The Predatory Wasp
Deep, meditative dub techno here courtesy of Shanghai-based producer Rainsoft with a specific focus on the interplay between the natural world and modern production methods. Think Donato Dozzy if he got lost in a rainforest for a couple of years. This is the title track from her new LP, and it’s very good.
This is taken from the Thom Yorke-composed original score for Daniele Luchetti’s film Confidenza, an adaptation of the Italian drama based on Domenico Starnone’s novel of the same name. The soundtrack LP sees Yorke working again with Sam Petts-Davies as well as the London Contemporary Orchestra alongside a jazz ensemble which included Robert Stillman and fellow The Smile bandmate Tom Skinner.
Given the artist and title of this, I’m not sure I really need to explain why I love it.
“How are you expected to put your hands in the air when you can’t even rise from your knees?”
https://3six.bandcamp.com/album/trance-anthems-for-a-sunken-generation
Wil Bolton is a composer, musician and artist based in East London. His work is inspired by place, memory, resonance and finding beauty in ruins, decay and the details and textures of everyday scenes. His latest album Null Point is dub techno meets Eno, blending gorgeous melodies and ambient textures with a more rhythmic approach than most of his previous work, with skeletal beats constructed from thuds, clicks and crackles sampled from a vintage 7” record of heart sounds as the backbone.
Sodium Pentothal is a rapid-onset short-acting barbiturate general anesthetic and the substance Stars of the Lids’ Adam Wiltzie used as inspiration for his latest album, Eleven Fugues For Sodium Pentothal; a suite of songs inspired by a recurring dream wherein “if someone listened to the music I created, then they would die.” Pretty bleak right! And he doesn’t stop there. “When you are sitting face forward on the daily emotional meat grinder of life, I always wished I could have some [barbiturate], so I could just fall asleep automatically and the feeling would not be there anymore.” If this all sounds overwhelmingly depressing, the music is anything but, with Dim Hopes especially building towards a climax that is without doubt closer to catharsis than to oblivion.
https://adamwiltzie.bandcamp.com/album/eleven-fugues-for-sodium-pentothal
Kelly Moran builds on the stripped-back, mesmeric piano that comprised 2023’s EP Vesela with her new album Moves in the Field. Gone are the experimental electronic meanderings of some of her previous work, replaced with these (relatively) straightforward but still completely enchanting pieces.
Blurring the lines between chamber music, contemporary dance, dark pop and ethereal ambience, Klein, Mica Levi and Space Afrika collaborator Bianca Scout distills a decade of multidisciplinary work with her new album Pattern Damage, moving between diaristic ephemera, demure post-punk and chamber ambient, and cracking open bewildering crypto-romantique wormholes in the process. And yes, this is pretty much a direct copy and paste of the release hype, but a) it’s accurate and b) it’s a bank holiday and I have better (lazier) things to be doing.
French artist Laetitia Sadier’s new album Rooting For Love is billed as a call to the traumatized civilizations of Earth, urging us to “evolve past our countless millennia of suffering and alienation”. Organ, guitar, bass, synth, trombone, vibraphone, live and programmed drums combine, yes, Air comparisons are appropriate and not just cos French: but there’s a edge here that’s absent from much of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel’s soft-focus oeuvre.
I run a little hot and cold on Big Thief – some of their work is incredible, some very meh – but I’m really enjoying Adrienne Lenker’s new solo album Bright Future, which is way more stripped down and even more contemplative, and even veers into Sufjan territory when she picks up the banjo. Track titles like Sadness As A Gift should give you an idea of the overall tone, but if you’re keen for some (arguably) self-indulgent introspection then it absolutely delivers. Already Lost is a highlight, including as it does some truly devastatingly poignant melodies.
I’ve been sulking about the woeful Glastonbury line-up for the last few days, but now it’s time I got over it and got on with my life. And even though there are so few acts I’m excited about seeing that it genuinely makes me sad, there are a few glimmers of light; Arooj Aftab among them. To Remain/To Return is from Love In Exile, an album I completely missed last year, with Vijay Iyer on pianos and electronics, Shahzad Ismaily on bass and Moog synth Aftab’s soaring Urdu vocals.
The Predatory Wasp 