The Predatory Wasp
Every Mariah the Scientist album so far has included a track that’s reduced me to a helpless mess: All For Me from RY RY WORLD and Reminders from MASTER, so anticipation was high for her latest, HEARTS SOLD SEPARATELY. Sure enough she’s done it again, this time with the Kali Uchis collab Is It a Crime made with producers Mat1k, Oliver Easton, and Nineteen85, the latter of whom is part of the duo Dvsn with which this track shares notable similarities. It’s so good!
Danny L Harle is a man of many talents; from working with Charli XCX and Caroline Polachek to producing perhaps of the greatest modern odes to hardcore to his latest project Starlight Divergence a haunting ambient LP producer in collaboration with Dutch producer Torus. Years ago when I worked at a house music record label in London, people lol’d at me constantly for my love of trance. Well who’s laughing now, you pricks?? Trance is back baby; in myriad, evocative, interesting forms, and you’re saying the poster boy for house is this guy?
Hailing originally from Montenegro, but having long departed for stints living in London, Rome, Philadelphia and his current home Nicosia in Cyprus, Martel is a former architect who has turned to building dystopian and subversive soundscapes. After creating characteristically atmospheric tracks for film and theatre, he’s launched his own Evil Ideas label and has just released ‘The Ghost’, a super-detailed techno cut that layers Dozzy-esque polyrhythms with hand-played percussion and synthetic textures. The full Zaire EP will be landing on vinyl later this year.
‘Change into One Another’ is a collaborative single by two of my favourite alt-pop artists, Discovery Zone and John Moods. The two share a long creative history, from playing together in the band Fenster to being partners in life. The track was written while they were parting ways, and both the song and its video explore how love changes us, and what follows in its aftermath.
https://mansionsandmillions.bandcamp.com/track/change-into-one-another-2
Sultry, low-key r&b for you today from French-born, London-based singer-songwriter and producer Léa Sen who first came to prominence with a breathy, resonant vocal on Joy Orbison’s Better in 2021, quickly followed by collaborations with Sampha, Oscar Jerome, Wu‑Lu, and Vegyn. This is taken from her debut LP LEVELS which was co-produced with her brother Florian, with each track representing a different floor in a liminal hotel of memory and growth.
XENIA REAPER lands on Berlin’s Oscilla Sound with seven deft cuts, gently fusing the outer realms of spectral ambience and delicate breaks.
First Floor‘s Shawn Reynaldo described Canadian producer 747’s new LP Pacific Spirit as “if Tin Man made a jungle record”, and that’s pretty much all you need to know. Where his past work etched itself in acid techno, Pacific Spirit blooms with expansive, saturated colours and wears its vulnerable, optimistic heart very much on its sleeve.
A new Burial record is an increasingly rare thing: his new EP Comafields / Imaginary Festival is his first original material for over a year, following a split release with Kode 9. Comafields opens with a sample of Russell Crowe as Noah from Darren Aronofsky intensely odd 2014 movie (sure) and then meanders through all the Burial tropes: vinyl crackle, celestial rave, abrupt tonal and rhythmic shifts, ethereal, whispered vocals, before seemingly sampling himself with the final shuffling percussive flourish. And… it’s great!
https://burial.bandcamp.com/album/comafields-imaginary-festival
Like many of the songs on The Antlers undeniable masterpiece Familiars, their new single Carnage starts as a whisper and ends with a roar, and is, according to the band’s Peter Silberman “a song about a kind of violence we rarely acknowledge—violence not born of cruelty, but of convenience. Innocent creatures are swept up in the path of destruction as their world collides with ours, and we barely notice.”
I fucking LOVE The Antlers, and really want to enjoy their forthcoming album Blight (10 October, Transgressive) in full, so won’t be listening to any more of the inevitable singles. But suffice to say, this is a very promising start.
Had me fooled 😦
The Predatory Wasp 