JAMILA WOODS
WATER MADE US
CD /LP /LTD LP /MC
- Bugs / 02. Tiny Garden / 03. Practice (feat. Saba) / 04. let the cards fall / 05. Send A Dove / 06. Wreckage Room / 07. Thermostat (feat. Peter CottonTale) / 08. out of the doldrums / 09. Wolfsheep / 10. I Miss All My Exes / 11. Backburner / 12. libra intuition / 13. Boomerang / 14. Still / 15. the best thing / 16. Good News / 17. Headfirst
On her expansive new album Water Made Us, Chicago musician and poet Jamila Woods shines anew as she asks the question, what does it mean to fully surrender to love? Across Water Made Us Jamila embraces new genres, playful melodies, and hypnotizing wordplay, as she wades through the exhilarating tumult of love’s wreckage and refuge.
While 2017’s HEAVN saw Jamila celebrating her community within a lineage of Black feminist movement organizing, and 2019’s Legacy! Legacy! reframed her life’s experiences through the storied personas of iconic Black and brown artists, Water Made Us is self-revelatory in an entirely new way, making this her most personal album yet. Made together with LA-based producer McClenney, and boasting features from longtime friends and Chicago natives such as Saba and Peter CottonTale, Water Made Us is a sprawling and intimate portrait of self-reflection, cleverly designed to echo the different stages of a relationship: the early days of easy compromising, flirtatiousness, and fun; the careful negotiation through moments of conflict or hurt; the grieving of something lost; and the tender realization at the end of it all that the person who is gone never really leaves, but stays with you as you find yourself ready to try again, refreshed and reassured.
The album’s title — taken from a line in album highlight “Good News” – is a subtle reference to the famous Toni Morrison quote “All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.” It’s this sentiment – of memory, place, and returning – that acts as a pillar for the album’s arc. Water Made Us reminds us that at its best love is a warm, still ocean. Deep, shimmering, and endless in its wonder. At its worst love can be a riptide that takes us so far away from ourselves we can hardly find our way back, hardly even remember how to swim. Yet Jamila surrenders to this surf — every wave and undertow – because maybe even the most painful endings can in fact be an invitation that calls her back home, back to shore, back to herself.
Available on limited arctic swirl vinyl.
Label: JAGJAGUWAR
CASISDEAD
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
CD / 2LP / LTD/MC
01. Do You Trust Me? / 02. A Spark / 03. Loosin’ / 04. Steptronic / 05. DEADCORP / 06. Pineapple Juice (feat. Kamio) / 07. I Wanna Go Home / 08. Actin’ Up (feat. Desire) / 09. Sarah Connor / 10. Do You Remember What It Was Like? / 11. Marilyn (feat. Connie Constance) / 12. Aghast 6 / 13. Boys Will Be Boys / 14. Venom / 15. Traction Control / 16. The Ants / 17. Matte Grey Wrap (feat. Desire) / 18. Pat Earrings / 19. Before This (feat. LATER) / 20. Jane / 21. Sugar Free / 22. Access Denied / 23. Skydive (feat Neil Tennant)
Famous Last Words is a fully realised expansion of the dystopian futurism that has captivated audiences since CAS first announced himself in 2013. Over the past decade, he’s dipped in and out of the shadows, blessing fans with cult hits while maintaining his anonymity and shunning media attention; a rejection of the spotlight that’s helped to create folklore around a rapper who’s widely regarded as one of the UK’s most inventive lyricists.
Famous Last Words is as much a sci-fi film as it is a rap record, a labyrinth of vice, crime and faded glamour. The listener steps through a portal into a realm narrated by CASISDEAD, whose command of storytelling drops you right into the underground of a city where he is the main character in a shady network of gangsters, girls and drug deals. However, Famous Last Words isn’t a story of bravado or posturing; much of the album deals in themes of loss, regret and paranoia, a persona constantly self-reflecting amongst the madness that surrounds him. The album features a carefully curated roll call of collaborators including Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant, Desire, and Connie Constance. The vocalists are immersed in CASISDEAD’s hallmark 80’s-inspired synthpop soundscapes, aided and abetted by a production cast that includes Stranger Things composer Kyle Dixon and ‘Italians Do It Better’ label founder Johnny Jewel.
Available on limited clear vinyl.
Label: XL RECORDINGS
