Sault - What's the story?

vinyl pressings sound good.

lead times for vinyl pressings are very, very long just now, not helped by covid outbreaks at pressing plants.

wow, where are the plants? I'm actually surprised at the number of things that are getting pressed given the circumstances and the Apollo masters fire.

The Apollo masters fire made no impact on European pressings. All Euro pressing plants I know of have the longest backlogs I've ever heard of due to a convergence of factors, and then Covid has just exacerbated that. I'd rather not mention specific plants.

"...reviews on discogs pointing out that the pressing isn't great and that it sounds better played from a phone..."

I ordered the repressings(?) listed on Bandcamp and to my surprise the "**Shipping Mid Jan 2021**" vinyl arrived just after Santa (stateside no less).

Without perusing discogs for feedback on the non-black wax, I was just after saying to a friend that these black vinyl releases (some if not all pressed at Optimal) might be the quietest/cleanest new vinyl I've heard in ages.

Dynamics well present and well presented.

tl;dr, get them when/if you can.

The black vinyl of all four impresses with, by way of comparison, the 5 and 7 already in your library, slightly freer of non-distracting-but-not-unexpected-given-the-medium sonic artifacts.

finally getting into black is. dont hear ESG at all, unless you only have indie/post punk references and had to find something that sounded vaguely close. skipped a load of messages so no idea if dangermouse was involved, but def does have his 90s breakbeat sort of aesthetic. i know they are british, but the singer definitely doesnt sound british. or at least, what she is singing definitely sounds very american.

makes me think of king a bit tbh. or any number of neo/indie/alt soul voices. love her voice.

if it isnt DM, its someone who is obviously a fan. def has that '90s plug in' vibe to the production.

danger mouse isn't involved, it's all produced & co-written by inflo. there are two lead singers and one of them, kid sister, is american. the other lead singer is cleo sol

inflo has worked on other stuff with danger mouse a fair bit though so there's your connection

also hear some shades of corinne bailey rae and lianne la havas.

One of their tracks (“Free”) is on the official Inauguration playlist

The first two records ('5' and '7') are more minimalist than the 'Untitled' records. Still not especially ESG-ish, but the comparisons stem from those records, not the newer ones.

"i just want to dance" is definitely the most esg-ish thing on either of their 2020 albums

Yep the ESG bassline comparisons and the Jaki Liebezeit-style drums I mentioned are regarding 5 and 7. The Untitled records are more influenced by disco and funk than by post-punk and krautrock

E.g: “Let Me Go”

ont hear ESG at all, unless you only have indie/post punk references and had to find something that sounded vaguely close.

sorry but that is nonsense. 5 in particular definitely has tracks that have an echo of ESG (intentional or otherwise) in some of the basslines, the way the drums swing, the fills and how stripped down they are.

On black is?

Read the post, the answer is right there.

5 and 7 are the name of their first two albums in case you think we’re talking about track numbers?

investigating their other stuff. yes, i just want to dance does sound like ESG, my bad.

this album makes me think a bit of 4hero too actually.

that's a good connection

I prefer 5 and 7 to Rise and Black Is, mainly because I find 5 & 7 to be really fun and the spoken interludes in Rise and Black Is don't have replay value to me (this is true about spoken interludes or skits on any album in history, for me). I'd def like to pick these up whenever they get a repress, if they are of the quality the Cleo Sol album is, which I recently got. It was expensive as fuck to order from the US (I think it came to $60) but the pressing sounds amazing, the cover and booklet are beautiful.

Head's up! All four getting a repress. Still not inexpensive but not gonna miss a chance to finally grab Rise aka best album ever on wax

www.strandedrecords.com/collections/sault?mc_cid=2658748e32&mc_eid=0f24ac7b12

if it isnt DM, its someone who is obviously a fan. def has that '90s plug in' vibe to the production

I was wondering what kept me at arm's length from these records and it turns out on reflection that it's this

I guess this is sort of a KeiyaA default thread -- she did a livestream last night tied in with the release of her album on vinyl; am watching the playback now and rather enjoying it. Anyway, back to Sault.

really falling in love with the Cleo Sol record now that spring has sprung -- the deep warmth that emanates from this record is exactly what I need right now

Watching Zero on Netflix last night and Why Don't You featured very prominently in one episode.

Looking at Spotify I see it's got 20M plays, almost twice as many as Sault's most streamed song (Wildfires, 13M)

Cleo's on the new Little Simz track

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHGf6tmnLYE

^ Gee, big spiffy arrangement on that thing!

(Okay, I now belatedly see that Simz's recent Introvert should have prepared me for this new emphasis. Intriguing!)

When Rise came out I was so excited, and in my enthusiasm convinced myself it was the best of the four. But I've been revisiting 5 and 7 this week and it's clear to me now that these first two albums actually tower over the subsequent two.

which is crazy because Rise and Black Is are phenomenal

The brevity of the first two work in their favor. You could probably trim Rise back to an equally pleasing 35-40 minutes.

!

Looks like there’s a new SAULT album incoming! pic.twitter.com/1yv5HNyQAl

— Concrete Islands (@islandsconcrete) June 14, 2021

OOF

oh damn

Direct link:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CQGrz3jngFs/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

!

AOTY 2021

Just you wait until FOUR comes out 12 weeks later.

nice.

I kind of hope the name indicates a return to the leaner sound of the first 2 albums

https://www.instagram.com/p/CQMWa1Fnkqx/

coming in 9 days but it's getting a dumb limited-time release as a gimmick

okay that is annoying.

unless maybe the album is filled with unlicensed samples or something. . . ?

it's going to be on streaming for the 99 days so i doubt it

happy birthday to me

Hell yes!

it's going to be on streaming for the 99 days

okay i misread that and thought it was only going to be there for nine days. dunno then. seems weird, especially considering the hype they've accumulated the last few months.

is it going to be a full length?

damn too bad it won't be rollout eligible next year since it won't exist anymore

It can be bought--so who cares if it's not streamable after 99 days? That hardly means it "won't exist"...