I’ve decided to take the stats I normally share on social media each month, provide links, and write something. As per Disquiet’s great post about why you should blog, blogging is mostly for the writer. So I’ll try and see what that does for me.

I use last.fm to capture basically all music I listen to: MP3s on my computer or phone, plays on Deezer, and plays on the Bandcamp app. Despite last.fm feeling like a bit of a ghost town now, some freaks have built a new last.fm chart visualisation app, Musicorum, which I’m using for this image of what I listened to.

Two things bug me about how last.fm does its charts. First, they’re based on number of different tracks you play, not amount of time spent listening. I picked up and listened to Chad Munson’s Lost Language quite a bit in July, but its 50-minute duration is made up of two tracks, so it’s unlikely to show up. Conversely, an album with many short tracks will end up at the top of the charts even if I just listened to it once or twice.

The second thing is that I listen to a lot of compilations, but I guess because each track has its own artist name they don’t always show up in last.fm charts as one album. Weirdly, MP3s from my phone show up as one album, but not on my laptop. 🤷‍♂️

I bought three compilations in July that I really liked and listened through multiple times, plus the new Strange Behaviour compilation I’m on, Ambient Maladies:

• Jogging House of Seil Records put together A Communal Compilation, which is a lot of unknown artists making gentle synth-led ambience;
• a hefty charity record, Slow Sketch 2: Reflections of the Ambient Community, which is quite diverse for an ambient comp, but leans towards the more earnest and droney end of ambience; and
• recent obsession Nikolaienko led me to what looks to be his label, Muscut, and the compilation Test Pressing III, which contains Muscut artists plus Andrew Pekler, Jan Jelinek, and more doing often weird and murky electronic experiments that I find hard to sum up in a sentence.

Right, here’s links and thoughts on that top 9.

Matt Rösner – No Lasting Form (Room40)

I’ve been happily listening to Matt’s collaboration with Seaworthy on 12k for a decade or more now and was excited to stumble upon this new solo work via browsing Lawrence English’s Room40 label.

Matt says of his process that “There were months where I didn’t record a single note, I just listened in a very detailed and deliberate way.” and for me the results reflect that slow and deliberate approach. I find the album hypnotic and quite its own thing. There is nothing I can point to that’s particularly formally distinctive, like the sounds he uses or compositional tricks or whatever, but I couldn’t point to any other beatless instrumental music and say “this record sounds like that”. The repeating sounds through most tracks often include piano- and bell-like noises, which make things feel not quite electronic and more environmental.

nueen – Nova Llum (Good Morning Tapes)

Literally Balearic music: chill out stuff from a guy from Mallorca. Often tracks feel kind of retro, from the slow breakbeat on Split which could be off some 90s 12″, to the crisp, sparkling synths and dramatic chords of Time=Feel which nods hard towards 90s ambience a la Global Communications’ classic. A great collection of tracks that flows really nicely.

Paq – Hyphae (Crash Symbols)

Another one that sometimes reminds me of the 90s, but more in the territory of the first few Air albums, some Skylab or something – and at times going way back to the Perrey & Kingsley records that people were sampling and making references to then. So, sometimes 90s, sometimes 60s and 70s via the 90s – thanks retro cycles! I mean, you have tracks with names like Atomic Samba! Overall, the album has a great psychedelic feel; a set of instrumental tracks that sometimes head off into space, but more often have a solid groove. Sometimes you’ve got old school drum machines, sometimes rolling, acoustic-sounding drums. Some double bass, some vibraphone, whatever spacey sounds making up the rhythm section, and often the kind of squeaky synth melodies I associate with old Moog records.

Midcentury Modular – Noncompetitive Music (Fallen Moon Records)

I got here because it’s a label that released me in the past – if I’m looking at a label to release my stuff it’s because they already put out things I like, so maybe that’s no great surprise. But then, after buying this, I discovered it’s the alias of a guy I’ve chatted with plenty via the lines forum. This release and Grosse’s do nothing to ease my feeling that ambient music is mostly practitioners listening to each other. 😅

Anyway, what we have here is a really tasty collection of synth jams. I would call it ambient, but it’s not in the washed-out or droning territory you might think of, and some tracks like entering the tunnel have a really driving pulse to them. The sounds lean towards grubby and fuzzy, with sounds collapsing into noise on some tracks, rather than all delicate sparkles and such. Some tracks like ciat 2 have chunky bass pedals, but my faves tend to me the lighter suspended tracks like the pair wandering flower garden and staggered blooms.

