L&Q Weekly

Kraftwerk Daft Punk fraud!, angry weekend listening, Jerskin Fendrix raps his own name, experimental music roundup, Rolling Stones cast announced

Apr 04, 2025

Album News

Albums for your diary announced this week:

Various Artists – Rough Trade 45s: Volume 1 (20 June, Rough Trade): The indie label that has inspired so many others will release a new boxset of 7-inch singles consisting of 8 records from their early years (1978-1980), by The Raincoats, Cabaret Voltaire, The Pop Group, Young Marble Giants, Swell Maps, Subway Sect and Augustus Pablo. It’ll be followed on 26 September by vol. 2, covering 1980-1992.

Obongjayar – Paradise Now (30 May, September Recordings): Following her recent single ‘Flood’, Little Simz returns the favour and features on the Nigerian singer’s second album. Although new track ‘Sweet Danger’ suggests he doesn’t really need a hand.

Wet Leg – Moisturizer (11 July, Domino): A record of “manic love songs” from the all-conquering indie band, written this time as five-piece rather than the duo of Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers.

Track of the Week

Jerskin Fendrix has proven true to his word of 2020 – a year when he released his debut album Winterise with the promise of being a less-is-more artist, only releasing music when he’s completely happy with it, so don’t expect to be inundated, he said. Five years later he’s finally released a new single. (He’s spent the intervening years being nominated for Oscars and Golden Globes and BAFTAs for scoring Poor Things, and winning an Ivor Novello.) ‘Jerskin Fendrix Freestyle’ is a ride once again. A mad fusion track of parping sax on which Jerskin raps the letters of his name at one point (“R is for rickets / It’s why Jerskin aches”). How is it not totally awful?

Weekend Listening

If over the weekend you listen to one album released today, make it A City Drowned in God's Black Tears by Baltimore-based duo Infinity Knives and Brian Ennals. They didn’t want to make another political album following 2022’s King Cobra (a record so good it became the Loud And Quiet Album of the Year), and A City Drowned in God's Black Tears started life as an EP. But things have happened in the world that the producer and rapper couldn’t not express. The genocide of the Palestinian people, Trump’s return, the violence of last-stage capitalism, Amazon (same), personal struggles and grief – it’s all here, in a furious record of righteous anger and extremely straight-talking lyricism: “Donald Trump, you a rapist and you know it / Joe Biden, you a Nazi and you know it / Obama, yous the devil and you know it”, goes the opening ‘The Iron Wall ft. FRANKI3’, setting the scene of an American discontent that’s no new thing. It’s all rage, and yet Infinity Knives production is more varied and eclectic than ever before, hopping from mutant disco to latin guitar, salsa, huge rock power chords, noise, back to IK’s known computer game twinkles. They’ve managed to make such all-consuming frustration sound far from derivative, and at times even like a party you want to be at.

Review

Have we become too unforgiving of artists? Even our favourite ones, loving their music until we’re spooked or turned off by a record that dares to do something a little different to that last. Black Country, New Road have evaded such an issue by switching things up with every release, so what of album number 4, Forever Howlong? It might be the first time they’ve ever felt so settled. Read now

This is good stuff, isn’t it!? Give it a share, aye?

Groove historian Cal Cashin delivers another out-there edition of his experimental music column The Drift, rounding up March’s best avant-garde releases from around the world. Read now

True Crime

It’s been April Fool’s Day this week, which caused a lot of people to use the internet to spread lies instead of what it’s meant to be used for. It was all a bit of harmless fun, but what if someone had fully believed that the Abbey Road crossing had been removed, and jumped off a bridge?! Worth thinking about for next year! One ridiculous story did turn out to be true, though: how Kraftwerk founding member Wolfgang Flür has been tricked into collaborating with an imposter calling himself Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter. The still unknown fraudster first got in touch with Flür via Facebook around 2022, and now 2 of their collaborations (‘Monday To The Moon’ and ‘Uber_All’) have made it all the way onto Flür’s new album Times, which came out last week. The tracks – worked on remotely, before you start to think that this guy got away with it by wearing a helmet the whole time – are credit to Thomas Vangarde, at the request of the fake Bangalter, a pseudonym that previously belonged to the real Bangalter’s own father. The thing is, what if someone jumps off a bridge!?

Rumour of the Week

Dormant since 1970, the vicious feud between The Beatles and The Rollings Stones looks like it might have been reignited this week following Tuesday’s announcement that The Beatles TV biopic will see the Fabulous Four portrayed by of-the-moment actors including Paul Mescal and Eddie Munster. With such sexy names attached to the project, The Rolling Stones camp are said to be furious that their own “bigger and better” biopic series hasn’t yet been announced by Channel 5. Sources says that as recently as 11.30pm last night, Mick Jagger was overheard telling the wind “we’ve got twice as many episodes, so it’s twice as good, okay?”. Whereas The Beatles show is confirmed to be a 4-parter, each dedicated to a different member of the band, The Stones’ rival show is rumoured to consist of 8 “Jagger-centric” “licks”, with working titles of ‘Hair’, ‘Dance’, ‘Movement (Dance)’, ‘Leggings’, ‘Money’, ‘Dancing’, ‘Sex with Mick’ and ‘The Others’. Although unsubstantiated, the cast is thought to include Mick Jagger in the role of Mick Jagger, Mat Horne as Ronnie Wood, Death In Paradise pinup Kris Marshall as Keith Richards, and a plank of wood as Bill Wyman.