The Predatory Wasp
Just listen to those sad chords! Makes me want to cry, in a good way, obviously. This is taken from Planet Mu founder Mike Paradinas’s new album under his µ-Ziq monkier which came out last week. Jungle meets ambient meets hardcore in the prettiest way imaginable.
If you haven’t yet listened to Harkin’s new album Honeymoon Suite, please go and do so now as it’s properly great. There are highlights aplenty; the moody, synth-lead throb of opener Body Clock; the driving riffs and sublime payoff of Talk of the Town. But none are perhaps quite as impactful and perfectly formed as the epic final track Driving Down A Flight of Stairs. Sprawling across 10+ glorious minutes and accompanied by a brilliant film directed by Dejan Mrkic, it’s a breathtaking slice of cinematic ambient that sits among the most affecting pieces of music I’ve heard this year. Come for the hooks, stay for the final emotional wallop.
Press releases are usually at best informative and at worst a complete waste to everyone’s time. However the one for Mary Lattimore and Paul Sukeena’s new collaborative album West Kensington struck me as particularly well-penned, so here’s an excerpt that does a better job of evoking its strange and beautiful atmosphere better than I could.
It is shocking what your mind will choose to forget. Almost always it needs a tear, a clean dash, a straight passage into what you’ve already known. Looking back, West Kensington has achieved that very goal: creating a landscape for memory, an imprint of that horizon, suspended in the cosmos.
Apologies for the complete lack of posts: I’ve been away! In an actual different country! For the first time since 2019! And yes it was great, thanks so much for asking. Hopefully you’ve found other places to get your daily music fix, but if you’re still a bit wound up about it have a quick listen to this ridiculously beautiful track from Hinako Omori’s recent(ish) album a journey. And if you’re still angry, there’s not very much I can do for you.
Late last month Skee Mask quietly popped out two EPs as part of Ilian Tape’s ISS series, one of which comprises four tracks of fiercely abrasive techno and the other – from which MDP93 is taken – eight tracks of gorgeous, beatless, drifting ambient: perhaps the most relaxing collection of music he’s ever put his name to. Honestly, if you’re feeling even mildly stressed or anxious – or even if you’re not – please put this on and go and look at the sky for a bit.
The latest album from New York artist Jacob Long recording as Earthen Sea, Ghost Poems spans ten tracks of lo-fi ambient and minimalist melodies created from a combination piano samples and field recordings. I’m usually draw to long, sprawling ambient, characterised by very slow progression and rich, warm pads a al Stars of The Lid. Here, tracks rarely break the four minute mark, and there’s a very defined rhythmic structure, but the sense of space created is nevertheless completely engrossing. I hadn’t paid attention to Earthen Sea before today, but I’m very glad he’s now on my radar.
Egyptian composer Nancy Mounir is a part of the Cairo new wave of artists who are taking inspiration from historical music to inform their own modern productions. On Khafif Khafif – as with a lot her compositions – she layers her own microtonal, ambient arrangements over a buried 20th century Egyptian cut to pleasantly unsettling effect.
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.
The Predatory Wasp 