OK, another year has gone by since I last wrote up some things I’ve been listening to! I still listen to all of those things I was recommending this time last year, which is part of my point of going slow and not just sharing a link to a brand new release. So, here’s another five things I’ve really soaked in over the last year.
Externalism – Externalism (False)
Almost no one has tried to follow in the footsteps of Basic Channel, Chain Reaction, and so on, but make it R&B. This is an EP presenting four versions of the one track, with differing levels of abstraction. The first version has the world’s most distant vocals, like just the ghost of a performance. There are lush chords and the most skeletal, dubbed-out rhythm section ever, and elsewhere some expressive noodling from an EWI. I love it all.
Caroline – caroline 2 (Rough Trade)
This might be my album of 2025 at this rate. This 8-piece British band basically make laid back, often pretty-yet-lo-fi indie songs. In the ensemble they must have strings and woodwinds, alongside more typical band instruments. They are deceptively weird. The opener, ‘Total Euphoria’, for me entirely lives up to its name and made me laugh out loud more than once from surprise and joy.
The best website I’ve found in the last year is the writer-owned music journalist co-op Hearing Things, and I found out about the album there. I really like getting music news and opinions from a site that survives solely on user subscriptions. No ads, no hoovering up of usage data, no payola vibes or weird concessions to some parent company, etc.)
Fergus Jones – Ephemera (Numbers)
If the above could be this year’s, this might be my fave album from 2024. It reminds me most of Joy Orbison, without having all that much specifically in common. I think the reminder or connection for me is dance music vocab but often quite adventurous sound choices and also plenty of more home listening vibes. So this is largely chill, downtempo electronic stuff, with a couple of vocal numbers including the highlight, ‘Heima’, a collaboration that has James K singing and Huerco S co-producing. As with those other artists, Jones is calling back to stuff I was into 25-30 years ago, whether he knows it or not, with solid nods to trip-hop, some icy turn of the century techno-y stuff, and some unmoored ambient drift.
Etelin – Patio User Manual (Beacon Sound)
I really don’t know how to describe this guy’s stuff. I mean let’s just go with ambient. But it’s not sustained drones, or big caverns of washed out sound. It’s not techno- or dub-adjacent. I join dots in my head with things back in the day like Microstoria and earlier Oval. It’s often quite nice, quite playful, and a little bit bent and weird. Anyway, I’ve got three Etelin albums and I really, really like all of them.
Over on Bandcamp I wrote:
Charming little sound worlds, as usual. This kind of “ambient but not all drenched in reverb” aesthetic is extremely my thing.
Erik M – Soft Wish (Kora)
Erik Mowinckel has mostly released under his own name and done several things I’d recommend, but why not start here? It’s beautiful. Another in the ambient, soft and small-sounding camp. I am an absolute sucker for noisy sounds (as in white noise, not aggro), what sound like chopped up acoustic sources, reversed things, and sparse synth bass. I find it hard not to want to mention Twin Peaks. It doesn’t sound much like Angelo Badalamenti’s score, but more like Lynch’s approach to sound as a whole.