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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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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

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Music

Natalie Bergman – Didn’t Get To Say Goodbye

Coming in like some modern-day hybrid of Lana Del Rey, Diana Ross and Karen Carpenter, Natalie Bergman’s new LP My Home Is Not in This World is somewhat of a mixed bag, but when it works it really works, as in this downtempo, heart-wrenching ballad complete with a highly charismatic, generously expressive bassline and late addition of some actually quite tasteful jazz-flute. Lovely stuff.

https://nataliebergman.bandcamp.com/album/my-home-is-not-in-this-world

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Music

René Najera – The Seasons feat. Leech

Minnesota-born, L.A.-based musician, mastering engineer, and co-founder of the Jungle Gym label Jared Carrigan records solo and in collaboration under a web of guises: V. Kristoff, Congo River Club House, Freaks of Nature, Easy Rider plus plenty more, including, most relevantly to this post, René Najera – his longest-running alias. His new LP Painted Life took shape from the seeds of a 2023 set prepared for a string of shows in Japan. Elements were later remixed, finessed, and expanded by a cast of inner circle collaborators, including Leech who contributed to this album standout.

https://renenajera.bandcamp.com/album/painted-life

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Music

james k – Blinkmoth (July Mix)

I CANNOT STOP listening to this track. Song of the year. Apparently it came out about a year ago, but I only just heard it as the second track on james k’s new album Friend. I love it so much!

https://jameskmusic.bandcamp.com/album/friend