The Predatory Wasp
I’m off to Glastonbury tomorrow (wallop!) and time is tight, but here’s a lovely, meandering slice of cosmic ambience for you, and the opening track from UK jazz keyboardist Greg Foat and Venetian downtempo electronic maestro Gigi Masin’s collaborative new album Dolphin. See you on the flipside!
Released as a Bandcamp exclusive in April and now available everywhere, Romance’s Fade Into You is descrived as their “first album proper” in the press notes, which is a little confusing, as there are at least a couple of what I’d consider full length releases out there already, as well as their collaborative albums with Dean Hurley. So who knows. But anyway… Fade Into You is a beautiful, delicately textured ambient album loosely inspired by Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1972 film The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant – “an unforgiving dissection of the toxic relationship between a haughty fashion designer and a beautiful but icy ingenue” – and continues the mysterious producer’s penchant for warping well known records almost beyond recognition, creating at times eerie but more often than not deeply emotional soundscapes from the resulting wreckage. Presumably there’s some Mazzy Star buried deep in here somewhere; some of the other building blocks are more explicitly labelled.
https://youmustrememberthis.bandcamp.com/album/fade-into-you
Spencer Doran takes us back in time with his appreciation of an “outsider’ Renaissance composer
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!
Described by Bandcamp Daily as “Video Game Music’s Most Valuable Outsider”, Spencer Doran is a composer, producer and contemporary sound designer who makes up one half of the Portland duo and Italian minimalism enthusiasts Visible Cloaks.
Composed and produced over the course of nearly three years, his latest solo album is the original soundtrack for SEASON: A letter to the future, which underpins the highly-anticipated meditative exploration game in which the main character must save memories of a civilization on the verge of collapse. A lush collection of transmissions from this warmly fading world, we hear a culture and ecology through the sentimental ear of their last witness.
For his One Track Mind selection, Spencer has picked an entire album from Tobias Hume, focussing on a particular performance from Jordi Savall.
I’ve spent an awful lot of time searching for “artists that sound like DJ Healer”, and the only one that’s really come close in term of delivering the hazy feels I need is Croatian Amor, especially his more recent work, which seems to be leaning ever further into dreamy breaks and nostalgia-heavy meanderings. These two tracks close his latest album A Part of You in Everything – a companion piece to last year’s Remember Rainbow Bridge, and dedicated to the memory of his younger brother who died at birth. Despite the overwhelming sad genesis of the 8-track collection, the overall effect is more reflective than desolate; a hopeful catharsis beautifully expressed.
https://croatianamor-poshisolation.bandcamp.com/album/a-part-of-you-in-everything
It’s been a crunchy old start to the week after a genuinely blissful weekend, but this is deeply relaxing stuff from Spencer Doran that’s making me feel – if not brilliant – then a bit more chill about everything. Taken from his album SEASON: A letter to the future (OST) – a soundtrack to a video game about preserving the natural world – you don’t need the accompanying visuals to be fully immersed in its gentle, meditative atmosphere.
https://visiblecloaks.bandcamp.com/album/season-a-letter-to-the-future-original-soundtrack
Continuing the theme of floaty electronica this week with this beautiful track from Doc Sleep’s recent album Birds (in my mind anyway), in which soothing, ebbing waves are firmly pinned to earth with subby breakbeats and crashing snares. It’s very good, as is the entire album. TPW recommends!
Here’s some highly atmospheric, beat-driven ambient for you courtesy of Agus Mena, who also records as Warmth and runs both the respected Archives and Faint labels. His latest album as SVLRBD The Waves arrived on the latter of these a couple of months’ back, and if you like The Lighthouse is very likely to appeal.
The Oslo-based pianist and composer on the cinematic journey and structural chaos of Fieldhead
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!
Julia Gjertsen is a pianist and composer based in Oslo. Combining contemporary electronic elements with the piano, she creates contemplative soundscapes and introspective compositions that draw inspiration from nature and reflect on moments from the past and present. Her music is characterized by a tender playing style and beautifully crafted melodies that aim to convey nuanced perceptions and emotions that can often be challenging to express through words.
Her second album Formations was released last year, while more recently she released the collaborative EP Dive alongside Finnish composer Juha Mäki-Patola. Her latest single, Embers, came out earlier this month as part of Fractals, Moderna Records’ annual piano day compilation featuring twelve pieces from composers and pianists around the world.
For her One Track Mind selection, Julia has selected the opening track from UK electronic duo Fieldhead’s 2009 album they shook hands for hours.
American singer-songwriter, poet, and photographer Thomas Meluch aka Benoît Pioulard put out his latest album last month, Eidetic: a word denoting the ability to recall mental images with extraordinarily rich precision. To record much of the album, Meluch holed up in a a cabin in rural Maine with a bit of percussion, a couple of Fender electrics, and a parlor guitar made by his friend. You can sense both the isolation and natural splendour throughout Eidetic, which ranges from Stars of The Lid-esque ambience of tracks like Where To to more structured, vocal-led pieces.
I posted about the lead single from this album, Let The Moon Be A Planet – a collaboration between guitarist and songwriter Steve Gunn and pianist and composer David Moore of Bing & Ruth – back in January, and was very much looking forward to its arrival. It landed last week, and hasn’t disappointed. The album initially took form over a series of remote sessions and was completed once Gunn and Moore got together in Hudson, New York. If you’re feeling in any way stressed at all, this will help.
https://stevegunn.bandcamp.com/album/reflections-vol-1-let-the-moon-be-a-planet
The Predatory Wasp 