New Music Friday: Stream projects from Yeat, Machine Girl, Christopher Owens, and more

LYFESTYLE is a return to high-octane form for Yeat, closer in sound and structure to his 2021 breakout Up 2 Më than his more recent albums. He’s trading bars with old friend Summrs over the careening “Go2Work;” pitter-pattering through the blitzkrieg of “Speedball;” bragging, “Diamonds on me cunt, watches on me cunt” on the hook to “U Don’t Know Lyfe.” There’s also some of the genre omnivory that marked his last album, from the throbbing dubstep-meets-Soft Cell “Gone 4 A Min” to the skaiwater-esque pop-punk flair of “Forever Again.” In an exclusive interview with The FADER, the rapper called the album, “the most polished I’ve ever came with the rap shit.” Yeat’s proven himself as a rapper, but LYFESTYLE makes the case he’s also a savvy composer. —Vivian Medithi

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“MG Ultra” is a double entendre, if not a very subtle one: the obvious connection to MKUltra (the CIA’s infamous mid-century human experimentation program) paired with the idea that Machine Girl’s new LP is the pioneering post-industrial duo “in their most distilled” form, per a press release. The pun is apt. MG Ultra is vocalist/producer Matt Stephenson and percussionist Sean Kelly’s clearest and most anthemic album to date, addled by paranoia and brain rot but still cohesive and ultra-compelling. Most of the songs retain the familiar breakneck-breakcore-verse-into-hyperdrive-hardcore-hook structure that’s been such a successful formula for MG in the past, but Stephenson’s hi-fi, no-filler production here makes the songs snap into focus more emphatically than any in their back catalog. From the squeaky-clean breaks of “Until I Die” to the hypertextual compression of “Nu Nu Meta”; the brain-melting speed bender “Sick!!!” to the head-spinning, conspiratorial club banger “Hot Lizard”; the show-stopping “Motherfather” to the footworking “Cicadas”; and the ultra-cynicism of “Schizodipshit” to the ultra-catharsis of “Psychic Attack,” MG Ultra is the ur-Machine Girl album, finding the duo at their purest and most mutated. —Raphael Helfand

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The former Girls frontman’s first solo album in nearly a decade feels like Christopher Owens returning to his center, but with the past providing an indelible shadow. “No, not another love song,” he sings on “No Good.” “Not one more song where I’m pretending everything will be OK.” The seven-minute-long “Do You Need A Friend” is similarly carved from dark material, with lines like, “People come and people go / But the loneliness is always the same” and “If you really wanna know / I’m barely making it through the days.” But elsewhere, songs reflect more positive developments in Owens’ life, like “Two Words,” which was written after Owens repaired his friendship with his ex. In an exclusive interview with The FADER, Owens said that the making of the record reminded him “that what makes you happy is music. Everything else is sort of trivial.” —David Renshaw

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What does it take to keep dreaming while living in a world that feels increasingly like the end times? That’s the question Kelly Lee Owens faces on her transcendent fourth studio album, Dreamstate. Music is rarely, if ever, a solution for these sort of large existential queries, but the Welsh electronic singer-producer is smart enough to know she’s not meant to be solving complex crises. Instead, her songs — enveloping, glowing, auras of light — offer relief simply by gesturing at the richness that’s still present around us. She points at all the “love you got” on the pulsating single of the same name and pulls us up with her to stratospheric heights on “Higher.” Several songs are named after Earth’s most basic elementals, “Sunshine” and “Air,” highlighting the miracles we often take for granted. For Owens, all of this is enough to keep moving forward, day by day, with hopeful persistence. That the music is also heavenly euphoria — something you can take onto the dancefloor and share with others — is a bonus. —Steffanee Wang

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TisaKorean’s frantic new EP runs shorter than a network sitcom but packs in more laughs, stunts, fights, and sex scenes than The Substance. With a pair of assists from Don Toliver and Tia Corine, In Silly We Trust is an unruly and unbound peek into an alternate universe where the goofy, rather than the geek, inherit the earth. Fans of “Backseat” and “Go Down” won’t want to miss “lEgs In tHe aIr,” a muted and moody slow jam that seems to demand a 45-minute extended remix. And it’s a treat to hear Tia and Tisa go back and forth on the playful “MiKeToMlIn,” which threads Milwaukee-esque handclaps to crystal synths and a pan flute straight out of Ocarina of Time. Whether croaking desperately in search of a “GLaSs oF WaTeR” or slurring, “Most she get up out me is a pedicrrrrrrrr,” amid an angelic harp quartet on “MoNeY HaPpInEsS,” TisaKorean proves he’s still one of America’s preeminent stylists, capable of making everything from Twisted Tea to plush tigers seem swagful. —Vivian Medithi

