August 5, 2024
Artists

Refresh your 2024 playlists with these underrated artists




Sudan Archives playing at Treefort music festival in 2019TREEFORT MUSIC FEST / FLICKR / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Sudan Archives

Self-taught violinist Brittney Parks is Sudan Archives. Whether playing alongside electronic pedals or a string quartet, Parks creates music that stirs both mind and body. As she told the Guardian in 2022, “I’m a deep, insightful person, but I’m also fucking silly”. Her music deftly navigates this balance – even within each vividly crafted piece. While some tracks leave vibrating strings to echo alone, others introduce pounding beats, wresting the violin from its often staid associations – associations Parks rejects, taking her inspiration from Irish and Sudanese fiddling. You can’t help feeling the freedom of her sound, a movement vividly underlined in concert, where performer and instrument dance around the stage, glittering and twisting. Her work’s ethereality remains deeply rooted – feet on the ground, dancing.

Daniel Johnston

Recorded on home cassettes, initially passed out from the Texan McDonalds where he worked, Daniel Johnston’s music is raw and intimate. His pining tones ring out amidst soft crackling, repeating piano chords, and sparse guitar. ‘Walking the Cow’ opens with toy-box pig noises, while a plaintive voice asks, “hi, how are you?”. The following refrain “lucky stars in your eyes / I am walking the cow” captures Johnston’s tenderness, one always inflected with a sense of loss. ‘True Love Will Find you in the End’ repeats “don’t be sad, I know you will”, a strangely adolescent voice holding nostalgia and wisdom. The intermingling of pain and naivety is characteristic of Johnston’s work, where tentative, childlike wonder overlays near-constant undertones of despair. Johnston’s sound, like his life, is troubled, but determinedly feeling and resolutely vulnerable.

Leenalchi

This South Korean band takes its name from Lee Nal-chi, the 19th century master of Pansori folk music and Jultagi – tightrope-walking. Pansori, usually performed by a singer and drummer, has been translated as “folk operatic song”: Leenalchi marry this with the pulse of pop, expanding their sound to include three singers and two bassists. Both Jultagi and Pansori are storytelling arts: Leenalchi’s repertoire brims with narrative, telling each tale through oscillating sounds as well as words. ‘Tiger is Coming’ from 2020’s SUGUNGGA conjures a beast with “Silkworm head waving / electric front legs”, an electricity that sustains each of their tracks. Many of these songs take their names directly from Pansori versions – they preserve the narrative impulse and hypnotism of their traditional inspiration, wrapping it in rhythm and energy. The resulting force is transfixing yet animating.