Just the other day I was listening to Kelela’s excellent live album In The Blue Light from last year and wondering when we’d get some new music, and POW!… here it is. idea 1 is indeed fairly simple and stripped down, but not as disposable as the throwaway name suggests, and perhaps signals a shift in her sound, throwing in distorted, shoegaze-y guitars alongside her familiarly breathy vocal.
“‘idea 1’ is about what it feels like to exist in this climate — the weight of being expected to witness, absorb, and speak truth at a time when the world feels like it’s unraveling. That’s a particular kind of burden Black women know intimately. Co-writing it with my best friend Janiva Ellis, hearing Oscar [Scheller]’s production give it shape, and then watching 91 Rules bring that tension to life visually feels like the beginning of a much larger conversation I’m ready to have.”
The Canadian singer-songwriter on the spooky atmospherics of a song from a cult horror classic
The premise of One Track Mind is pretty simple: I ask artists to pick one track that means a lot to them – either something they’ve discovered recently, something that’s been with them for years, or one that reminds them of a specific time in their life or career – and tell me what makes it so special to them. I get to talk to the artists I love, and they get to talk about the artists they love. Love all round!
Ora Cogan is a Canadian singer-songwriter whose work sits somewhere between folk, slowcore and dreamlike indie. Her records are sparse and carefully arranged, often built around voice, guitar and a restrained sense of atmosphere. There’s a cinematic quality to her writing, with themes of isolation, faith and memory running through much of her catalogue.
Written in the quiet, slightly uncanny surroundings of Nanaimo, B.C., her new album Hard Hearted Woman took shape through a loose, lived-in rhythm of cold-water plunges, long river swims, late-night conversations on art and politics, and drives through the Lillooet landscape to visit her godmother.
Her debut for Sacred Bones, the record carries that atmosphere with it. Drawing on haunted folk, psych rock and a shadowed edge of country, Cogan sketches out something immersive but controlled, where release feels textured, elusive and necessary.
For her One Track Mind, Ora has picked out a haunting song from perhaps the definitive British folk-horror movie.
Ora Cogan on Magnet – Willow’s Song from The Wicker Man
“The Wicker Man is one of my all time favourite films. It felt close to home as I grew up on a small island with a lot of wild weirdos. I watched this film at a formative age and the very immersive storytelling of this masterpiece has stayed strong in my imagination ever since.
“What an epic pagan love song. Sooo spooky and dreamy. While I’m writing songs I imagine I’m writing them to score films. I love the way a song can evoke a whole realm you could get lost into.”
Ora Cogan – Heart Hearted Woman is out now on Sacred Bones
Usually when couples break up, they don’t decide to write an album together. But in this case, I’m very glad JJ Weihl aka Discovery Zone and John Moods did exactly that. Dreaming for Miles is a collection of songs that were written over the past ten years or so and recorded between their basement practice space and at their home in Berlin. After spending over a decade living together and playing music together, their lives pulled them in different directions, but during the process of separation, they decided to make a final record together. The result is reflective, often deeply sad, but also somewhat hopeful; a beautiful, poignant distillation of two singular artists saying goodbye to one another.
Xylitol aka producer and DJ Catherine Backhouse shifts up the refinement and musical breadth for her second album Blumenfantasie, which landed earlier this month on Planet Mu. Blumenfantasie draws heavily on the work of Sarajevo-born minimal synth composer Miaux, whom she recognises as “a kindred spirit in terms of her directness and melancholy, as well as her lightness of touch”, rolling through immersive jungle workouts with the occasional dip into beatless ambience.
Some slightly uncharacteristic (for this blog) jangly indie for you today courtesy of Snail Mail from her new album Ricochet. Not sure if it’s due to the fact that it’s Friday and the end of a pretty hectic week, but it’s been making me smile all morning. “Misery feels safe to write about because I am good at it,” she says, “but I’m not bathing in my own agony anymore.” Quite. And “agony” especially feels far removed from these effervescent songs, on the surface at least.