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Keyboardist Chris Abrahams, drummer (and occasional guitarist) Tony Buck, and bassist Lloyd Swanton have been releasing uncompromising works of improvised music for 35 years — live records, soundtracks, and roughly two dozen studio LPs that often consist of roughly hour-long single tracks. Bleed, which follows 2023’s Travel, sticks to this time-tested formula. The 42-minute composition starts with slow, sustained notes from Abrahams’s piano, their overtones bleeding into one another like spilled ink. Even as he moves into an electronically effected fortissimo, you can still hear the human behind the instrument shifting position and drawing short, sharp breaths. Buck’s drums enter in earnest near the six-minute mark with swelling rolls juxtaposed with shimmering tone clusters — wind chimes strung through a wormhole. The drums slip in and out of a pulse as Swanton plucks his downtuned E string and Buck strums sweet, simple guitar chords. Many more things happen, but a short-form play by play would be a silly exercise. Like all of The Necks’ best albums, Bleed cannot be properly rendered by written words; amorphous but intentional, built on the absence of structure, the piece seems to slowly rise from a pre-language, primordial stew that will keep convecting long after humans cease to walk the earth. —RH

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Luka Seifert, a.k.a. RIP Swirl, makes baggy, Madchester-inspired songs that sway with a gentle confidence. On his second album, Perfectly Blue, the Berlin-based musician pulls in a raft of vocalists to sharpen the edges of his club-adjacent, indie rock soundscapes. Maria Somerville drifts over the top of “Bizarre,” which adds shoegaze-y guitar tones and rapid-fire percussion to the mix. alias error of a.s.o., meanwhile, appears on “I Found You Out,” a dreamy waltz that builds into a delicately epic finale. Despite being just 26 minutes long, Perfectly Bluenever feels anything less than wholly fulfilling. —DR

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Miami-based quartet Seafoam Walls have described their music as “Caribbean jazz-gaze,” a nod to the eclectic array of influences and cultures in the band. Thurston Moore was so enamored with their debut album, XVI, that he released it on his Daydream Library Series label in 2021. Now, the band return with a follow-up. Standing Too Close To The Elephant In The Room explores what they see as the limitations of intersectionality and “what it means to be a good person,” per frontman Jayan Bertrand. Musically, that’s expressed through an array of blissed-out arrangements that tap at the limits of indie rock’s outer edges. Don’t mistake the serenity or Bertrand’s diaphanous vocal melodies for timidity, though. “Rapids” is a rich and knotty meditation on the importance of keeping an open mind, an idea that underpins Seafoam Walls music across the board. “Cabin Fever,” meanwhile, is the album’s moment, a rallying cry to keep underground culture unique and distinct. Whether you want to kick back or go deeper, Standing Too Close To The Elephant In The Room has something to say. —DR

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Office Culture is a New York City-based jazz-soul band that’s just released their fourth studio album, Enough. It’s helmed by the singer-songwriter and pianist Winston Cook-Wilson, whose lyrics sometimes belie silly and uneasy neuroses: “I brought a hat to the party […] and you tell me I’m a hat guy;” “Well I’ll panic, so don’t panic at me;” “Never trust a man in overalls.” His musings often hone in on the unspoken tension of small moments and spiral out from there — something we’re all at fault to do. But the way he sings about them is almost with a note of whimsy. All of this is wrapped up in an elegant jazzy suit, so the adults in the room can also take a second and look at the absurdities their brains come up with. —SW

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Nothing hits quite like gorgeous ambient production paired with pristine percussion, and no one does it as well as Japanese experimentalists Chihei Hatakeyama (purveyor of said ambience) and Shun Ishiwaka (provider of said drums). Both absurdly prolific masters of their craft, Shun and Chihei have shared their second collaborative LP of the year (the follow-up to May’s Magnificent Little Dudes, Volume 02.). The project lasts 55 minutes across four tracks: “M3” (featuring British cellist Cecilia Bignall), “M2,” “M5,” and “M6.” (For those keeping track, MLD Vol. 01. featured “M0,” “M1.1,” “M1.2,” “M4,” and “M7.”) Each “M” is a self-contained microcosm teeming with soft noise, swelling and shrinking as its stars go giant. Taken as a whole, MLD2 is boundless beyond comprehension. —RH

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