Ulla – Limitless Frame (Motion Ward)

I named Ulla’s first album as the single album on my end of year list for 2019. It felt like the thing I most wanted someone, anyone to check out. Ulla has turned out to be really prolific and I’ll admit I’m almost hitting the point of overload. I think this counts as her fourth solo album (so that’s three in the last year and a half), plus she’s done numerous shorter releases and amazing things with Perila, both under their separate names and as LOG.

I’ve listened to this heaps since it came out in late June and I think I have to admit it’s not my fave. It’s more diverse, e.g. one track is a mellow saxophone solo, another a murky piano lament (over 8 minutes!) and another sounds like guitar noodling – a bit more processed, like on Clearly The Memory, but still quite a departure from what she has been doing. On the split release with Oceanic, Plafond 4, she did things like this that I really liked, but here these tracks just don’t grab me and make me buzz like her more abstract moments where hard-to-describe sounds loop-but-don’t, coming and going and changing form. Still, that’s not to say it’s not a good record and I’ll still be jumping on whatever Ulla does next.

Grosse – Untitled (self-released)

From time to time I do the assignments from the Disquiet Junto, and Marc Weidenbaum has a Slack workspace for contributors to chat. I hang out there a lot and get a lot of recommendations. Grosse is another of the Slack members. He put out two releases concurrently in February. I finally picked up a copy of this one and have no regrets.

It’s another set of electronic instrumentals, each quite different from the next, and none landing neatly in the territory of a particular genre. I don’t have much more to say than that!

Womb – Holding A Flame (Flying Nun)

Something with singing! Heh, the only one. I will say Womb songs sound pretty samey to me, but it’s a samey I love. They remind me a little of a slightly sad-sounding indie I associate with the 90s, but I couldn’t name an act they specifically remind me of.

For this to make the charts means I listened to it a lot, because it’s just a four-track EP. Compare with e.g. Noncompetitive Music‘s twelve tracks.

Suuri-Pieksä – Fitolampa (Triangle & The Snitches)

Four lovely synth tracks, my fave being the dubbed out second track, which has this beautiful synth progression through loads of echoes accompanied by gurgling and lurching sounds like a tape being mangled. Something about how pretty and friendly the synth line is (and that it sounds like it’s being played, with variations) pairs beautifully with the quiet pitch mayhem happening in the background.

Nikolaienko – Rings (Faitiche)

Probably quite typically for me, most of what I listened to in July is music that I got in the same month. But this has stuck around for a while now. I don’t feel like I can describe it adequately. From the descriptions and so on I understand it’s mostly music made with tape loops. Perhaps because of that it has a retro electronic feel that goes all the way back to 50s and 60s recordings. There’s Forbidden Planet burbles and reversed bits on Mirrorage, plonky wooden percussion sounds wandering in and out on Hidden Track and a lot of gently looping synth tones, particularly on each of the tracks named Ambianta. I love it!

I’ll try and keep this tight: here’s five releases I’ve been listening to a lot since January. Thanks to the ongoing phenomenon of Bandcamp Fridays I’ve bought way too much music over the past year – you can always go look at my Bandcamp fan account for the whole damn list.

Lido Pimienta – Miss Colombia (Anti-)

One that came up from end of year lists, specifically Pitchfork’s The 22 Best Songs by Latinx Artists in 2020. I was blown away by the single Eso Que Tu Haces, and the more I dug into the album the more I found to enjoy. Many songs are cumbia of some flavour, but also arranged with layers of woodwind, brass, steel drums, and more. I’d love to understand more of the lyrics, but apparently Duolingo only gets me as far. Who woulda thunk?

I enjoyed this little documentary too.

Beatrice Dillon – Workaround (PAN)

Another one from lots of 2020 end of year lists. I’d love to know what Dillon was working around here, if we’re to take her track titles as being at all descriptive, because these sparse rhythm workouts sound like they were definitely always supposed to be this way. Synth stabs and drum machines suggest the lineage of house and techno, but the beats here never sit still. No extraneous stuff, often just a few chords and a drum machine, sometimes with an unadorned acoustic instrument playing alongside. And best of all, while the beats are often on the move, they don’t sound complicated or virtuosic. Just naturally roaming about with plenty of variety. The standout tracks for me are the ones with live tabla, such as the opening Workaround One.

LCM – Signal Quest (Orange Milk Records)

This trio create an otherworldly combo of sax with meandering keys and electronics. More like quiet fusion moments than the other releases on Orange Milk are. Really affecting and has rewarded repeat listens. I don’t have more to say on it, but if you like kinda new age-y things or quiet jazz fusion you may well enjoy this.

Picnic – Picnic (Daisart)

A beautiful thing from a duo associated with c-, some kind of social group of ambient music makers from Kansas, USA that includes exael, uon, Ulla Straus, Perila, Huerco S, and so on. As per some of those other acts, the music tends to involve floating synth chords and ASMR crackles. There are sometimes rhythmic bits but it’d be a stretch to say there are beats. Often things feel quite small and delicate – neither washed out in reverb like a drone record, nor covered in dub fx either.

