Loads of interesting albums out today – from Thee Sacred Souls, Dawn Richard, Alessandro Cortini and others – but this is the song that’s made me happiest this week, and even though it officially came out months ago the album it was released on landed last week, so it still counts as new music. Ok? Good. Efterklang was a new name to me and it was Mabe Fratti’s involvement that initially piqued my interest, but after multiple daily listens I think I can now call myself a fan.
Quasar 554 is the project of producer Paolo Alberto Lodde, also known as Dusty Kid: someone I was pretty obsessed with close to two decades ago, especially his track Luna, which I think opened a mix or compilation I used to hammer and still holds up as an absolute banger. Anyway! As Quasar 554 he was invited by the One Instrument label to create an EP exclusively using the Roland Jupiter-6. Often overshadowed by its pricier predecessor, the Jupiter-8, and sometimes criticised for its cold and thin sound, Lodde has eked out some genuinely emotional moments from the Jupiter-6, the results of which are worth checking out even if you’re not a massive synth nerd.
The first solo project from Alan Sparkhawk, formerly of Low, was always going to be difficult. Following the death of his wife and bandmate Mimi Parker in 2022, Sparkhawk hasn’t been absent as such, still recording with his son and playing the occasional live show, but his new album, White Roses, My God is certainly his fullest musical statement since Parker’s death. And a surprising one it is, with Sparkhawk going full Kayne, albeit thankfully only in musical rather than political direction, with heavily autotuned vocals stretched over stripped-back, electro-ish arrangements. Brother is the only track that features any guitar at all – which will probably upset Low purists – and benefits from the additional texture that brings. But at this stage I think he’s earned the right to do whatever he wants.
“We get lots of inspiration from the natural world: its quietness, rhythms and beauty”
Mary Lattimore and Walt McClements are two of contemporary music’s most renowned innovators. Lattimore’s inventive harp processing and looping has brought the instrument to a new audience and her prolific run of celestial solo albums and evocative film scores have redefined the instrument in the modern consciousness. Her genre-agnostic collaborations include work with Kurt Vile, Steve Gunn, Jeff Zeigler, Meg Baird, Bill Fay and Thurston Moore.
McClements, who tours as a member of Weyes Blood, is an acclaimed composer in his own right, sculpting glacial atmospherics from the accordion.
Recorded in the cozy setting of McClements’ apartment during a rainy December in LA, their new collaborative LP Rain on the Road unfurls as a series of sonic vignettes, rolling landscapes hewn from longform improvisations for harp and accordion. Embellished with additional instrumentation such as the shimmering constellations of hand bells on “Stolen Bells” that glisten like lights on wet pavement, or the stately piano figures on “The Top of Thomas Street”; their pastoral pieces manage to paint vivid images.
Currently in the middle of an extensive European tour, I was very happy they agreed to have a chat about the album, the origins of their collaborations and why Spotify sucks.
When did you first meet, and how long did it take for you to decide that you wanted to work together on music?
Walt – We met in 2017 when we were both playing a festival with the same band. I feel like we became friends then and did some collaboration here and there, Mary played some harp on an old project of mine’s record. But maybe not until the pandemic did we start to connect more musically. I had started making more instrumental ambient/drone work, and Mary was a big influence and supporter. I played on her porch when she started hosting socially distanced outdoor shows, and then we went on tour together in 2021, and I started to sit in on a few songs at the end of Mary’s set, which was so fun, and that led to the idea of making a record together.
Mary – We both grew up in North Carolina and turns out we attended some of the same shows. This collaboration and friendship feels meant-to-be. I’m a big fan of Walt’s ear and aesthetic and sonic curiosity, so it was natural to ask him to sit in when we were on tour together. It feels like a really organic way of getting to know someone, personality and musical sensibility and instincts going hand-in-hand.
Mariachiara Troianiello aka Katatonic Silentio continues her exploration of spatial, experimental sound design on her new EP Axis Of Light, slicing and splicing various forms of dub, techno and breaks while following her instincts towards storytelling in each track. Bridging The Gap is skeletal, paranoid, sketchy and extremely good.
“The story of my life doesn’t exist. Does not exist. There’s never any center to it. No path, no line. There are great spaces where you pretend there used to be someone, but it’s not true, there was no one. I started to write in surroundings that drove me to reticence. Writing, for those people, was still something moral. Nowadays it often seems writing is nothing at all. Sometimes I realize that if writing isn’t, all things, all contraries confounded, a quest for vanity and void, it’s nothing.”
Danish-Chilean artist Molina’s new album When You Wake Up is due out in October, and last week she shared the latest single, teaming up with TPW favourite ML Buch on Organs. According to Molina, Organs is “a fusion of our individual approaches to perceiving melodies, recordings, and sound in general” while incorporating their “mutual attraction to catchy melodies”.
Following a limited two-track vinyl edition earlier this year, The Smile have now officially released Don’t Get Me Started alongside The Slip, now accompanied by a typically hard-to-watch-without-your-eyes-melting music video from audiovisual artist Weirdcore, who has previously created videos for Charli XCX, Radiohead and perhaps most strikingly Aphex Twin.
Yetsuby is the solo experimental electronic and ambient-focussed project of South Korean artist Yejin Jang who also records of one half of the excellent duo Salamanda. If I Drink This Potion is taken from her new album, b_b, her debut release on Seb Wildblood’s all my thoughts label; a striking mini LP that features some of the most arresting, engrossing and detailed production of any I’ve heard this year.
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.
The Predatory Wasp 