Poppy Ackroyd’s new album Liminal was written during a period of major upheaval in her life, it marks a return to the piano and violin-focused approach heard on some of her earlier records, with every sound on the album created using those two instruments alone.
Built from a mix of composition and improvisation, the music often feels as though it is discovering itself as it goes, while still carrying the melodic detail and emotional weight that have become hallmarks of her writing. “I had such a chaotic few years” she says of the album’s genesis, “but the only way to cope was to allow things to be messy”. From a listeners point of view, however, her clarity shines through.
Almost Waking is a collaborative album from Mabe Fratti and Bill Orcutt, bringing together Fratti’s cello, voice and experimental songwriting with Orcutt’s distinctive, often unpredictable guitar playing. Across eight tracks, the pair create something that feels loose and exploratory as cello and guitar weave around each other, occasionally becoming difficult to distinguish, while Fratti’s vocals appear sparingly, adding another layer that drift between inherited folklore and instinctive improvisation.
The Lebanese artist on the haunting quality of a Fennesz classic
The premise of One Track Mind is pretty simple: I ask artists to pick one track that means a lot to them – either something they’ve discovered recently, something that’s been with them for years, or one that reminds them of a specific time in their life or career – and tell me what makes it so special to them. I get to talk to the artists I love, and they get to talk about the artists they love. Love all round!
Lebanese musician, performer, visual artist and composer Charbel Haber has spent more than two decades at the forefront of Beirut’s experimental music community. Whether composing for multidisciplinary projects or developing his own solo material, Haber has built a reputation for creating immersive, emotionally resonant works.
His latest album, May a soft sun bless your sky while you wait for the inevitable, was written following his move from Beirut to Paris and reflects on themes of distance, exile, mortality and the search for tenderness amid uncertainty. Recorded in Paris and completed through collaborations spanning Beirut and Montreal, the album unfolds through slowly evolving compositions built from layered guitars, loops and electronic textures.
For his One Track Mind, Haber has chosen a haunting track from Fennesz’s 2004 album Venice.
Charbel Haber on Fennesz – Transit feat. David Sylvian
The track I pick would be Transit from Christian Fennesz’ record Venice, with David Sylvian singing. That track haunts me since I discovered it more than 20 years ago. It’s a traveller’s song.
The loneliness of Europe’s airports when I’m on tour, the acceptance of the idea that we die alone and the cigarette that is kept for last. The melancholy reflected by sylvian’s voice and fennesz’s glitches, the last human talking to the last machine, in conversation about the end of mankind caused by alienation and digital isolation. The fall of empires but not in a blaze, just out of boredom and detachment from each other. It reminds me a lot of Paul Auster’s novel In The Country of Last Things.
This track is best when walking in the quiet Venetian streets, away from the tourists, feeling like the last of your kind, on your last stroll through the ruins of civilization.
Chabel Haber – May a soft sun bless your sky while you wait for the inevitable is out now
There’s something about the way that Olof Dreijer bends his synth patterns that makes his music entirely original. Across his various aliases – mostly famously, The Knife, and closest to my own heart, Oni Ayhun – the squirmy, alien sounds he wrings from various bits of hard and software could only have been created by him. Taken from his debut solo album Loud Bloom (ambitious, varied, long-awaited, arguably overly-long), Cassia is Dreijer in peak form; perhaps one of the greatest tracks he’s ever produced. And yes, I know it came out two years ago, but I’d not heard it until last week, so maybe you haven’t either.
It’s been 8 long years since The Field last released solo music, and it is wonderful to have him back. The master of long-form, melodic, looping electronic music seems to exist in a soft-focus parallel universe where time stretches and contorts in unnatural, but always soothing, ways. His new album Now You Exist for Studio Barnhus comprises five new compositions; all luxurious, dreamy, flawless.
I think this blog definitely leans a bit moody and self-serious at times. 1-800 GIRLS’s debut album LOVE is neither of those things. It is good though, at least, 50% of it is. I really don’t like the first half… but the second half is great! Riddle me that.
Created during a period of internal struggle and shifting self-perception, Loraine James’ new album Detached From The Rest Of You explores a more direct and vocal-led approach. The experience of producing 2025’s Clandestine EP with singer Anysia Kym opened up a more pop-focused framework, helping her shape her ideas into tighter song structures without losing the fragility and experimentation that defines her work, while also opening her up to collaboration more than ever before, with guests on the LP including Sydney Spann, Low’s Alan Sparrowhawk and Miho Hatori on the standout Flatline.
It’s a sunny Friday, and after possibly the most intensely stressful ticket buying experience of my life yesterday (for which I hold more contempt for Ticketmaster than is healthy), I needed something soothing to guide me into the weekend. Described as “A poetic, dream-like story born from a period of creative stillness”, Lithuanian ambientist Teatre’s new album All Constellations Weaving Into One fits the bill perfectly.
Berlin-based artist Nalan returns with 2009, her first album since 2022’s I’m Good. Out last month on Mansions and Millions, 2009 was written and recorded between Berlin and Istanbul and leans heavily into the reflective power of nostalgia, reshaping the late-2000s into something both sentimental and slightly distorted though a compelling indie-pop lens.
The Predatory Wasp 