The Predatory Wasp
I’ve been getting to grips with the new Night Tapes album portals/polarities over the last few weeks, and while it hasn’t become an obsession in the way that last year’s assisted memories did, it still has its moments, one of which is the dreamily melodic swordsman. I just wish there were a few more of them.
Cate Le Bon’s new album Michelangelo Dying is a reflective, experimental pop record shaped by grief and personal change. Built from warped guitars, processed saxophones, and layered vocals, it moves away from her earlier sharp-edged sound into something softer and more abstract. The lyrics are impressionistic but emotionally direct, touching on memory, identity, and loss. It’s her most introspective album to date, balancing clarity and strangeness in equal measure.
The latest single from my favourite new musical discovery of 2024 isn’t quite reaching the lofty heights of Assisted Memories, but the formula’s still working.
Reunion Island is Ashley Leer, Matt Leer, and Brad Loving, and that’s about as much information as I can find out them. Their second (I think) album Night Words came out last month, and it’s really very good; ambient techno one minute, shoegaze the next, and various things in between. Lost New is dubby, hypnotic techno, as soothing as it is stimulating.
Night Tapes started out as evening jams between housemates Max Doohan, Sam Richards and Iiris Vesik in London, and came to full fruition during lockdown when, like most of us, they stayed inside and tried to avoid losing their minds. Their latest EP Assisted Memories is low-key dream pop at its finest, with languid guitars, gentle rhythms and lots of haze.
https://nighttapesmusic.bandcamp.com/album/assisted-memories
French artist Laetitia Sadier’s new album Rooting For Love is billed as a call to the traumatized civilizations of Earth, urging us to “evolve past our countless millennia of suffering and alienation”. Organ, guitar, bass, synth, trombone, vibraphone, live and programmed drums combine, yes, Air comparisons are appropriate and not just cos French: but there’s a edge here that’s absent from much of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel’s soft-focus oeuvre.
Taken from Tennis’s sixth album Pollen, Forbidden Doors is absolutely brilliant: gently propulsive and instantly hooky, with some really beautiful melodies half-hidden under its hazy sheen.
https://www.crashrecords.co.uk/products/tennis-pollen-pre-order
Originally released back in 1997, Hydroplane’s eponymous – and only – debut album has just been reissued by Melbourne-based Efficient Space. If like me you were completely unaware of its existence until now, it’s really worth giving it a listen: its DIY production aesthetic coupled with singer Kerrie Bolton’s hushed vocal results in a dreamlike atmosphere akin to Liz Harris’s work as Grouper, albeit with less existential angst. Opening track Wurlitzer Jukebox should be enough to convince you it’s a worthy investment of your time.
I played this to my daughter at the weekend, fully expecting us to bond over its easily accessible hooks and soft-focus melodies and after a couple of minutes she looked at me and said “This is ok, but let’s listen to something else”. What a dick! It’s much better than ok. But then maybe I’ve been sucked in by the Carpenters-evoking cover art and the fact that it was really warm and sunny when I first listened to it. Anyway, you can judge for yourself. Turns out 6 year-olds really have no taste at all.
Tell me the lie is the debut single from British Armenian Ripsime and was written a week before war broke out in Armenia back in 2020. Parts of the video was filmed in the Artsakh region, most of which was subsequently destroyed in the war, adding an extra level of poignance to what is already a disarmingly affecting slice of dreamy indie pop, and a remarkably assured, fully-formed first single.
The Predatory Wasp 