongur” (Solar Boy). — Raphael Helfand

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music