From hip hop to dream pop with a few stops in between, New Haven’s musicians have been hitting the studio recently, and coming up with a strong start to 2023 for recorded music in the Elm City.
Moshyura started appearing on stages in early 2022 bringing out a musical style that combined acoustic blues, R&B, and hip hop to create something not quite anyone else’s. His latest EP, RIZZ ERA, finds the performer continuing to explore his sound, starting with “Vito,” in which the artist croons and raps over a galloping acoustic guitar and rumbling bass that, all together, set up a rhythm designed to make heads bob. “Moments” kicks up the urgency with acoustic guitar alone, while “Pigeon Food” adds drums to bring out the hip hop side to the music that much more. Meanwhile, “Blood” incorporates the sounds of shakers and synths to further expand the musician’s sonic palette. All told, RIZZ ERA shows that Moshyura has plenty more to say, lyrically and musically, and whets the appetite for the next time he plays live.
Wally — Teo Hernandez on lead guitar and vocals, Lucas Hernandez on synth and vocals, Alex Blair on guitar on vocals, Colin Dooman on bass, Alex Yoo on drums, Miles Keingstein on trumpet, Declan Sheehy-Moss on tenor sax and ewi, and Isa Orozco on vocals — is a a big band that makes a lush, intimate sound. Day by Day “is our first studio recorded EP,” the brothers write in accompanying notes, and represents “some of our most personal and favorite songs from our discography.”
The opening track, “Can You Keep a Secret?” sets the tone; it’s a choral piece mixed to sound like it has been recorded in a seaside cave (was it?). It moves directly into “Settled,” which moves amiably from soothing and wistful to huge and triumphant across its three-minute length. “Mesmerism” uses synths to create a propulsive sound that opens out into rich harmonies, chiming guitars, and skittering rhythms. It ends as a club banger. “Tallgrass” then takes it down several notches, a moment of unashamed beauty and tranquility. The EP’s closer, “Velvet,” then packs enough ideas for five songs into one, making for a far-ranging closer to a short record that sets its ambitions high and fulfills them.
New Haven hip hop legend Dooley‑O continues to dig into his archives and come up with gold. “The underground hip hop world was left reeling from the passing of People Under The Stairs’ Double K in January 2021,” Dooley‑O writes in accompanying liner notes.“Back in 2007 – 8 he was working on a sick project with our man in New Haven, CT, Dooley O. A couple tracks from the sessions had been leaked on the net but the majority haven’t been heard before.” As it turns out, Double K and Dooley‑O made a short album’s worth of material. “Who’s Real” is a smoker likely to fill a dance floor, while “Box” is ready to chill from its first beat. “Hip Hop” uses a thoughtfully swirling set of samples to write a love letter to a genre that’s a problematic partner. “Wait Your Turn” is a piece of fragmented funk. The riches continue with several more cuts, followed by an a capella version of “Who’s Real” and the instrumentals of several tracks “for the DJs to play with.”
Dooley‑O and Double K aren’t afraid to throw a few elbows. Dooley‑O writes that “Hip Hop” in particular “laments the current state of the artform, something which most heads can relate to. Not to say that hip hop isn’t alive and well, as we know it is — well, at least alive — but Dooley & Double K are heard laughing at and pointing to the joke that the culture has become, asking us ‘what happened’ to the form.” In 2008, the two veterans had the right to frame the question.
Meanwhile, Elm City noise slinger CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP — abbreviated sometimes as Chop7times — unleashes the 19-track album We Live As Ghosts, a pummeling, exhilarating set of songs that, as with Chop7times’s previous output, is a one-person show. “Drums, bass, noise, and vocals by Chop7times. Recorded, mixed, and mastered by Chop7times. No real instruments were used in these recordings,” the brief liner notes read.
On Sunday, Chop7times unleashed the sound live at Space Ballroom alongside four other New Haven-area bands, Space Camp, Intercourse, Kidnapped, and Doom Beach. Whether from an album or from a stage, Chop7times uses machine-gun percussion, screeches, grinds, and screams to wring chaos from order, a blistering and apt expression of a certain part of the emotional state of our times.