Tag: drone

Categories
Uncategorized

Ethel Cain – Punish

And so begins the inevitable march of posting all the music from 2025 that I missed, starting with this beautiful, devastating track from Ethel Cain’s album Perverts. It doesn’t really do justice to listen to it in isolation from the rest of the album, but it is an undoubted highlight – if a ‘highlight’ can make you want to curl into a mournful little ball and never go outside again. Perverts is one of the bleakest, most sorrowful albums of the year, and I can’t stop listening to it.

https://ethelcain.ffm.to/perverts

Categories
Music Uncategorized

36 – A Warm Static Sphere (Part 1)

A Warm Static Sphere sees TPW favourite 36 in ultra-deep mode – vast and immersive synths mesh with opaque waves of noise which give way to more delicate moments and open up to reveal fragments and minutiae buried in the depths. The press notes describe the album as “truly horizontal music”, and while I’m not entirely sure what that means, it definitely makes me want to lie down. In a good way.

https://quietdetails.bandcamp.com/album/a-warm-static-sphere

Categories
Music

Jessica Moss – Washing Machine

Unfolding is Jessica Moss’s most meditative and plaintive solo album, and perhaps the first in the Montréal violinist/composer’s decade-spanning discography that could properly be called ambient.

The album came together over a period of a year, inspired by the genocide in Palestine, and as a direct response to “our collective witnessing, our collective grief, as a portal to collective mourning, as a searchlight through our internal weather systems, seeking one another out in the dark.” Opening the album, Washing Machine traces its origins to a phone recording of a European laundry machine, captured by Moss as she sat next to it, heartbroken on the bathroom floor, finding solace by humming a melody along to the mechanical harmonics of the washer working through its cycles.

https://jessicamoss.bandcamp.com/album/unfolding

Categories
Music

Not Marshall – UNKNOWN PRODIGY

Pretty sure I write a variation on this every time I post a Not Marshall track, but it is staggering they don’t get more attention. At time of write they have one (!) follower on Soundcloud and get 56 monthly listeners on Spotify. And I don’t think they even have a Bandcamp account. A ludicrous state of affairs. Their latest LP ELLIX is another masterclass in icy ambient and drone, even swerving into more trancey textures a la 36 and Lee Gamble. Should be massive, never will be 😦

Categories
Music

Walt McClements – Washed Up

Washed Up arrives midway through On a Painted Ocean, Walt McClements’ excellent second solo album. Like much of the record, it blends processed accordion with pipe organ and subtle electronics, creating a slow-moving, textural piece that leans into repetition and decay. Washed Up feels deliberately suspended – caught in a kind of emotional stasis. It’s not trying to build or resolve, just to hold a space. There’s something compelling about how stripped-back it is. No big gestures, just atmosphere and tension left to hang.

https://waltmcclements.bandcamp.com/album/on-a-painted-ocean

Categories
Music

Penelope Trappes – Anchor us To The Seabed Floor

Penelope Trappes doesn’t so much write songs as she carves out little underwater worlds to sit and stare at your feelings in. Anchor us To The Seabed Floor from her new album A Requiem is synths that start soft and end up ragged, hushed vocals, and heavy emotional fog. It’s slow, it’s sad, it’s very beautiful. Let it wash over you and maybe cry a bit. Or don’t. It’ll still haunt you either way.

https://penelopetrappes.bandcamp.com/album/a-requiem

Categories
Music

Walt McClements – Sirens

I saw Walt McClements support Mary Lattimore in a tiny venue in a town most of you have never heard of last year, and it was pretty amazing hearing him create an overwhelming wall of sound from an accordion, a loop pedal and not much else. One woman fainted! But it was quite hot and she was quite old, so take from that what you will. You get a sense of the power and grandiosity of his music from Sirens, the latest single to be released from his upcoming album On a Painted Ocean, due out in April on Western Vinyl.

https://waltmcclements.bandcamp.com/album/on-a-painted-ocean

Categories
Music

William Basinski, Richard Chartier – Aurora Terminalis

Longtime friends and collaborators William Basinski and Richard Chartier return to LINE with Aurora Terminali, a 60-minute odyssey through drone and ambient that marks their first new work together since 2015’s Divertissement. Starting with a burst of bright, jagged synths it soon dissolves into something significantly calmer before leaning into darker, more paranoid tones in in second half.

https://lineimprint.bandcamp.com/album/aurora-terminalis

Categories
Music

Pefkin – Gossip In The Leaves

I alluded to this release last week, but it’s so good it deserves a bit more love. This is taken from the new album from Pefkin, aka Gayle Brogan, witten in autumn 2023, during a big life shift—including her move from Glasgow to Sheffield—this three-track album reflects the emotional journey of change. Using a stripped-back setup of viola (an instrument she’d never played before), synth, and voice, Gayle recorded each track in a single take. It’s deeply affecting and a late contender for ambient/drone album of the year.

https://pefkin.bandcamp.com/album/the-rescoring

Categories
Music

Not Waving, Romance – Love Pervade The Sinless Breast

Possibly my favourite ambient pairing, Not Waving and Romance, return with their latest LP Wings of Desire, inspired by Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. And if that sounds catastrophically pretentious – correct! But ambient pretentiousness really does result in some of the best track names in music (honourable mention to Dylan Henner on this front). Love Pervade The Sinless Breast (!) is gorgeous, sweeping, mournful: everything you need to start your week with a bang.

https://notwavingromance.bandcamp.com/album/wings-of-desire