The four different guest remixes bring more rhythmic takes, particularly Huerco S’s version of Folds and Rips.

Jonnine – Blue Hills (Boomkat Editions | Documenting Sound)

I’ve been quietly plugging my way through the Boomkat Editions | Documenting Sound releases, which were a collection of releases the webshop put out from musicians responding to COVID and 2020 and the rest. So far this album from HTRK’s Jonnine is a real standout. It might be the weirdest of the 5 albums I’m writing about here, but on the other hand it’s the most retro. Moody guitar, bass, drum machines, and layered vocals could all be from the 80s. Songs sometimes feel like just strange sketches, but almost always in a good way! The advertising copy refers to The Cure circa The Top, which is not what I would’ve thought of immediately, but I get it.

Happy New Year! It’s been a while since my last wee round up. What with the Bandcamp Fridays and all, I’ve consumed a stupid amount of new stuff which you can always nosey through on my Bandcamp fan page. But here’s six more releases I’ve enjoyed a lot in the last six months or so. All ambient stuff this time.

The Arteries of New York City – The Arteries of New York City (Bloxham Tapes)

Beautiful mysterious lounge bar jazz wanderings juxtaposed with more abstract atmospheres. The vocal closing track is a perfect way to go out – almost feels like a spoiler to mention it, sorry.

Jonathan Fitoussi – Plein Soleil (Transversales Disques)

Pretty, drum-free arpeggiating synth stuff, like taking something like Tangerine Dream’s ‘Love On A Real Train’ and exploring every branch that one track could take you down. 

The label is primarily a reissue label, which perhaps gives you a feel for how this is fairly retro. Still, it’s a clean and clear sounding beast compared to the more collagey or murky things I’m writing up elsewhere in this post.

Ike Zwanikken – For Little Limp and Tunnel Vision (Storage Media)

Four more ambient tracks, sometimes punctuated by majorly muffled or distant-sounding drums (but it’s always kept sparse). There’s a lot little events, layers and subtleties in these tracks, but mostly they just sound great. 🌹

Ike is from New Zealand and this was recorded in Berlin in 2017, but only released this year. It’s a massive contrast to the equally detailed, skittery dancey stuff he’s also put out as Ike.

Jeannine Schulz – Serve (self-released)

What I hear is a combination of grungey tape loops – plucks (guitars?) and chiming synth sounds – mixed with rich organ type keyboards. RIYL Marcus Fischer, Taylor Deupree, or both!

Schulz appeared seemingly out of nowhere this year and has cranked out a crazy number of releases. I haven’t checked out any others closely yet, because this has been enough. Really relaxing without being cloying, imo.

Robbie Elizee – Windows 95 Startup Blues / Central Standard Time (self-released)

All 3 tracks are absolutely cracking drones. I never know what distinguishes what I love from what I don’t, but this release has that thing.

Around the time of Black Lives Matters protests kicking off again earlier in 2020, there was a request on reddit for recommendations of Black musicians making ambient and this guy went in for a bit of self-promotion. I’m glad he did.

Nate Johnston – A Constellation of Similarities (AEMC Records)

A collection of curious little mysteries and surprises, mixing wandering synths with wordless male harmonies reminiscent of Beach Boys slow numbers, acoustic instruments, and who knows what else?

This is the first single-artist release from a record label that has evolved out of a Facebook group, Ambient and Experimental Music Community (AEMC). For all that Facebook might seem like a diminished and still-fading thing, I have to admit this group has been a quietly enjoyable “place” to spend some time. Social media platform guilty pleasures?

Not much more to say that I don’t cover in the video.

Well, a few comments:

I was keen to explain the overall thing right at the start so those who didn’t want to watch 8 minutes could get the gist upfront.

I did maybe 8 takes and this is a straight run through with some slight edits to the audio.

I didn’t script the video, but I had a plan in mind.

I didn’t even mention the software being used, but I figured it was about a writing technique, not about the specific tools used to achieve it.

The track I’m talking through here is Escalators, Violins off Quiet, and in this take I didn’t bother to mention that the title is pretty prosaic – the track has a squeaky escalator sample and violins in it – but also was me resisting going all in on an “escalating violence” pun.

The other track I mention near the end that uses similar techniques, but with multiple MIDI parts pointed at a mono synth, is Phase off Everything Happens, For Some Reason.

I guess I’m doing this kind of round up every 3 months then.

