Every year tends to overwhelm in terms of amazing music releases, so artists and mutually exclusive readers shouldn’t take it personally when one of their favorite, year-defining albums doesn’t appear within the limited confines of the myriad lists of a superlative 25, 50, or 100 of them which tend to appear every December like so many festive Starbucks cups.
For instance: Powell’s debut album Sport could’ve easily made our list last year, but for reasons that have little to do with an actual referendum on that album’s quality, we at TMT neglected to cumulatively acknowledge the UK producer’s semi-playful achievement, which rhythmically kept listeners on their toes, and which cleverly-incorporated more than a few seemingly-vintage TV samples. (It’s possible that we were just too worn-out from all the partying we did at the 2016 Rio Olympics and overlooked it? Or that its October release date simply precluded it from being properly digested until January.)
But this year, Powell is hitting us early (though seemingly still without much concern for propagation). This past Friday, he surprise-dropped a new “mini-album” called New Beta Vol.1. The release is theoretically only available on vinyl, and it also marks a formal return to Diagonal, the label that he co-founded after he confessed to XL that he has still had unshakable feelings for it last year. Despite the name, don’t consider New Beta Vol.1 necessarily as the first in a series, but do go ahead and think of it as quantitatively/qualitatively occupying that sort of prominence.
Order it over here (500 copies only, so hustle-up). And while you wait for it to arrive and ponder its potential placement on the 2017 lists you’re already making (c’mon, you know it’s true), reboot your Powell-memory by listening to Sport’s “Frankie (feat. Frankie), and check out the full tracklisting for New Beta Vol.1 down below:
New Beta Vol.1 tracklisting:
01. Teddy
02. Freezer
03. Wormhole
04. 97
05. The Bust
06. Dogs On Acid
07. Electric Sheep
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