The Predatory Wasp
Find You is the latest track from Maymind – the moniker of LA based producer and DJ Leo Maymind – and is taken from his forthcoming album June due for release in November. Fusing elements of left-field electronics late night grooves and washed out, reverb-heavy vocals, it juxtaposes subdued beats with startlingly bright synths that give the impression of sunbeams puncturing the early morning haze.
Galcher… Lustwerk! Every time I see this guy’s name written down I suffer from an uncontrollable compulsion to say it out loud, mimicking that robotic French tag from his breakthrough Blowing Up The Workshop mix. Try it! It’s fun! Anyway, this is taken from a new Explorations in Analog Synthesis collection (Volume II, funnily enough) where Moog have asked a load of Very Good Producers to demonstrate the “powerful analog sound and sonic possibilities Moog Sound Studio offers”. Each track was built around the Moog Mother-32, DFAM, and Subharmonicon included in each artist’s Moog Sound Studio, and the full seven track EP includes music from Boy Harsher, Hannah Peel and others and is well worth checking out.
Electronic folk innovator, recent Paul Hamlyn Foundation award winner and TPW favourite, Me Lost Me’s latest single is taken from her forthcoming EP The Circle Dance and comes accompanied by a kaleidoscopic music video filmed on location at Sunderland’s Penshaw Monument. Gently haunting and instantly compelling, like much of her work Acrobat On The Roof seamlessly blends the old with the new, creating something unique, timeless and understatedly beautiful.
Eternally Recurring is the lead single from New York City-based Colombian guitarist and composer Jan Esbra’s forthcoming debut album Temporary Objects: a collection of 10 improvisations and spontaneous compositions that draws influence from a variety of artists including Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros, Blank For.ms and Lightbath. Created using guitars, samplers and various effects pedals, it’s incredibly minimalistic and initially stark – clinical even – but over time starts to exude a real warmth and depth of character that completely draws you in.
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.
In September Lee Gamble brings his Flush Real Pharynx 2019-2021 album cycle to an end with A Million Pieces Of You, a seven-track LP that was written “in a time when the subjective experience of overload came to a halt, giving way to an overbearing sense of loss, burnout and a desperate need for hope,” which I’m guessing means Covid o’clock. Playing with rhythms and tones and switching effortlessly between wide-eyed optimism and almost overwhelming despair, Hyperpassive, then, seems like a fitting representation of the emotions many of us went through on an almost daily – if not hourly – basis in 2020 and beyond. Oh, and it’s also really good, just in case that wasn’t clear.
https://leegamble.bandcamp.com/album/a-million-pieces-of-you
NANAO follows the release of GILA’s debut album Energy Demonstration which landed last year, and is his first collaboration with LA based vocalist Kloxii, a Chinese-American producer and experimental pop musician who has released music via Tricky’s False Idols, and been mentored by Marie Davidson for Amplify Berlin. Exploring various themes including unrequited love and vulnerability, NANAO is looser and rougher than the tracks found on Energy Demonstration, with stuttering, over-saturated beats and ominous synth lines creating an oppressive, but oddly uplifting atmosphere.
Ben McCarthy is an electronic musician and sound artist from Toronto, who blends layers of re-purposed, processed and archival sound into some pretty unique music. Here he’s teamed up with Irish artist Lighght and together they’ve created a staggeringly beautiful, disquieting slice of experimental electronica that at times sounds like a gorgeous celestial improvisation straight from the heavens, and at others like whales being crushed to death by patient but deadly blue-white blocks of shifting ice. Don’t let that last part put you off though: it’s great.
https://paleeyesmusic.bandcamp.com https://lighghtmusic.bandcamp.com
I’ve listened to Days Like These maybe a dozen times now, and I’m still not even sure if I like the first half of it. Alan Sparhawk’s vocal is more prominent than perhaps ever before, accompanied by Mimi Parker’s harmonies and very little else and it’s almost wilfully OTT and (whisper it) a bit cheesy? Maybe that’s the point, and there’s a good chance that later this year after sitting with it for longer and reading more into the meaning behind it I’ll realise just how wrong I am, but that’s where I am right now. What isn’t in doubt however, is the second half, which is one of the best things they’ve ever made.
Produced again by BJ Burton who worked with them on 2018’s incredible Double Negative, it descends into warped static, freewheeling, ethereal harmonies and an atmosphere so thick with longing it takes a good few minutes to pull yourself out of it. It’s also the lead single from their forthcoming new LP Hey What, out 10 September on Sub Pop. Bring on the heartache.
I hadn’t thought about the video game Alex Kid in Miracle World for probably around 20 years, until the other day I saw it was getting a re-release: a fancy, updated version for modern hardware, and one of those games where you look at the new footage and think “Yeah, that’s how I remember it looking” until you go back and look at original Master System / Megadrive footage and realise that actually what it looked like was a few dozen pixels thrown on a screen seemingly at random with barely any discernible detail and ordered to jump frantically around, the kind of thing that if you were forced to play now you wouldn’t last five minutes. I’m not going to play the remake, as I don’t want to be reminded of a) how old I am and b) how jaded I am, but knowing that it exists and is scratching a few people’s itching nostalgia is comfort enough. In my head, the soundtrack is exactly like this new track from fivepaw which is taken from his latest album, and if it’s not, I don’t want to know.
