The Predatory Wasp
There’s a lot of very interesting, gloomy music out today, including an EP called ‘murmuring chasms of nostalgia’ (come on), but it’s sunny outside and I’m going to a gig tonight so now is not the time for self-reflection and “thinking”. So instead here’s a bouncy indie disco thing taken from Girl Ray’s extremely buoyant new album Prestige to put a little Friday spring in your step.
Billowing ambient that builds into something more rhythmic and structured; like an optimistic take on Vangelis with all the sharp edges sanded off. Taken from the Kaifeng-born, Vancouver based musician and occasional chef’s new album of the same name which is well worth checking out in its entirety.
I’m not quite as enamoured with Jessy Lanza’s new album Love Hallucination as I hoped I would be, but there’s no denying the infectious brilliance of Limbo. Deeply rooted in late 70s/ early 80s funk and with a bassline to rival the best of that era, its a ridiculously hooky earworm that I’m inevitably going to be hammering for months.
“Cold Ecstasy is the ultimate memory rush. It’s the album I’ve always wanted to make“
Cold Ecstasy is the latest album from 36 – the ambient and experimental electronic music project of UK artist Dennis Huddleston. An homage to the happier, more emotionally-charged aspects of the UK hardcore and rave scene, it is a truly beautiful body of work, playing with themes of memory and deeply rooted in nostalgia: something with which I have an arguably unhealthily obsession.
I love Cold Ecstasy, so was delighted that Dennis agreed to answer some questions about his inspirations and approaches to its creation.
For the majority of the 00s and 2010s – and arguably even in its 90s heyday – trance and the happier aspects of hardcore were pretty much written off as unserious and not worthy of respect. Why do you think that is?
People are too serious, perhaps? Look, I get it. There were some absolutely dreadful happy hardcore tunes. Things got pretty stupid after 1997. But UK hardcore has always had this duality, right from the get-go. For every classic tune like Ellis Dee’s “Free The Feeling” we also got gimmicky trash like “Sesame’s Treet”. Happy hardcore just took things to the extreme, since the bad stuff was really, really bad. It was an easy target, I found it hilarious how Sharkey was a key part of hardcore’s downfall with much-maligned tunes like “Toytown”, yet he was also instrumental in pushing the Freeform sound years later, which gave us so many great tracks. As I say, such is the duality of man!
Of course, it’s a phenomenon which isn’t exclusive to hardcore. Every genre has good and bad tunes. It encourages you to dig deeper to find the stuff that shines brightest. Believe me, there’s plenty of classic happy hardcore tracks, if you give it a chance. I wouldn’t have listened if they weren’t there.
As a result of the deep calm I felt after the first few minutes of listening this, I was very much unprepared for its final third. I won’t spoil the surprise.
Lots and lots of fun music out today, but this is probably the biggest and funnest of the lot. The first new music from The Big RDJ in 5 years – the predictably functionally named Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / in a room7 F760 – includes this tight, sinewy little roller which dissolves into those trademark melt-your-heart pads in its final third.
https://aphextwin.bandcamp.com/album/blackbox-life-recorder-21f-in-a-room7-f760
I came across this during a frantic Spotify cull of albums I’ve saved but rarely (if ever) listened to. Cucina Povera is the alias of the Glasgow-based artist Maria Rossi, originally from Finland, and this is taken from her 2021 LP Dalmarnock Tapes, throughout which she layers her own vocals to create a choir of one, with invariably intensely haunting results.
Part of a run of singles featuring new versions of tracks from Poppy Ackroyd’s 2021 album Pause, Hinako Omori’s offering starts sparse and delicate before the tension resolves into something richer and more comforting with the addition of radiant and increasingly prominent pads.
Dennis Huddleston aka 36’s new album Cold Ecstasy is a pitch-perfect homage to 90s rave, focussing on “the happier side of the hardcore spectrum, which I feel was unfairly maligned at the time.”As a teenager obsessed with happy hardcore and later trance, I’ve always had a massive soft spot for the unashamed positivity of those genres. A companion piece to 2021’s Weaponised Serenity which was equally brilliant, this new LP is further proof that Huddlestone is one of the most consistently excellent electronic producers out there.
Back in May 2016, Trevino a.k.a. Marcus Intalex released his debut album Front on his own Birdie label. Following the producer’s death in 2017, the follow-up album Back was released posthumously in May. Recorded between Berlin and Manchester, Back is at its strongest when it embraces the more melancholy aspects of electronica – as in the all-conquering Backtracking, still one of the best techno singles of all time – with Moodswing a clear highlight.
The Predatory Wasp 