Huron – Happy Transmission (Rad Cult)

A beautiful set of wandering synth sounds that at times made me think of Boards of Canada minus the rhythm section. Quietly diverse, but not just all over the shop. And, yeah, do judge it by its cover. Really good fit.

Part of the steadily increasing proportion of stuff I buy from fellow music makers in online forums, Slack workspaces, Facebook groups, etc.

The Japanese House – Good At Falling (Dirty Hit)

I first got into this one woman band via this song, which isn’t on the album.

The album is in a similar vein, with a lot of processed vocals pitched and stacked and mangled, sorta new wavey electric guitar licks, and such. It struck me the arrangements are a lot like melodic IDM artist Lusine, just with full songs on top.

The album does get it a bit samey, but I love the highlights. I’ve listened to tracks like We Talk All The Time and Lilo so many times and am not sick of them.

Polygloss – Coronal (self-released)

I’ve listened to this a lot in the last month or two and it’s really taken me to some weird places, in the best of ways. It’s some guy I follow on Twitter for laughs and music nerdery – he just casually self-released a really tight album on one of those days when Bandcamp were waiving their fees.

Not sure I’ve got any useful descriptors for this. Synth music, quite spare and sometimes genuinely odd, but never in a way that’s hard work or sort of willful about it.

Klara Lewis – Ingrid (Editions MEGO)

Buy on Bandcamp.

A single long track developing from a cello loop over 20 minutes. I read comparisons to The Disintegration Loops, but this is more your classic crescendo from quiet to a roaring wall of noise, via slowly evolving spectral weirdnesses. It’s great imo.

Kmru – Saal (self-released)

I probably found this in this reddit thread promoting Black artists who make ambient music, one of several such lists that popped up in response to the death of George Floyd. I don’t see how buying Kenyan music supports the BLM cause, but I really liked these two tracks and wanted to buy them regardless.

Two ten-minute drone tracks that are a nice mix of field recordings and near-static tones. Quiet and quietening, IME.

Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe – Basalt Sphere (self-released)

This moody 20-minute long track reminds me of gamelan, gongs, chimes, and sometimes like something really big is starting to fall – a bit of a glacier, a large rock, a building. Tiny ghost vocals lurk in the mix and small changes really shift the rhythm of the elements. I love this kind of thing that can sound like not much is going on, but also sound like it never really sits still.

This New York synthesist’s looooong and slowly evolving tracks have been exciting me for a few years now, 2016’s Cognition – Observation and this 2014 video of a performance in San Francisco being particular faves.

Lowe’s been going hard out on Bandcamp in the last while, uploading his back catalogue and unreleased stuff alike, and I’ve been enjoying this one, Basalt Sphere, and Phosphenes in recent months.

Hadi Bastani – Emergence (Flaming Pines)

Yet another one I’m going to struggle to describe. Instrumental electronic stuff, with a real mix of sounds, from a moody building drone a little like the above Ingrid, through what sounds like scraping metal and feedback, to Raster.Noton-ish pulsing drum machine stuff, to gentle guitar arpeggios. His notes say “It brings together a host of field recordings, found object recordings, live improvisations, recycled sounds, synthesis, and voices, produced in Tehran and Belfast over the span of 10 years.” It’s really pretty diverse and I found it super-engaging.

I was paying special attention to Flaming Pines’ releases leading up to our Montano release on the label, and I’m very glad I listened to this one.

Hawthorn – Evening Dreams of Space Flight (self-released)

Impressive little debut EP (though that huge final track brings the total play time up to almost 40 minutes. I do my best to avoid the pretty empty word “cinematic” when describing instrumental music, but it’s probably apt here. Any of these tracks sounds like it could be a contemporary soundtrack piece.

The third release in this round-up that’s from someone I “know” online, in this case from the Disquiet Junto Slack.

n-So – Out of the Valley (Moderna Records)

Dramatic piano pieces, adorned with synths and other electronics from time to time. Sometimes I think it threatens to get a bit OTT for me, with its rich harmonies and such, but it never really tips over the edge. I’ve found I can put it on when I first wake up or put it on when I’m trying to sleep at night, and it always sounds good.

Fourth release from someone I “know” online, this time lines.

Supermalprodelica / Kerozen – Saint-Arnoult (Scum Yr Earth)

Quiet lockdown noodling from France. The quietest end of techno, I guess. Soft and pleasant loops and pulses that I found really restful.

I have no memory of how I found this – I seem to be only one of five people who’ve bought it, and one of the others is my bandmate Adrien who is there because of me. 🤷‍♂️

So one thing that makes me feel generation-gapped is the whole Melodyne world of music tricks. I know what it does, but I just can’t muster up any enthusiasm to go there. The closest I’m getting is the new generation of cheap or free apps to split a song into what remixers call “stems”, being the bits of a song like its vocals, drums, bass, and “others”.

