The Predatory Wasp
I first heard this only a couple of days ago, and it has already brought a ludicrous amount of joy into my life. As my brother said when I sent it to him: “It’s the DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ x Blood Orange x Two Bears mashup I didn’t know I needed, but absolutely do”. I’d also add Prince and Jai Paul to those reference points. High praise indeed, and deserving of every word.
Miyaxx is the duo of Lea Thomas and John Thayer, who have been making music together in various forms for more than a decade. Their album Hold Your Ego Out Like a Sun brings Thomas’s voice, songs and open-tuned guitar together with Thayer’s percussion, field recordings and electronic production. There’s a folk record at its centre, though it often takes unexpected turns into various different genres. But above all, it is achingly beautiful. And sad; very sad.
https://miyaxx.bandcamp.com/album/hold-your-ego-out-like-a-sun
“When we say feral we mean killable and ungrievable; an animal for whom violent deaths are a possible outcome; that can be culled by slow poison, trapped and left to knaw its own leg off; that is worthless unless domesticated.
“When we say feral we point to an ideology of extermination and control.
“When we say feral we mean resisting
“When we say feral we mean unapologetic.”
Carmen Villain’s new album Memoria is built around the idea of sound as memory, with old recordings pulled apart, processed and folded back into new ones. The result sits somewhere between dub, ambient music, free jazz and there’s loads to get lost in across the record, but Blue is the one I keep coming back to. Flutes and clarinet drift in and out, weird little electronic details flicker around the edges, and everything seems to exist in this strange, suspended space. It’s hazy, immersive, tense and really quite unsettling.
L’Rain’s fourth album fata morgana is described in the press notes as “a fearless reckoning with self-doubt and the mirages of belonging and alienation that shape Taja Cheek’s lived experience”, and by me as “something I haven’t had the chance to listen to in full yet”, but based on the strength of the phenomenal lead single elmyra I’m going to enjoy my time with it.
I’m on on holiday tomorrow and blog posts are not going to be a major part of my itenirary, so I’m leaving you with this bucolic delight from Patricia Wolf. Yarrow is part of Music To Watch Seeds Grow By’s collection, marking the label’s ninth release and the third of Season Two, with each of the tracks acting as reflections on the life cycle of plants and their dynamic ecological relationships.
https://patriciawolf.bandcamp.com/album/music-to-watch-seeds-grow-by-009-patricia-wolf-yarrow
I wonder if anyone will write about Hana Stretton’s new album tiarn without mentioning Grouper? Not me, that’s for sure! Comparisons are apt, along with a leaning towards the creaky, plaintive instrumentation of Corina Repp, but while Liz Harris’s musical world can often feel claustrophobic and paranoid, Streton sounds open, almost joyful, even when her compositions are hinting towards the skeletal conjured on standout track Right Whale.
Avi Engel has shared ‘Garden Of Earthly Delights’, the first single from forthcoming album Seedhead. Taking its name from Hieronymus Bosch’s feverish vision of paradise, earthly pleasure and damnation, the seven-minute track opens with lyrics that immediately sets out its stall: “Slithering star, coruscant worm / burrowing deep in the guts of the earth / I’m cold / and I want to go home”. So far, so harrowing.
From there it unfolds slowly and sparsely, drawing together experimental art song, folk, chamber music and ethereal wave into something stunning, pastoral and bleak. Strings hover around Engel’s voice as themes of climate change, ecological grief and eco-horror emerge through strange, mystical poetry. Beautiful, unsettling music for a world that feels increasingly so.
A frankly ludicrous amount of talent combines for Everything Always Changes, For We’re Truly Here, a collaborative LP from four of the most boundary-pushing electronic and experimental artists working today. Cult Polish producer Przemysław Jankowiak, aka 2K88, brings together Rainy Miller, Lauren Duffus and Bianca Scout, creating a dreamlike album blending R&B, ambient electronics and fragmented vocals, inspired by the slow, dreamlike dance at the heart of the Polish film Salto.
https://fixedabode.bandcamp.com/album/everything-always-changes-for-we-re-truly-here
This is the opening track from Kelsey Lu’s new album So Help Me God and it’s astonishingly good: a sweeping, theatrical 8 minute epic that incorporates elements of drone, experimental pop, jazz and r&b to jaw-dropping effect.
