Want to know how this week started for me? I was out on my usual daily walk and had a hawk attack the top of my head. I’m fine. The hawk is fine. But holy shit was it wild. I didn’t hear it at all (had headphones on), but just felt something heavy hit my head, and turned in circles, looked around, and saw it flying off. I only have a few very minor scratches, but still – totally bananas. Then, on my walk today, two neighbors were trying to herd a large snapping turtle away from their yard and back toward a pond. It was the biggest one I’ve ever seen outside of the Oklahoma Aquarium (they’ve got a 300 lb monster Alligator Snapping Turtle). So, I don’t know what the hell is going on this week.
With that said, last Friday the new Foxy Digitalis and Jewel Garden compilation was released. Clarities features 40 tracks from 39 artists – everyone from Lawrence English and Polypores to Catherine Sikora, Stephen Vitiello, Thollem, Carlos Ferreira, Domenica Diavoleria, and more. It’s pay-what-you-want and all proceeds help keep Foxy Digitalis online and moving ahead. So, if rad tunes and this site are two things you like… what are you waiting for? Grab it OVER HERE.
And now, more excellent tunes.
Zosha Warpeha silver dawn (Relative Pitch)
Fires burn like distant beacons, reminders of days behind and the desire for tomorrow to come. Zosha Warpeha’s plaintive exorcisms for Hardanger d’amore (somewhat similar to a Norwegian Hardanger fiddle) and voice are barren, pulled inward to their core. Melodic streams swirl in sweet melancholic laments. With circular patterns and winding, layered progressions, Warpeha wraps us in gauze all while sending spectral whispers skyward. silver dawn is grounded in loose earth, each aural portrait living from the cracked facades that pull steel tendrils taut. We hang in the warm resonance, stuck in the air, our breath slowing as time becomes quiet. An absolutely beautiful record.
Luke Stewart’s Silt Trio Unknown Rivers (Pi Recordings)
Rhythm sits in the spotlight and still comes in waves on Unknown Rivers. Stewart’s excellent Silt Trio – Brian Settles on saxophone with Trae Crudup and Chad Taylor sharing the drummer’s seat – bound effortlessly through thick-heeled wind-ups and rugged progressions. Stewart’s jumping basslines are the glue and the driver but Settles always keeps the clouds golden with melodic whisps and frenetic runs. Unknown Rivers diverges into different facades, though, leaning into Crudup’s and Taylor’s distinctive approaches. Fire and brimstone cast one kind of sonic shadow, with Crudup holding a stoic fury up close, but in the finality, the reconciliation, Taylor drives the last nails home. Unknown Rivers is ultimately boundless and alive.
Carlos Giffoni Dream Walker (Ideologic Organ)
Wherever the light fades into honed, synthetic shards, Dream Walker opens portals. Carlos Giffoni’s first album in six years is revelatory. Across 11 electronic vistas, gravity evaporates and resettles into a paean for the glossy darkness. Laments fuse to square waves, buried pulses, and oscillating whispers. Giffoni channels timeless expressions through a maze-like environment, each turn gifting a new path into a new dream. Visions of grandeur crumble into sonic dust with each discordant swell. These pieces are moving, pierced by an emotional thread that vacillates between enveloping drones, ambient driftscapes, and abstract electronics. Dream Walker celebrates inward reflections even if these tone sequences long for an endless expanse to seek. It’s infectious with real staying power, echoing through our dreamworlds deep into the beyond. A stunning record.
Opuntia Mercurio (Umor Rex)
Mercurio is the debut, solo full-length from Mexico City’s Camila de Laborde. It opens the doors to midnight, stepping into a world of blackened concrete pop and faded neon that eventually fades into whimsical pastels. Vocals are wrapped in ethereal film, just blurred enough to pull us in, but the melodic progressions are timeless and emotive. Sometimes de Laborde soars, reaching higher registers and opening gilded conduits into the dawn. The synth arrangements and skeletal beats swim in tension, piling futurist hymnals on decaying, aural infrastructure to frame each message in glass. Opuntia mixes lilting melodies and spoken word to build out the soundworld and heighten the dramatic flourishes buried within electronic debris. Once she emerges from the other side and into the light, an unspoken transformation is complete.
