I underestimated how much time I would have this summer for things outside of personal/family responsibilities. It’s the first year in a long, long time my daughter hasn’t gone to any summer camps (a decision made for various reasons), and while we’ve been having a blast, it hasn’t left as much time for music/art/writing (and most of what time I do have is being poured into a big new project that I will announce soon). That being said, we’ve been listening to a ton of stuff, and I’ve made a more concerted effort to jot down notes/thoughts on things wherever I can for these columns.
As ever, thank you to everyone who supports the site through The Jewel Garden, Patreon, Ko-Fi, etc. Those dollars really add up and help offset the site costs tremendously. There’s a sale at The Jewel Garden right now, by the way – use code heatstroke for 25% off anything and everything.
Also, if you are in Tulsa, come to our next opening at The Bird House – a new intermedia exhibition from Warren Realrider, Kahâriwis â Concrète. Get in touch for the address.
Heinali & Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko Гільдеґарда (Hildergard) (Unsound)
Hildegard is not a reconstruction of the past but a reflection shattered and reassembled under the pressure of war. Heinali and Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko begin with Hildegard von Bingen’s visions and music, but what emerges is something far more raw and embodied. The voice carries both sacred intensity and folk resistance, rooted in Ukrainian vocal tradition that has survived attempts at erasure. Modular drones swell and crack beneath it, not to support but to envelop, echoing both medieval sonorities and the physicality of trauma. The music stretches, slows, and expands until liturgy becomes landscape, and prayer becomes a survival instinct. Each tone holds a residue of violence and clarity, of sirens and stained glass. What remains is not comfort but presence, a way of staying alive inside the unbearable. Easily one of 2025’s best.
Western Extra Zig Zags on the Book of Changes (Hermit Hut)
Nothing about Zig Zags on the Book of Changes feels accidental. It moves like a dream shuffled out of sequence, where deadpan humor dissolves into bruised reflections and the sorrow hums beneath the punchlines. Western Extra drifts into view as a transmission from elsewhere, two voices entwined in the fog, building myths from spiritual static and suburban talismans. The tonal pivots feel like quick turns in a strange house, one room blown-out and ragged, the next dimly lit and humming with dust. Beneath the bent forms and lyrical curveballs is a flickering warmth, a sense that Quinn and Rose are both revealing and disappearing at once. The album doesn’t resolve so much as hover, like a radio tuned between two signals, waiting for something to speak back.
Heat On s/t (Cuneiform)
Heat On burns with a restless clarity, rooted in Chicago’s history while refusing to sit still inside it. Lily Finnegan’s drumming pulses with intent, not just as rhythm but as a form of conversation, constantly shifting the ground underfoot. There’s joy in how this quartet collides and coheres, especially in the exchanges between Ari Brown and Mwata Bowden, where dissonance and lyricism orbit the same sun. Fred Jackson Jr. is always there, bending his alto sax into inquisitive, riveting shapes. The record feels lived-in and immediate, full of swing and skronk and the kind of groove that doesn’t have to ask permission. Finnegan and Macri lock into patterns that buckle and lurch with purpose, holding tension without ever snapping it closed. It’s a debut that listens forward and backward at once, aware of the weight it carries but still light on its feet.
Eloine Impractical Furniture (Personal Archives)
There’s a kind of kinetic elegance to Impractical Furniture, as if Bryan Day translated a collapsing toolbox into a language of brittle tension and ghostly resonance. Each track moves with delicate balance, flickering between friction and silence, motion and memory, built from a portable tabletop rig originally designed for live performance and reimagined in the studio. The materiality of the objects comes through clearly: metal scraping, springs stuttering, tape spooling in loops that seem barely tethered to gravity. The music suggests more than it states, offering a sonic blueprint for impossible machines or forgotten rituals. In these pieces, the boundaries between sculpture, circuit, and sound dissolve, leaving behind a hushed choreography of unlikely instruments in quiet conversation.
Jo Johnson Escape Now (quiet details)
Jo Johnson folds melody into atmosphere with a precision that feels almost weightless. Escape Now drifts through layered tonal worlds, where analogue synthesis, harp, recorder, and voice braid together in slow, luminous arcs. Sequences unfold gradually, pulling harmonic threads through shifting textures that feel both vast and close. There’s a sense of motion without urgency, of detail without clutter, each sound placed with care, allowed to breathe. The record leans into contrast, balancing the intimate with the expansive, softness with clarity. It’s not just immersive but quietly radiant, a work shaped by deep listening and restraint.
