Why stop at four aliases when you can just keeping making up new ones? DJ Healer / DJ Metatron / Traumprinz / Prince Of Denmark recently announced two double EPs under a new moniker, The Phantasy, and – obviously – it’s great. As usual it’s vinyl only and also as usual it sold out about in about a minute, however all the tracks are now up on YouTube. Usually I wouldn’t condone this kind of behaviour, but as this is the only way the 95% of us who love the music but aren’t prepared to pay insane prices on Discogs will ever get to hear it, I think it’s probably fine.
There’s also a new DJ Metatron album Loops Of Infinity (A Rave Loveletter) that I haven’t even had a chance to listen to yet, but I’m pretty confident will also be exquisite. I’ve said it before: what a time to be alive.
Gabrielle Current new single marks a bit of a departure from her previous glossy pop, and channels 90s R&B aesthetics to very enjoyable effect. Both the vocal and production are hazy and understated, gently rolling along without vying for your attention and creating a quietly beguiling, nostalgic atmosphere as a result.
Clocking in at under two minutes there’s not an awful not to Hey Boy, but what it lacks in length it more than makes up for in sultry smoothness, with both Apollo and Kali Uchis delivering their short verses in tones that can only be described as sexy AF. Hey Boy arrives at around the halfway point of Apollo’s excellent new album Apolonio and is a masterclass in modern soul-inflected R&B.
Erika de Casier’s 2019 album Essentials washands down one the best LP’s of last year, and came – at least for me – completely out of the blue: fully formed, unique, brilliant. Newly signed to 4AD, No Butterflies, No Nothing is her first new music since then, and is a bit of a departure from her previous work. Where Essentials was light and buoyant – naive almost in its simplicity – the production on No Butterflies… is much darker and more complex, reminiscent of something like Kelela’s Frontline. Still great, just in a different, slightly more intimidating way.
Lots of you will already be very familiar with The Caretaker and this record – especially as it came out in its final form more than a year ago, and much of it was originally recorded at least a decade before that. If so, please forgive me for delving back into the recent and not so recent past, which is, after all, exactly what Everywhere At The End Of Time is all about.
Probably the best-known alias of Leyland James Kirby, The Caretaker is someone I’ve always thought I would enjoy, but never really gave the proper time and attention – due at least in part to the fact that none of his work ever appears on streaming services. Recently this 6-hour+ epic has become a trend of TikTok, a Quietus article about which made me finally commit an extended listening session.
Everywhere… was released in instalments, each portion of the release representing a different stage of the progression of Alzheimer’s disease until – with the final instalment in 2019 – The Caretaker character died and the moniker was retired. The Caretaker project was initially inspired by the haunted ballroom scene in The Shining, and like many of his albums – and often revisiting and sampling his earlier work – Everywhere… is mainly comprised of treated and manipulated samples of 1930s ballroom recordings, which disintegrate further and more violently into chaos as the album progresses, representing the various stages of memory decline brought about by the disease.
The result is utterly haunting, harrowing, beautiful and existential, and one of the most profound – if at times extremely challenging – experiences you can have listening to music. Will I be making a TikTok video to share my experience? I shall not.
Jim-E Stack is an artist who’s slowly crept onto my radar over the last couple of years by putting out a steady stream of reliably good but usually fairly understated, indie-electronica. “I’ll give this a shout out on the blog” I naively thought a couple of hours ago. “He could probably do with the support…” but oh right turns out he gets well over a million monthly listeners on Spotify and is already kind of A Big Deal. Probably should have guessed as much given the featured guest on this is Saint Bon Iver to be fair. Anyway, it’s great: and I’m very excited about his new album, Ephemera, which is out later this month.
This is taken from the new two-track EP from Brooklyn composer and producer Faten Kanaan, and follows the release of the equally brilliant The North Wind last month. Fatan has previously said that much of her work is inspired by cinematic forms, whether that’s sweeping vistas or intimate character studies; both of which are apparent in The Archer, with its dramatic swathes of synths conjuring both ragged forests and Blade Runner-esque cityscapes while simultaneously evoking a deep personal narrative.
On a blazing hot Sunday afternoon last June I watched This Is The Kit perform on Glastonbury’s West Holts stage, and it was absolutely magnificent: exactly the kind of relaxed yet quietly invigorating vibe I was looking for, and I’ve been hooked ever since. Was Magician is the latest in a run of singles from her forthcoming album Off Off On which is out later this month, and is delicate, sparse and very lovely indeed.
I heard this on the radio earlier today as the sun was just breaking through the morning haze and it made me feel incredibly calm and happy. It’s from London producer Flaurese’s debut EP which is out now on Circa ’99, and it’s a real delight: warm chords and winding melodies with an almost 8-bit bassline that chugs on throughout before entering throwback rave territory for the final third. Quite the debut.
The earliest harps were discovered a long old time ago: around 3500BCE. Back then and for years after, they were the instrument de jour, but despite their popularity around the globe for centuries, and depiction in several cultural cornerstones (see: Guinness, Ireland in general), you have to go a little out of your way to find much modern music based around a harp. Mary Lattimore is arguably the most well-known proponent of this unwieldy instrument, and her new album Silver Ladders is engrossing, transportive and gorgeous, with the 10-minute epic Til A Mermaid Drags You Under an intense, occasionally unsettling but completely enthralling highlight.
The Predatory Wasp 