Maybe it’s been a foolish endeavor, and maybe I’m the only one who misses the blog ol’ days, but I’ve been giving it a shot. I’ve been working on restoring some of the old content, though much of it was lost. I’ve slowly been rebuilding the old remix sunday archives, and even posting the occasional new edition. And I’ve been writing again.
You can find all the label’s releases here, on bandcamp, or most anywhere you listen to music these days. I’ve still got copies of some of the old vinyl releases, and I recently released the first in a set of charitable cassette compilations to raise awareness about the continued [mis]use of broken windows policing methods.
Plus, I put together a playlists section with a handful of spotify lists that hopefully start to capture a [slightly] updated version of the moods we used to peddle. Give those a listen and a ❤ if you would be so kind. If you want to get in touch, just give me a holler.
Celestial-scale breakbeats from British-Croatian Morwell, off of his newly released remix EP on which he reinterprets the tracks from his previous record from early last year, Resonance. In the case of “Loving You,” the dissonant rave stabs of the original are swapped out for cosmic piano chords, and vocals read from HP Lovecraft’s Beyond the Wall of Sleep, and the clobber of the break is dialed back (but just a smidgen). While these two versions exist in the same general orbit, the other remixes on the new record tend to be more severe departures from the originals upon which they’re based, often dipping dramatically in tempo or shifting genre altogether.
You can grab both the Resonance remixes or the originals on Morwell’s bandcamp, and while you’re there, check out his whole catalog. He’s impressively prolific; there’s tons of good stuff to get lost in. You can also find all of his stuff from streaming, if that’s more your speed.
Infectiously odd experimentation from New Zealand’s Havening. I’m telling you, they do it weird in NZ. I wrote about someof Havening’s compatriots last month—about how well those artists from NZ captured a sense of everyday dread and gloom, and that maybe that was part of the Kiwi condition, so to speak. But this track, and Havening’s other work, leads me to believe it may be more accurate to describe a willingness to embrace esoterica, and let the everyday weird in. This song is just as strange as those I posted from flip for garth and Qwazdyn, but most of the gloom is replaced by a sense of calm curiosity. There’s still an underlying current of mild dread in that arpeggiating synth line, but don’t we all wake up some mornings with a combination of resignation and optimism? I may dread one part of my upcoming day, and look forward to another.
I’m not sure if there’s more direct meaning intended here. ‘Gorp’ is a funny word, and that may be the extent of it, or maybe Havening is referencing the act of eating greedily, or an affinity for trail mix. Either way, I like this song.
You can find this for streaming anywhere you do that sort of thing, or support the artist by grabbing a copy on bandcamp.
First up is Syglit, an artist from Russia about whom I know just about nothing else, but both tracks on their new record are sublime exercises in mood and glitch. Find them streaming all over, or grab them on bandcamp.
Syglit – “you_re late” (sc)
Syglit – “source .env” (sc)
Next is the new single from Iranian artist Pari Eskandari. I posted the video for Eskandari’s previous single a couple of months ago, which was a vivid exploration of the struggle of women in Iran, made in-part as a tribute to Mahsa Amini. This new song is equally compelling, and was produced by Eskandari, together with Tricky and Peter Kirn, and released on Tricky’s False Idols imprint. Find it for streaming, or on bandcamp.
Pari Eskandari – “Drehmoment” (sc)
The last one is from another artist I know little about: London’s Omar Moon. This is from a charming beat tape that you can find on all the streamers, but unfortunately not on bandcamp. Thankfully, Moon okayed me sharing with you all the mp3, which you can download below. Lovely stuff, this.
I was so overcome by excitement for Olof Dreijer‘s Rosa Rugosa 12″ last year on Hessle Audio that I totally overlooked sharing it here. Suffice it to say, the record was exactly what I’d been missing since falling in love with the old Knife records — songs that elegantly teeter between emotionality and humor. Dreijer hasn’t lost any of his Swedish knack for pop sensibility, and he’s still combining that with a healthy dose of side eye, a curled smile, and an aesthetic all his own: one I will clumsily describe as evocative of impish toucans flying around in a botanical garden formed of plasticine.
Now he’s got another record on the way, this time for the ever-exciting AD93. It’s out March 6th, but you can listen to the A1 below, and pre-order the 12″ on bandcamp. You can also still grab a copy of Rosa Rugosaon bandcamp too, but I’m sure they’ll sell out soon. I can’t pick a favorite song from that record, so I’m just sharing all three here.
