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 Apr 15 2025
Boards of Canada – Music Has The Right To Children (1998)
Riding the wave of downtempo, IDM, and fringe electronica, the indomitable Boards of Canada began in 1998 a series of genre-shaping albums that kept electronic music at the forefront of counterculture and student listening, beginning with Music Has The Right To Children.
After acts like The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, DJ Shadow, and Fatboy Slim, the youth was moving away from the rockband to the dancefloor. But, for those who were too anxious, shy, or timid to bust a move, this kind of soft, slower, whimsical, eery, and otherwise strange electronic music became a mainstay for the new young introvert.
Rock music already had its indie branches suited for the insular, but electronic was yet to truly find itself in that regard. This debut Boards of Canada record was, to many, the beginning of that journey. ‘Roygbiv’ was like ‘How Soon Is Now’ for ecstasy users.
Jantra - Synthesized Sudan: Astro-Nubian Electronic Jaglara Sounds from the Fashaga Underground (2023)
Something interesting is going down in Sudan. In the marketplaces of Khartoum, and throughout Al-Fashaga, you can find music shops whose speciality is reprogramming Yamaha’s and other synths to accommodate Nubian and Arab scales, imitating the harmonics and microtonal universe of Arab music.
The process is arduous and takes a tremendous amount of skill and knowhow to pull apart factory-made keyboards to include whole new scales, and this technological revolution is itself beginning a new music revolution. Meet Jantra, the king of the Sudanese electronic underground, who combines Western synths with native styles, creating an entirely new space of music.
The feel is sci-fi, futuristic, sleek, danceable, but for Westerners hard to fully get their head around. Listening to the album first time round was a trip that I couldn’t recommend more strongly.
Heatwave – Too Hot To Handle (1975)
With temperatures rising globally and hitting our hottest every year last year, ‘Too Hot To Handle’ may become the anthem of the boring 20s. With many hits penned by Hull-based Rod Temperton, the same songwriter behind ‘Rock With You’ by Michael Jackson, one should only prepare for nothing but hits.
There is possibly no greater funk track than ‘Boogie Nights’, slick, smart, melodically perfect, moving eloquently between contrasting verses, bridges, and choruses, and such a vitality that even the abstract thought of the track makes you tap your feet.
It is so relentlessly impressive, and it doesn’t stop there. The eponymous track is another massive highlight of the pre-disco funk era, no doubt influencing the direction of all dance music after it. That feeling you get from a properly dirty beat, that makes you just wanna screw your face up and wince at the sheer filth of the track, is still a noted phenomena in dance music, known now as either ‘bassface’ or ‘screwface’, and as early as 1975, Heatwave were making dancers feel it. It really is too hot to handle.
The Sylvers – s/t (1972)
A massive change in vibe, the almost Christian rock/soul feel of The Sylvers is considered to many to now be deeply uncool. Song titles like ‘Touch Me Jesus’ would curl the toes of a youth, now and even then. Radio-friendly, inoffensive, contrasting to the political music of that era from artists like Heron and Bartz, The Sylver’s weren’t winning any countercultural points.
I’m really not selling it. What I’m trying to say is that, within their rather restrictive format, are able to craft excellent melodies, socially conscious lyrics, and body-lifting vocal harmonies that rival the depth and fullness of The Beach Boys. ‘Only One Can Win’ is a microcosm of everything great about the album.
Known for its sampling on J Dilla’s ‘Two Can Win’, which barely touches the track so much as loops it, lulls you into this family-friendly safety shield, until it drops a shocking lyric like “I thought your love would leave me/After the sound of a n****r’s voice”, commenting on fears of racism and the-then recently legalised practice of miscegenation.
Despite the bands, and most likely the labels, desire to stay within the confines of social acceptability, they could never be separated from the deeply political and radical times.
Nai Palm – Needle Paw (2017)
A usual guitarist for jazz-funk outfit Hiatus Kaiyote, Nai Palm found her opportunity to do something different on her solo album. Featuring none more than her electric guitar and her own layered vocals, Needle Paw contrasts the work of her main project by offering minimal, stripped-back indie-soul music, with deeply personal lyrics and a DIY ethic.
It’s like a self-released, bedroom pop record but by a seriously talented musician, both in singing, songwriting, and guitar playing. The style now is fairly ubiquitous since the explosion of bedroom pop and bedroom rock, but at the time, I’d never heard modern soul so stripped back, so full of life despite the exclusion of any other sound than strings and a voice.