The Predatory Wasp
Absolutely nothing I write here is going to do justice to how overwhelmingly brilliant this song is, so I’m not going to try, just go and listen to it. Track of the year contender for sure, taken from her new album Second Line. On my fourth straight listen and it just made me cry. Fucking hell, it’s amazing.
Flying Lotus occupies one of my many blind spots for artists I should really know about and be listening to a lot, but never seem to get around to. My thought process goes something like: Flying Lotus is really good / everyone seems to love him / I expect I’d really enjoy it if I dedicated a bit of time to exploring his catalogue / that seems like hard work / I’ll just listen to Nation of Language again. So it’s odd that what’s essentially a soundtrack album is the one that’s caught my attention, but here we are. Mind Flight is taken from Yasuke – which is a six-part Anime series for Netflix – and the entire thing is brilliant. But I guess you already knew that, didn’t you?
The fact that Wildhart are back putting out new music makes me so happy, especially when it’s this good and ticking all my personal favourite boxes. Breathy vocal? Check. Headily nostalgic atmosphere? Yep. Lovely floating melodies that creep up on you and infect your brain without feeling like they’re trying too hard. Sure! And like some of my favourite Wildhart tracks, they save some of the best moments of Better Bby until the end when there a few chord changes that make me happy-sad in the best possible way.
Like a lot of people, my entry point into Burial was 2007’s Untrue, which means I completely missed his remix of Blackdown’s Crackle Blues. According to Boomkat – who tend to be a pretty good authority on this kind of thing – that was a mistake, as it remains one of his tightest productions to date. Now, 15 years later, Burial and Blackdown reunite on Shock Power of Love EP which landed today on Keysound pretty much out of nowhere, which seems to be Burial’s current MO.
Space Cadet includes many of the later-era Burial staples – extended running time, triumphant, almost trancy chords – as well as plenty that have been with him his entire career (hello plaintive vocals and atmospheric crackles), but pushes the euphoric envelope further than perhaps ever before, with the warped call of “take me higher” echoed by a full on gospel choir. I guess we’ve come to expect this kind of relentless brilliance from Burial by now, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.
Considering the amount of featured artists appearing on it, The Feels is both understated and concise: a lazy, hazy hip-hop jam that never tries too hard, or at all really. This came out back in February as part of FairRose’s album The Antics which is a laidback delight from start to finish, conjuring a tone and atmosphere distinct from anything else I’ve heard this year. It’s probably a little bit of a lazy comparison, but I can hear definite echos of The Fugees, both in the collaborative approach and the specific style of production, which pays homage to the dusty sampling techniques of the 90s without ever feeling like it’s ripping anyone off.
Recording under his 96 Back alias, 9696 Dream is the excellent new album from Manchester producer Evan Majumdar-Swift; a body of work that can handily be summed up in all its fun-loving, electro-leaning glory by its title track. Some of the sound design here reminds me a little of Holly Herndon, but without any of the oppressive intensity her music often explores. Instead we get warm, open chords, stripped-back rhythms and an almost uncontrollable desire to listen this at a volume that would doubtless upset my neighbours.
In her poem Wild Geese, Mary Oliver explores what one must do in order to lead a good life. In it the speaker talks directly to her reader, imploring them to not worry so much about being good; rather, the reader should be true to nature and the beauty found in it. As someone who holds the natural world in similarly high regard, it’s fertile inspirational ground for Nina Kinert, who describes her own feeling while reading the poem as “a sort of wanderlust, travelling of the mind in a time when we all need to stay put to stay safe.” The result is a brief but beautiful ballad which not only has the heartbreakingly poignant piano you’d expect, but a pan flute, which adds further a further atmospheric layer to a hauntingly lovely piece of music.
Bit late on this one as it came out about a month ago, but… it’s so fun! The British indie pop band’s latest starts life in a vaguely Aphex-ish way – all squidgy bass and sharp breakbeats – before morphing into a hyper-pop bubblegum banger like it was suddenly hit with a massive dose of steroids, but the kind that mean you’re still smiling and having a nice time, rather than sweaty and twitchy paranoid mess. Taken from their album (although it’s only three tracks, so, maybe EP?) Civilisation II, which is out now.
I only really started paying proper attention to ambient a few years ago, and increasingly I feel like I’ve missed out and will never properly catch up, especially when there seems to be a near constant stream of incredible new stuff being released. Case in point: PCM’s Macro, the lead single from their forthcoming album. It’s absolutely incredible: a masterclass in restraint, raw emotion and surging power stretched out over 9 epic minutes.
Lisa & Kroffe released their first album Gärdet Session back in 2013, and have been keeping themselves busy under various different names and projects in the electronica, techno and kraut genres since then. Efterdyningar is taken from their new LP Roslagens Famn which came out last month, which is really brilliant instrumental music in the borderland between folk, psychedelic, ambient and styles of electronic music I can’t even identify. Efterdyningar itself is a super-chilled moment halfway through that delves into a lot of my favourite themes: nostalgia, sadness, melancholy; you know, the good stuff.
The Predatory Wasp 