Essential Tracks This Week: Nala Sinephro, Pharmakon, and more

The heat of summer is still very much with us, but fall is just around the corner, and we’re starting to get some spectacular previews of albums to come. This week’s batch of Essential Tracks features some highlights from some of our most anticipated albums of the fall (more on that soon), as well as a surprise release from some MVPs and another great single from one of the biggest albums due out this month. Hear and read about this week’s Essential Tracks.

Nala Sinephro – “Continuum 1”

The new album by Nala Sinephro is presented as an extended piece of music in different movements; that each track is titled “Continuum” helps drive that point home, and there’s a recurrent arpeggio that connects each link in the chain. But that being said, a gorgeous standalone moment in a vast ocean of them is still worth celebrating. “Continuum 1” introduces the album with a kind of ambient spin on a jazz trio piece, with drums, saxophone and synthesizers intertwining in a loose yet gauzy and elegant piece that’s as much about its grounding rhythm as its boundless atmospheric drift. It’s less a song than a soothing wash of sound—the beginning of something spectacular.

From Endlessness, out September 6 via Warp

Pharmakon – “Wither and Warp”

First of all, new Pharmakon: Fuck yeah. Second of all, noise artist Margaret Chardiet has a few signature modes, primarily a screeching onslaught of thrum and static and more slow-moving industrial-throb terror. “Wither and Warp,” the first single from her first new album in five years (and first to break alphabetical naming conventions since 2019’s Devour) is very much the latter, a clattering dirge of distortion and ominous chanting that’s substantially more unsettling and anti-pop than any song of the summer candidate. But who needs convention and pure hedonism when you have awe-inspiring feats of aural terror?

From Maggot Mass, out October 19 via Sacred Bones.

ELUCID – “Instant Transfer” (feat. billy woods)

Last year saw the release of best-of-year worthy records from both billy woods and Armand Hammer, and this year has seen the duo appear on a Sun Ra tribute as well as ELUCID delivering a verse on Shabaka Hutchings’ new album, so their productivity is already through the roof. But ELUCID is about to release another new solo album this year, and its lead single, featuring his Armand Hammer counterpart woods, showcases the rap duo at their best. Against a menacing production from Samiyam laden with a dark, oozing backdrop and hard-hitting trap beats, each emcee showcases his unique style: ELUCID with a grounded yet intense delivery and woods offering laid-back soothsayings. Along with this week’s Pharmakon track, a song that’ll only get more spins as the season grows witchier.

From Revelator, out October 11 via Fat Possum

The Smile – “Don’t Get Me Started”

The Smile surprise released a new 12-inch single this week with two great new songs, only one of which is available on streaming services, which is the one we’re writing about right here. (Though the flipside, “The Slip,” is great.) “Don’t Get Me Started” feels a little more like Kid A-era Radiohead than the taut urgency of the band’s two studio albums, floating along a spacious synth pattern as Thom Yorke delivers a typically excellent vocal melody, with skittering drum patterns entering the frame, a frantic counterpoint to the atmospheric melody. While the existence of a new Smile single is a surprise in itself, that it’s this good really isn’t.

Out now via XL

Fontaines D.C. – “Here’s the Thing”

Fontaines D.C. are competing this year for the title held in 2022 by High Vis for most appearances in our weekly Essential Tracks column. But it’s kind of inevitable when they keep delivering such great singles ahead of the release of their new album Romance. “Here’s the Thing” is a more straightforward post-punk/alt-rock song than the more beat-driven “Starburster” or the dreamy psychedelia of “Favourite.” But damned if it’s not another absolute knockout of a single.