Tag: experimental

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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

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Penelope Trappes – Anchor us To The Seabed Floor

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.

https://penelopetrappes.bandcamp.com/album/a-requiem

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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.”

https://ohyung.bandcamp.com/album/you-are-always-on-my-mind

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Mount Kimbie – The Trail (Astrid Sonne Remix)

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.

https://boomkat.com/products/the-trail-astrid-sonne-remix

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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.

https://kathrynmohr.bandcamp.com/album/waiting-room

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Voice Actor, Squu – dYn

Stroom favorites Voice Actor team up with Squu for their second album, Lust (1), blending ambient dance, electro-dub, and trip-hop into 14 hypnotic tracks. Following previous LPs Fake Sleep and the mammoth Sent From My Telephone which spanned a frankly ridiculous 3+ hours, this release feels somehow sharper yet simultaneously dreamy, with soft textures, shimmering vocals, and hazy lyrics that float effortlessly, with the ambient dancehall vibe of dYn an early highlight.

https://stroomtv.bandcamp.com/album/lust-1

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Avi C. Engel – Where Does a Moth Go?

Avi C. Engel’s new album Nocturne (Soundtrack for an Invisible Film) was created during a period of sleeplessness and depression and completed as the artist emerged from it. Initially conceived as a personal attempt to find solace, the album – which lands 03 January – is released in the hope of providing others with a sense of calm or, at the very least, an engaging diversion. Ahead of the full LP, Where Does A Moth Go beautifully captures both the strength and fragility of the artist, with Engel’s vocal coming across as harrowing and hopeful in the same breath.

https://aviengel.bandcamp.com/album/nocturne-soundtrack-for-an-invisible-film

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Mary Lattimore, MIZU, Jamal Shakeri, Laraaji – Midnight Moon Pool (Womb of the Soul)

If you think that’s a long artist / title combo… you’re right! And it comes from a VA compilation the scope of which is genuinely staggering. With production beginning in 2021, and over 100 artists contributing, TRAИƧA is a new compilation across 8 chapters and 46 songs, spotlighting the gifts of many of the most daring, imaginative trans and non-binary artists working today. Artists include (deep breath) Mary Lattimore, Devendra Banhart, claire rousay, Ana Roxanne, Julien Baker, Grouper, Moses Sumney, Andre 3000, Gia Margaret plus, plus, plus. Ridiculous.

https://redhot.bandcamp.com/album/tra-a