The ambient artist on the arresting simplicity of a song by Myriam Gendron
The premise of One Track Mind is pretty simple: I ask artists to pick one track that means a lot to them – either something they’ve discovered recently, something that’s been with them for years, or one that reminds them of a specific time in their life or career – and tell me what makes it so special to them. I get to talk to the artists I love, and they get to talk about the artists they love. Love all round!
Brad Deschamps, recording as anthéne, is a Canadian ambient composer whose work leans into stillness, tone and emotional weight. His music draws on soft drones, field recordings and minimal melodic fragments to build pieces that feel immersive without becoming overworked, with releases across labels such as Home Normal, Whitelabrecs and Past Inside the Present.
His latest release is a collaborative album with Alessio Bertuzzi aka Far Away Nebraska, great plains, which leans heavily into the ‘country ambient’ aesthetic, and has been a daily source of morning calm for me over the past several weeks.
For his One Track Mind, Brad has picked out a deeply meditative song from a celebrated Canadian musician and songwriter.
anthéne on Myriam Gendron – Solace
“Though I’m constantly seeking out and listening to new music, when I think of the last decade or so there are a few artists that really stick out as being extremely important to me. Myriam Gendron is one of them. Her discography is all so amazing, but this song “Solace” from Not So Deep As a Well is one that I return to very often. The guitar playing bares a passing similarity to another song I almost chose for this, “Sleepwalker” by Julie Byrne, (another one of those artists whose work I’ve spent a lot of time with in the last 10 years or so).
“The combination of her beautiful guitar playing and the words of Dorothy Parker is really arresting, and it’s also just a very novel idea to set Dorothy’s poetry to music. To me the song/poem seems to be about grief, letting yourself feel sadness and not trying to hastily move on:
There was a rose that faded young; I saw its shattered beauty hung Upon a broken stem. I heard them say, “What need to care With roses budding everywhere?” I did not answer them.
There was a bird, brought down to die; They said, “A hundred fill the sky- What reason to be sad?” There was a girl, whose lover fled; I did not wait, the while they said, “There’s many another lad.”
“Having seen her perform live a few times, her music on record and in person feels very warm and inviting despite being so minimal and somewhat somber, and I take great comfort in it. Perhaps most inspiring is this song is from Myriam’s first album, recorded alone in her apartment with no prior knowledge of sound engineering, and to have composed and recorded something this beautiful is really something.”
anthéne & Far Away Nebraska – great plains is out now on Home Normal
I’m not even going to attempt to interpret the cryptic madness of the Bandcamp description of this track, but any new material from Voice Actor is very welcome. Hopefully this is part of a wider forthcoming project… but who knows.
more eaze is the moniker of Brooklyn-based composer, orchestrator, and multi-instrumentalist, mari rubio, and her new album sentence structure in the country is a collection of compositions across ambient and experimental pop, each beautifully realised, self-contained worlds, with influences stretching from country to jazz. The album’s compositions evolved over a number of years, with each updated version informed by both the context of rubio’s performances and the musicians she chose to create them with.
Sometimes all you need to start the day right is a nice, fried slice of deep, dubby house; so here’s Mammo serving up the goods. Taken from his new album Lateral which clocks in at an intimidating 99 minutes, but is well worth your time if you’re into stripped back techno, sketchy ambient and a few things in between.
Arima Ederra for Image magazine, October 2022. Photographed at Teo Halm's studio in Los Angeles, CA. Creative direction by Emi Farai, Simone Niamani Thompson.
Arima Ederra is a Los Angeles–based singer, songwriter and visual artist whose work blends alternative R&B, folk and indie pop into a soft-edged, emotionally detailed sound. Born in Atlanta to Ethiopian parents and raised in Las Vegas, her music draws on East African influences alongside jazz, soul and contemporary songwriting. Her new album, A Rush To Nowhere, moves through various genres and influences, some channelled more effectively than others; however the soul/country/pop/r&b blend of You’re My is a clear standout.
The Predatory Wasp 