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Music

Marta Forsberg – Dreamers feat. Rupert Enticknap

Marta Forsberg returns to Warm Winters Ltd. with her new meticulously woven album Archaeology of Intimacy. Soothing, gentle, yet uncompromising and strikingly beautiful, the album sees the Swedish-Polish composer move away from more long-form compositions into what the press notes describe as “pop”, but I definitely wouldn’t. Closing track closing Dreamers is an almost operatic piece which combines clipped and heavily auto-tuned vocals, a string section and beautiful synth melodies to impressively hypnotic effect.

https://martaforsberg.bandcamp.com/album/archaeology-of-intimacy

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Music

Night Tapes – swordsman

I’ve been getting to grips with the new Night Tapes album portals/polarities over the last few weeks, and while it hasn’t become an obsession in the way that last year’s assisted memories did, it still has its moments, one of which is the dreamily melodic swordsman. I just wish there were a few more of them.

https://nighttapesmusic.bandcamp.com/music

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Music

Valentino Mora – IIIII1IIIIIIII1IIIIIIIII

It’s less than 2 months until the best album of 2025 will be released: Voices From The Lake’s II, the follow up to their eponymous, seminal debut. I’ve listened to this pretty much weekly in the intervening 13 (!) years, so the hype is very real. In the meantime, we have Valentino Mora’s also brilliant Biotope, released on Dozzy’s Spazio Disponibile and operating in a similarly atmospheric, hypnotic realm.

https://valentinomora.bandcamp.com/album/biotope

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Interviews Music

Cate Le Bon – Jerome

Cate Le Bon’s new album Michelangelo Dying is a reflective, experimental pop record shaped by grief and personal change. Built from warped guitars, processed saxophones, and layered vocals, it moves away from her earlier sharp-edged sound into something softer and more abstract. The lyrics are impressionistic but emotionally direct, touching on memory, identity, and loss. It’s her most introspective album to date, balancing clarity and strangeness in equal measure.

https://catelebon.bandcamp.com/album/michelangelo-dying

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Music

Malibu – So Sweet & Willing

There are so many interesting and/or brilliant albums coming out at the moment that I find myself with very little time to actually write about them. Hopefully I’ll dig out a bit more time next week, but for now – and continuing the ambient theme of this week – he’s a deeply soothing track from Malibu’s excellent new LP Vanities which landed today.

https://mmmmalibu.bandcamp.com/track/so-sweet-willing

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Music

Arvin Dola – Resurrecting the father (canon)

I’m not sure if “celestial ambient” is even a thing, but regardless, I’m really into it. Arvin Dola’s new album O Ghost is extraordinary and exactly the kind of ambient I love: grandiose, emotional, just the right side of melodramatic, evoking huge sweeping vistas or unfathomable cosmic spaces, bringing together the past, present and future into a single, gut-wrenching singularity. “Memory is a living relationship. It tells us more about who we are than about those who are no longer here,” says Dola. Sure, yes: but have you ever seen C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate? Cos this is what you’d be listening to while you did.

https://arvindola.bandcamp.com/album/o-ghost

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Music

Kate Bush – Under The Ivy

Despite my slight obsession with her, I don’t consider myself a Kate Bush completist: there’s quite a lot of her catalogue – and in one case, an entire album – that I can happily live without. However I’m still surprised that I’m hearing Under The Ivy for the first time today; or at least, it’s the first time I’ve properly paid attention to it.

Aficionados have long celebrated this as one of her hidden gems, tucked away as the B-Side for the vastly more celebrated Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) and previously unavailable on streaming services until the release of her Best Of The Other Sides compilation. It is, quite simply, one of her very best; a spiritual companion to The Man With The Child In His Eyes, and has already reduced me to tears, twice.

https://music.katebush.com/buy/best-of-the-other-sides/

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Music

Her Blur – People Of The Red Blur

I don’t even know what this is really and I can’t find anything about it online other than that’s it a project of Luke Wyatt and Jessi Long, but it’s incredible.

https://valcrondvideo.bandcamp.com/album/first-blur

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Music

Nation of Language – Under the Water

I’m not entirely sold of Nation of Language’s new album Dance Called Memory yet, but I also thought that about their last one and ended up thinking it was yet another triumph, so I’m holding back judgement for a few weeks. What I am sure about though is that Under the Water is the best thing on there, which is a high bar.

https://nationoflanguage.bandcamp.com/album/dance-called-memory

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Music

Joanne Robertson & Oliver Coates – Always Were

The accompanying PR text for Joanne Roberson’s new album simply reads: “Blurrr was written in between painting sessions and also whilst raising a child”, which is appropriate for an album of such understated brilliance. Mainly comprised of Robertson’s mournful guitar and heartbreaking, spectral vocal, there are several collaborations with Oliver Coates – perhaps best know for his devastating score for the film Aftersun – including Always Were, which is just ludicrously good.

https://joannerobertson.bandcamp.com/album/blurrr