The Predatory Wasp
This is taken from the Thom Yorke-composed original score for Daniele Luchetti’s film Confidenza, an adaptation of the Italian drama based on Domenico Starnone’s novel of the same name. The soundtrack LP sees Yorke working again with Sam Petts-Davies as well as the London Contemporary Orchestra alongside a jazz ensemble which included Robert Stillman and fellow The Smile bandmate Tom Skinner.
Given the artist and title of this, I’m not sure I really need to explain why I love it.
“How are you expected to put your hands in the air when you can’t even rise from your knees?”
https://3six.bandcamp.com/album/trance-anthems-for-a-sunken-generation
Wil Bolton is a composer, musician and artist based in East London. His work is inspired by place, memory, resonance and finding beauty in ruins, decay and the details and textures of everyday scenes. His latest album Null Point is dub techno meets Eno, blending gorgeous melodies and ambient textures with a more rhythmic approach than most of his previous work, with skeletal beats constructed from thuds, clicks and crackles sampled from a vintage 7” record of heart sounds as the backbone.
This came out last year, but I’m highlighting it now as a) I’ve only just listened to it and it’s brilliant and b) he’s playing in my hometown next week, and is the first musical act I’ve been genuinely excited about here for ages. Significant serpentwithfeet vibes. And he’s playing in a library! Madness. More of this kind of mournful electronic-indie R&B, please.
The now 10 year old Acid Test 09 sees a special anniversary edition repress with a new vocal mix of track Test 3 which arguably distracts from the near-perfect bubbling simplicity of the original, but is nevertheless a nice reminder of how brilliant this collaboration was.
I finally watched Aftersun last night and woke up still feeling pretty sad about it, so needed something to bounce me into the weekend. This (relatively) new EP from Lossy is perfect, and at times reminds me of some of Barker’s recent, beatless(ish) work.
Sodium Pentothal is a rapid-onset short-acting barbiturate general anesthetic and the substance Stars of the Lids’ Adam Wiltzie used as inspiration for his latest album, Eleven Fugues For Sodium Pentothal; a suite of songs inspired by a recurring dream wherein “if someone listened to the music I created, then they would die.” Pretty bleak right! And he doesn’t stop there. “When you are sitting face forward on the daily emotional meat grinder of life, I always wished I could have some [barbiturate], so I could just fall asleep automatically and the feeling would not be there anymore.” If this all sounds overwhelmingly depressing, the music is anything but, with Dim Hopes especially building towards a climax that is without doubt closer to catharsis than to oblivion.
https://adamwiltzie.bandcamp.com/album/eleven-fugues-for-sodium-pentothal
Kilometre Club’s heartbreakingly beautiful ambient track Dividend is taken from a benefit compilation for FLAP (Fatal Light Awareness Program Canada), an organisation that seeks to protect migrating birds. Curated in part by TPW favourite Avi C. Engel and including several of their collaborative tracks with Bradley Sean Alexander, it’s Polar Seas’ 75th and final release and a fittingly contemplative collection of meditative tones and melodies.
https://polarseasrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/sky-within-us
Kelly Moran builds on the stripped-back, mesmeric piano that comprised 2023’s EP Vesela with her new album Moves in the Field. Gone are the experimental electronic meanderings of some of her previous work, replaced with these (relatively) straightforward but still completely enchanting pieces.
Blurring the lines between chamber music, contemporary dance, dark pop and ethereal ambience, Klein, Mica Levi and Space Afrika collaborator Bianca Scout distills a decade of multidisciplinary work with her new album Pattern Damage, moving between diaristic ephemera, demure post-punk and chamber ambient, and cracking open bewildering crypto-romantique wormholes in the process. And yes, this is pretty much a direct copy and paste of the release hype, but a) it’s accurate and b) it’s a bank holiday and I have better (lazier) things to be doing.
The Predatory Wasp 