The following all provide an excellent soundtrack to pack records into cardboard boxes. Trust us.
Hello, Friends.
And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow is the latest album from Natalie Mering as Weyes Blood and my word, does she create a vibe. Her voice is even more central and present than ever before, both in a tranquillisation hush and as a commanding balladeer. The songs all sound strangely familiar, like known classics, but one of her great hooks is making them all slightly off-kilter, like you're remembering them slightly wrong in a dream. For all of the calming and washing synths, there is a certain uneasiness to her chamber pop, an alluring darkness that bleeds through the background. Features guest appearances from Meg Duffy, Daniel Lopatin, and Mary Lattimore. A hugely accomplished record, this really is a belter.
Knowing that the album's opening track - The Hermit - spans 40 minutes, and its accompanying short film by James Hawkins premiered in art cinemas, you get a fairly good idea of the scope and scale of Richard Dawson’s latest epic. The Ruby Cord is the final part of his trilogy that started with Peasant and continued in his modern day classic 2020, based somewhere in a near or parallel future of discombobulation. A singular talent, his song structures and storytelling are thrilling and the density of this album is positively overwhelming. His voice is so arresting, this requires the attention of a novel. Record of the Week and simply stunning stuff!
Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) and Peter Kember (Sonic Boom) have combined forces for a joyous and jubilant album called Reset, a retro-tinged and dreamy treasure. Full of woozed-out samples, it’s a tribute to 60s big sunshine pop with loops culled from the intros to rock ’n’ roll 45s from the late 1950s and early 1960s. The dreamy fragments build and rattle hypnotically, panning across the stereo to dizzying effect. In lesser hands this could so easily have fallen flat, but the production is so inventive and the layers of voices are absolutely mesmerising. A beautiful trip.
SAP is the third album from Kaya Wilkins as Okay Kaya and it’s really got something going. It is broadly a concept album about consciousness, and the way she floats through tones and timbre is really lush. Really progressive production with plenty of experimentalism.
As we are really unbelievably busy trying to get your orders out, we’re going to keep this week’s mailer short, so also out today and getting played at Drift;
POLE – aka innovative German electronic artist Stefan Betke - returns on Mute with the excellent new Tempus album.
CAZIMI is the first album since 2013 from the beautifully voiced Caitlin Rose.
Step on My Travelator: The Imagined Career Trajectory of Superstar DJ & Dance Pop Producer, Melvin Harris is the debut LP under the Acid Klaus name from cult-producer Adrian Flanagan.
Helen Ganya (previously performing under the moniker Dog in the Snow) releases Polish the Machine on Bella Union.
Prom Nite is the retro-tinged new set from turntable extraordinaire DJ Yoda.
Mirage is the full, debut LP from the sublime Molly Lewis. Transcendental whistling!
Lastly today, Switched On Ra is a cosmic trip from Chicago trio Bitchin Bajas. We literally only have a handful, but we’ll try and get more because it’s a real peach!
- Drift