Number Face is the new album from Tokyo and Paris-based composer Hidetoshi Koizumi. Koizumi is better known as Hybrid Leisureland, the pseudonym under which he released music between the years of 2007 and 2021, at which point he shifted to using his real name. The new album—his second under his real name—follows closely his previous work, and is primarily concerned with the intersection of serene texture and minimalist, hyper-intricate programming. Over the course of the album’s seventy-five minutes, on songs like “Finale” and “Illusion in Illusion,” Koizumi coasts gently across the tranquil waters of carefully laid pad washes, disturbed only by the delicate insect-wing flutters of serial clicks and blips. He moves from the near-neo-classical territory of “Clowns” and “Second Delight” to songs like “Phantom” and “Misalignment” that almost feel like highly restrained takes on dub techno.
Koizumi describes Number Face as an exercise in “express[ing] a sympathy with the various movements of the human heart; the thoughts, feelings, and concerns of our daily lives.” This sentiment feels realized here. After a few listens, I found myself hearing the record as the soundtrack of everyday people completing their activities of daily living, if perhaps at times at both lethargic and manic paces. On “Second Delight” I can picture the overworked parent frantically vacuuming their house as soon as they’ve arrived home from work, before rushing to get dinner prepared; “Snow Tiger” could be the soundtrack of someone soaking in the tub until they prune; “Judge” could be the song you hear when you catch someone’s eye for a couple of seconds too long on the street; album closer “So Was Red” could be just for someone eating a meal alone with their thoughts.
These daily mundanities are easily overlooked, but they carry with them most of our feelings and thoughts, whether fleeting or concrete. As is the case with much of his previous work, Koizumi seems willing to treasure these moments, in lieu of focusing on the more melodramatic or visceral. The result is a record that at first blush is placid, but upon more thoughtful reflection is full of insight into everyday living, the kind of record that can keep you company while keeping you even-keeled — one that doesn’t feed on your agita or lull you to sleep.
Number Face is available now on all streaming services, and for purchase on bandcamp.
I’ve got so much good stuff coming in all the time, and I don’t always have the bandwidth to cover as much as I’d like. So, in the interest of not letting too many gems fall through the cracks, I’ll occasionally be collecting a handful of recent contributions into a new From the Mailbox feature.
Wonderfully idiosyncratic club music from Perth’s Nikolas Thompson. I love when a song feels totally built for purpose, like it was produced by a DJ just to fill a specific hole in their set. Grab the mp3 so it can serve that purpose for you too. Thompson seems full of personality, zeal, and good ideas, so I’d keep an ear out for more from him.
Next, it’s more dancefloor frenzy from Norway’s Dr. Sepi. This time it’s breakneck triplet carioca syncopation meets 170bpm breakbeat fury. DJ’s: grab the mp3 for free below (and don’t miss that last one I posted too).
More unabashedly vulnerable dance music from North London’s Sound of Fractures (aka Jamie Reddington), who I’ve covered a couple of times now. This is the third single from Reddington’s interactive album Scenes, a project that encourages listeners to contribute their own memories and rewards them by generating unique album art for the next song in the series based on their contribution (plus one of the submissions becomes the official artwork). Participate in the project, and in so doing get to have a listen to the next single.
The Scenes project is also emblematic of Reddington’s approach. I’ve been following him on socials the past few months, and the guy is clearly working hard to try to create something special — leaving no stone unturned. I know he has young children, as I do, so I’m extra impressed by what he’s managing to accomplish. He’s seemingly using even the most peripheral of moments to generate content that may inch him forward. I can’t always say the same for myself, but his determination is almost as inspiring as the music itself.
Find this song, along with previous Sound of Fractures material, on all the streaming services, or support the artist and grab this one on bandcamp.
Do you wanna have a baby?
Do you wanna bring people into this world?
Hope battles doom on Danish composer Astrid Sonne‘s new LP Great Doubt. It’s fair to feel trapped in this tension. There’s so much in the world to be in awe of, and so much simple beauty by which to be captured. But we’re also inundated with information that rightly ought to make us doubt our collective futures, and in turn would cause most artists seeking sincerity or posterity to doubt themselves. Sonne puts these contradictions on plain display on her new record, and in doing so, gives the impression of utter confidence–anything but great doubt.
