The Predatory Wasp
Andrew Ostler, you had me at “unashamedly nostalgic for the polyrhythms of 70s Berlin”. One of two extended pieces from his new album, Ostler’s penchant for modular synthesis is expressed across a 20 minute recording that evokes not only the electronic polyrhythms of acts like Tangerine Dream, but also the epic prog-rock of Pink Floyd. No mean feat, but it’s handled here with both skill and subtlety.
Unlike pretty much every other person in the world, I didn’t really enjoy Loraine James’s 2021 album Reflections very much. It’s obviously really good, I just found it a bit jarring and after a few time thinking “everyone loves this, so you should too!” kinda just stopped trying. It felt too much like hard work, which absolutely does not apply to her new album recorded as Whatever the Weather, which seems tailor-made for me: all the rough corners of Reflection sanded down to a soft sheen, and the machine-driven claustrophobia replaced by hazily shimmering vistas. Opener 25°C is about as calming as music gets, and that’s what I need in my life right now.
Oxford based experimental producer theboywhochosethesea drop the title track for their new album, released later this week on Bandcamp as a digital/cassette release on the Expert Sleepers record label. Pairing dusty, subdued piano lines against a backdrop of bristling synths that steadily rise and fall, its dissonant textures are expertly handled creating a piece that simultaneously pulls you towards both the light and the dark.
After the potential for anxiety-inducing trauma inflicted by yesterday’s post it’s time to cleanse your aural palettes with one of the most relaxing pieces of music imaginable. Unless you find birdsong triggering, in which case probably skip this one. Originally released as a solo piano piece last year, Bigley produced this new version as she “felt like I could even create a further feel of a haunting ethereal quality by adding a couple more layers.” Success.
I never heard New Mexican Stargazers’ 2021 album Highway Dreamscape, but I’m reliably informed it was one of the year’s best. Menu is taken from their new release Alternate Soundtrack To: B-Jeweled: a sprawling, near two-hour collection of crushed pop and ambient soundscapes that sounds like the Blade Runner soundtrack as reimagined by The Caretaker.
https://newmexicanstargazers.bandcamp.com/album/alternate-soundtrack-to-b-jeweled
If like me you’re a relative newcomer to Agustín Mena’s music as Warmth, you’re in for a very relaxing few days to say the least. Mena has a back catalogue spanning close to 30 albums, pretty much all of them delving into the kind of super-chilled, atmospheric, unoppressive ambient I absolutely love. Even just having a quick scan of the cover artwork of his previous releases genuinely makes me feel like life is good and any issues I’m currently dealing with with ultimately be overcome. Walls is taken from his new album Pale Sun: more of this kind of thing, please.
There’s something uniquely joyful about hearing an artist’s work for the first time, loving it, and then discovering they have an extensive back catalogue in which you’re destined to completely lose yourself for some time to come. Before this morning I had never heard of Turkish musician Ekin Fil, and now I am completely obsessed. Variously described as “drone-folk” (amazing) and “Grouper-adjacent” (reductive, but fairly accurate), her latest album Feelings is absolutely stunning, and Being Held is just sublime, ominous throughout until the merest fragment of distant vocal lets you know that everything’s going to be ok.
Neil Foster continues to establish himself as one of my favourite new musical discoveries: at least, new to me, as the ambient-focussed Irish composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist has been putting music out for a few years now. Trawalua – named after, I’m assuming, the dramatic shores of Trawalua Strand – is warm and expansive, and does that thing of sitting somewhere between hope and deep melancholy that I’m especially drawn to.
claire rousay’s 2021 album a softer focus was one I regularly returned to throughout the year, usually first thing in the morning when it’s gentle melodies and evocative field recordings would make me feel infinitely better about whatever mundane task I was faced with. On same she’s teamed up with more eaze for something altogether more jarring, but no less brilliant, with the fizzing intensity of its opening few bars quickly fading to reveal a PC Music-esque core of saturated vocals and naive, plunky melodies. Part hyper-pop excess and part ambient understatement, it’s a combination that probably shouldn’t work, but absolutely does.
A theme of: Very Chilled Music Indeed seems to be emerging on the blog this week, which perhaps reflects my mindset of trying to wind down to such an extend that by Christmas I may need assistance simply getting out a chair. And it doesn’t come much more relaxed that this gorgeously atmospheric slice of ambient from Belfast-based composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Neil Foster. Created using analog arpeggiators, live vocals, delayed, layered pianos and his own field recordings, it is, in a word, lush.
The Predatory Wasp 