The Predatory Wasp
Unsurprisingly, two of the guys from one of the world’s most acclaimed band of all time, plus another guy, make some pretty astonishingly good music that sounds enough like their other band to be comforting, but different enough to make middle aged men very, very excited and feel as if they’re at the cutting-edge of the scene once again, you know, the same way it felt when their first band made all that amazing stuff in the 90s.
After various collaborative projects over the past few years, Donato Dozzy finally gives us what we all want: a solo ambient techno album, tailor-made to make us weepy. “An emotional homage to family and the Adriatic Sea” (!), Magda is absolute fucking perfection and if it’s not in my top 10 albums this year, it will have been a frankly ridiculous year for music. At times evoking, possibly even surpassing his seminal Voices From The Lake project, if you don’t like Le Chaser at least, we can’t be friends.
Apparently the “sad cowboy” aesthetic is a thing, and while I categorically refuse to dive into TikTok to confirm this, I’m definitely interested in its musical manifestation. Cowboy Sadness is a project from some of my favourite musicians – The Antlers’s Peter Silberman, David Moore of Bing & Ruth, and Nicholas Principe of Port St. Willow – so even without the deliciously bait title of Selected Jambient Works Vol. 1 I was fully invested before I’d heard a note. Cue an hour of luscious pads, hushed drums and effervescent melodies evoking dusty plains and big ol’ skies as far as the eye can see.
https://cowboysadness.bandcamp.com/album/selected-jambient-works-vol-1
Eriks de Casier announces her forthcoming album Still with new single Lucky, which treads a familiar but nevertheless enjoyable path: warm chords, stripped-back, evocative breaks and plaintive, romantic vocals. The most interesting part of the announcement though is the list of collaborators Casier produces on the album, namely They Hate Change, Shygirl and Blood Orange. Still is out 21 February, so I don’t even need to spend too much time imagining what that will sound like.
the unfolding rose is an ever expanding album mostly made up of improvised one-take songs, recorded, mixed and mastered by aloisius alongside various collaborators. If you’re in the market for an extremely challenging 4+ hour ambient/experimental LP, this comes highly recommended. Patience definitely required, but there are some truly extraordinary moments of beauty hidden between the sketchy snatches of conversation and – at times overwhelming – dissonance. This particular track also ticks the elusive ‘zero views on YouTube’ box, which makes me feel exceedingly niche.
Best For Your And Me is the third single to be unveiled from Helado Negro’s forthcoming album PHASOR, which is set to land 09 February on 4AD. And it’s a peach! Loose and languid but with just enough low-end growl to keep it anchored to the dusty earth.
Marika Hackman’s new album Big Sigh is described as the “hardest” record she’s ever made. It’s unclear whether that refers to the challenge or how it actually sounds; it’s definitely bolder and less hushed than some of her previous releases, but still contains plenty of sadness, reflection and catharsis, which is exactly what I’m interested in, and LP opener is a beautiful, haunting, (almost) instrumental starting point for what turns out to be the first great release of the year.
Trevor Powers’ return as Youth Lagoon completed passed me by last year, the album’s inclusion on various end of year lists has prompted me to dive in. I really liked his last two albums under his own name, especially 2018’s Mulberry Violence, was a beautifully odd. Lux Radio Theatre isn’t the most exciting track on Heaven is a Junkyard, but it’s probably the prettiest.
As is traditional, the first few weeks (possibly months) of 2024 will see me catching up on all the brilliant music I missed from last year. I expect everyone’s feeling exceptionally bleak after big nights out/in a couple of days ago, so here’s something soft and restorative from Amsterdam’s nthng, taken from their latest album There Is A Place For Me. For fans of DJ Healer, breakbeats and being reflective (or just a bit sad).
My favourite album of the year was a nostalgic reimagining of mid-90s rave with all the sharp edges removed, so it’s unsurprising that I’m similarly enamoured with Metro Riders’ backward-looking LP Lost In Reality, which examines 80’s proto-house through an extreme lo-fi lens. A project of Henrik Stelzer, this latest Metro Riders album aims to “map out an emotional geography of cities at night” and absolutely nails the sense of time and place, like a Roland-obsessed Burial for the Stockholm underground.
The Predatory Wasp 