Sonne’s previous three records were largely instrumental; confluences of heady and often futuristic sound design and measured instrumentation. They were all terribly beautiful at times, but also sometimes bearish. They gave a sense of Sonne as thoughtful and self-aware, but maybe also a touch self-conscious or unfeeling. There were previous glimpses of something else among those records too — Cliodynamic‘s “To Change Is To Continue”, outside your lifetime‘s “Withdrawal”, or Human Lines‘s “Alta” were all moments that made me sure something much more fluid was at work beneath all the virtuosity.
The new record is so much looser than its predecessors, and it’s wonderful for it. Most obvious is the addition of Sonne’s words; they appear on much of Great Doubt, and they’re almost all full of such a welcoming tender unpretentiousness and intimacy. But I also get the impression that Sonne has become unwilling to hide behind a complicated sound palette. The sound design across the album is skeletal, and at times, almost naive in its simplicity (at least when compared to her previous work). This is a ruse, I think — there’s still plenty of care put into these sounds, but I think that’s mostly just a product of Sonne’s skill in getting at the essence of the recipe, no longer overworking the ingredients. I believe she just had the confidence on this record to let the sounds serve the songs, and not obfuscate her feelings with overthinking.
Great Doubt is out now on Escho. You can purchase it on bandcamp, or find it for streaming anywhere.
New work from Tommy Simpson, also known as Macro/micro, whose last album I wrote about in 2022. This song is the ending credits music for R.A.E.R BETA 0027, a sci-fi short film about a novel confrontational therapy modality that cinematizes the subject’s psyche and draws them through a visual tour of their own memories and feelings. It’s a wild little film, and Simpson’s score is perfectly subdued and tense. His work lends itself to this sort of thing, so it’s no wonder the whole soundtrack works so well. Find it on bandcamp, or for streaming all over.
Macro/micro – “Reassembling the Self” (bc)
Simpson also recently released “VoE” or (Velocity of Emotions), a commission for Lever Couture to soundtrack their recent collection and runway event of the same name. This is an epic—clocking in at just over fifteen minutes, but wholly engaging throughout—intended to capture the internal contradictions of being human, and our collective struggle to find peace in our respective polarities. Listen below, or find it on bandcamp.
Glittery and tense breakup pop from Oslo’s Maud, real name Kristine Hoff. The gist here is straightforward, but familiar to many: it’s after a painful breakup and you’d rather never see that other person again (or at least you need some real distance for a minute), but you keep running into them, either actually, virtually, or at least mentally.
This is from Maud’s upcoming full-length The Love That Remains, which you can pre-order on bandcamp. It’s out February 16th. You can also find this for streaming all over.
Filter house meets g-tech from Baltimore’s club queen, TT The Artist, together with Noisia’s Thys and Big Dope P himself. Doppie and Moveltraxx continue their neverending quest to remain the most productive ass shakers east of the Atlantic.
Taken from the upcoming SBF26 compilation, out 2/26. Preorder on bandcamp, or find it for streaming wherever.
More of that internetcore-adjacent online jungle I was onabouta couple of months ago. This time it’s this very playstation roller from miiinty, who I know nothing about except that they’re [maybe] from the UK. Besides the song’s bloodshot title, the only indication of miiinty’s inspiration is the following statement: “born to uwu forced to thug it out tbh.” Like any good loading screen song, this song’s appeal is immediate and it remains engaging throughout, in a way that could probably go on forever before you’d notice the game had frozen.
Not on bandcamp, but you can find it for streaming anywhere you’d think to look.
miiinty – “playing spyro on a ps2 emulator gave me a hit of dopamine!!!” (sc)
Like many of her fans, I became aware of LA-based bad snacks from that great track she made during a session of Andrew Huang’s “4 producers 1 sample” challenge. Notwithstanding her violin chops, at the time, she was primarily putting out LA beat scene-type stuff (there’s still no great name for that subgenre, but you know the wonky stuff I’m referring to, right?), which she continued to focus on for quite a while afterwards. She did some great performances in that context too, including online during the pandemic for the likes of Brainfeeder’s twitch channel.