Spleeter is one such app that’s available for free as a command line thing here: https://pypi.org/project/spleeter/ There’s instructions on how to install it on your computer out there, and a web implementation where you just drag and drop files into your browser here: https://splitter.ai/

A couple of months back my buddy Tim Koch linked me to another one I’ve already forgotten and instantly dissected Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams for me, at my request. Even from a Youtube ripped MP3, converted back into MP3s, the results were pretty good. These algorithms are weird things. So clever, so quick, and I feel like maybe twenty years back when I was first mucking with Autotune and such things I would’ve been absolutely delighted. I can imagine my younger self sitting there for hours splitting up tracks, slicing and dicing component parts, reusing them in unintended ways, etc.

But I have to admit right now I’m barely interested. It’s fun to check how well they work, but I have no appetite to do a live dub of, say, some obscure 90s number, nor to speed up split out break beats (literally not that, not break beats) from some cluttered funk tune to find some undiscovered Amen replacement.

Still, I was interested enough to make this post, I guess.

It’s been five months since I last did one of these, excluding when I pushed Ulla Straus’s Room as an album I loved from 2019. So here’s ten releases I’ve been listening to a lot in the interim.

Chelsea Jade – Personal Best (self-released?)

I keep coming back to this album from 2018 and it’s one I’ll happily listen through from start to finish. I’ve listened to it a lot over summer. Many great pop songs, full of great hooks, fantastic lyrics, and all kinds of curious audio sparkles. I saw her live earlier in the year and the beats were surprisingly pumping over a PA. Ace.

Legowelt / SFV Acid / Haron – Plafond 1 (Bakk)

I’ve been enjoying the whole Plafond series. Chiefly techno-ish artists doing something closer to ambient music, but often with a sense of drama and climax. I’ve got the first 4 and recommend any of them.

Frederik Valentin & Loke Rahbek – Elephant (Posh Isolation)

I absolutely thrashed this Danish duo’s 2017 debut, Buy Corals Online (Editions MEGO), and while this hasn’t hit me quite so hard yet, the not-too-glossy mix of synths, bass, piano, whatever else is going still makes me very happy. There’s a bit more digital sheen to this one, more overt signs of what once upon a time was called “studio trickery” but might just be on someone’s phone these days.

Anyway, I unreservedly love the opening and closing tracks, and the whole is short enough to easily digest too. 🖤

Robin Saville – Build A Diorama (Morr Music)

Walking music from one half of the excellent Isan.

I still revisit Robin’s album from 2013, Personal Flowers, and have a strong sense I’ll be listening to this 7 years down the track as well! I love the delicate sounds – the mix of electronic and acoustic chiming and bubbling. It’s ambient, but not a washed out drone. (Not that that doesn’t have it’s place, but!)

Mapstation – Present Unmetrics (TAL)

Another new release from someone I’ve been listening to for years. Mapstation is Stefan Schneider, formerly of To Rococo Rot, Kreidler, and The September Collective. It’s been well over a decade since a solo album and this is an inviting, roaming mix of synth bass, euphonium and noisy electronic debris. Schneider is a bass player and I can imagine that’s key to the way these weird little instrumentals are warm, somehow tuneful, and swinging, despite also being glitchy, rough and strange.

mHz – Form (Kasuga Records)

This is the first time I’d heard this kind of thing coming out of New Zealand. Wellington Mo H. Zahreei has the best initials for this kind of technical, spare music! A meticulous set of tracks in the territory of Alva Noto, SND, raster.noton. Alternately percussive bangers and fizzy harmonic stuff – sometimes within the same track.

The physical edition comes on SD card. 😎

Kilchhofer / Hainbach – Acosta (Marionette)

If anyone knows something else like this, let me know. Percussive, rhythmic synth music but the beats mostly feel like hand drums. Pretty and tuneful as much as it is abstract. Also a pretty amazing split, in that the music of both artists sounds so of a piece. Kinda cool that their tracks are intermingled too.

Jeff Parker – Suite For Max Brown (International Anthem)

I can’t pretend to listen to much contemporary jazz. I ended up here because Parker is in noodly fusion band Tortoise. This turns out to be a cool stitched-together-at-home jazz record, perhaps my only disappointment being that there’s no other vocal track after the fantastic opener.

Deltidseskapism – Nattmusik (Source Records)

Is it a bit abstruse to write about a 16-year-old CD that hasn’t made it online in any form? Oh well, looks like it’s pretty cheap on Discogs. After some discussions with my Takamu collaborators, Adrien & Tim, I ended up ripping this and listening to it multiple times.

