The Predatory Wasp
Lots of good stuff out today, much of it pretty mournful (see also: most of Bat For Lashes’ new album) but this is my pick, from Arooj Aftab’s new album Night Reign which described in the press notes as “a perfumed, public garden of renewal”, and although I’m not entirely sure what that means, it’s very lovely.
Earlier this year, London-based Mia Koden put together a mix of unreleased material and let people vote what three tracks should be on her new EP 34U, which landed last month. Expect moody dubs and junglist movements with Inna Fear the clear standout.
HOMESHAKE continues to tease his second album of the year with a new single. Simple – accompanied by a music video directed by Jim Larson, – follows lead single Nothing 2 See,” and is the second part of a trilogy of videos for the forthcoming LP Horsie. For fans of 80s soft rock and prominent electric guitar.
Glassy ambient from Karl Primo under his Lb Honne alias, taken from the new album present future / here there. I’d like to tell you more, but there just isn’t time.
https://projindigo.bandcamp.com/album/present-future-here-there
Shout out to Alexander Crickdog for drawing my attention to Ms Ray’s incredible Wow Is Now EP from a few years ago, which remains a dinner party staple. Signs is similarly shimmery Sade-adjacent bedroom pop and hopefully signals an imminent album announcement.
The first new music since the release of her excellent 2023 album Spike Field, Taper was written and recorded around two years ago, and is “about searching for someone who doesn’t want to be found and mourning a future foreclosed. grief and longing, basically…”. Bleak! And beautiful!
House, post-punk, funk, Afrobeat and disco collide on the new album from Ibibio Sound Machine, Pull The Rope. Mama Says strongly reminds me of Crazy P as seen through a lens of afrofuturism and is absolutely essential for three-quarters of its running time, after which it transforms into a completely different, deeply irritating song that’s probably just best ignored.
It’s Friday, the sun is shining, so here’s some deeply paranoid bleakness from Keeley Forsyth’s third album The Hollow which came out today. The album’s title comes from her discovery a long-abandoned mining shaft whilst out walking, while musically it incorporates aspects of minimalist post-classical, dark ambient and film and theatre soundtracks, with occasional warped pitch-shifts of her overwhelmingly mournful vocal for additional headfuckery.
Live’s new LP (EP? mixtape?) is a pretty tough listen in places. The hecticness of the opening track almost seems designed to put you off, but you’ve settled into its crunchy, super-lofi aesthetic, there are a few moments of genuine brilliance, Mashed Feelings among them. It’s unlikely to generate quite the same hype as last year’s Girl In The Half Pearl, but it’s still definitely worth a listen.
Written and recorded in 2021, Doer connects the dots between Frankfurt-based Man Rei’s (aka Kristin Reiman) debut Cusp in 2020 and their more recent recordings for Glasgow’s Somewhere Press. Bona Fide is about as hauntingly beautiful as it gets; a ghostly chamber piece where Reiman’s voice provides both the lead vocal and the shifting background textures.
The Predatory Wasp 