Dva – Piri Piri

This album catapulted to the top of my listening charts of this year, it just has a ridiculously strong hook. It definitely helps that sun coming out more, trees are bursting in leaves, and this is essentially a soundtrack to summer. Kung Fu and Lococo are hymns for a sunny day on a meadow by a lake while having food on the grill and tossing frisbee.

Indie pop is a great genre for this record: it is absolutely pop with a world music spin, but it’s quite a mile from mainstream radio pop. Some songs have this strong cuteness factor because of the singer’s voice, like how The Asteroids Galaxy Tour took us by storm in 2009 with their debut. It also brings me back to the Radiocafé era of Hungary.

Onipa – We No Be Machine

African world music meets afro-futurism. The essence of this tradicional instruments meet booty shake electronics shows well in the track Sohaa Gb3k3 – that’s a favorite, hilarious but in a good way.

Dead Can Dance – Dionysus

The new Dead Can Dance album is just wonderful. For some reason I always have the idea in mind that they might go back to work in their early music style like before Into The Labyrinth, but this did not happen this time either and Dionysus just kept pursuing their ethnic music line of work. It is a beautiful continuation of what they did on Into The Labyrinth and Spiritchaser just matured and on a more grandiose scale. I love it.

Ludovico Einaudi – Taranta Project

World music kind of thing. Italian traditional music from Salento mixed with North African and Turkish flavours, tuned to the voices of jazz, rock, folk, and in some cases soundtrack-like grandiose orchestrations. For me it resembles Dead Can Dance on quite a wide range from the medieval sounds to the Spiritchaser’s ethnic fusion. It is a very unique and interesting record.