The Predatory Wasp
It’s Friday right, so really I should be posting something party-appropriate to soundtrack your #bignightout but I now live in Devon so instead here’s a short ambient piano track complete with birdsong: perfect for watching the sun go down over some rolling fields or gently lapping beachside waves.
Unheard Delia was originally released as an exclusive vinyl with Electronic Sound alongside Peel’s cover feature back in March, but it landed on streaming platforms today so thought it was worth highlighting. It includes extracts from an interview with pioneering BBC Radiophonic Workshop artist Delia Derbyshire conducted by writer Jo Hutton in early 2000, around 18 months before Delia died, and consist of lovely, gentle washes of synth overlaid with Delia passionately talking about everything from her production techniques to how her music was often considered “too sophisticated for the BBC 2 audience”, and is completely mesmerising.
At 86 years of age, Shirley Collins is still creating music brimming with life, vibrancy and hope. Her new EP Crowlink includes spoken-word poetry, ambient, glistening new-age synths and deep, earthy folk, dragging seemingly ancient tales into the present and creating something deeply personal and intimate yet entirely relatable and accessible. Crowlink is a thing of timeless, transportive beauty, and deserves your immediate attention.
Magic is the new single from producer, singer and songwriter Kat Kitka, an utterly engrossing, haunting beautiful piece of music that pretty much completely defies description (but here goes). Folk, spoken word, ambient and ethereal pop are are dissected and reassembled alongside hugely evocative field recordings, resulting in a five minute track unlike anything else I’ve heard this year. The Kate Bush vibes are strong with this, which isn’t something I say lightly. Highly recommended.
A longtime member of alt-rock band Nine Inch Nails, as a solo artist Alessandro Cortini has released something like a dozen or so albums over the last decade; electronic-based experiments in ambient, noise and occasionally straying into something that vaguely resembles techno. His latest LP SCURO CHIARO landed last week, and even though CHIAROSCURO came out as a single a few months back, I missed it at the time and it’s such a clear standout that I couldn’t not feature it. Building slowly from a base of celestial bleeps and hums to a gloriously intense finale, it’s the perfect embodiment of electronic music at its most cinematic.
Loscil has been making consistently brilliant, deeply atmospheric electronic music for two decades now, and over the course of 15 or so albums has established himself as a producer with a clear and precise vision. Lumina is taken from his latest album, Clara, which came out last week, and is a perfect example of his patient, haunting approach to production, with reassuringly warm, sweeping pads accompanied by a winding, bubbling synth line that both soothes and invigorates.
Eager Atom is the latest musical project from Dutch producer and composer Gydo Keijzer, and Ambient I is taken from his new album Extrastatecraft. It’s a powerfully cinematic slice of ambient that could just as easily soundtrack the most unsettlingly poignant moments of a lo-fi Adam Curtis’s documentary as it could the final, cathartic , “tears in the rain” scene of a multi-million dollar sci-fi epic. Both of which are compliments, just in case I lost you at “ambient”.
Kenyan artist KMRU follows up the two fantastic albums he released last year with another cut from the same exquisite cloth. Logue came out last week and is another gorgeous, delicate electronic album that explores ambient experimentalism, almost approaching beatless techno with some of its tracks. 11 is meditatively percussive, with spine-tingling synths and rich warm pads creating an intensely cosmic – but also firmly grounded – atmosphere, like a caveman staring longingly at the stars in search of the divine.
It’s fairly outrageous that despite stealing the name for this blog from one of his songs, I’ve barely acknowledged than Sufjan has put out four (four!) albums in the last month or so. Arguably it’s one album, split into four parts, but still. My various excuses: I’ve been busy! There’s been a lot of good music to cover! Pubs have been open! Etc. Anyway, this is me officially saying: these albums exist and are all out now and are definitely worth your time. Also, they’re all on YouTube in their entirety.
Like many of Sufjan’s albums, they’re self-indulgent and meandering. Also like every single one of his albums, there are moments of such sublime, heart-rending beauty that you can’t imagine listening to anyone else ever again. Revelation V is one of those moments, but there are many, many more.
Created solely with a guitar and a bunch of layered effects, Forget is a powerful and poignant track from St. Louis artist Greg Dallas, recalling the hazy, drifting ambience of artists like William Basinski. It’s really beautiful, and I wish it was three times as long so I didn’t have to keep hitting replay.
The Predatory Wasp 