Lately though, she’s been putting out sublime dance music. She shies away from calling it house music, instead referring to it as “home music.” Cute joke, sure, but it’s honestly a pretty apt description. I can’t really see “iiwannabe” fitting all that well in most club sets, but I sure do see plenty of people (myself included) really enjoying a romp around the living room to it.
Grab this on bandcamp or find it for streaming. Her youtube persona, much like her music, is also as earnest as can be, and a great resource for producers and other music people of all sorts—I recommend you check that too, if you’re not already there.
Today is just a day for experimental composition and ambient explorations, I guess. Seattle-based composer and producer Stephen Karukas, aka kmodp sent me this curious piece a couple of weeks ago. The title refers to Samuel Morse’s first message sent over telegraph: “What Hath God Wrought.” As Karukas tells it, because this first transmission was the basis of all electronic communication that followed—including music distribution—he sought to write something that would juxtapose Morse’s “weathered quasi-religious” message with other elements more “enigmatic and futuristic.” The song does just that. It feels like its the product of time travel, like something that might have been made by a church organist from 1844 transported to the present and plopped in front of an open Ableton Live session.
The song is available now on bandcamp or for streaming. It’s the first single from kmodp’s upcoming album Crimée No. 7 scheduled for released in early February.
kmodp – “2023:01.2 Electric Telegraphy 24 May 1844” (bc)
Sebastian Zawadzki is a Polish-born classical pianist and composer living in Copenhagen. His previous work tends closer to the neoclassical, having composed for the Budapest Symphony Orchestra and across film and television. The two songs I’ve included here are less so. They’re from his upcoming full length Pax Elysium (which might be loosely translated from the latin to ‘heaven’s peace’). Both are delicate and minimalist, based primarily on an electronic sound palette—the whole album is just as meditative and patient. It’s a beautiful and accessible record, and could work just fine as pleasant background music, but Zawasdki’s attention to detail really rewards the attentive listener—I suggest taking a half hour to actively listen to the whole thing.
Pax Elysium is available for streaming all over. It’s not yet available for purchase, but you can find the two included singles on bandcamp.
Sebastian Zawadzki – “Dulcis Experrectio” (bc)
Sebastian Zawadzki – “Quiessentia Inter Notas” (bc)
Otherworldly experiments in sound design from Mattia Cupelli, based in Rome. “Cells” is from Cupelli’s newest album, Artificial Hades—it typifies the album’s overall sense of menace and its exploration of data as living entity. Save for a few moments of elemental reprieve, most the record is true to its title; it sounds like the white-hot forging of new elements and their painful journey from the underworld up to the earth’s surface. Not for the faint of heart, but also full of beauty.
I’ve also included a track from another recent collection EP III 2017_2020. “Eon” gazes upward more and is slightly gentler than the material on the new album, but is perhaps and even more impressive demonstration of Cupelli’s command of restrained distortion.
Both records are available on bandcamp or for streaming. I recommend exploring Cupelli’s whole catalog, there’s tons to explore.
Pristine percussive downtempo from Icelandic couple Keli (Hrafnkell Örn Guðjónsson) and EstHer (Esther Þorvaldsdóttir). “Gufunes” is named after the area of Rejkavik where the couple live — once a thriving settlement, it became a waste disposal site, and has now been repurposed as a sculpture park and center for creative innovation. Þorvaldsdóttir is herself a member of the Intelligent Instruments Lab, which developed the proto-langspil—used as the lead on the song. The instrument is based on the traditional Icelandic langspil or trichord, but has been augmented with an embedded computer running algorithms to manipulate the strings’ vibrations, in an effort to bring unpredictability to the instrument’s tone and resonance. Guðjónsson, an accomplished drummer and percussionist, used a violin bow to create the lead rhythm, while Þorvaldsdóttir adjusted the strings’ suspension in real time to modulate the instruments’ pitch and rhythm. The result is haunting.
Pick up the song on bandcamp, or stream it anywhere streaming is done.
When Joseph Salazar, a producer and composer from Austin, sent over this song, he included only a link to the following tweet by writer and illustrator Tim Urban:
The last stars will die out 120 trillion years from now (at most) followed by 10^106 years of just black holes.
Condensed, that’s like the universe starting with 1 second of stars and then a billion billion billion billion billion billion billion years of just black holes.
Stars are basically the immediate after-effects of the Big Bang. A one-second sizzle of brightness before settling into an essentially endless era of darkness.
