The Predatory Wasp
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.
Becky and the Birds is the solo project of Swedish artist Thea Gustafsson, and someone I first came across via her eponymous 2018 debut EP, which is still one I go back to regulalrly. Paris is taken from her new EP Trasslig, which roughly translates from the Swedish “entangled, messy, intricate”, which neatly sums up the vibe across the seven tracks it contains. As on much of her work, her voice on Paris is extraordinary, hitting high notes that transcend traditional vocals and become strange, eerie textures floating above sparse, otherworldly production.
Control is the final track on Jackie Lynn’s (aka Circuit des Yeux’s Haley Fohr) latest album Jacqueline, and it’s a pretty phenomenal way to wrap up the 30 minutes or so of eclecticism that precedes it. Ranging from electro-inflected punk to soaring, ethereal folk to out-and-out pop, it’s a disorienting experience of being flung from one genre to another without the slightest bit of warning. And then there’s Control, an epic, grandiose finale that’s both fragile and foreboding, and a fitting end to a hugely ambitious release.
I have tried hard to love græ, the new album by Moses Sumney. It’s clearly brilliant, and the scale of it is pretty staggering, but I’ve found it almost overwhelmingly impenetrable on the many occasions I’ve sat down to listen. This is a failing on my part. However, there is a three-track run at the start of the second side of the double LP that is utterly sublime, kicking off with Two Dogs. I just wish I liked the rest of the album as much as these 10 minutes or so. I’m sorry, Moses: I have tried, and been found wanting.
Ingrid starts off with nothing more than a solo, softly reverbed cello, which wanders round a little before locking into a single repeated refrain. Over the course of the next 20 minutes it’s slowly joined by various electronic textures, gradually dissolving into a cacophony of static before Lewis strips everything away again until only the stark, fragile strings remain. It’s stunning, and Lewis’s ability to wring this amount of tension and emotion from a single, simple loop is really quite breathtaking.
altopalo are an experimental quartet who met in New York and have been putting out strange, sometimes unsettling and often very beautiful music for the last few years. This is taken from their second album farawayfromeveryoneyouknow, and is delicate, sparse and very lovely indeed.
This is taken from Zeroh’s new album BLQLYTE, which is one of the most extraordinary things I’ve heard this year. I guess ‘experimental hip hop’ would be a vaguely appropriate description, but it doesn’t really come close to doing it justice. It’s an almost overwhelming experience, and you really need to listen to the album in full to properly appreciate its depth.
As distinctly un-Friday as the new album by Cremation Lily is, I’m really, really enjoying it. Static-drenched and ultimately pretty moody, it also has flashes of radiant joy breaking through the grey. Case in point: the last few moments of Evenings Cast Astray, which starts life with a simple, acoustic guitar strumming away, moving through an eruption of white noise before everything else fades, leaving a single, beautiful synth line and a few chirruping birds for good measure.
Wonderfully weird and unpredictable electronica from Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith. The Steady Heart encompasses elements of folk, jazz, choral and various strands of electronic music, and is completely beguiling from start to finish.
The Predatory Wasp 