The Predatory Wasp
Purelink embrace liquidity on their second album Faith, washing live instrumentation and exposed vocals over their patented cascade of dubbed ambience and ebbing rhythmic experimentation. With a vocal appearance from Loraine James, Rookie stands out even amongst all the other floaty excellence, her voice floating like smoke over pattering rhythms and airy synths
Breezy, sun-kissed soul from sexy crooner Durand Jones that owes a huge (and presumably knowing) debt to Sylvia Striplin’s seminal groover You Can’t Turn Me Away Taken from their new album Flowers, which is destined to soundtrack basically every BBQ I have this summer.
https://durandjonesandtheindications.bandcamp.com/album/flowers
Nilüfer Yanya returns with her new EP Dancing Shoes, out now on Ninja Tune. Dancing Shoes was written alongside a collection of tracks that Nilüfer re-approached with her creative partner Wilma Archer when she returned from touring her latest, insanely brilliant LP My Method Actor aka the best album of 2024. The project includes Nilüfer’s latest singles “Where To Look” and “Cold Heart”, as well as this previously unreleased beauty.
Fantologia I is a 17-track compilation curated by Quixosis and DJ +1, bringing together experimental electronic artists from across Latin America. The release explores themes of uncertainty and instability in the region, focusing on the idea of hauntology and the disappearance of promised futures. The music ranges from ambient and textured soundscapes to more rhythmic, club-influenced tracks, tied together by a shared sense of tension. Arriving at around the midpoint of the VA, Peruvian artist Orieta Chrem’s track KON blends Aphex Twin-esque disquieting synth lines with haunting vocals and clipped drums.
The opening track from Che Noir’s new LP The Color Chocolate 2 see the Buffalo-based rapper and producer in typically reflective form, with bars like “Family trees that we cherish with conviction / But the only thing that we inherit is addiction” passionately delivered over rich, evocative production.
Unbelievably good, taken from her recent Can’s Gone Warm EP. Sits somewhere between John Glacier and Kate Bush. Ridiculous.
Maiya Blaney describes her second album A Room With A Door That Closes as “a love letter to her blue,” an emotional state that she defines as “a kinetic, intense, and dark energy that needs to be expressed as soon as it is felt.” The eleven songs on the album span radioactive kiss offs, sorrowful meditations on yearning, and gossamer reveries about self image, with the stand-out And moving through pitch-shifted drone, majestic strings and soft guitar over the course of its 6+ minutes.
https://maiyablaney.bandcamp.com/album/a-room-with-a-door-that-closes
Se Amaba Así – which loosely translates to “The way love was” – sees Raquel Berrios and Luis Del Valle Buscabull devoting their second album to the examination of modern love and the myriad strains of Latin music to explore their struggles as both artists and a romantic couple. It’s darker in tone that their debut Regresa but no less captivating.
Leon Bridges wrote this a decade ago around the time of his fantastic debut LP Coming Home, but it’s only just seeing the light of day. Nostalgic country-soul stylings from one of the best sounding voices in the business.
On her debut album Desert Window, Lucy Gooch stays true to her electronic foundations, while incorporating more acoustic instrumentation and digging deeper into her folk roots through songwriting. At the heart of Lucy’s music is her rapturous, at times operatic vocal, with which she bring to the fore more than with previous releases. The result is described as “an atmospheric balance between Kate Bush and Cocteau Twins harmonies” which is risky ground with which to invite comparison; the fact that I’m not mad about it shows just how good this album is.
The Predatory Wasp 