The Predatory Wasp
The Worlds We Leave Behind, the second full-length from the duo of zakè (aka Zach Frizzell) and Tyresta (aka Nick Turner), opens with Undiscovered; a heavenly, inviting glide that occupies a full quarter of the album’s run time. It sets the scene perfectly with a bedrock drone beneath a cyclical, ascending melodic theme, until gently shifting into shadows and choral loveliness in its final third.
https://zakedrone.bandcamp.com/album/the-worlds-we-leave-behind
Illuvia is the music project of Ludvig Cimbrelius who also releases music as Purl, Eternell and Abraço de Vapor. New album Earth Prism is his third under this ambient drum n bass leaning alias, and does pretty much exactly what you’d expect, with atmospheric pads and lush melodies combined with lo-fi drums filtered almost out of existence.
https://astrangelyisolatedplace.bandcamp.com/album/earth-prism
Dylan Henner has made some of the most enriching, soothing ambient music I’ve ever heard, so I’m very excited about diving into his new album. Also, it’s called performs Raymond Scott’s Soothing Sounds for Baby, so I’m anticipating being pretty fucking relaxed in about an hour’s time.
https://dylanhenner.bandcamp.com/album/performs-raymond-scotts-soothing-sounds-for-baby
Following their excellent collaborative LP Dolphin, UK jazz maestro Greg Foat and Venetian electronic luminary Gigi Masin join forces once again for The Fish Factory Sessions, an exclusive release for Record Store Day 2024. Also featuring the talents Moses Boyd on drums and Tom Herbert on bass, Sabena is an alternative version of the track of the same name from Dolphin; a beautifully poignant tribute to Masin’s late wife, with this new version even more delicate than its predecessor.
https://gregfoat.bandcamp.com/album/the-fish-factory-sessions
Glassy ambient from Karl Primo under his Lb Honne alias, taken from the new album present future / here there. I’d like to tell you more, but there just isn’t time.
https://projindigo.bandcamp.com/album/present-future-here-there
This blog is leaning ever more exclusively into ambient, so if you’re not into that – I’m sorry. But it’s hard not to when there’s so much good/weird/dreamy stuff around. Here, Not Waving and Romance take inspiration from Botticelli’s ‘The Birth of Venus’ on their third full-length LP Infinite Light, and the album’s title track is unquestionably its centrepiece; a ten-minute celestial epic to send even the hardest-lined of atheists quivering to their knees.
https://boomkat.com/products/infinite-light-e6c1ba09-0f31-4d2f-9708-2e7a5786ff69
It’s always nice to find an album that so unnerving I need a couple of breaks to get through it. Madeleine Cocolas’ latest LP Bodies set out to explore similarities between bodies of water and human bodies and to blur the boundaries between them, incorporating sounds of water Madeliene recorded on trips to the Australian coastline as well as creeks and waterfalls in Far North Queensland. Drift, with its bubbling, optimistic lead line, is probably the most accessible track. Elsewhere things get very intense very quickly.
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.
The Predatory Wasp 