Take some time out, put on the headphones, drop the needle on the record, or queue up the latest releases on your phone.
Here’s four recently released albums that we’ve been playing at OUTinPerth HQ, new records from Kim Petras, Yazz Ahmed, Doublespeak and Suzette Charles.
Kim Petras
Detour
★ ★
Kim Petras has a had a bumpy career to date. Her record company shelved her first album Problématique, sending her back into the studio to record Feed the Beast which came out in 2023. They added Unholy, her chart topping collaboration with Sam Smith on as a bonus track. Later in the year the company put out the first record recorded as the singer’s second album.
Petras headed back into the studio to record this third album, but she’s now parted ways with Republic Records and put it out independently. It’s thirteen short and sweet electro-pop tunes, which rather than break new ground in the music realm, sound like we’ve been transported back to around 15 years ago. Heavily processed vocals, metallic clashing synths and distorted beats feature on many of the tracks.
Detour introduced to the sound and serves as a fine entry point into the sonic journey. DTLA – it stands for Downtown Los Angeles – is filled with crunchy beats and is all about heading to meet a player in his penthouse apartment. I Like Ur Look is one of the album’s catchiest songs with a pumping verse and a sing-a-long chorus. Check it is filled with annoying cut up vocals, and a clipped acoustic guitar – it was groundbreaking a distinctive sound when Madonna and Mirwais did it 25 years ago.
Polo, a song about someone wanting to rip off Petras’s polo shirt is almost unlistenable. A succession of songs, most just around two minutes follow but they all sound quite alike. Basketball stands out from the crowd, it was produced by the late SOPHIE.
Yazz Ahmed
Shirin-Yoku
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Yazz Ahmed is a British-Bahraini trumpeter, flugelhornist, and composer whose work combines jazz with Arabic scales and electronic sounds. She has collaborated with Radiohead, Joan as Policewoman, Lee Perry, and many other musicians. Here, she shares a four-track EP of mesmerising jazz sounds.
Opening track Dawn Patrol moves through several distinct phases. It begins with a repetitive trumpet line, before electronic beats enter underneath, followed by a live drummer. Gradually, the track builds and morphs until it breaks into a beautiful brass-led melody that slowly blurs into an ambient soundscape, allowing the listener to drift into daydreams. In its final movement, however, it pulls us back into a tenser, funkier space that builds to a crescendo.
A quieter mood is established on Forest Bathing, featuring a lone flugelhorn backed by gentle ambient electronic sounds. It is sublimely beautiful. Bird sounds open the EP’s third track, A Moment to Be Free, which mixes brass, beats, and electronica.
The fourth song, Questions No Answers, was composed with, and features, fellow trumpet player Noel Langley. The seven-and-a-half-minute composition begins with a meandering trumpet layered over an intriguing mix of muffled electronic sounds that shift and change throughout. It is deeply meditative.
Doublespeak
Doublespeak
★ ★ ★
Doublespeak is something of a super-group, featuring Vince Clarke from Erasure, Yazoo, and Depeche Mode, alongside Blancmange singer Neil Arthur and experimental electronic artist Benge. This album is largely made up of cover versions, but they are mostly obscure and interesting choices. It sounds very much like its component parts, evoking a Depeche Mode record and, at times, The Magnetic Fields.
It opens with Fad Gadget’s Back to Nature, followed by Brand New Life, originally recorded by Young Marble Giants. Sparse, dark, spooky, and electronic are the order of the day. A more familiar tune arrives with The Visitors, the title track from ABBA’s often overlooked 1981 album. This marks the point where the journey shifts into more upbeat pop territory, though it remains less energetic than the original recording by the Swedish group.
I Can’t Escape Myself, originally by British post-punk band The Sound, comes next, followed by the two most recognisable songs on the record. The Carpenters’ Goodbye to Love is particularly beautiful, stripping the song of its previously saccharine tones. David Essex’s Rock On is also presented in a colder, sparser style.
After sounding remarkably like The Magnetic Fields, the album actually includes a Stephen Merritt-penned song, Smoke and Mirrors. John Hartford’s Gentle on My Mind, made famous by Glen Campbell in 1967, is another highlight.
If you enjoy this collection, it is worth following it up with Depeche Mode member Martin Gore’s covers album Counterfeit, released in 2003. If you can track down a copy of British Electric Foundation’s Music of Quality and Distinction Volume Three: Dark, it would make a perfect companion album.
Suzette Charles
Suzette Charles
★ ★ ★
Suzette Charles first found fame in 1984, when Vanessa Williams was asked to stand down as Miss America after nude photos of her were published by Penthouse magazine. For the final two months of Williams’s reign, Charles was promoted to Miss America.
She went on to work as an actor and, in the early 1990s, signed a recording contract. Her record company paired her with some of the hottest producers in pop music at the time, British hitmakers Stock and Waterman, who alongside Matt Aitken had crafted chart successes for Kylie Minogue, Bananarama, Donna Summer, Dead or Alive, Rick Astley, Jason Donovan, Sonia, and many others. Charles recorded six tracks with the duo, and the single Free to Love Again was released in 1993.
However, the music landscape was shifting. Grunge had arrived, Italo-house was dominating the dance charts, and mainstream pop was taking a back seat. The partnership between Pete Waterman and Mike Stock also came to an end, and Charles’s album was shelved.
Now, three decades later, Charles has reunited with producer Mike Stock to re-record those six tracks and add five more, finally bringing the album they once envisioned to life. After You’re Gone, Don’t Stop (All the Love You Can Give), Every Time We Touch, What the Eye Don’t See, Just for a Minute, and Free to Love Again are the original songs, joined by Whenever You’re Around, See Your Smile, Nothing to Hide, We Lost the Beat, and Simple Life.
If you are an aficionado of the PWL sound from the late 1980s and early 1990s, this album offers a warm trip back to the music of your youth. While these songs do not represent the strongest output of Mike Stock’s impressive career, they sit comfortably alongside releases by Lonnie Gordon, Boy Krazy, Sybil, and Big Fun.
