Tag: experimental

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Lee Gamble – Juice

Continuing the trance revival theme today with this melancholy banger from Lee Gamble’s new album Models, which, when compared to some of his previous work, is surprisingly accessible. According to the PR, “it’s pop music, but it ain’t background music” and I’m not sure I entirely agree with either of those statements, but it is very good. Elsewhere on the album you’ll find him autotuning the fuck out of Lana Del Rey, which is also fun.

https://leegamble.bandcamp.com/album/models

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Lost Girls – Timed Intervals

Jenny Hval and Håvard Volden’s Lost Girls’ collaboration dates back more than a decade, with Volden playing regularly in Hval’s live band and two previous albums. In 2022, the duo were booked to perform a concert at Les Subsistances in Lyon, and decided to use the opportunity to create all new material, with Volden creating beats and guitar chord progressions and Hval restructuring the parts, creating melodies and adding lyrics. The resulting album, Selvutsletter, explores different territory than their previous work; shorter, more concise and melodic songs that border on alternative pop (kinda), with opener Timed Intervals one of the clear standouts.

https://lostgirls1000.bandcamp.com/album/selvutsletter

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Maria BC – Lacuna

While Maria BC’s debut album Hyaline explored grief and anxiety through a series of character-led accounts, their follow-up Spike Field is more concerned with buried emotions and actions, positing that the past will continue to lurk below the surface until one decides to break through the soil and face what lies beneath. If that makes it sound bleakly gothic, then the music is anything but; it’s delicate, earthy and seemingly with an underlying note of optimism in even the most stripped-down of compositions. For fans of Grouper, detuned Steinway pianos and wallowing.

https://mariabc.bandcamp.com/album/spike-field

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Devendra Banhart – Feeling

Devendra Banhart’s 11th studio album Flying Wig is a collaboration and “actualisation of a precious friendship” with acclaimed solo artist and Mexican Summer label-mate Cate Le Bon; a project somewhat prophesied by the mirror-image titles of their early solo albums (Banhart’s 2002 Oh Me Oh My and Le Bon’s 2009 Me Oh My. For fans of dreamy atmospheres, self-reflective lyrics and fully immersing yourself in deep melancholy.

https://devendrabanhart.bandcamp.com/album/flying-wig

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FKA Twigs – Papi Pacify

Yesterday marked the 10 year anniversary (!!!) of the release of FKA Twigs’ staggeringly brilliant EP2. Produced by Arca, it went on to ‘inspire’ an entire wave of artists attempting to replicate its stripped-back yet immensely rich and impactful sound. Very few matched its creativity and sheer take-your-breath-away originality, and none surpassed it, arguably even Twigs herself (although many would disagree with me on that last point). A decade later it still represent a high point, both musically and culturally, and perhaps most importantly, open my own eyes and ears to a world to which I was previously completely ignorant.

https://www.instagram.com/fkatwigs

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Apex Twin – zin2 test5

Lots and lots of fun music out today, but this is probably the biggest and funnest of the lot. The first new music from The Big RDJ in 5 years – the predictably functionally named Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / in a room7 F760 – includes this tight, sinewy little roller which dissolves into those trademark melt-your-heart pads in its final third.

https://aphextwin.bandcamp.com/album/blackbox-life-recorder-21f-in-a-room7-f760

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Cucina Povera – Naapurista kuuluu lattian natinaa

I came across this during a frantic Spotify cull of albums I’ve saved but rarely (if ever) listened to. Cucina Povera is the alias of the Glasgow-based artist Maria Rossi, originally from Finland, and this is taken from her 2021 LP Dalmarnock Tapes, throughout which she layers her own vocals to create a choir of one, with invariably intensely haunting results.

https://cucinapovera.bandcamp.com/album/dalmarnock-tapes

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Rrose – Spore

Rrose’s compositional process centres on “seed” sounds being fed through elaborate webs of interrelated audio processing: essentially a chain of sequences where changes in any one element have resulting implications further down the line. If that all sounds a bit technical its because its largely copied from the press notes, but I thought it was quite interesting. The new album from which Spore is taken splits its time between radical techno iterations and pieces which pare back the percussion, letting the synth textures uncurl in their own time and space. Spore lands firmly in the former category, and is among the most straightforwardly enjoyable tracks on Please Touch.

https://eaux.ro/album/please-touch

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Loraine James – 2003

Loraine James released two of the best albums of last year, so news of a new LP is real welcome on this blog. Landing in September on Hyperdub – her third for the label – Gentle Confrontations will feature collabs with George Riley and keiyaA and others, and has been touted as “a teenage Loraine would like to have made” and described as “positively languid”, which is excellent news. Lead single 2003 certainly fits with this description, and has echoes of Tirzah in both the haunting, loopy simplicity of its production and low-key vocal delivery.

https://lorainejames.bandcamp.com/album/gentle-confrontation

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Mandy, Indiana – 2 Stripe

Everywhere I look, Mandy, Indiana’s new album i’ve seen a way is getting glowing reviews. A four-piece experimental noise band formed in Manchester, the group was initially comprised of vocalist Valentine Caulfield and Scott Fair after they sharing a bill with their former projects, and were subsequently joined by Simon Catling (synth) and Alex MacDougall (drums). Their debut LP is noisy, chaotic and at times overwhelming, with a raw urgency throughout, even in its less full-on moments. 2 Stipe is arguably one of the most conventional tracks, even though they’d surely rail against the use of that word.

https://mandyindiana.bandcamp.com/album/ive-seen-a-way