The Predatory Wasp
The title of Corrina Repp’s new LP, ACTIVITY DREAM: Instrumentals on the guitar Vol. 1, tells you everything you need to know. It’s beautiful, fragile music, ripe with wonder and yearning. There’s also a 36 page photo book that accompanies the release, described by Repp as full of “perfect accidents I feel lucky enough to witness.”
https://corrinarepp.bandcamp.com/album/activity-dream-instrumentals-on-the-guitar-vol-1
This is a new collab from funk/soul music artist, producer, and songwriter Tim Rose and R&B and multi-instrumentalist DDidThat, the fourth in a series of reflective, funk-inspired lofi compositions. It’s a real, head-nodding vibe of a record, rolling unhurriedly along on shuffling breaks, gentle guitar and meandering Rhodes-y piano: the ideal soundtrack for drifting away to lands more pleasant and peaceful.
It’s fairly outrageous that despite stealing the name for this blog from one of his songs, I’ve barely acknowledged than Sufjan has put out four (four!) albums in the last month or so. Arguably it’s one album, split into four parts, but still. My various excuses: I’ve been busy! There’s been a lot of good music to cover! Pubs have been open! Etc. Anyway, this is me officially saying: these albums exist and are all out now and are definitely worth your time. Also, they’re all on YouTube in their entirety.
Like many of Sufjan’s albums, they’re self-indulgent and meandering. Also like every single one of his albums, there are moments of such sublime, heart-rending beauty that you can’t imagine listening to anyone else ever again. Revelation V is one of those moments, but there are many, many more.
Less than six months after the release of The Ascension – about which I still have mixed feeling to say the least – Sufjan has just announced a new instrumental album, Convocations. Comprised of five volumes – Meditations, Lamentations, Revelations, Celebrations and Incantations – the project is “a two-and-a-half-hour, 49-track reflection on a year of anxiety, uncertainty, isolation, and loss”, and while I’ve probably done enough reflecting over the last year or so, it’s Sufjan, so this is obviously excellent news, as even if it’s likely – on recent form – to be an uneven two-and-a-half-hours, you’re pretty much guaranteed at least a few moments of indescribable beauty. Out 06 May digitally, and 20 August via 5xLP colored vinyl boxset .
The Predatory Wasp 