The Predatory Wasp
The new album from Levon Vincent, SILENT CITIES, is unlike anything he’s produced before, and is more concerned with mood and atmosphere than deadly dancefloor “weapons”, which is just fine by me. The entire album is great but Sunrise is a definite stand out, with its glistening, meandering synth line and washed out pads evoking both peak Mr Fingers house and 80s-aping synthwave.
I really wasn’t expecting Drake to surprise drop a soulful house album in the Year Of Our Lord 2022… but here we are.
US producer The Range is responsible for one of my all-time favourite and go-to “get shit done at work” mix. His new album Mercury is full of the same sample-heavy., outrageously feel-good electronic tunes, and while it doesn’t quite compete in terms of sheer propulsive energy as his mixes, is still definitely worth checking out.
ashbalkum – the new album from Seoul electronic duo Salamanda – is really, really lovely. In the press release, rather than banging on about all the different synths they used and talking about their inspirations, the overwhelming focus is the fun they had making it, and how their friendship inspired them to create music that was playful and soothing. How nice is that! And to quote directly from the PR: “Do dreams always reflect what we think? Is what we feel within dreams real? Ultimately, Salamanda don’t seek to answer these questions, so much as revel in the delightful liminality of it all.” Lush.
The classical pianist and synthesiser obsessive discusses the timeless beauty of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Energy Flow
The premise of One Track Mind is pretty simple: I ask artists to pick one track that means a lot to them – either something they’ve discovered recently, something that’s been with them for years, or one that reminds them of a specific time in their life or career – and tell me what makes it so special to them. I get to talk to the artists I love, and they get to talk about the artists they love. Love all round!
Born in Yokohama, Japan, Hinako Omori moved to the UK when she was three years old and currently lives in London. She began her musical path learning classical piano, later training as a sound engineer, and has since moved into working with analogue synths. Previous to releasing her own solo material she toured with and played on records by a raft of critically acclaimed musicians including Kae Tempest, Georgia, and Ed O’Brian. However it is her experience in sound engineering that form the foundation for her new album a journey…, a deeply meditative electronic project that encompasses binaural field recordings, analogue synthesisers and augmented vocals.
For her One Track Mind selection, Omori has picked a track by arguably Japan’s most celebrated and influential musician of all time, Ryuichi Sakamoto.
I don’t think I’ve featured any other artist on this blog as much as Bad Flamingo – but they’re just so remarkably, consdiently good, so for this I make no apologies whatsoever. The Fifth Of June is another sultry, country-meets-alt-pop mashup that sounds like nothing else out there
Despite 070 Shake’s Modus Vivendi being my very favourite album of 2020, the fact that she released the follow up, You Can’t Kill Me, last week completely passed me by. You would have thought that sitting in front of a computer and hunting for new music for hours every single day would prevent this kind of glaring oversight, but apparently not. Anyway, it’s here, and it’s fucking great. I could have picked any one of at least half a dozen tracks to highlight, but let’s go for Purple Walls as it has that perfect balance of crushingly hard production and plaintive vocals. Peerlessly brilliant, as ever.
Jamal Moss (who also records as Hieroglyphic Being) has been a pioneering force in Chicago’s electronic music scene for decades, producing a range of sounds from weird, glitchy electro, to gorgeous, melodic house. Most of the tracks on his Modern Love debut Thanks 4 The Tracks U Lost fall into the latter category, with The Lust With-IN tugging especially hard on the heartstrings with its melancholy pads and beautiful, cascading synth line.
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Barker is someone I wish released more music, as pretty much everything he does put out is fucking incredible. Since 2018’s groundbreakingly brilliant Debiasing EP he’s been ploughing a particularly rich furrow of (nearly) beatless atmospheric techno, now taking on a remix of techno royalty Luke Slater under his Planetary Assault Systems alias. Slowing the tempo and erasing all but the tiniest hint of a kick drum, Barker’s version is meditative, warm and essential.
ROF is taken from Hyaline, the debut album from Ohio-born, Oakland, CA based artist and songwriter, Maria BC. Described in the accompanying promo copy as “ghost stories, but not as we know them”, the world building throughout the album is really extraordinary, and the uncanny atmosphere is rarely more dense and intimate than on ROF, where a hushed, Grouper-esque guitar and a glacial vocal takes centre stage as eerie field recordings twist and scuttle in the distance.
The Predatory Wasp 