France Jobin –Scènes (LINE)

Another one from 2017, this one a tribute to Finnish producer and musician Mika Vainio, who died that year. It’s by far the quietest selection in this post. Jobin’s compositions always sound to me like she’s sculpting sound in the sense of subtracting from whatever source she started with. I put it on at night, to sleep to, I put it on for close listening too. While I guess you could describe this as drones, that shouldn’t imply that it’s heavy or grungey.

I obsessed over Jobin’s Intrication a few years back, which still might be my fave.

If you like any kind of ambient music, give Ulla Straus‘s Big Room a hoon. I passed it over on first listen as “nice enough”, but am glad I came back to it.

I bought and/or downloaded 105 releases in 2019 and 35 of them are from previous years going back to 2000. And predictably enough, some of the things I most enjoyed listening to in 2019 were from those earlier years, e.g. Etelin’s I-have-no-vocab-for-this Hui Terra, Barker’s Debiasing, and Chelsea Jade’s Personal Best.

Perhaps in part because I already overwhelm myself with so much new (to me) shizz, I always feel a bit overwhelmed by end of year lists. So I’m leaving this post at just one release I’d recommend. But if you so wished you could basically track my buying habits entirely via my Bandcamp collection or most of my listening via my ancient last.fm profile.

Five things from the last couple of months.

Fumitake Tamura – Tamura 000 (Black Smoker Records)

This came out in May and is a CD-only release. I loved this guy’s previous releases, and have no regrets on finally caving and buying a CD direct from him, even if it cost me a year’s rent. Almost. Very pared back mostly instrumental hip-hop, with a palette that reminds me of SND and other microsound and sometimes Chain Reaction artists like Porter Ricks (who he did sample once upon a time).

If you want something more readily available, try his collaboration with Japanese MC Hidenka.

Julia Reidy – In Real Life (Black Truffle)

Baffling and intriguing: I seriously have no other album I can point to that sounds like it, except her release from earlier in the year. Reidy plays finger-picking 12-string guitar that reminds me most of acoustic blues, and her sparse vocals are sort of along those lines as well, but through Autotune. And the two tracks here stretch to about 20 minutes each, with a bed of quite uneasy-listening synth and organ parts under the guitars and vox. The end result is actually a bit more accessible than it might sound, at the least in comparison to her previous release, the aptly-named brace, brace. 😅

Lontalius – All I Have (PBWH)

Great second album from Lontalius, one of the better musicians to come out of New Zealand this century so far. Nice and concise; I think he said something about wanting it to fit in the palm of your hand, which works. 🙌

It’s in part produced by R&B producer Om’Mas Keith (Frank Ocean, et al) and separately by Jim Fairchild (Grandaddy, Modest Mouse). It certainly feels like an indie record through and through to me, but does contain a lot of tasty ear candy for folks like me.

Jonas Meyer – Konfusion (Serein)

A very tightly contained set of what I’d comfortably call an electronic record, but with a lot of use of acoustic material (instruments and otherwise). Only one of the six tracks clocks in at less than five minutes, but it’s one of those albums that feels like there’s absolutely no fat on it. And heaps of character. I couldn’t be sure of his influences at all, although the types of sounds and the way they’re used sometimes reminded me of Giuseppe Ielasi’s albums for 12k.

The cover art is on point: is that intricate pattern a digital creation or a photo of a delicate sculpture? Some combination?

Belly Full Of Stars – brokendatapool (Courier)

Apparently I can’t post one of these without a link to someone whose music I “met” via lines, and in this case she’s a Disquiet Junto contributor like me. 🎛

A great four track EP of short electronic instrumentals, where each track is based on some kind of glitch or used materials or software that’s somehow obsolete.

Really enjoying what I’ve found of this guy Johan Rijpma.

Always fun when someone takes a physical thing and makes it unfamiliar, in this case through weird angles and through choreographing the familiar thing happening en masse.

I like how this one only reveals how it works at the end… I never would’ve guessed what was going on.

This article by a Philosophy PhD really resonated with me: The problem of mindfulness.

I enjoyed it for the critique of people saying mindfulness is somehow free of values or beliefs, because that never made sense to me, but I also liked that it’s not just a giant dismissal of a set of techniques that, personally, I’ve found pretty useful.

But, you know, everything has limits. This rings true:

[Mindfulness is] not much help in sifting through competing explanations for why you might be thinking or feeling a certain way. Nor can it clarify what these thoughts and feelings might reveal about your character. Mindfulness, grounded in anattā, can offer only the platitude: ‘I am not my feelings.’ Its conceptual toolbox doesn’t allow for more confronting statements, such as ‘I am feeling insecure,’ ‘These are my anxious feelings,’ or even ‘I might be a neurotic person.’ Without some ownership of one’s feelings and thoughts, it is difficult to take responsibility for them.

