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Kelela, ‘Point Blank’
“Why’s your love so bleak?” That’s one way Kelela confronts a bitterly disappointing partner in “Point Blank.” Her voice is, as she sings, “gentle, never weak” while she sustains melodies over throbbing, echoey, destabilizing electronics. Kelela and her co-producer, Oscar Scheller, deploy ambiguous chords and fragments of drum-and-bass beats for a track that constantly moves forward but never feels secure, while she makes a necessary but joyless separation: “I’m too spent to weep,” she concludes.
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RaiNao, ‘Sofocón’
RaiNao — the Puerto Rican songwriter and producer Naomi Ramirez Rivera — revels in desire on her brilliant second album, “Marcriá” (“Created at Sea”). Her shape-shifting songs riffle through styles from Puerto Rico and far beyond. In “Sofocón” (“Hot Flash”), she sings about the heat of attraction — “I give you everything and you want more” — over a multi-leveled beat that’s rooted in bomba but topped along the way with a merengue-tinged saxophone hook, jazzy electric-piano runs, a trombone ensemble and her own vocal harmonies with Auto-Tune flourishes. It’s adventurous yet utterly poised.
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Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 featuring Tom Morello, ‘Na Dem’
“Save me from these users/humanity abusers,” Seun Kuti sings, going on to denounce politicians, religious leaders, soldiers, businesspeople and more. Egypt 80 — the band founded by Seun’s father, Fela Anikulapo Kuti — rolls out a modal Afrobeat groove that summons percussion and horns, thickening and darkening like storm clouds gathering, with Tom Morello’s lead guitar growing ever more insistent.
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What’s New in Instrumental Music
Poppy Ackroyd, ‘Shimmer’
The British composer Poppy Ackroyd limited herself to sounds she could make on her two longtime instruments — piano and violin — for her new solo album, “Liminal.” Ackroyd’s music favors consonance, repetition, straightforward melodies and gradual layering. In “Shimmer,” she sets up placidly undulating piano motifs and a gentle beat before, two minutes in, overdubbing herself into a violin section to hint at disquiet with a turn toward minor chords. But serenity soon returns.
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Lakecia Benjamin featuring Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah, ‘Mi Gente’
The easygoing, calypso-tinged melody that opens “Mi Gente” from the alto saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin’s new album, “We Dream,” soon becomes something fiercer. A minute into the track, it gives way to a modal theme driven by a stark piano vamp and hurtling, polyrhythmic percussion. Benjamin and the trumpeter Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah both vault skyward in their solos, and Adjuah carries the blues with him.
