Discover Blogly: Listen to new music from Chuquimamani-Condori, Hi-C, and more

Discover Blogly is The FADER's curated roundup of our favorite new music discoveries.

Chuquimamani-Condori, DJ E

It’s almost prohibitively difficult to make music that sounds wholly original as postmodernism's epochal exponent continues to tick toward infinity. But there’s an artist who’s been doing so with remarkable consistency for 15 years — first as E+E, then as Elysia Crampton, and now as Chuquimanani-Condori. Paradoxically, they often achieve this daunting feat by reaching back further in time for source material than most artists are willing to, most notably by weaving huayño — an indigenous Andean style whose roots predate European colonization — between more modern artifacts (radio tags, video game samples) to create monumental sound tapestries. Despite their reliably mind-blowing output, DJ E, which dropped like a cannonball in November with zero external promotion and was followed by an equally explosive Fact Mix earlier this month, is perhaps this year’s most surprising gem. (Though it received plenty of love in experimental music communities online, its late, unannounced arrival excluded it from all but one major publication’s AOTY lists.) Listening to the album on a good sound system or quality headphones is a completely immersive experience: Ingeniously mixed to sound like it’s attacking you from all angles, it’s a record that will swallow you whole if you’re willing to give it half an hour of your time. From the panpipes that usher in “Breathing” to the panicked keys that underscore “Engine,” the satanic disc jockey growl that opens “Eat My Cum” to the pounding percussion at the climax of “Know,” the obliterating chaos of “Return” to the apocalyptic ecstasy of “Until I Find You Again,” let DJ E engulf you in its smothering embrace. — Raphael Helfand

Candelabro, Ahora o Nunca

<a href="https://registromovil.bandcamp.com/album/ahora-o-nunca">Ahora o Nunca by Candelabro</a>

Music that you could ostensibly brand as “indie rock” is only worthwhile when it pushes up against convention. Whether it’s hookier acts like Being Dead and Slow Pulp or more surreal ones such as yeule, bar italia, and Yves Tumor, this is music that is invested in defying any whiff of blandness. You can add Candelabro, a six-piece band from Santiago, Chile to that list. On their debut album Ahora o Nunca released this week, Candelabro have something a lot of bands don’t: enthusiasm. I was hooked by the affection for mid-’00s Canadian indie rock a la Spencer Krug and Arcade Fire demonstrated on “Refugio II” and “Dedo Chico,” which Candelabro pair with traces of classic Chilean guitar. While I would have been content for a whole album of that, Candelabro display a shocking range with their outliers alone: there’s a distended grunge track worthy of Ovlov (“Me acerca otro más”) and an aching piano ballad (“Pucha que ha costado”) as the penultimate track — you can imagine Randy Newman tapping out the keys in some lonely, long-forgotten lounge. The epic scope is smoothed over by a consistent callback to the psychedelia of the ‘60s and ‘70s (Television Personalities, Sonic Boom, etc) — closing track “Madre” sounds like the end of a significant event, and by then, Candelabro have earned that feeling. — Jordan Darville

Hi-C, L3Ft 4 D3ad

Tread music — a deep-fried descendent of cloud rap created by the Philly collective Working On Dying — has become the grammar for legions of underground rappers and producers to create their own frenzied languages. Hi-C’s sonic vernacular has earned him a cult following, and his new tape L3Ft 4 D3ad is a furnace of garishly gothic noise-rap. There’s a sense that we’ve caught Hi-C mid-exorcism on the album: it contains joyful moments like the lead single “NaNa 0 Hatch1” which deflects haters and sizes up challengers over an epileptic pinball machine beat reminiscent of Sicko Mobb, as well as exciting tracks that show tread’s growth like “VaMP N1t3Mar3” and the xaveirsobased-featuring “GupP1.” A key force in the development of HexD music — a gothic offshoot of tread with blown-out sub-bass, pitched-up vocals, and an abundance of hellish sample drops — Hi-C has moved beyond flighty, hermetic music scenes and into his own region. — Jordan Darville

Honour, Àlàáfíà

Àlàáfíà was written in the immediate aftermath of the death of Honour's grandmother, with its landscape of gritty rap beats, blown out bass, and ambient washes all rattling with grief. The PAN artist made the album between London, New York, and their native Lagos in Nigeria, crafting something truly ambitious from modest beginnings (Honour used a trial version of Ableton throughout). Àlàáfíàis deeply referential, with nods to Sun Ra, DJ Screw, and bell hooks on a track like "When Angels Speak of Love," and artists as wide-ranging as DMX and Kelly Rowland in their lyrics elsewhere. One song ("Pistol Poem (Lead Belly)") features Honour rapping briefly before a sample from a Richard Pryor stand-up set spins the whole thing around. Experimental music and work created from a place of mourning can make for understandably somber listening but Àlàáfíà uses loss as a skeleton key to open new musical boundaries, breathing fresh air into their collage of loving memories. — David Renshaw

NOVA ONE, create myself

It’s the casual intensity that courses through NOVA ONE’s 2023 album, create myself, that endears it to any cast of daydreamers, window-gazing contemplators, and over-thinkers. Fuzzed-out indie choruses and airy vocal stacks chariot the album's mediation over messy relationships and self-identity arcs. At times honestly accusatory, at times relishing in the world’s flaws, NOVA ONE leaves behind an irresistible capsule of delicate soprano, wandering guitar, and everything reverbed. With lyrics that speak to a kaleidoscope of suffering, from heartbreak to mental, NOVA ONE makes listeners feel seen, as if inviting us to sit and rot for a while in the soft gray shoe-gazey fog of create myself. — Lila Dubois