Author: The Predatory Wasp

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Interviews Music

One Track Mind: Mint Julep

The Portland duo discuss their addiction to Ruby Haunt’s Sorry, Sabrina

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!

Today we welcome wife and husband duo Hollie and Keith Kenniff aka Mint Julep to the blog: a group I’ve only recently discovered but are quickly becoming a TPW favourite. Their new album In A Deep and Dreamless Sleep came out last week, and honestly, it’s just so wonderful. Touching on elements of shoegaze, indie-pop and more amorphous forms of electronica, it conjures an atmosphere as rich, vivid and densely packed with ideas as anything you’re likely to hear this year.

For their track, Keith has selected a short but powerful track from Californian group Ruby Haunt’s 2018 album Blue Hour.

Continue reading “One Track Mind: Mint Julep”
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Music

Ymir – The Crystal Expanse

Ymir is an experimental multimedia artist from North Dakota who specialises in short-form ambient music and 3D glitch art. Latest single The Crystal Expanse is inspired by a particular scene from Miyazaki’s 1984 Japanese anime film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in which the protagonists wake up underneath the canopy of a toxic jungle: an enormous, oppressive space punctuated by occasion shafts of light. I’ve not seen the film, but Ymir absolutely manages to conjure an impressive sense of both scale and wonder with this short but extremely intense slice of ambient.

https://www.instagram.com/ymir_was_taken

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Music

Lana Del Rey – Tulsa Jesus Freak

There’s a strong argument to be made that Lana Del Rey has basically make the same album three or four times now, and while there’s nothing on Chemtrials Over The Country Club that’s going to win her any new fans, it’s hard to argue with the strength of some of these “I’m sad, you’re sad: let’s be sad together” ballads. Tulsa Jesus Freak is probably the weepiest of all of these, demonstrating her mastery of both melody and atmosphere.

https://www.lanadelrey.com

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Music

Kas – In The Absence Of Becoming

Ilian Tape really is a remarkably consistent label: I don’t think I’ve heard a single thing on there I haven’t really enjoyed. This is taken from Galaxian alias Kas’s new album Like Sunlight Threads – the first LP on the label since the Zenker Brother’s brilliant Cosmic Transmission from last year – which veers wildly between fairly accessible, melodic breaks and terrifying, panic-inducing techno. In The Absence Of Becoming sits very much in the former category, and is unlikely to make my wife ask “What the fuck are you listening to?” with quite the same venom as some of the other tracks on here.

https://iliantape.bandcamp.com

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Music

Terror Peaks – Sᐝo⼁❘ ︲⏐ ˌ ˈ ̩ Showyou

Squarepusher-channeling IDM (if we’re on board with that term) from Terror Peaks for you today, which seems to be doing everything it can to wrongfoot you at every turn. Each time it settles on a particular groove or pattern for a few bars it almost immediately switches it up for something even more intense and intricate, which would all make for a pretty headscrambling few minutes if it weren’t for the occasional, gorgeous pads and snatches of vocals that drift into the mix, reassuring you that everything will be all right in the end, honestly.

https://slowdancerecords.bandcamp.com/album/terror-peaks

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Music

Charlie Houston – Things

I am a massive sucker for exactly this kind of stripped-back, dreamy r&b/pop. Aimed at the youth, Things is good enough to transport us all back to those intensely conflicted times, when even the most mundane conversations can send you reeling for days. Similar in tone and subject to a lot of Khalid’s earlier music – of which I am also a big fan – Things is a perfect, infectious blend of the throwaway and the profound.

https://charliehouston.com

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Music

Mint Julep – Pulse

A welcome return to Portland duo Mint Julep on the blog today, who follow up last month’s A Rising Sun with an even more emphatically lovely slice of dreamy pop/shoegaze. Pulse builds from a steady kick drum and shimmering guitars to an all-consuming climax of astonishing intensity, with Hollie’s ghostly vocal a calming, spine-tingling presence throughout. Definite shades of Beach House at their most emphatically emotional. Plus: their new album A Deep And Dreamless Sleep lands next week. Happy daze indeed.

https://mintjulep.bandcamp.com/album/in-a-deep-and-dreamless-sleep

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Music

The Egyptian Lover – Cinnamon Oil Massage

Pioneering electro pioneer The Egyptian Lover has doubled down on his 2015 album 1985 with new LP 1986. Like its predecessor it focusses entirely on the kind of sounds and techniques he was using back in the mid-1980s, and aside from it perhaps sounding a little more polished that some of the electro and proto-hip-hop being produced then, its otherwise sounds completely indistinguishable. Cinnamon Oil Massage is a definite highlights, complete with the omnipresent crisp, punchy 808 beats and an outrageously over the top electric guitar solo which is absolutely joyous.

https://thegyptianlover.bandcamp.com/album/1986

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Music

Amandra x Mattheis – Manekin

If Stanley Kubrick had been making 2001 this year, I’m convinced that Amandra and Mattheis would have been brought in to work on the soundtrack. Manekin is from their first collaborative LP Lettre Ouverte which came out towards the end of last month, and is jaw-droppingly brilliant. It’s not really fair to highlight a single track as it undoubtedly works best when immersing yourself in the album from start to finish, but Mankin is a near perfect example of their patient, celestial approach to techno. With shades of both Voices From The Lake and DJ Python’s more recent Mas Amable – but with arguably loftier ambitions than both – it’s the most immersive electronic album I’ve heard so far this year.

https://nousklaer.bandcamp.com/album/lettre-ouverte

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Music

Akiyoshi Yasuda – even

Writing about this kind of floating, glassy ambient, I sometimes feel like words aren’t really doing it justice, which is, admittedly, a bit of an issue if you’ve chosen to run a blog where your own grasp of language is at least reasonably important. even – the latest from Japanese artist Akiyoshi Yasuda – is the latest to stump me. Is it ‘gorgeous’? Yes. Is it ‘evocative’? Also yes. Does it ‘feel as insignificant as curling wisps of distant clouds, but also have the ability to make your head spin with the force of its own delicate beauty’? Sure does.

https://soundcloud.com/starguitar