The Predatory Wasp
Shawn Reynaldo’s First Floor Substack continues to be a reliably rich source for electronic music reccomendations, and the latest edition highlighted an artist with whom he’s long been obsessed, J. Albert. Converge is taken from his album Return To Sender which sees the NYC-based artist flit between relatively down-the-line dub techno and more amorphous, experimental structures, into which latter category Converge neatly fits.
Purelink embrace liquidity on their second album Faith, washing live instrumentation and exposed vocals over their patented cascade of dubbed ambience and ebbing rhythmic experimentation. With a vocal appearance from Loraine James, Rookie stands out even amongst all the other floaty excellence, her voice floating like smoke over pattering rhythms and airy synths
Deep, meditative dub techno here courtesy of Shanghai-based producer Rainsoft with a specific focus on the interplay between the natural world and modern production methods. Think Donato Dozzy if he got lost in a rainforest for a couple of years. This is the title track from her new LP, and it’s very good.
Flawless ambient dub techno taken from Night Sea’s LP Still, which is in their words “the culmination of a two-year journey playing with the relationship between sound, repetition, and impermanence.” Couldn’t have put it better myself, so I’m not going to try. It’s out now on Silent Season, which is probably my favourite label for this kind of stuff, and if you like Manila I would highly recommend checking out their Campfire Stories series of mixes, as well as the rest of their catalogue.
The Predatory Wasp 