Varsity Star is a Brooklyn-based electronic musician who grew up in the suburbs of Boston, but relocated to Berlin after a “biblical flea infestation” made his apartment uninhabitable. His remix of Coolgirl’s Gaussian Blur amplifies some of the more retro-leaning electronic elements of the original, upping the tempo and adding furious, Squarepusher-esque drums to run alongside the neon synth lines. By turns franticly glitchy and soothingly warm, it’s an assured reimagining of what was already a strong record.
Under Me is the latest single from London-based experimental pop artist Rebecca Phillips, who combines Arca-esque production with striking vocals that swerve between hushed background textures and screaming excess. There’s a fine balance of delicate melodics and punishing violence at play here, and it all works extremely well.
The big news today is: commas are back. Specifically; commas in album titles, which I am bang into. Earlier I posted a track from Pale Honey’s Some Time, Alone, and now I’m getting all excited about Infinity Knives new album Dear, Sudan, which is so weirdly exquisite I’m not even sure how to describe it. In The Mouth Of Sadness is heavy on both reverb and emotion, and transitions from a gushing electro pop banger into a gently tinkling jazz ballad. And it’s probably one of the more ‘conservative’ records on there.
This is taken from Call Super’s excellent new album Every Mouth Teeth Missing. I’ve always found Call Super’s music vaguely intimidating, for reasons I’m not entirely clear about, but whatever the reasons might be this is the first album I’ve got properly stuck into and I’m very glad I did. Pleasure For Pleasure is like two different tracks hammered together: the glitchy, video game-evoking bounce of the main rhythm section and the glassy pads that are occasionally permitted to break through more and more frequently until it all gels together into a satisfying mess of phased drums and white noise.
Lots of you will already be very familiar with The Caretaker and this record – especially as it came out in its final form more than a year ago, and much of it was originally recorded at least a decade before that. If so, please forgive me for delving back into the recent and not so recent past, which is, after all, exactly what Everywhere At The End Of Time is all about.
Probably the best-known alias of Leyland James Kirby, The Caretaker is someone I’ve always thought I would enjoy, but never really gave the proper time and attention – due at least in part to the fact that none of his work ever appears on streaming services. Recently this 6-hour+ epic has become a trend of TikTok, a Quietus article about which made me finally commit an extended listening session.
Everywhere… was released in instalments, each portion of the release representing a different stage of the progression of Alzheimer’s disease until – with the final instalment in 2019 – The Caretaker character died and the moniker was retired. The Caretaker project was initially inspired by the haunted ballroom scene in The Shining, and like many of his albums – and often revisiting and sampling his earlier work – Everywhere… is mainly comprised of treated and manipulated samples of 1930s ballroom recordings, which disintegrate further and more violently into chaos as the album progresses, representing the various stages of memory decline brought about by the disease.
The result is utterly haunting, harrowing, beautiful and existential, and one of the most profound – if at times extremely challenging – experiences you can have listening to music. Will I be making a TikTok video to share my experience? I shall not.
Fields is taken from the new album from Gabriel Garzón-Montano, on which the NYC-based singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist presents tracks from three distinct self-created characters (lots more on this in Pitchfork’s glowing review for those who are interested). Fields bears comparisons to to fellow experimental r&b practitioner Moses Sumney, both vocally and its rich, occasionally unsettling production and meandering, unpredictable structure. Both artists are pushing boundaries in intoxicating directions, and Agüita will surely stand up as one of the year’s best (and varied) albums come December.
Formerly known artistically as Youth Lagoon, Trevor Powers has now released two records under his own name, the latest being Capricorn: a sketchy, at times deeply paranoid and at others almost naively beautiful instrumental collection of songs. There’s a tapestraic quality to the album, which is peppered with field recordings and warped, hushed and time-stretched synths, halfway between Blood Orange and The Caretaker. Album closer 2166 is like the entire album compressed into a single track: a poignant piano line, ominous bass notes and something that was probably a vocal once upon a time before it was processed almost beyond all recognition. It’s a really impressive body of work, from an artist that seems to be doing it exactly the way they want.
If you’re not familiar with him, A. G. Cook made his name as the founder and head of PC Music, which is either one of the most groundbreaking labels of the last decade, or an infuriating in-joke that should be erased from history, depending on your point of view. Over the last few years he’s become one of the go-to producers for Charli XCX, and together they’ve made some quite astonishing pop. Acid Anger is taken from his new album 7G (which comes in at a frankly intimidating 49 tracks and 2+ hours) and reminds me quite a lot of Mylo’s Destroy Rock & Roll in its glitchy treatment of vocals, with a dose of glacial Aphex-esque melodies thrown in for good measure.
Quicksails is the recording project of Chicago-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Ben Billington, and Melrose Move is taken from his latest album, Blue Rise. Starting life as a relatively ominous, almost funereal three-note bassline, it quickly transforms into something celestial and expansive; like a fountain of glittering stars shooting upwards from the dank earth before gently fading into hazy-white oblivion.
Closeness is taken from mydata, the fourth album from Australian artist Katie Dey: an intimate electronic album about an ‘internet relationship” in which Dey’s vocals are more often than not partially buried, emerging twisted, hushed and barely audible from beneath layers of winding static, triumphant strings, or whatever other musical textures she’s thrown at the canvas. Closeness is short, barely clocking in over two minutes, but packs a huge punch: a sincere and incredibly moving minimalist ballad.
The Predatory Wasp 