Yubu and the Ancient Youth is a unique assortment of musicians with experience in different music genres and cultures in America, East Africa, West Africa and Europe. This has molded them to have a unique perspective on the global music scene. The band has found a home in Memphis Tennessee, the home of the blues, where they develop, create and perform a tasteful spin of blues music.
Haley Fohr is a vocalist, composer and singer-songwriter based in Chicago, Illinois. Her musical endeavors focus around our human condition, and her 10-year career as Circuit des Yeux has grown into one of America’s most successful efforts to connect the personal to the universal. Circuit des Yeux’s 2021 album -io was ranked on NPR’s 50 Best Albums of 2021, Pitchfork’s 100 Best Songs of 2021, and The Wire’s Top 50 Releases of 2021, among other best of 2021 year-end lists.
Anika — the project of Berlin-based musician Annika Henderson, who is also a founding member of Exploded View — announces Change, her first new album in over a decade. Her video for “Change” was directed by Sven Gutjahr, who also directed the video for her recent single, “Finger Pies.” The follow-up to cult favorite Anika (2010), Change is beautifully fraught. The intimacy of its creation and a palpable sense of global anxiety are seemingly baked into the album’s DNA. Spread across nine tracks, the central feeling of the record is one of heightened frustration buoyed by guarded optimism. The songs offer skittering, austere electronic backdrops reminiscent of classic Broadcast records or Hi Scores-era Boards of Canada, playing them against Anika’s remarkable voice — Nico-esque, beautifully plaintive, and — in regard to the record’s subject matter — totally resolute.
