Top 5 Albums of the Week
Culture Calling's Top 5 albums of the week, an eclectic mix of records from across genres and decades. Come discover weekly albums to bulk out your collection.
By Charlie Walker | Updated Jan 13 2025
Jorge Ben - Negro É Lindo (1971)
Always putting Black consciousness at the forefront of his work, Jorge Ben’s Negro E Lindo, translating to ‘black is beautiful’ was his greatest ode to the gorgeous complexity of Afro-Brazillia. He had previously written love songs about unambiguously Black women, some more chauvinistic than others, and would continue to make Black women his artistic muses, but here is the most declarative statement of his belief and pride.
As free as ever, with his favourite Trio Mocoto in session, Ben slips over the metre when it suits him, gleefully sailing his voice over the compositions, liberating his vocals and lyrics from the comparative rigidity of his signature brand of samba. Even without understanding the words, his joyous whimsy is unmistaken.
And then you get to the translations: an impassioned ode to Cassius Clay or Muhammad Ali; love songs that border on spiritual awakenings; the minutiae of daily life and the true beauty behind the mundane; the title track, which exalts the beauty and excellence of Blackness in the face of Brazil’s uniquely troubled past. Jorge Ben acknowledges and unpacks pain and trauma, knowing that the greatest hatchet man in the war against evil, is love and joy.
Ryuichi Sakamoto, Danceries – The End of Asia (1982)
A difficult record to hunt down, Sakamoto’s medieval-sounding fantasy-folk work with Danceries didn’t fit neatly with his pioneering electronic works either side of it, with this record feeling like the product of a different artist entirely. Just a year prior, Sakamoto and Co were looking to the future on Technodelic, the first ever record to be comprised mostly of samples and loops (which is now standard in many genres), but here, Sakamoto looks into the past. The distant past.
It's in someways an analogue remix album of Sakamoto’s past hits. It features new versions of both ‘Grasshoppers’ and ‘The End of Asia’ from his debut THOUSAND KNIVES, but instead of updating the already-futuristic sound of the originals, he covers them as if he were born a few hundred years prior.
An entirely Japanese group performing European medieval music speaks to Sakamoto’s background as an ethnomusicologist; he was looking upon Europe the same way many anthropologists have looked upon Asia, with fascination, imagination, distortion, and dogmatism. And it’s fascinating for him to title it The End of Asia; as European influence began to pervade every aspect of Asian society, there was a great sense that something was being lost through gain. Sakamoto embraces Europe yet still undercuts it by presenting it as primitive.
It’s a fantastic concept for an album, and would work insanely good as a film or TV soundtrack. No wonder, then, that that’s what Sakamoto would spend much of his career working on, winning Oscar’s and Grammy’s all along the way.
Spotify | Apple Music (Disc 3)
Johnny “Hammond” Smith – Gears (1975)
Electrifying, fast-paced, dancefloor-oriented soul-jazz for the heart and feet. Gears is a whirlwind of highly-danceable funk with staccato bursts of hellfire drums. A samplers dream, containing quick flashes of instrumental brilliance, Johnny “Hammond” Smith artfully paces and textures this half-hour with all the ribs of his talent.
Taking his moniker from the Hammond organ, Mr. Smith shreds those keys like he sold his soul for the privilege, even outpacing the modern-sounding, jungle-esque drums that form his backing.
The eponymous gears he slips into never falls short of the fourth gear, always driving on with contagious, head-rocking beats that rivals even the best dance music of our day.
That is, until the final track, where after spending the first five tracks in the fast lane, slowing down to 70bpm feels like you’re standing still. An absolute rock of a record.
Smiley Culture – Tongue in Cheek (1986)
A key musical voice in the history of Black Britain, a charming, comedic figure able to point and laugh at conservative social conventions in the UK from a complicated outside/inside perspective, it is unfortunate that Smiley Culture has been largely forgotten by the public.
Despite charting with ‘Cockney Translator’ back in 86, he spent the rest of his life under the radar until a supposed suicide during a police invasion in 2011, becoming a galvanising symbol in that years London riots.
Looking back, especially with racial tensions on the boil in this election year, a track like ‘Cockney Translator’ could do us a lot of good, in accepting that some of us are different, that these differences can sprout humour rather than anger, and that our differences only stand out because so much else is alike.
Tongue in Cheek for this reason should be considered a milestone album in Black British musical history.
Sufjan Stevens – Seven Swans (2004)
Perhaps a needed record to cope with the bleak nothingness of winter, this early record from one of America’s greatest living singer-songwriters evokes the old American pastoral with lyrics and attitudes that place this rural utopianism in the 21st century, giving a peculiar beauty to the minimalism of winter.
A devout Christian, his deep faith carries through into his work, yet instead of a preachiness that Christian music tends to lean toward, it instead adds a veneer of ethereality, and a perceived unification of all forms of beauty that would revolve one to believe in the first place.
With a strong sense of place, vivid natural imagery, and strong evocations of America’s historical music, Seven Swans is the perfect album to keep by your side during long winters in the country.