We live in that one bright second.
As much of a mind fuck as the thought of all that is, how can you not feel a little luckier to get to live within that “one bright second”? The thought of an eternity of darkness before and afterwards is terrifying, but I’m comforted by my luck to have landed where and when I did. I think this is applicable on a smaller scale too: sometimes I wish I’d been born in another era, especially when I worry about how the world will change throughout my daughter’s lifetime, but I should ultimately just count myself lucky that I get to have lived now versus having missed it all altogether. The luck is in the living itself.
This song must have been made in the same stargazing frame of mind. It sounds it–contemplative synthwave with a fuzzy euphoric finish.
Grab it on bandcamp for whatever you wish to pay, or find it for streaming anywhere.
Apache chops and hurdy-gurdy drone on this bouncy breakbeat number from Berlin-based an:mu, who describes their material as “just some music.” Their naming conventions are similarly understated—despite having released dozens of tracks on several releases in the past year alone, almost all the songs are just numbered, with no names, and the EPs are also just named by catalog number. “04” is from an:mu’s latest AN016, which includes five other similarly expressive breakbeat-heavy tracks. “02” is from their previous AN015, released this past October, which is a little deeper and nods closer to outsider and ambient house.
Grab these on bandcamp for whatever you wish to pay. Or stream them to your heart’s content wherever you do that.
Gentle warble meets satisfying rattle on this easygoing breakbeat exploration by Toronto-based Fermi Lëkundë. The winter feels insurmountable here right now (Toronto’s probably worse), but as its title would imply, this track has genuine springtime vibes. I’m here for it; sun and sky, please.
Grab this on bandcamp or stream it wherever you do that. (And while you’re there, check the club mix version, which is something else entirely.)
Clean lines and overall precision on this lovely bit of melodic brain dance from Guadalajara-based Australian pianist Bermano. I’m also including an older track— “Humo”— which he sent me a couple of years ago and I previously overlooked. Similar melodic exactness on this, but based on a 2-step shuffle.
Grab these on bandcamp or stream them on your outlet of choice.
Jaunty two-step roller from Philly’s Doris Saturday (real name Roby Saavedra). There’s a touch of bitterness and sadness in those Rhodes too, which is probably appropriate given the song is named after a man famous for killing a killer. It’s a really pretty song.
This is from Saavedra’s recent self-released Memorylessness three-tracker, which you can grab for whatever you wish to pay on bandcamp.
While you’re there, check his last few releases too—including his excellent January 2023 maxi for Queens-based label Mechanical. I’ve included the B-side from that below as well, but both sides are excellent.
Seven minutes of dramatic metallic techno from Chaos Control (aka Darion Bradley). Bradley is based in Greensboro, NC, but there’s no doubt this cut from his latest EP Shed Skin is waist deep in the waters of Lakes St. Clair and Eerie. It’s undeniably Detroit.
Grab Shed Skin on bandcamp or stream it wherever you do your streaming.
Two and a half minutes of jitter, spikes, and wash-out from German producers Maurice Schirm and Panksovic. Isolating Northern European melancholia complement perfectly these dreary midwinter days here in the Northeast.
Out now on Schirm’s own Signal Weltfunk imprint as part of the Absence Presence EP. Grab it on bandcamp or stream away.
I was fourteen when Massive Attack’s Mezzanine was released, and like many, I bought it at first sight—for that album cover—despite not yet knowing what trip hop was. At that point in my life, I would typically go to my local Tower Records after school to try to find hiphop records I didn’t already have—it wasn’t usually a fruitful task. Even though the genre was fully ubiquitous by that point, mainstream outlets still did pretty terribly to hide their implicit (or explicit) bias against the genre. (And no need to pretend race and class weren’t a big part of that.) Similarly, despite being a huge store with plenty of room for experimentation, Tower wasn’t actively featuring many import records either. But I’m super thankful to whoever the Tower employee was who decided Mezzanine was a worthy record to put on a display rack — I doubt I’d have noticed it otherwise. Because of that discovery (and learning about the existence of Fat Beats a few weeks later), my tastes took a sharp left turn and my life was changed.
