The Predatory Wasp
Egyptian composer Nancy Mounir is a part of the Cairo new wave of artists who are taking inspiration from historical music to inform their own modern productions. On Khafif Khafif – as with a lot her compositions – she layers her own microtonal, ambient arrangements over a buried 20th century Egyptian cut to pleasantly unsettling effect.
Andrew Ostler, you had me at “unashamedly nostalgic for the polyrhythms of 70s Berlin”. One of two extended pieces from his new album, Ostler’s penchant for modular synthesis is expressed across a 20 minute recording that evokes not only the electronic polyrhythms of acts like Tangerine Dream, but also the epic prog-rock of Pink Floyd. No mean feat, but it’s handled here with both skill and subtlety.
I really hope that whatever changes are implemented at Bandcamp following their acquisition by Epic Games, they maintain their roundup editorials, as I’ve found some incredible music there over the last few years. Case in point: Kee Avil’s frankly terrifying Crease, which – with its croaky vocals and discordant melodies – is disquieting, but essential listening.
I never heard New Mexican Stargazers’ 2021 album Highway Dreamscape, but I’m reliably informed it was one of the year’s best. Menu is taken from their new release Alternate Soundtrack To: B-Jeweled: a sprawling, near two-hour collection of crushed pop and ambient soundscapes that sounds like the Blade Runner soundtrack as reimagined by The Caretaker.
https://newmexicanstargazers.bandcamp.com/album/alternate-soundtrack-to-b-jeweled
Taken from her new album Classic Objects, Year of Sky is as evocative and transportive as anything Jenny Hval has created, soundtracking a rite of passage into a world only she can perceive but that she’s desperate to share with us.
It’s a testament to the raw artistry of Keeley Forsyth that she manages to make music this bleak a joy to experience. The follow up to 2020’s equally desolate Debris, her latest album Limbs puts her extraordinary voice even more front and centre, often alongside the very sparsest of orchestration. Land Animal is a personal favourite, but at less than 30 minutes long I’d suggest listening to the entire album at least twice through to properly lose yourself in the beautiful sorrow of it all.
An unpopular opinion: I don’t really like Arca’s music and find it fairly hard, even borderline impossible to listen to. I’m wrong, obviously, and if I think about it it’s objectively ‘good’ (many would argue peerlessly groundbreaking), I’ve just never got on board with it. So it’s a rare treat to hear her remix of the equally experimental Laurie Anderson and enjoy it, so I’m finally free to jump on the Arca Appreciation Juggernaut ™.
Year Of Love is the second single to be released from Jenny Hval’s forthcoming album Classic Objects – her first studio album for 4AD. The song explores a “very troubling” experience she had of witnessing a marriage proposal at one of her performances. Plenty of artists, I’m sure, would have experienced this as a purely romantic act, and thought very little about it afterwards, but for Hval it elicited questions about how her art impacts others, and her own marriage; themes she explores and attempts to resolve over the course of the song.
Of course, you could just ignore all that and enjoy what is – lyrics aside – one of the most upbeat songs in her catalogue to date.
New year, new Burial, and what better way to fully embrace the January bleakness than with his amorphous, ambient-leaning Antidawn EP, which acts as both protective cloak and insidious amplifier of the cold, hash reality of the world across five expansive, spectral tracks. Burial’s work has become increasingly loose over the last decade, formal structures all but abandoned for longform sketches as various motifs are explored and then abruptly cut off as others emerge from the static-ridden gloom. Shadow Paradis stands out for me, as its final moment are among the most beautiful he’s ever conjured, and that’s saying something.
The world has changed – arguably irredeemably – since Huerco S released his last album, the universally lauded and wordily titled For Those Of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have); an album which many have aped but few – if any – have bettered. February 2022 sees the release of his new LP Plonk, which, if the first tastes are anything to go by, we’re all going to be completely absorbed by for many years to come. His palette many have expanded since For Those…, but his ability to craft intoxicating sonic worlds remains as tight and impressive as ever.
The Predatory Wasp 