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Lee Gamble – Juice

Continuing the trance revival theme today with this melancholy banger from Lee Gamble’s new album Models, which, when compared to some of his previous work, is surprisingly accessible. According to the PR, “it’s pop music, but it ain’t background music” and I’m not sure I entirely agree with either of those statements, but it is very good. Elsewhere on the album you’ll find him autotuning the fuck out of Lana Del Rey, which is also fun.

https://leegamble.bandcamp.com/album/models

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Evian Christ – Silence

Trance really is having a moment. It feels like everyone is finally ready to accept what I’ve known all along: trance is the best, most credible and timeless genre of all! The latest evidence of this seismic shift is the Warp-approved Evian Christ and his debut album Revanchist, which explores “the latent potential in Trance to evoke, beyond Euphoria, the fullest feeling of the Sublime.” Yes! Silence is a reimagining of Delirium’s proggy masterpiece of the same name. Rave like it’s 1999 all over again.

https://evianchrist.bandcamp.com/album/revanchist

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Lost Girls – Timed Intervals

Jenny Hval and Håvard Volden’s Lost Girls’ collaboration dates back more than a decade, with Volden playing regularly in Hval’s live band and two previous albums. In 2022, the duo were booked to perform a concert at Les Subsistances in Lyon, and decided to use the opportunity to create all new material, with Volden creating beats and guitar chord progressions and Hval restructuring the parts, creating melodies and adding lyrics. The resulting album, Selvutsletter, explores different territory than their previous work; shorter, more concise and melodic songs that border on alternative pop (kinda), with opener Timed Intervals one of the clear standouts.

https://lostgirls1000.bandcamp.com/album/selvutsletter

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Maria BC – Lacuna

While Maria BC’s debut album Hyaline explored grief and anxiety through a series of character-led accounts, their follow-up Spike Field is more concerned with buried emotions and actions, positing that the past will continue to lurk below the surface until one decides to break through the soil and face what lies beneath. If that makes it sound bleakly gothic, then the music is anything but; it’s delicate, earthy and seemingly with an underlying note of optimism in even the most stripped-down of compositions. For fans of Grouper, detuned Steinway pianos and wallowing.

https://mariabc.bandcamp.com/album/spike-field

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L’Rain – 5 to 8 Hours a Day (WWwaG)

Under the mononym L’Rain, Brooklyn native Taja Cheek has become a celebrated figure in New York experimental music, and her new album I Killed Your Dog looks set to further cement her reputation. Existing in a similarly genre-less, albeit considerably more wavy space as someone like Yves Tumor, I Killed Your Dog considers what it means to hurt the people you love the most, and has been described by Cheek as an “anti-break-up” record. Does this mean it’s a record that soundtracks people getting together? Or one that’s suited to couples who really should split up, but battle through regardless. Probably the latter, maybe something else entirely. But it’s very good and you should listen to it.

https://lrain.bandcamp.com/album/i-killed-your-dog

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Raw Poetic, Damu The Fudgemunk – Ease Side

I’m not sure why it’s taken this long for me to get stuck in to Raw Poetic and Damu The Fudgemunk’s Away Back In LP, but I have now, and it’s great. 2022’s Laminated Skies is a masterpiece and didn’t get anywhere near the attention it deserved. Away Back In is described as “a transcendent musical fusion of hip-hop, jazz, and garage rock”, and lead single and opening track Ease Side is indicative of its loose, upbeat vibe.

https://damuthefudgemunk.bandcamp.com/album/away-back-in-2

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Nina Kinert – Marble Armour (In The Eye of My Maker)

I love Nina Kinert. Her 2018 album Romantic and In Twos EP from the same year are releases I return to frequently, but she’s been relatively quiet since then, averaging about a single a year in the intervening years. So I was very excited to get stuck into her new album Religious, which explores some of her stories about growing up within the Pentecostal Church Community in Sweden , while at the same time dealing with her “attraction to spiritual mystique and the supernatural.” As with most of her work, Marble Armour is hauntingly beautiful, and a great entry point into her often electronically inflected, folk-led musical world if she’s escaped your attention until now.

https://ninakinert.bandcamp.com/album/religious

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Helena Deland – Roadflower

Taken from Helena Deland’s second album Goodnight Summerland, Roadflower is quietly stunning. Written in the aftermath of the death of Deland’s mother, many – if not all – of the songs deal with death and its aftermath, with its tone similar to recent albums by Tomberlin: mournful, but exquisitely, cathartically so.

https://helenadeland.bandcamp.com/album/goodnight-summerland

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Mary Lattimore, Roy Montgomery – Blender in a Blender

On the strength of its final 30 seconds alone, Blender in a Blender would be one of my favourite pieces of music this year. A collaboration with guitarist Roy Montgomery, the track was first drafted by Lattimore during an artist residency program in UCross Wyoming, and later evolved over the duo’s pen pal correspondence. Montgomery’s chords emerge from the harp-induced haze in the outro, and are completely and utterly mesmerising. It’s taken from Lattimore’s new LP Goodbye, Hotel Arkada, an album so obsessed with nostalgia it could have been tailor-made for me.

https://marylattimoreharpist.bandcamp.com/album/goodbye-hotel-arkada

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Pangaea – If

I haven’t posted an “absolute banger” on here for quite some time, but this from Hessle Audio co-founder Pangaea is really excellent. Chopped vocals and chunky beats! But it’s the pads that come in halfway through that make it, transforming decent club fare into a poignant anthem. Taken from his new LP Changing Channels which is out now.

https://pangaeauk.bandcamp.com/album/changing-channels