I used to be pretty okay with winter – hell, I might even say I was into it, but after about five days of sub-freezing temperatures (today it’s supposed to get up to 40 for the first time since last Thursday – woohoo!), I am rethinking all of that. Anyway, The Jewel Garden has dropped its first release of 2024, a killer new album from QNDFK. If sliced-and-diced beats, aerated synthscapes, tape mange, and strange, beguiling samples are your thing, you should absolutely check it out.
Yesterday, the newest episode of Songs of Our Lives was released with the great Ilyas Ahmed. We had a blast chatting about everything from Scott Walker and Fugazi to how many otherwise great songs Bono has ruined and clowns (well, the last one is on the Patreon edition). It’s a great episode – I hope you check it out!
Meanwhile, here’s a pile of tunes I’ve been enjoying a fair bit these past few weeks.
Matt Weston This is Broken (Self-Released)
The air is caustic, and we’re trapped in a room with charred, decaying walls in the opening stretches of “You Have To Question The Validity Of Your Sneer.” Matt Weston’s recent run of form continues on This is Broken. It’s one hell of a record. Amorphous tonal heaps bleed through the margins, pierced with metallic scraps and singed by world-eating resonance. Muffled howls are turned into blackened, skittering electric circuits. Weston crushes rhythms into the smallest bits, lacing arcane patterns across empty surfaces. It’s like a secret message being broken apart at the seams. Squalls fueled by heavy distortion and an absolute clownshow atrocity up the drama, twisting open-air escapades into a total horrorscape. The trip of This is Broken culminates on the back half of “Half-Suburban Waltz,” leaving us to pick all our flesh-and-bone scraps before the hellfire sucks up the last oxygen in the room. Weston has been absolutely killing it, but This is Broken might be my favorite of his yet. Highest possible recommendation.
Nora Nygard I Wish I Could See You (Little Sisyphus)
Subtle shifts in the quiet escapes of I Wish I Could See You sting for a quick moment before blooming into glowing invitations. Synth arrangements flicker like buoyant, glowing shapes in the sky, metering out secret messages in tonal constellations. Nygard folds timbres into one another, moving from aqueous, melodic sequences into luminous beacons spreading outward across bright chord progressions and wistful arrangements. Memories are spoken into existence, plagued by anchors from the past while still working as a spirited elevation channeled by crystalline layers, elegiac pads, and a sense of appreciation and wonder. I Wish I Could See You is a beautiful sanctum, a space where we can simply be.
Village Of Spaces That’s Understanding (Feeding Tube)
A calm spirit tiptoes through the gentle cadences and plucked guitars of That’s Understanding, setting the stage for Dan Beckman-Moon to turn the whimsical tranquility up to ten. Small moments sprout tendrils that follow circuitous sonic paths, finding larger meaning in the skies. Sweet melodies cover every corner of this tender music, manifesting into timeless serenades at the cusp of midnight. Days become endless basking in the glow of That’s Understanding, honey-kissed harmonies leaving me starry-eyed in wonder, gleefully waiting for the next bit of aural affection to wash across my brow. What an absolute delight.
iu takahashi Sense / Margin (laaps)
Sense / Margin captures the feeling of wandering silently through the early morning haze, in the crisp air where dreams and reality melt into one another. Rippling streams and lilting birdsong fold into resonant drones, a hollow opened and filled with deep tones. takahashi sings like shadows fading from view while strings rattle in the spaces left behind, searching for an aqueous surface to inhabit. A poignant sense of restraint is central to this album, with every movement considered and purposeful. We are pleasantly stuck in simple expressions layered with serene overtones. As always, takahashi’s compositions are tactile and infectious, her use of field recordings muted yet powerful. Textures woven into the radiant tones tell the real stories to engage our senses, and Sense / Margin aims to keep us suspended in that feeling.
Zachary James Watkins Chatty Mandrill Volume III (sixtyhurts)
Kaleidoscopes have wings on Chatty Mandrill Volume III, endless colors taking flight across dub-inflected rhythms and pointillist synthscapes. Somehow ZJW finds a pocket that’s relaxed and propulsive, sending tense vibrations snaking through hypnotic cadence streams. Bass runs churn for days, a relentless foundation that drives everything into oblivion. Sparkling melodies line the arrangements with burning synth leads and dramatic chord progressions. Nothing is left uncovered, though, and every gleaming surface of this digital jungle is a frenetic light zone spilling over with harmonic splendor. ZJW is dialed into the nth degree. Every layer sings and bounces, beats catch fire from morning until midnight, and Chatty Mandrill Volume III pops us right into the neon spindrift to dream forever. Essential listening.
Jonathan Desay / Álex Reviriego Postcards (Crystal Mines)
Magic happens in unexpected sonic folds throughout this captivating and hypnotic collaboration between Jonathan Desay and Álex Reviriego. Upright bass motifs bloom into new techniques, explorations of unfound aural grounds that ripple through the air with an inquisitive purpose. Reviriego steeps each note in wonder, fed into a synthetic matrix where Desay repurposes and reimagines each tonal expanse into intriguing, wistful patterns like rusting playgrounds wheezing secret messages to forgotten ghosts. Textural elements shade the margins. Postcards is excellent.
post doom romance prairie transmissions (Somnimage)
seah and mykel boyd investigate decaying resonances and liminal expanses across 13 pieces on prairie transmissions. Relatable images begin to fade into obscured emotional facades, ancient tendrils buried in aural debris waiting to be excavated. Discordant mirages exist beyond the ether, spiraling away from the sharpened timbres and lucid drones permeating these shadow landscapes. post doom romance collide at different intersections, slowly and constantly changing the angles of their harmonic dissolution. Guitars echo across distance, beckoning us forward, deeper into the immersive environments of prairie transmissions. Frigid, windswept shards cascade with subdued cadence. The darkness is sprawling and the nights are long here, but the deeper we get into this sonic treatise, the fuller we feel. Fantastic.
City of Dawn Scattered Colours (Aural Canyon)
City of Dawn always finds the most beautiful sonic ruminations to stretch across a contemplative divide. Electronic and organic sounds blend together creating new nodes of reflection, shaping glassine timbres and ethereal pads into imaginary worlds. Bright vistas stretch toward an illuminated horizon, casting slow-moving shadows like pathways to beyond. String arrangements are like quiet echoes wrapping our thoughts in gauzy fabric, aural cashmere to keep us warm and held close. Countless emotions are dancing through these glossy passages. Life grows here. Guitar arrangements feel like fragmented visions, shimmering in the peripheral while still holding emotive power. When blended with plaintive synth melodies and lucid aural dreamscapes, Scattered Colours expands our inner revelations to the breaking point. Divine.
Heejin Jang Human Iceberg (Self-Released)
Another killer notch in Heejin Jang’s growing discography, Human Iceberg splits the ground into bits. Harsh soundscapes fade into electric heartbeats, frenzied into cracked glass timbres. Jang’s music finds the midpoint between abrasive and inviting, and she has an instantly recognizable way of combining austere sonic environments and sharp tones with tempting melodic elements to make unique sound spaces. It’s wild and enthralling. Patterns get broken into smaller patterns before she reconstructs a scrap world from parts. Mangled electronics leave fuzzed-out trenches, pulling myths apart at their seams and uncovering destructive forces hidden in plain sight. Human Iceberg is intense and often overwhelming, but in those acerbic confines, truths are revealed. She is so, so good.