On and off for the past 7+ years I’ve taken inspiration from a weekly assignment called the Disquiet Junto. Marc Weidenbaum, who runs the thing, offers up some usually basic steps for creating some audio, challenging you to make something and get it online for feedback and comment within a few days.

This week Marc picked up a tweet I shared with him via the Disquiet Junto’s Slack and has made it the jumping off point for the assignment.

The original tweet I thought would be a fun musical cue:

It was nice to contribute to the Junto in a different way like this, as I haven’t been actually doing any of the assignments for ages. It got me thinking how I’ve been doing this kind of thing for decades. I think it was in 2000 I agreed to coordinate a remix chain where a bunch of us online in different parts of the world took it in turns to remix the previous contributor’s track. Someone in the project had to build a custom website to upload the files to, because there was no online file-sharing service I knew about. It took forever on dial-up to get the stems… I think I probably downloaded them from work. Back in the days, when work internet and devices would be 100x better than at home.

Here’s a playlist of Junto assignments I have done. It’s probably more fun to click through to tired ol’ Soundcloud and read about each assignment.

Here’s another five things I’ve listened to a lot in the last six months or so. All relatively short releases, which is probably an accurate reflection of this year’s listening.

Saariselka – Ceres (Longform Editions)

Slide guitar, electric piano, just under 18 minutes of niceness.

I really like Longform Editions‘ whole thing of trying to put out long and slowly evolving tracks as an alternative to jumping constantly between things. It’s nice synchronicity with the new Montano tracks Shanan and I have been writing over the last year, which tend to be no less than 15 minutes a piece.

I’m a fussy bugger, so have bought maybe only six of the Longform Editions releases so far. But I listen to everything at least once to see what’s going on.

Kate Carr – City of Bridges (Longform Editions)

At 36 minutes, this one is most definitely longform. Field recordings and enigmatic collage. I like releases where I don’t know how much is in the field recordings and how much is not.

Bonus points for keeping in moments of interference from mobile phones. 😅 Most “field recordists” (ugh) freak out when that kind of thing happens.

Barker – Debiasing (Ostgut Ton)

I’ve listened to this so much this year. It’s techno, but no beats. So kinda also like Berlin school chugging synth stuff (Klaus Schultze), but not as boring. 🔥 Four concise tracks that do their thing and then stop.

Released on the label of Berlin techno Mecca , Berghain.

Adrien75 – Snow Walking (self-released)

Adrien writes:

For the 20th anniversary of the Adrien75 e.p. (a seven song 12″ released on the long defunct American IDM boutique label Carpet Bomb in 1999) I’m happy to present this new seven song e.p.

And, yeah, it’s a great collection of melodic IDM, with a couple of pulsing four-to-the-floor numbers near the end. If Boards of Canada territory isn’t your thing, maybe check ‘Germany 1999’ at least. Happy reminders of old Farben / Jan Jelinek records.

Loidis – A Parade, In The Place I Sit, The Floating World (& All Its Pleasures) (Anno)

Unsurprised Four Tet is into this. Here’s what I already wrote on Bandcamp:

This is the most dancey alias of Huerco / Pendant I’ve heard – crack up that the 2nd track goes 5 minutes before a beat drops, tho 😀

Like his other aliases, this reminds me a lot of stuff from 15-20 years ago, but never like a total ripoff. And it’s a great sound.

Here’s five things new to me in the last six months or so. Leaning towards stuff you might not have heard. Switzerland, USA, Ghana, NZ.

Martina Lussi – Diffusion Is A Force (Latency)

A varied bag of electronic instrumentals that are fairly hard to pin down. I was vaguely reminded of Laurel Halo’s release on the same label, Raw Silk Uncut Wood, but no really useful points of comparison jump out. I already wrote on Bandcamp:

A great collection of tracks that often feel like their own little worlds, but work well together as well. Impressive when someone has their own voice across such a range of music, imo

Olivier Creurer – Bits (self-released)

Again, this is one I already wrote about on Bandcamp:

Living up to its name, this single track moves through a bunch of different bits, each one a curious little world.

Something intimate and inviting about a beatless album that’s not washed out in reverb too.

I apparently like describing things as little worlds. 🤔

It’s one of two in this list I discovered via the lines community, and Olivier’s comments about his approach there might be of interest to other music-makers.

GALTFaculty – E B O W (Human Pitch)

I keep coming back to this short and sketchy release. Me on Bandcamp again:

I’m not going to pretend I’m schooled up on Ghanaian beats, but the loops on here have the greatest feels. Sometimes loopy sample house hits just right. This is one of those. Favorite track: Owned It.

