The May Flash-Cult Digest
What is this thing?
Welcome to "Flash-Cult", swift insights for the advice-averse!
Each month, join us on a journey from the electrifying strums of rock to the soothing melodies of jazz, from the serene waves of ambient to the pulsating rhythms of electronic. No need for long reads—just a quick, fun glimpse and an invite to explore the best tunes we've discovered.
Flash-Cult choices of the month
Our special selection of great music released during this month.
Beth Gibbons
Lives Outgrown
Experimental
Beth Gibbons has mastered the art of deliberate, almost lethargic creativity, with each sparse release enhancing her enigmatic reputation. Her latest album, "Lives Outgrown," marks a significant return, weaving together acoustic folk with experimental textures, creating a dense, exploratory soundscape. Gibbons' introspective lyrics and haunting melodies reflect themes of motherhood, anxiety, and aging, making this album a poignant and richly layered comeback that transcends her past work with Portishead.
Flash Advice Song: Reaching out.
Wadada Leo Smith, Amina Claudine Myers
Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens
Jazz
Central Park, resembling a monster’s footprint in Manhattan, serves as the muse for Wadada Leo Smith's "Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens." This album, featuring pianist Amina Claudine Myers, transcends mere landscapes, offering a stately, elegiac tone that echoes seismic events and human history. Smith's compositions, steeped in jazz and the AACM tradition, weave through the park’s natural beauty and historical depth, creating a rich, expansive auditory journey that belies its concise 36-minute runtime.
Flash Advice Song: When was.
Shellac
To All Trains
Indie Rock
"To All Trains" is quintessentially a Shellac album, encapsulating the band's signature minimalism and raw energy. Released shortly after frontman Steve Albini's unexpected passing, it stands as a testament to his unwavering dedication to a pure, unembellished underground rock ethos. The album's 28-minute runtime is packed with the band's trademark caustic wit and blistering sound, serving as a fitting and powerful epitaph to Albini's influential career and the enduring spirit of Shellac.
Flash Advice Song: Chick New Wave.
Mdou Moctar
Funeral For Justice
Rock
Powerful sounds, razor-sharp guitars, political, militant and involved singing: this album takes the best lesson of 70s rock and present it in a faithful but never mannerist key. The adjective "afro-rock" - which is often attributed to Mdou Moctar and his production - is a miserable label. Here we are faced with a masterpiece of contemporary rock: where it was made and in what language it is sung does not in the least affect its ability to convey anger, frustration and a sense of melancholy which however transforms into the desire to raise one's head and continue to fight for justice.
Flash Advice Song: Oh France.
Kamasi Washington
Fearless Movement
Jazz
Kamasi Washington's "Fearless Movement" is a sprawling, nearly 90-minute opus that continues his tradition of expansive jazz narratives, though without the choirs and orchestras of his previous works. Created during the pandemic, the album delves into themes of dance, mortality, and fatherhood, weaving complex jazz compositions with elements of funk, R&B, and hip-hop. With contributions from his road band and various collaborators, Washington achieves a cohesive yet adventurous soundscape, blending joyful and intense musical explorations with social and spiritual depth.
Flash Advice Song: Ahsa the first.
Billy Eilish
Hit me hard and soft
Alt-pop
Probably the most talented singer of her generation, Billie Eilish risked becoming a genre in her own right, with sounds and themes that have characterized her production for almost ten years now. This album surprises with every track, making the artist compare with traditions and styles quite distant from her usual territories (a couple of songs are so Taylor Swift-like that they seem Mariah Carey-like), with the result that only the singer's voice and expressiveness act as a common factor in the work. In short, it's a bit like returning to the house where you grew up and finding the furniture all moved: it's not bad, but... somehow it's not the same. But you know that maybe, in the end, it's better.
Flash Advice Song: BIRDS OF A FEATHER.
Church
Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitar
Jangle Pop
Jangle pop was born as a revisitation of the '60s sound, but after an initial innovative push it took refuge a bit in mannerism. The greatest advantage of this album is being halfway between the "special edition" of previous albums and recordings of the creative mess that gets you when you are in the rehearsal room with your lifelong friends. This leads to a completely unusual and at times irresistible result: a very interesting mix of innovation and jingle-jangle guitars that will make you fall in love.
Flash Advice Song: Manifesto
MòS Ensamble
Pets & Therapy
Chamber pop
Relaxed sounds, good orchestration, sublime execution: this album has chamber pop at its purest... except that deep sound of uneasiness that comes out on dead angles, where you can barely hear it. Those are the angles where art stands, and this third record is probably the most iconic release for the collective's art. Melodies and beauty are not easy to catch here, despite everything is sorrounded by a alienating sweetness, but they are there to find under the cover: like a messy room, full of discs, musical instruments and cables, where you need to find your hidden pearls, this record is less about what you find, and more about what you are searching for.
Flash Advice Song: Let's talk
Historical milestone
Every month, a fresh milestone from music history served up for you.
Thee Silver Mt.Zion
Kollaps Tradixionales - 2010
post-rock
I honestly don't know if an album from 2010 can be considered "a fresh milestone from music history", but certainly the musical world of fifteen years ago was something completely different: just think that this album was released on vinyl in very few copies, with a very strange format for the few crazy people who didn't download it from Soulseek. This is post-rock at its peak: four losers, bent over their instruments, endlessly repeating notes, phrases, reverberations and laments. In the strings of Thee Silver Mt.Zion there is no genre style that is not used, no musical cliché that is avoided, no melodic solution that is not crossed: yet from these grooves emerges an enormous, gigantic sense of communicative urgency, of expressive strength . Because ultimately that's what music is: it's not originality, it's not technique. It's a cry in the night, made because you hope someone will hear it. Or that there's a light that can come and get you, out there somewhere.
Flash Advice Song: There is a light
