Weekly Music Roundup: Robyn, Cypress Hill and Urban Santeria by Okonkolo

Week of Aug. 6: This week, long-awaited returns by Robyn and Cypress Hill, plus Urban Santeria from Okonkolo.

The First Robyn of Summer, 8 Years On

The Swedish electropop star Robyn hasn’t put out a full album since 2010, but that’s about to change. She’s just released her first single from a forthcoming record, and “Missing U” shows that she’s about to pick up where she left off – with a steady dance beat, swirling synthesizers, and multiple layers of her voice. The song falls into a pattern that she’s used to great effect before, namely, dancing away your troubles. (See, for example, her huge 2010 hit “Dancing On My Own.”) Here, she’s mourning the end of a relationship, but seems to be doing it while the strobe lights flash and the drums pound.

Cypress Hill Return With New Egyptian-Flavored Single

Like Robyn, the multi-platinum hip hop band Cypress Hill is about to release its first full-length album in eight years. Called Elephants on Acid, it will apparently feature sounds and musicians from various parts of the world, and the lead single, “Band of Gypsies,” is a collaboration with a group of Egyptian street musicians from Cairo. It’s just the latest in a long line of unusual choices of musical partners this band has made. (In 2004, Cypress Hill teamed up with Tim Armstrong of the rock band Rancid on the memorable “What’s Your Number?” – essentially a remake of “The Guns of Brixton” by The Clash.) The song begins with Sadat & 50, as the Cairo crew is known, and then alternates between the two bands; but everything is woven together by a throbbing bass drone, a thudding drum beat, and a skirling, keening electric guitar that drifts around a Near Eastern mode. The band’s veteran producer, DJ Muggs, also directed and partially shot the video for “Band of Gypsies.”

Elephants on Acid comes out on September 28. They’ll play their annual Haunted Hill concerts in New York this Halloween, on October 31 at the Gramercy Theater and on November 2 at Warsaw in Brooklyn. 

Santeria Prayers, El Barrio-Style, from Okonkolo

The Afro-Cuban spiritual practice known as Santeria has its roots in the Yoruba culture of what is now Nigeria. Chanting and drumming have long been at the heart of this tradition, and they still are – but the band Okonkolo has given them a contemporary, jazzy twist on their new album, Cantos. The band is led by Abraham “Aby” Rodriguez, a New York native from a Puerto Rican family who is a percussionist and a Santeria priest. He and guitarist/producer Jacob Plasse have come up with a fetching blend of spiritual dance rhythms and surprising, almost orchestral touches. In this piece, “Wolenche por Chango,” Aby’s vocals are soon surrounded by funky guitars and jazzy horns; but towards the end, there’s a striking passage with a lush string sound and a plaintive clarinet. Chango, by the way, is the god of the drum, so those bata drums are a constant throughout the piece. 

From Scotland’s Chvrches, a Blast Of J-Pop

Back in March, the synth-pop band Chvrches released their third album, Love Is Dead.  In the roundup for that week we focused on the song “My Enemy,” a collaboration with Matt Berninger of The National. On Friday, Chvrches released a new – and unexpected – collaboration: it’s a single called “Out Of My Head,” and sees the Glaswegian band working with a Japanese pop group with the wonderfully unlikely name Wednesday Campanella. Chvrches’ Lauren Mayberry handles the choruses, in English, but the verses are sung in Japanese by the J-pop trio’s lead singer Kom_I. In a press release, Kom_I described her singing with Chvrches as “Kiyoshiro Imawano (Japan’s late “King of Rock”) meets David Bowie, and edamame meets fish and chips.” The video is an anime extravaganza with a huge water bottle emerging from the sea and a subway car flying through the air. All accompanied by the lush, layered sound of Chvrches at their catchiest.

Donny McCaslin Reflects Bowie’s Influence In New Album

Sax player Donny McCaslin was no secret to fans of the New York jazz scene before 2016, but he was catapulted to a whole new level of visibility (audibility?) when David Bowie’s final album, Blackstar, was released in January of that year. McCaslin and his quartet were essentially Bowie’s band for that album, and some of Bowie’s influence seeped into McCaslin’s last album, Beyond Now (which included covers of two Bowie songs). Now, McCaslin’s forthcoming album, Blow., sees the band moving into sonic terrain that shows even more of Bowie’s impact. With guest singers like Mark Kozelek of the band Sun Kil Moon and Gail Ann Dorsey, who was Bowie’s bass player for many years, McCaslin has come up with an album that uses his band’s serious jazz chops in the service of song structures drawn from rock. The single “Club Kidd” features vocals by Ryan Dahle, and surprisingly pairs reflections on McCaslin’s early days in music clubs with the movement of bees. 

Blow. comes out on October 5. McCaslin and his quartet play Rough Trade in Brooklyn on September 13 and 14; watch for a live performance on our Facebook page on September 7 at 2 pm.