Add to playlist: Idrissi’s cliché-corrected medieval music and the best new tracks of the week | music

from London via Corsica/Occitania
Recommended if you like Arooj Aftab, Maria Callas, The Choral Tragedy of Prioritizing Self-Esteem in an Age of Pleasure
the next New single “Dieus Sal la Terra” is out now

The Idrissi Ensemble is a useful corrective to the stereotype of medieval music as smooth, pious, and serene. Hearing the howls of this London-based group – sometimes backed by up to 19 members – you are reminded of song’s inexhaustible ability to conjure new pain.

In 2016, Thomas Fornell, a Corsican composer who teaches at the Guildhall School of Music, became increasingly obsessed with the ancient music of his homeland, with its pre-modern score and quivering, flowery motifs. He gathered a group of college friends to try what he found.

What he envisioned was far from a re-enactment of history. Fornell, for example, reworks this male-dominated repertoire for mixed voices. Today, Idrissi’s individual female voices – drawn from pop, jazz and multinational folk traditions – are one of the group’s main attractions. There is a political tension that runs through their work as well. They celebrate Troperitzthe outspoken and subversive female troubadour of twelfth-century Occitania, and the recent Dieus Sal la Terra, a Bagella It was sung by Fornell for Mixed Voices “in solidarity with those struggling to survive on the land they know.”

Their relationship with their practice became deeper. Like Corsican singers, they often sing in a horseshoe shape, with their arms crossed, without sheet music. Over the drones of a vielle (a portable instrument with a funky side note) and a vielle (a medieval violin), they deploy ornate and expressive vocal lines. While other vocal bands in Britain value pure tunings, their sound is rougher and more spiky. Individual improvisation is crucial, and when they all decide to move in unison, it is with a hesitant heaviness: burdened by long-standing pain. Hugh Morris

The best new songs of the week

Underscore – tell me (you want it)
After Music and Do It, these are three perfect singles in a row from what promises to be one of the pop albums of the year. Hyperpopper’s latest jumps into bovver’s boots, beautiful melody flourishes matched by prostep.

The Womack Sisters – You’ve been gone for a long time
With heavyweight musical genes – Bobby Womack and Sam Cooke are among their relatives – this Daptone-signed trio delivers a gorgeously upholstered vintage soul ballad, its chorus charged with hurt and disillusionment.

Friends & – A man of constant sadness ([android] Th [autism] [phishes] to [network] @ [the city upon a hill]) ([bOyFrIeNd_qUeSt_bEgInS])
The Canadian group released Folx, an album featuring 112 songs, many of which are only a second or two long. This 1.53 effort is a highlight, with AI vocals and samples from My Little Pony and O Brother, Where Art Thou? Collision in dual-core bliss.

Terrorism – still suffering
After a quarter century of centrifugal pits and somersault divers, the American hardcore band sounds more energetic than ever, with vocalist Scott Vogel opening up about his shyness and self-doubt.

Squarepusher – K2 Central
The first fruits of Tom Jenkinson’s ambitious upcoming album, Kammerkonzert: This is essentially a concerto for bass guitar, with a devilish, funky bass line surrounded by sumptuous harmonies.

Maria BC – Rare
From their new album, Marathon, out today, this is a gorgeous song that rests on a steady vocal melody sung in Maria BC’s Vashti Bunyan-ish tones, backed by a mass of gently rising noise.

John Carroll Kirby – Centauri
Kirby, the Zen master at Los Angelino jazz lounge, returns with a whiff of incense and high-quality hair products. His new work features gentle piano figures emerging through a soft veil of synths.

Ben Beaumont Thomas

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