The Predatory Wasp
Lots of good stuff out today, much of it pretty mournful (see also: most of Bat For Lashes’ new album) but this is my pick, from Arooj Aftab’s new album Night Reign which described in the press notes as “a perfumed, public garden of renewal”, and although I’m not entirely sure what that means, it’s very lovely.
The first new music since the release of her excellent 2023 album Spike Field, Taper was written and recorded around two years ago, and is “about searching for someone who doesn’t want to be found and mourning a future foreclosed. grief and longing, basically…”. Bleak! And beautiful!
Nina Kinert released RELIGIOUS last year; an album telling personal stories about growing up within the Pentecostal Church Community in Sweden. Her new LP CHORALS is a continuation of RELIGIOUS and is billed as “an experiment revolving around voice and death” recorded in close collaboration with Anton Sundell and Daniel Fagge Fagerström. It’s beautiful, and if you’re interested in hearing more about Nina’s experiences and the recording progress, be sure to check my interview with her from last year.
There have already been some banging albums out this year, Naliah Hunter’s Lovegaze not least among them. Depending on which publications you trust this has been labelled as ambient, experimental, folk or a combination of all these and more. If you trust this blog, I’d just say go and listen to it and make your own mind up (but it’s definitely not ambient).
Avi. C Engel’s new album Too Many Souls lands 23 February digitally, with additional formats including cassette by Cruel Nature Records (UK) and on CD by Somnimage (US). Lead single Hold This Flame is a spectral delight; sparse and haunting with Engel’s ghostly vocal contrasting with the gently rising dissonance of strings and percussion.
Hailing from Cornwall – namely Mousehole, which is what most people imagine when picturing a Cornish finishing village – Daisy Rickman is an artist, photographer and folk musician whose second album Howl is due out in March. Feed The Forest is the album’s lead single, a song that perfectly blends discordance with melody, and warmth with a creeping sense of dread, with Rickman’s confident, earthy vocals as haunting as they are reassuring.
Marika Hackman’s new album Big Sigh is described as the “hardest” record she’s ever made. It’s unclear whether that refers to the challenge or how it actually sounds; it’s definitely bolder and less hushed than some of her previous releases, but still contains plenty of sadness, reflection and catharsis, which is exactly what I’m interested in, and LP opener is a beautiful, haunting, (almost) instrumental starting point for what turns out to be the first great release of the year.
“These days I feel somewhat in control of what I choose to believe”
Nina Kinert released the album Romantic and the EP In Twos in 2018 and was awarded Composer of the year at the Independent Manifest gala in Sweden that same year. Her new album Religious – her first release since 2021’s Wild, Wild Geese – tells personal stories about growing up within the Pentecostal Church Community in Sweden, while simultaneously exploring her attraction to both nature and the supernatural.
Romantic was my album of the year in 2018, and still affects how I search for new music today. I’m pretty much always on the lookout for ‘the next Nina’; to discover an artist about whom I was previously unaware, but that goes on to have a huge significance in my life. So to say I was happy that she agreed to an interview is somewhat of an understatement.
Religious tells stories about you growing up in the Pentecostal Church, and also explores your attraction to spiritual mystique and the supernatural. Were these attractions you felt as a child, or did they come later?
I’ve always felt open to different possibilities, and maybe seen that as a result of my childhood within the church. As if it gave me an understanding of belief – no matter what the belief relies on. But when I was a child I thought everything needed to be categorised, divided into good or evil. That’s not how I see it now.
I love Nina Kinert. Her 2018 album Romantic and In Twos EP from the same year are releases I return to frequently, but she’s been relatively quiet since then, averaging about a single a year in the intervening years. So I was very excited to get stuck into her new album Religious, which explores some of her stories about growing up within the Pentecostal Church Community in Sweden , while at the same time dealing with her “attraction to spiritual mystique and the supernatural.” As with most of her work, Marble Armour is hauntingly beautiful, and a great entry point into her often electronically inflected, folk-led musical world if she’s escaped your attention until now.
Taken from Helena Deland’s second album Goodnight Summerland, Roadflower is quietly stunning. Written in the aftermath of the death of Deland’s mother, many – if not all – of the songs deal with death and its aftermath, with its tone similar to recent albums by Tomberlin: mournful, but exquisitely, cathartically so.
https://helenadeland.bandcamp.com/album/goodnight-summerland
The Predatory Wasp 