What’s new to listen to

A roundup of what we’re tuning in to in the worlds of podcasts and music.

Nine

Surprising in every conceivable way, mysterious musical collective Sault’s latest effort is a remarkable, accomplished assortment of salubrious sound. At first, you’re reminded of The Go Team! or The Avalanches, listening to childlike chants making merry over dirty house grooves. There’s punk energy and notes of legacy hip-hop in their chaotic revelry before the lights get low for silky smooth R&B and then the album closes with a resplendent ballad and you wonder what has just happened. All this musical wizardry seems effortless and makes for enjoyable superficial sonics, but as you scratch deeper, socially conscious messages emerge. The people making this music aren’t affluent millennials blessed with hightech bedroom studios, but children of the street raised with scant hope and less opportunity. There are strong, stand-out tunes (Light’s in Your Hands, Alcohol, Bitter Streets), but this layered work is best consumed in its brief, 34-minute entirety to allow for full effect.

Wild Crimes

This podcast, from London’s Natural History Museum, analyses international smuggling and trade of animals explaining how wildlife crime is the fourth-most-lucrative illegal industry in the world. Hosted by Tori Herridge and Khalil Thirlaway, it unpacks the reality of the trade, through which millions of animals are poached, traded and killed at the hands of organised gangs. Herridge and Thirlaway contextualise the cost of the trade on multiple terms, including how the destruction of habitat and endangerment of vulnerable species leads to things like, well, pandemics. Fascinating stuff. – George Fenwick

Jubilee

Japanese Breakfast’s exuberant slice of indie pop centres on Korean-American artist and author Michelle Zauner’s dainty vocals, which provide an endearing dreamlike quality to her music. Unafraid of a saxophone solo or to surround herself in strings, Jubilee smacks of joy, an unselfconscious celebration of life. Typical is Be Sweet, whose 1980s-inspired synth-soaked chorus, syncopated rhythm guitar and charming call and response interplay have helped clock it up more than eight million spins. Tactics feels like a black-and-white 50s romance slowly dissolving and Posing in Bondage presents another more subdued side. A song about all consuming desire, it’s intense and intimate, before morphing into a dark electro drop.

– Alex Behan

Flow State

Do you a) struggle to concentrate, particularly while working from home, or b) hate working in silence, but can’t really work while listening to music? This may provide the perfect inbetween. DJ and producer Bobby Lyte, pictured, curates this podcast which provides halfan-hour of minimal instrumental electronic music to help you focus. He follows the popular ‘‘Pomodoro technique’’, which suggests 30 minutes of music with a five-minute work break to improve productivity. I’ve enjoyed the episodes I’ve tried so far; the music is supremely relaxing, and it helps me stop procrastinating by actually making work a little more interesting.