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TENGGER – Eurasia

Soothing ambient electronics from the New-Age drone duo TENGGER for you today, and I have to say this is the most relaxed I’ve felt listening to music for quite some time. TENGGER translates to ‘unlimited expanse of sky’ in Mongolian, which is incredibly appropriate for the sweeping harmonies and spacious atmospheres conjured by not only this record, but much of their catalogue. Eurasia is from their new album Nomad, which is out now on the brilliantly named Beyond Beyond Is Beyond Records.

https://tengger.bandcamp.com/

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Allsides – I’m in Love With the European Union (feat. Jakub Dudek)

Allsides is a joint project of Polish artists Z ^ L ^ X, Gap The Boy and Jakub Dudek, who also appears as a featured artist. I’m In Love… is wonderfully glitchy electronica with some lovely melodies floating behind the crushed drums and percussion, and a bleepy lead synth that holds everything together. It’s the lead track from their new LP Toy Division, which is varied, at times challenging, and definitely worth a listen.

https://whattodo.bandcamp.com/music

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Music

whattodo – Weekly feat. NEY LIQA

I’ve spent about half an hour looking for any background information at all about whattodo, but as a search time it’s a tough one, and I keep getting reccomendations for “what to do in London on a shoestring budget”, etc. Their Bandcamp page simply states “producer, songwriter, dogwalker”, and at the time of writing Weekly has two views on YouTube, so it doesn’t look like self-promotion is high on the agenda here, which is a shame as it’s a beautiful, subdued, melancholic record that more people should hear.

https://whattodo.bandcamp.com/music

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Music

Photay – Existential Celebration

Existential Celebration is taken from Waking Hours, the third album from New York musician Evan Shornstein aka Photay: an alias he established after a formative trip to Guinea in West Africa on which he discovered and embraced the distinctive and expressive styles of percussion that has characterised much of his musical output. This album opener is actually fairly sparing in its delivery of percussive elements, focussing instead on an epic intertwining of strings and synth lines.

https://photay.bandcamp.com

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Music

Kaleida – Other Side

I’m a big fan of Kaleida’s 2017 debut album Tear The Roots, especially Echo Saw You and their cover of 99 Luftballoons, which is completely inspired. Other Side is the first single from their forthcoming album Odyssey and seems to pick up where the previous LP left off: breathy vocals, ethereal atmospheres and hushed tones over a gently pulsing mid-tempo beat. Like much of their music it’s quietly beguiling, and a welcome glimpse into what I hope will be another excellent album.

https://kaleidamusic.com

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Rae Khalil – benny!

benny! is one of the breeziest songs I’ve heard all year: bouncy, chunky drums, hazy background melodies and Khalil flowing effortlessly over everything. In and out in under two and a half minutes leaving a dopey smile plastered all over my big stupid face. More of this please.

https://www.instagram.com/raekhalil

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Music

Nathan Micay – A Razor’s Edge Requiem

The first track Nathan Micay ever finished was a jungle bootleg of Sufjan Stevens, so with credentials like that his place on this blog was pretty much assured before I’d heard even a bar of his new album The World I’m Going To Hell For. Happily, it’s absolutely brilliant, and A Razor’s Edge Requiem is an early highlight, blending Selected Ambient Works-era Aphex pads over thunderous broken beats and fizzing synth lines, before dissolving into a finale so moving it makes we want to spend the rest of the day listening to it on loop while gazing at little fluffy clouds.

https://www.facebook.com/NathanMicay/

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Dua Saleh – smut

Sudanese-American artist Dua Saleh started off their artistic career as a poet before releasing their debut single First Take back in 2017. smut is one of the tracks on their new EP, ROSETTA, which dropped last week. It’s an intoxicating pop-r&b-electronic hybrid: unpredictable and constantly shifting in tone and style over the course of its four-minute running time, and I absolutely love it.

https://twitter.com/doitlikedua

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Gia Margaret – 3 movements

While touring her last album There’s Always A Glimmer, Gia Margaret lost her voice, forcing her to prematurely end the tour and spending several weeks at home to recuperate. Initially removing herself from from music entirely, she eventually started playing around with her synthesiser and piano, and had soon written and recorded an album’s worth of (almost wordless) ambient. Mia Gargaret came out last week and is thoroughly beautiful, and 3 movements is just one of many highlights.

https://giamargaret.net

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Music

Naeem – Tiger Song

Tiger Song is the last track on Startisha, the first album US rapper Naeem Juwan has recorded under his own name. Best known under his Spank Rock moniker, Naeem retired that alias a few years’ back as he became frustrated with the limitations it imposed. “When I chose that moniker I thought I would be able to grow and change as much as I wanted to. But the audience didn’t allow me to do that” he told NY Times in a recent interview. I’m not hugely familiar with his previous output, but Startisha absolutely sounds like an artist testing their own boundaries, and Tiger Song is a powerfully unsettling end to an intriguing LP.

https://twitter.com/NAEEMmusic