New Music Friday: Stream projects from Cassandra Jenkins, BERWYN, and more

On My Light, My Destroyer, Cassandra Jenkins manages to turn depressingly mundane moments into profound spiritual revelations with field recordings, bits of dialogue, and sleek ‘70s soft rock. There’s a jazzy New Age synthesizer on loop while she arranges “Delphinium Blue” flowers, a grungy guitar lick when she locks eyes with a lizard in “Petco,” and a thought-provoking conversation with her mother while they search the night sky for “Betelgeuse," Orion’s second brightest star. At other points, Jenkins also mentions her apartment’s “landlord pink” walls and Captain Kirke “crying on local news,” while her soft voice is accompanied by an ever-changing soundtrack that oscillates between found samples, nostalgic synth-pop, and intimate bedroom indie. It’s an album that’s constantly in flux, with Jenkins dissecting loneliness and connection through cross-genre experimentation and the type of inner thoughts collected from some late-night existential crisis. — Sandra Song

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

Over the past few years, BERWYN has established himself as one of London's most unique storytellers, bringing his voice to songs by Fred again.. and Headie One, as well as his Mercury Prize-nominated mixtape Demotape/Vega. Who Am I is his debut album and gives him the platform to lay out his backstory with the heft and gravity it deserves.

Berwyn, now 28, arrived in the U.K. without the necessary immigration papers having moved from Trinidad to the U.K. at age 9. His attempt to secure the right to remain in the country informsWho Am I, offering him a line to speak directly to the bureaucratic figures making instability a constant presence in his life. "Dear Immigration" offers the starkest summary of what it did to him. "You made me feel like a fugitive and a runaway," he says on a track that runs without any music. A strong narrative does not instantly make an album captivating, though, and Berwyn brings his quest for purpose to life through production choices that often feel transportative. "Who Am I" is confident and forward-facing, a soulful rap track that feels both raw and laser-focused. "I'm Drowning," meanwhile, mirrors the spiraling effect of depression and self-medication. It would be tempting to describe the details of this essential album as unique if it wasn't so cruelly common for a country that has never truly reckoned with its colonial past. — David Renshaw

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music

The third full-length project (and official debut album) from Manchester-based producer salute is his most confident and finely crafted yet, a raucous blast of futurist French Touch and euphoric house. There are no traces of the greyscale gloom that crept through the production of 2019’s Condition, his last full-length release; True Magic is painted with the same colors that MRIs show on brains when they feel love. An impressive roster of collaborators help salute build the party of his dreams: Disclosure, Rina Sawayama, Empress Of, Sam Gelliatry, and many more unlock entrancing new pockets of their own respective sounds thanks to salute’s rare talent for melody. It’s cathartic without being cheap, luxurious without being stuffy. Despite the album’s construction as a radio station in some lost entry in the Wipeout game series, True Magic has the elements of a pure retrospective rather than mere “retro,” bringing the past to our present instead of pining for something long gone. — Jordan Darville

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp