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Tag: experimental
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Salami Rose Joe Louis – Upstairs
Multi-instrumentalist and producer Lindsay Olsen aka Salami Rose Joe Louis released her new album Lorings on Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder label last week and it’s excellent. Produced almost entirely on her Roland MV8800 workstation, for a couple of songs, SRJL invited a handful of talented friends to collaborate: guitarist/producer Flanafi (with whom Olsen partnered for the collaborative album ‘Sarah’ in 2024); Omari Jazz (Black Decelerant); Luke Titus and Sergio Machado Plim. The result is satisfyingly dreamy bedroom pop and occasionally glitchy electronica that drifts and tugs in perfect harmony.
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JakoJako – Hoa đào
Ludicrous amounts of fun stuff out this week which I’ll be highlighting in the coming days, starting with Sibel Koçer’aka JakoJako’s new LP Tết 41, her debut for Mute. Recorded during a trip to Vietnam and bookended by field recordings from Tết Lunar New Year celebrations, the album is a sonic nod to Koçer’s heritage, with the melodic palette breaking away from traditional Western scales, drawing instead from the tonal intricacies of the Vietnamese language, inspired by overheard conversations. Produced with a minimalist setup consisting of a Eurorack and Waldorf Iridium Core, Tết 41 reflects on notions of rebirth, and the pursuit of a sonic core.
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Walt McClements – Washed Up
Washed Up arrives midway through On a Painted Ocean, Walt McClements’ excellent second solo album. Like much of the record, it blends processed accordion with pipe organ and subtle electronics, creating a slow-moving, textural piece that leans into repetition and decay. Washed Up feels deliberately suspended – caught in a kind of emotional stasis. It’s not trying to build or resolve, just to hold a space. There’s something compelling about how stripped-back it is. No big gestures, just atmosphere and tension left to hang.
https://waltmcclements.bandcamp.com/album/on-a-painted-ocean
Penelope Trappes doesn’t so much write songs as she carves out little underwater worlds to sit and stare at your feelings in. Anchor us To The Seabed Floor from her new album A Requiem is synths that start soft and end up ragged, hushed vocals, and heavy emotional fog. It’s slow, it’s sad, it’s very beautiful. Let it wash over you and maybe cry a bit. Or don’t. It’ll still haunt you either way.
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OHYUNG – dancing on the soft knife
OHYUNG made my favourite album of 2022, the ludicrously under-appreciated ambient masterpiece imagine naked!, and on the basis of my first few listens their latest LP is going to be right up there in 2025. You Are Always On My Mind marks a shift—away from the rawness of their earlier experimental work and towards something more pop-adjacent, but no less nuanced. Built from processed string loops and glistening synths, You Are Always On My Mind is “a declaration of love for raves and the dark hazy rooms that helped me to be free and true with myself – seeing other people who are so free and beautiful and thinking that one day that can be me – that’s me in the future.”
Astrid Sonne’s remix of Mount Kimbie’s The Trail sounds absolutely nothing like the original, and is all the better for it: chopped, stuttering and deeply atmospheric, her own ghostly vocals providing significant chills.
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Walt McClements – Sirens
I saw Walt McClements support Mary Lattimore in a tiny venue in a town most of you have never heard of last year, and it was pretty amazing hearing him create an overwhelming wall of sound from an accordion, a loop pedal and not much else. One woman fainted! But it was quite hot and she was quite old, so take from that what you will. You get a sense of the power and grandiosity of his music from Sirens, the latest single to be released from his upcoming album On a Painted Ocean, due out in April on Western Vinyl.
https://waltmcclements.bandcamp.com/album/on-a-painted-ocean
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Marina Zispin – The Bells (time will tell)
Now You See Me, Now You Don’t is the brilliant debut LP from Marina Zispin, the project of Bianca Scout and Martyn Reid. Scout, a composer and vocalist, has built a reputation for blending ambient, spoken word, and contemporary classical elements, with past work including The Heart of the Anchoress and last year’s incredible Pattern Damage. This new collaboration continues her exploration of fragmented memory and shifting perceptions, but with a (mostly) more upbeat tone that much of her previous work.
https://scenicroute.bandcamp.com/album/now-you-see-me-now-you-dont
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Kathryn Mohr – Waiting Room
Written and recorded in a repurposed fish-packaging factory in the remote Icelandic village of Stöðvarfjörður, Kathryn Mohr’s Waiting Room is an eerie and intimate exploration of solitude. Her debut LP for The Flenser, it’s sparse yet deeply affecting, built from skeletal guitar lines, occasional piano, and field recordings that capture Iceland’s stark beauty. Songs drift between ghostly folk and surrealistic soundscapes, with Mohr’s vocals hovering between detached murmurs and visceral intensity.
The Predatory Wasp 