Rosenau & Sanborn – Bluebird (Psychic Hotline)

The second I heard about via lines. A duo play guitar and synths/samplers live and record the whole room, with the doors open. It’s really simple in the most enjoyable and direct way. Bonus points for the track where one asks “what did you think?” and the other complains about the ending. 👌

Paperghost – This is a Miracle Village (Sonorous Circle)

I reckon Zach Webber’s own words do the trick:

This album is my first fully instrumental release. Exploring West Coast synthesis combined with collage’d samples, field recordings and live instrumentation. Tape wear and degradation interplay the soundscapes to create an aged warped sound throughout the album. Created after watching too many hippie-cult documentaries the album acts as a kind of crypto soundtrack, a soundtrack for a film that does not exist.

Actually, there’s plenty in there that could make me wary – if he’d said “cinematic”, well, that’s a bit of a red flag for me – but I’ve been listening to this a lot and totally recommend it.

I’ve always listened to some out and out pop. Sure, it might all be a bit of a Serious Film Guy Defends The Quality Of Toy Story 2 scenario when just this week I was buzzing over the sounds of a faulty extractor fan in the takeaway joint I was in, but it’s true.

Over the past few years, when I’ve been making playlists for the car or whatever, I’ve been tending to put in really straight (heh) pop songs that are explicitly gay, even just through use of pronouns. I thought to post some of it, after this:

So, yeah, here’s that Lontalius song (which is great (obligatory self-serving link to a remix I did in 2013)) and then some even more pop things I’ve been listening to.

Eddie / Lontalius has been tweeting about his love of Phoenix and I get that kind of vibe from the instrumentation in this, though the vocal is doing its own thing. (I also still put tunes like Everything is Everything and of course If I Ever Feel Better on my playlists.)

Lontalius remixed Troye Sivan, which I think is where I first came across the latter. This vid had me thinking of Marc Almond and Pierre et Gilles, which did have me wondering if there was more mainstream gayness going on than I remembered back in the day, but.

Absolute killer chorus with that chugging guitar, and (spoiler!) when it comes back around the last time with just Troye singing and a much higher guitar line it gives me that perfect hanging-in-mid-air-when-are-we-going-to-land feeling I want in a pop song. The breakdown and the drop, I guess.

I reckon this Sivan / Jónsi collaboration is as beautiful a pop ballad as you get. Yes, that’s Jónsi who fronts the Icelandic band Sigur Rós and who would more commonly be called post-rock or ambient perhaps.

I don’t remember how I came across this next song. The first time I played it to my wife she said “Michael, years of gym classes has changed you” … which may well be true.

The ascending harmony in the “take him to the pier in Santa Monica” bit gets me every time. But also all the mad reverb games that mess with the perceived space of the track. Sparkly!

Then this came along:

This comment on the above:

When I read about a “boy version” of this song I was thinking “like a straight version? ew” I was a fool and I apologize.

😁

I haven’t found that many Kiyoko songs I really like, but she did a big duet with Kehlani, who has a feature on this next tune.

Structure-wise it’s a totally no surprises feature verse, landing where you’d put the rap in a pop song. But lyrically it flips the song from something absolutely commonplace to something I’d never heard on the radio before – but which I really wish was commonplace.

This last one I came across via Melody from RNZ tweeting this:

We’re back full circle to a bit more of an indie vibe. King Princess! Amazing name!

A bit of a funny name for my first go at rebooting blogging since maybe the end of 2013.

In a recent conversation on the lines forum a couple of folks commented on the reflective qualities of writing a blog, regardless of whether you get any responses or evidence that anyone’s reading it. So here I go.

The post title seems fitting for a few reasons:

1. I finished a solo album last year, yet to be released, which is the quietest album I’ve written. I’m really happy with it. I might make music with big drums again some day, but right now I can’t imagine it.
2. I have a folder where I save unfinished tracks by year. It’s empty. I have finished maybe four tracks this year, but have been going multiple weeks at a time without writing at all. So in the sense of making music, this is the quietest I’ve been in yeeeeeeaaaaars.
3. Although I’m pretty active on lines still, and probably (relatively) active on “classic” social media, it’s really falling away and I’m finding that calming and enjoyable.
4. On the reflection front, I’ve been learning recently to let some of my nervous energy dissipate and let things go slow. (Like every other comfortable first-world jerk. Hm – ok still a way to go.)

If I’m being truthful point 2 might be about to change. It feels like two collaborations I was part of last year are (quietly, again) starting to spark up again. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I might put some more words right here and see how it goes. I still obsessively listen to new music, so I might take some time to write up thoughts on some of that.

My cat just walked across my kalimba. (And 10 other smash hits!)