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Music

Angel Olsen – [New Love] Cassette

Around the release of her debut album Half Way Home, I saw Angel Olsen perform to a couple of hundred people at a modest venue in Shepherd’s Bush. She was magnetically brilliant: flirting with some random guy in the front row, asking if anyone had any tequila and ploughing through what felt like pretty much every song she’d released up to that point.

Since then, obviously, she’s become huge, and every album since has been ramped up in terms of scope, production, energy and scale. It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed lots of it, but I’ve definitely missed the stripped-down heartbreak of songs like Safe In The Womb and Lonely Universe. So her latest release, Whole New Mess, which presents the stark original versions of tracks from 2019’s All Mirrors is about as up-my-street as it’s possible to be, and [New Love] Cassette is just one of many gems in which you can hear the ghost of the song it eventually became.

https://angelolsen.com

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Music

William Basinski – O, My Daughter, O, My Sorrow

Like his best-known work, The Disintegration Loops, O, My Daughter, O, My Sorrow is about decay, memory and death, and not since the release of those groundbreaking albums has the focus been quite so stark. It’s the first single from his new LP Lamentations due for release in November, and might just be the most sorrowful piece of ambient I’ve ever heard, with fragments of strings and operatic vocals consigned to the depths of the abyss against a relentless wail of churning feedback loops. “Captured and constructed from tape loops and studies from Basinski’s archives, Lamentations is over forty years of mournful sighs meticulously crafted into songs” heralds the press release. Roll on November…

https://williambasinski.bandcamp.com/

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Music

TENDER – Own Up

Hooray! It’s a new song from TENDER: one of my favourite musical discoveries of the last few years, and a band that I have somehow still managed not to see play live. Currently have tickets to a show in November… how’s that looking lads? Lads?? Ah well, one day we shall be together. And until then, please keep delivering the goods. Namely, big, anthemic, synthy, emotional tunes like this. Cool? Coooool.

https://www.tenderofficial.com

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Music

Sneaks – Sanity

Sanity is fierce, crunchy, eerie, swaggering and a whole load of other adjectives that I can’t really be bothered to get down on paper (screen?) as I’m too busy really, really enjoying listening to it. It is electro? Punk? Post-punk-inflected electro? Who knows, and more importantly, who cares? Big up Sneaks for creating my #trackoftheweeksofar – IT’S. A. BANGER.

https://sneaks.bandcamp.com/

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Music

Cut Copy – Stop, Horizon

Cut Copy have been around for 20 years, and I think this is the first time I’ve ever listened to a record of theirs. It’s entirely possible that I glanced at their name and got them confused with Coldcut which, while not exactly a great reflection on my musical nouse, is at least honest. Anyway, turns out their pretty popular and have released a lot of shiny, towering pop over the last two decades, and that’s definitely something I’m in the market for right now.

Stop, Horizon is taken from their new album Freeze, Melt. It’s about as pretty as pop gets, with a gently layer guitar loops slowly joined by tinkling percussion, whispered vocals and eventually a steady, four-four beat that nuzzles us you through to the end: a cosy, comforting hug of a record.

http://cutcopy.net

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Music

HAAi – Head Above The Parakeets

HAAi has produced some of the most original, impactful records of recent memory, and Head Above The Parakeets is yet another incredible addition to one of the most consistently brilliant discographies in electronic music. As with much of her previous work it’s not afraid to take its time, but once it gets going its gritty, churning and propulsive, and there’s an incredible balance of raw power and subtle, beautiful melodic touches throughout: at once a banger and a tearjerker, and I absolutely love it.

https://haai.bandcamp.com

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Music

Sevdaliza – Habibi

Habibi, the new single from Iranian-Dutch singer, songwriter and record producer Sevdaliza, is extraordinarily good. Beautiful, delicate piano and her trademark otherworldly strings pitched against churning, seething, raging background atmospherics and the occasional apocalyptic bass note to remind you not to get too comfortable. It’s a masterclass in tension and a reminder that Sevdaliza is operating in a space entirely of her own making.

https://www.sevdaliza.com

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Music

A. G. Cook – Acid Angel

If you’re not familiar with him, A. G. Cook made his name as the founder and head of PC Music, which is either one of the most groundbreaking labels of the last decade, or an infuriating in-joke that should be erased from history, depending on your point of view. Over the last few years he’s become one of the go-to producers for Charli XCX, and together they’ve made some quite astonishing pop. Acid Anger is taken from his new album 7G (which comes in at a frankly intimidating 49 tracks and 2+ hours) and reminds me quite a lot of Mylo’s Destroy Rock & Roll in its glitchy treatment of vocals, with a dose of glacial Aphex-esque melodies thrown in for good measure.

https://agcook.bandcamp.com

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Music

Tomberlin – Wasted

Tomberlin’s 2018 debut album At Weddings is without doubt one of my favourite of the last few years, and one I go back to on a pretty much weekly basis. It’s stripped down, fairly mournful folk: utterly beautiful and almost unbearably sad in parts. By contrast, her latest single is positively upbeat, at least in its buoyant rhythm and big, open melodies. But lyrically there’s still that same sense of melancholy that makes her work so personal and unique: “I try to write it out / Make sure nothing sounds weird / Make sure it’s not half bad / Do you think this songs sad?” The answer? Yes, a little, and I’m very much looking forward to the new EP Projections which is due out 16 October via Saddle Creek. 

https://tomberlin.bandcamp.com/

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Music

Loscil – Coasts

I watched The Lighthouse last night, so the sound of rolling waves at the start of Coasts immediately caught my attention. But while the film is a claustrophobic, paranoid, hallucinatory nightmare (but also really good, honestly), Coasts – from Loscil’s most recent EP Faults, Coasts, Lines – is expansive and soothing: more akin to a glassy lake than a churning sea. It’s ambient at its most tranquil and conciliatory and is really rather wonderful.

https://loscil.bandcamp.com