Shakali Rihmastossa (Not Not Fun)
Golden shores greet us in the whimsical confines of Rihmastossa. Shakali, the namesake of Brno-based Finnish artist Simo Hakalisto, crafts organic sound worlds filled with tonic spells and electroacoustic dreams. We hear the inner workings of biological machines through swift arpeggios and resonant bells. A gentle cadence winds through every corner of Rihmastossa, lilting and calming in unison as we drift deeper into green space. Hakalisto uses an array of instruments and synthesizers, fusing synthetic fantasy with earthbound timbres. Muted sequences pluck out shapes from above and arrange them into a series of sweet messages that spell out the history of this imagined world. Field recordings enliven the soundscapes and texturize the aural environment, sending us on a fairy tale excursion into the beyond. This is so wonderful.
Jason Kahn / Alice Hui-Sheng Chang I Smile When the Sound Is Singing Through the Space (Self-Released)
As a longtime admirer of Jason Kahn’s work, I Smile When the Sound Is Singing Through the Space left my jaw on the floor. Tawainese vocalist Alice Hui-Sheng Chang and Kahn have worked together since 2015, and this cathartic exposition was recorded during a 2023 residency at Ting Shuo Hear Say in Tainan, Taiwan. Clairvoyance takes shape in the extended techniques and guttural washes. Voices quiet and explode, running through frequencies like a twisting monsoon flood across parched earth. Each turn leaves me further captivated. The timbres of each voice simultaneously complement and spoil the other, building an uncertain tension between various diverging expressions. It’s a wild, enthralling ride. At points it’s like Kahn is fading into nothingness, his voice broken and scattered as Chang melodiously twitters and dances in the dust left behind. It’s rife with drama and release. Fans of Tazartès and Charmaine Lee take note. Highest recommendation.
marine eyes to belong (Past Inside the Present)
Cynthia Bernard’s third marine eyes album pulls those closest to her even closer. While rain brushes against glass, and ambient synths drift through a candle-lit world. to belong has a domestic feel, celebrating small moments and the banal beauty that sustains us. Dream folk missives pierce the ethereal veil in places, with Bernard’s sweet murmurs shining atop the strummed guitars and gossamer electronic waves. Distant memories and complex lineages are roadmaps through dark clouds, held close with silvery vocals and doleful guitar reveries, all of it strengthening bonds and building warm embers in the impermanence of these lives.
Reign of Ferns Mirrored Hope (Aural Canyon)
What a wonderful surprise. Ryan J Raffa and Andrew Weathers join forces for an unexpected revel through rhythmic mist and liminal notions. Manipulated vapor twists into buoyant rhythms effervescing melodic remnants between two points. Bass lines snake across parched landscapes leaving trails to bake in the fading sun. Mirrored Hope sits in darkness harnessing points of light. Textural patterns encircle formless, synthetic harmonies, a tactile impression of the drift presented with aural shades. Where the light is sharpest, fractured arpeggiations turn neon to stand out from the background. In the margins, where shadows become real, emotions fray and settle with crackling hums dissipating into fleeting drones. The silence is never far away.
Quick Hits:
zakè Veta (Zakè Drone Recordings)
A lifetime of memories blurred together into transient sonic forms, lighting the sky beyond vision and enveloping the horizon with a warm, static glow.
Géométries Nebuloasa (La République des Granges)
Ancient rituals from a future civilization jettisoned into space debris. Filtered rhythms, hypnotic vocalizations, and scattered junk electronics blitzed by radio waves and uncanny static. A different kind of flaming tune.
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