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.
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7038634357 – Winded
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Apex Twin – zin2 test5
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.
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36 – Touch The Sky
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.
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Trevino – Moodswing
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.
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Katatonic Silentio – To
Increasingly, I like electronic music to make me feel one of two ways: extremely, nostalgically blissed-out or overwhelmingly anxious to the point of not being able to sit still. Katatonic Silentio’s output falls very much into the latter of these two categories, although To – from her recent Mantis 11 EP – is one of her more accessible pieces, with a clear, if apocalyptic, rhythm and only the suggestion of creeping, mechanical oblivion patiently lurking in the background.
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Arthur Russell – Telling No One
Picture of Bunny Rabbit features nine previously unreleased performances from legendary artist Arthur Russell, recorded around the time he released his career-defining album World of Echo. These newly discovered tracks have been compiled from completed masters culled from two unique test pressings, including one, dated 9/15/85 by Arthur, provided by his mother and sister, while a further four tracks were discovered in his tape archive. Profoundly haunting as ever, its a fascinating collection from an artist whose legacy continues to grow.
https://arthurrussell.bandcamp.com/album/picture-of-bunny-rabbit
Recorded following the death of her producer and close friend, Julie Byrne’s first album in six years The Greater Wings embraces her sorrow and attempts to find personal growth in the desolation of loss. Gently meandering from traditional folk compositions to more ambient, textural pieces, it’s an undeniably sad album, but richly, rewardingly so, for the listener as much as its creator.
Finding albums like Not Marshall’s Fragments of Varnished Visions makes me a bit happy and a bit sad: happy, as I feel like I’ve stumbled on something brilliant that hasn’t already had its praises highly sung; sad as this is flying so hard under the radar that it’s difficult to imagine any more than a small handful of people will ever get the chance to enjoy its magnificence. I literally can’t find anything about it online except its listing on AOTY, not even a Bandcamp page. It’s not often ambient is explicitly joyful, but that’s certainly the case with About The Desert, and the rest of this deeply buried gem is equally lovely.
The Predatory Wasp 