The Predatory Wasp
Despite existing in my head under a label of “Cannons but more low-key’, even I realise that this is doing Tokyo Tea Room a disservice. Their new album Feel Forever is a complete joy, full of bouncy, rubbery basslines and plenty of yearning. I’m off to see them in Bristol in a few weeks, and I expect I’ll have a bloody good time.
Astel is a new alias from Addison Groove, also known as Headhunter, an artist whose work has shaped key moments in UK electronic music for over two decades. With Shards, he steps away from the rhythmic intensity of the dancefloor, turning instead towards stillness, atmosphere and a more contemplative way of listening. This belongs to the increasingly popular “producer who used to make techno bangers and now is too old to go to clubs and makes ambient” sub-genre, and is fast becoming my favourite.
https://biofieldrecords.bandcamp.com/album/astel-shards-biofield-002
New Agnes Obel album today, her first in six years, and it’s sent me back to seeing her at the Barbican about 15 years ago, when I remember being completely drawn into how sparse and strange her music could feel while still somehow filling a room that size.
The Meaning of Flowers is built from piano, strings, her voice and all these small details that seem to appear around the edges, and I’ve only had a first listen so far, but it already feels like one of those records where the more interesting things will probably reveal themselves in due course. It’s very lovely.
“When we say feral we mean killable and ungrievable; an animal for whom violent deaths are a possible outcome; that can be culled by slow poison, trapped and left to knaw its own leg off; that is worthless unless domesticated.
“When we say feral we point to an ideology of extermination and control.
“When we say feral we mean resisting
“When we say feral we mean unapologetic.”
This is a long way from from the music I usually gravitate towards, but I find it incredibly hypnotic. Billy String is, I’m reliably told, a leading figure in the modern bluegrass revival, pushing the genre into wider territory by combining traditional flatpicking and Appalachian roots music with psychedelia, rock, country and the extended improvisation of jam-band culture. I really like it!
Carmen Villain’s new album Memoria is built around the idea of sound as memory, with old recordings pulled apart, processed and folded back into new ones. The result sits somewhere between dub, ambient music, free jazz and there’s loads to get lost in across the record, but Blue is the one I keep coming back to. Flutes and clarinet drift in and out, weird little electronic details flicker around the edges, and everything seems to exist in this strange, suspended space. It’s hazy, immersive, tense and really quite unsettling.
Windy and Carl join fellow Michigan duo Optigan Conservatory for an album of blurry guitars, electric piano and synths, recorded with very little planning and, seemingly, a few sounds nobody remembers actually making. ‘Timelines’ is a lovely little stretch of deep-space drift, with soft chords slowly folding into one another and the whole thing hovering somewhere between ambient music and a half-remembered sci-fi soundtrack. Hazy, slightly spooky, very nice indeed.
https://windyandcarl.bandcamp.com/album/windy-carl-meet-optigan-conservatory
L’Rain’s fourth album fata morgana is described in the press notes as “a fearless reckoning with self-doubt and the mirages of belonging and alienation that shape Taja Cheek’s lived experience”, and by me as “something I haven’t had the chance to listen to in full yet”, but based on the strength of the phenomenal lead single elmyra I’m going to enjoy my time with it.
John Beltran released one of the years best album’s back in February, Canada, and has another, Sunrise and the Life We Live, due in October for Music For Dreams. If that’s still not enough dreamy electronics for you, yesterday From Detroit From Love reissued his 2020 EP, from which this arpeggiated delight is taken.
Sleep D and Mosam Howieson join forces for an EP that sits between peak-time bangers and deep hypnotic terrain, with Intetia my pick of the bunch thanks to its Barker-esque melodic synthline and the fact that the breakdown reminds me of 00s prog.
