The Predatory Wasp
This came out back in May, but it’s new to me and may well be to you as well. The collaborative project of Lankum’s Ian Lynch alongside George Brennan, One Leg One Eye output could mildly be described bleak and foreboding, with the inimitable Boomkat describing their new LP CRONE as “imagining Celtic folklore as molasses slow, rust-caked transcendent doom”.
Built entirely from source material supplied by zakè, Brian Grainger, working as Coppice Halifax, has somehow teased rhythms, melodies and entire compositions from recordings that contained no beats or obvious musical framework to begin with, uncovering possibilities that feel both surprising and strangely inevitable.
The result is Tree Grid, a collaborative LP that sits somewhere between reinterpretation and reinvention, never losing sight of where these sounds came from but constantly pushing them into unexpected territory. It’s also the first glimpse of what looks set to become a deeper collaboration between two artists whose approaches seem to complement each other remarkably well. If this doesn’t make my end of year shortlist I will be astonished.
Functions’s new LP Aeternum (Existenz) brings to a close a body of work that began with 2019’s Existenz. Written between 2016 and 2019 during an intensely productive period in the studio, the six-track release explores ideas of transformation and renewal, taking inspiration from the seven stages of alchemy. It also serves as a tribute to Sumner’s friend and longtime collaborator John Mendez aka Silent Servant. If there’s a track that encapsulates the record’s atmosphere, it’s City Of Luz. Running for close to 13 minutes, layers of synth and texture gradually emerge before dissolving again, sitting somewhere between ambient electronics and hypnotic techno. Just how I like it.
https://function-inf-ny.bandcamp.com/album/aeternum-existenz
Originally sketched more than ten years ago before finally being completed, the new single from Sova (AKA Sophia Subbayya Vastek) is built around looping piano, warm woodwinds and subtle electronic textures that constantly evolve, and calls to mind work from another prepared piano devotee, Kelly Moran. It’s taken from Sova’s forthcoming album Alight!, due on 4 September via Hout Records, with contributions from Clarice Jensen, Chuck Johnson, Spencer Zahn and others.
Avi Engel has shared ‘Garden Of Earthly Delights’, the first single from forthcoming album Seedhead. Taking its name from Hieronymus Bosch’s feverish vision of paradise, earthly pleasure and damnation, the seven-minute track opens with lyrics that immediately sets out its stall: “Slithering star, coruscant worm / burrowing deep in the guts of the earth / I’m cold / and I want to go home”. So far, so harrowing.
From there it unfolds slowly and sparsely, drawing together experimental art song, folk, chamber music and ethereal wave into something stunning, pastoral and bleak. Strings hover around Engel’s voice as themes of climate change, ecological grief and eco-horror emerge through strange, mystical poetry. Beautiful, unsettling music for a world that feels increasingly so.
A frankly ludicrous amount of talent combines for Everything Always Changes, For We’re Truly Here, a collaborative LP from four of the most boundary-pushing electronic and experimental artists working today. Cult Polish producer Przemysław Jankowiak, aka 2K88, brings together Rainy Miller, Lauren Duffus and Bianca Scout, creating a dreamlike album blending R&B, ambient electronics and fragmented vocals, inspired by the slow, dreamlike dance at the heart of the Polish film Salto.
https://fixedabode.bandcamp.com/album/everything-always-changes-for-we-re-truly-here
Chicago songwriter Tasha returns with her fourth album You Are Spring! which lands today and follows 2024’s All This and So Much More. The new LP continues her move towards a broader, more expansive sound while retaining the intimacy that has long defined her songwriting. Among the highlights is Clarion, a gently drifting folk-pop track inspired by repeated journeys between Chicago and New York and named after a small Pennsylvania town passed along the way. Like much of the album, it explores ideas of movement, change and finding a sense of home in unfamiliar places.
Laura Misch’s lates LP Lithic follows Sample The Sky and Sample The Earth, completing a loose trilogy of records shaped by landscape, natural processes and the relationship between sound and place, with this latest album taking its cues from caves, stone, weather systems and the vast stretches of time that leave their mark on both. Recorded across quarries, cliffs and caves in Cornwall, as well as locations in Greece, Berlin and South London, Lithic feels denser and more subterranean than its predecessors, with saxophone, voice, field recordings and electronics combing to impressively atmospheric effect.
Les Imprimés is the project of Norwegian songwriter and producer Morten Martens, whose second album Fading Forward is out now on Big Crown Records following the excellent Rêverie from a couple of years ago. Drawing on soul, doo-wop and alternative pop without sounding especially concerned about genre boundaries, Martens fills these songs with reflections on love, loss, memory and the passing of time, all delivered with a warmth that feels unforced and personal.
Forest Drive West’s new album Mantis 1920 sits somewhere between Donato Dozzy and Andy Stott, so you know I’m loving it! Right lads? Lads!??
The Predatory Wasp 