This song by Swedes boerd and Boko Yout (Bård Ericson and Paul Adamah, respectively) is an unambiguous callback to the records of that era. I’m certainly not alone in recognizing trip hop’s quiet return to relevance, but I suspect I’m also not the only one who righteously continued listening to the genre throughout its colder years. It seems to me a sign of being well-adjusted to periodically make room for listening to the milestone records of one’s youth, if for no other reason than to put one’s teen angst in some perspective—and maybe to recognize where a more critical ear would have been deserved in the first instance.
Boko Yout’s vocals here—particularly in the verses—can’t avoid some comparison to Daddy G’s gravely timbre, but boerd’s production doesn’t strike my ears as particularly close to the lineage of the genre’s more ubiquitous torchbearers, like Massive Attack or Portishead. Consistent with much of his earlier work, boerd’s beat is markedly less ominous or grim compared to those acts. It’s lighter; and that’s not a bad thing. The drums and use of scratching evoke something closer to the open breakbeat style of a Nightmares on Wax record. The walking bassline feels more like Morcheeba. And the pop sensibility of the songwriting and its key feels almost like something Sneaker Pimps would have written. These are all references to be plenty proud of too—trip hop wasn’t all utter darkness, it had its hopeful moments too.
Unfortunately for all you iPod revivalists, this isn’t on bandcamp (yet), so for now you’ll need an LTE signal to stream this on your commute.
“Idaho” is make-believe. Commonly misattributed to the Shoshone or Nez Pearce, the word was the 1860 invention of a delegate of the Jefferson Territory, who proposed its use as the name of the state that eventually became known as Colorado. Instead, it was adopted as the name of a steamboat that transported the thousands of miners up the Columbia river and its tributaries to the gold mines that were springing up in the Clearwater area of what later became the state of Idaho. That Jefferson delegate intended the word to mean “gem of the mountains” — so its adoption by miners was fitting, and it’s probably also the reason Idaho is nicknamed the “Gem State.”
The state isn’t well known for its music, but the way Lucy Dacus of boygenius tells it, Idahoans don’t want to be known for much, for fear that word gets out about just how beautiful the state is. Nonetheless, I can’t help but feel like there’s something bubbling up there. A few weeks ago I covered the immaculate dungeon synth of Boise’s Viscount and Brutus Greenshield, and that’s definitely the first time I’ve ever clocked any electronic music from the state, much less music so imaginative. So it feels like it can’t be a coincidence that I found another artist from the area releasing equally inventive ambient and experimental music.
nevereven is Dylan Seibert, from Star, ID—a 5000-pop suburb of Boise. He’s a young artist who’s recently self-released his debut LP Cautionary Tale (To Those Who Will Listen). To take a clumsy stab at categorization, I might say the record sits somewhere in the universes of hauntology, hypnogogic pop, and vaporwave, but none of that quite captures the starkness of most of its songs. Seibert admits an interest in plunderphonics, so references to 0PN or sunsetcorp wouldn’t be altogether inaccurate. Lopatin often shines in his insistence on recontextualizing the goofy and saccharine, but on songs with absurdist titles like “A Honeybee That Poops Out Dinosaurs” or “Stumbling Upon A Chasm That Leads To The Fourth Circle Of Hell”, Seibert’s outlook on fatuous subject matter seems decidedly darker—and the product feels immediately vulnerable as a result. This isn’t to say that he doesn’t wear some of his influences on his sleeve, but this music still feels sincerely exploratory.
Maybe adventure is what best captures the Idaho sound, if there is such a thing (I’m deciding there is, even if lacking any union). It’s probably reductive to say that 35 million beautiful acres of public land must inspire quests, even imaginary ones; or that little to no attention or scene-iness must reduce the pressure on artists to conform to a specific aesthetic. But I just can’t shake the sense that acts like nevereven are seeking out only what feels right and not presupposing the result. This spirit of exploration is almost literally captured by the foghorns and time-stretched accordions of the album’s closing track, “Voyager’s Lament”, but its implication is inescapable throughout the record.
Maybe it’s best to forget everything I’ve said about a nascent Idaho scene and let the Idahoans to themselves. Any way you cut it though, this record is a gem.
nevereven – “A Honeybee That Poops Out Dinosaurs” (bc)
nevereven – “Idle Soul and the Tale of the Crying Machine” (bc)
nevereven – “Stumbling Upon A Chasm That Leads to the Fourth Circle of Hell”
