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One Track Mind: Arvin Dola

The Spanish composer and sound artist on the fragile solemnity of a late-period Low masterpiece.

The premise of One Track Mind is pretty simple: I ask artists to pick one track that means a lot to them – either something they’ve discovered recently, something that’s been with them for years, or one that reminds them of a specific time in their life or career – and tell me what makes it so special to them. I get to talk to the artists I love, and they get to talk about the artists they love. Love all round!

Spanish composer and sound artist Arvin Dola works at the intersection of music, cinema, and performance. His background in scoring for film and theatre informs a deeply textural approach, where sound becomes a vehicle for memory, emotion, and unresolved narratives.

His new LP O GHOST is his debut album release and is inspired by absence, memory, and the weight of unresolved time. Written in the wake of personal loss, it folds grief into a subtle kind of presence. Drawing on hauntology and shaped by Dola’s work in film and performance, the record blends ambient, drone, and disintegrating motifs that never quite land or leave.

For his One Track Mind selection, Arvin has chosen to highlight a track from an incredible album which also happens to be one of my all-time favourites.

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Music

Valentino Mora – IIIII1IIIIIIII1IIIIIIIII

It’s less than 2 months until the best album of 2025 will be released: Voices From The Lake’s II, the follow up to their eponymous, seminal debut. I’ve listened to this pretty much weekly in the intervening 13 (!) years, so the hype is very real. In the meantime, we have Valentino Mora’s also brilliant Biotope, released on Dozzy’s Spazio Disponibile and operating in a similarly atmospheric, hypnotic realm.

https://valentinomora.bandcamp.com/album/biotope

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Music

Malibu – So Sweet & Willing

There are so many interesting and/or brilliant albums coming out at the moment that I find myself with very little time to actually write about them. Hopefully I’ll dig out a bit more time next week, but for now – and continuing the ambient theme of this week – he’s a deeply soothing track from Malibu’s excellent new LP Vanities which landed today.

https://mmmmalibu.bandcamp.com/track/so-sweet-willing

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Music

Her Blur – People Of The Red Blur

I don’t even know what this is really and I can’t find anything about it online other than that’s it a project of Luke Wyatt and Jessi Long, but it’s incredible.

https://valcrondvideo.bandcamp.com/album/first-blur

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Music

René Najera – The Seasons feat. Leech

Minnesota-born, L.A.-based musician, mastering engineer, and co-founder of the Jungle Gym label Jared Carrigan records solo and in collaboration under a web of guises: V. Kristoff, Congo River Club House, Freaks of Nature, Easy Rider plus plenty more, including, most relevantly to this post, René Najera – his longest-running alias. His new LP Painted Life took shape from the seeds of a 2023 set prepared for a string of shows in Japan. Elements were later remixed, finessed, and expanded by a cast of inner circle collaborators, including Leech who contributed to this album standout.

https://renenajera.bandcamp.com/album/painted-life

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Music

james k – Blinkmoth (July Mix)

I CANNOT STOP listening to this track. Song of the year. Apparently it came out about a year ago, but I only just heard it as the second track on james k’s new album Friend. I love it so much!

https://jameskmusic.bandcamp.com/album/friend

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Music

Kelly Moran – Echo In the Field

Announced alongside a new album, Don’t Trust Mirrors due in October, Kelly Moran’s Echo in the Field pairs prepared piano with synths and strings, creating a piece that shifts between delicacy and propulsion. The accompanying video, directed by Katharine Antoun, places Moran herself at the centre. Speaking about the decision, she said: “Few things in this world terrify me more than the idea of me dancing in a music video. I wanted to address that fear head on because this is the first track I’ve written that makes me want to get up to dance, headbang, and generally lose my shit.”

https://kellymoran.bandcamp.com/album/dont-trust-mirrors

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Martel – The Ghost

Hailing originally from Montenegro, but having long departed for stints living in London, Rome, Philadelphia and his current home Nicosia in Cyprus, Martel is a former architect who has turned to building dystopian and subversive soundscapes. After creating characteristically atmospheric tracks for film and theatre, he’s launched his own Evil Ideas label and has just released ‘The Ghost’, a super-detailed techno cut that layers Dozzy-esque polyrhythms with hand-played percussion and synthetic textures. The full Zaire EP will be landing on vinyl later this year.

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Music

XENIA REAPER – halo°°°

XENIA REAPER lands on Berlin’s Oscilla Sound with seven deft cuts, gently fusing the outer realms of spectral ambience and delicate breaks. 

https://oscillasound.bandcamp.com/album/lmnl004-zumi3

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Music

747 – Sea To Sky

First Floor‘s Shawn Reynaldo described Canadian producer 747’s new LP Pacific Spirit as “if Tin Man made a jungle record”, and that’s pretty much all you need to know. Where his past work etched itself in acid techno, Pacific Spirit blooms with expansive, saturated colours and wears its vulnerable, optimistic heart very much on its sleeve.

https://aquaregiarec.bandcamp.com/album/pacific-spirit