Manja Ristić Purpurna vresišta (wabi sabi)
Manja Ristić draws sound from the edges of abandonment, letting places speak through vibration, resonance, and decay. She is among my favorite artists on the planet. Purpurna vresišta gathers field recordings from scorched industrial zones, coastal shallows, and tropical forests, layering them with violin, hydrophones, and electronics that hum with ghosted memory. The textures feel weathered and raw, stitched together by slow tonal shifts and environmental rhythms that refuse to be smoothed over. This isn’t just a study in place but in aftermath, in what lingers when extraction ends and something quieter begins to grow. Each piece feels porous, full of barely perceptible thresholds where the human and nonhuman blur. Time doesn’t pass here, it pools.
Philip Gayle Sunrise Crazy (Public Eyesore)
Philip Gayle builds a sonic fever dream that feels equal parts slapstick and elegy. Sunrise Crazy unspools in unpredictable directions, where sputtering toys and ghostly clarinets share space with meowing cats and broken lullabies. The voice isn’t ornamental; it’s feral and central, muttering and shrieking its way into the music’s nervous system. Beneath the chaos is a sense of ritual, grief braided into absurdity, like someone laughing through tears at a wake no one planned. It’s funny, unsettling, and strangely moving. A cracked mirror held up to the idea of composition, and a reminder that even nonsense can ache.
Prymek, Fuchs, Rose Disagreements Vol. 1 (Island House)
Disagreements Vol. 1 doesn’t smooth over contrast; it leans into it, letting friction become form. Chaz Prymek’s guitar playing pulls itself apart mid-phrase, flickering between folk shapes and jagged unravelings. Nic Rose’s keys dart and clusters, answering with sharp angles and sudden light, while Mike Fuchs holds the center with drums that guide as much as they listen. The trio creates a shifting terrain, alive with tension and generosity. It feels less like compromise and more like a shared willingness to be changed by contact. These are disagreements that bloom.
Jashiin State of Play (Self-Released)
A whispered conversation with an old piano begins to take shape on State of Play, each piece tracing the outline of a thought as it stirs to life. Jashiin’s playing is unadorned and closely recorded, capturing the raw proximity of fingers on keys and the subtle breath of the instrument itself. There is a sense of stillness here, not as absence but as presence held in tension. Each track feels like a quiet search, a hand reaching out in the dark. The intimacy isn’t dramatic or performative; it lingers in small, precise movements that carry surprising weight. This is a record that listens inward and uncovers a fragile kind of clarity.
Amy Cimini See You When I Get There (Relative Pitch)
Amy Cimini carves sound out of air with amplified viola, bending distortion, reverb, and delay into something that feels hand-built and lived-in. Her playing shifts between sharp angles and open space, where percussive bursts give way to melodic fragments that hang like questions. See You When I Get There is the result of years moving through noise bands, experimental ensembles, and the lingering imprint of punk and protest. It’s raw but never careless, personal without being insular. Each piece feels like a memory traced through resonance, a quiet homage to the people and places that shaped the sound. For a label that releases a lot of great music, See You When I Get There is among my absolute favorites on Relative Pitch.
Sleep Number Sunspill (Ceremony of Seasons)
Sophie Hull doesn’t just build songs, she cultivates psychic terrain. Sunspill moves like weather through the body, stretching time into ribbons of light and shadow until meaning becomes sensation. Her voice drifts at the edge of form, smeared across heavy drones, scorched guitar lines, and synthesis that flickers like memory half-recalled. It isn’t driven by climax or resolution but by emergence, each piece swelling from silence into presence, then folding back into the blur. The density holds a strange lightness, like a fog revealing shapes only through stillness. Even at its most engulfing, the music remains porous, carrying a quiet invitation toward deeper, softer states. Hull captures not a story but a condition, a sustained openness shaped by resonance and restraint.
The Blackstar Experience Maximum Sunlight (Low Versions)
Maximum Sunlight radiates with the weight of revelation, not as warmth but as exposure. Dakota Harrington’s work as The Blackstar Experience filters truth through dense layers of sound that breathe and grow, unfolding in slow, deliberate waves. Guitar lines echo in decaying resonance, while arpeggios glint at the margins like faded memories more than melodies, flickering just out of reach. Modular textures twist around field recordings, shaping a landscape where clarity feels more like rupture than resolution. Horns drift through the haze like signals lost in time, not arriving with answers but deepening the questions. It’s a record that doesn’t chase resolution but lingers in the charged space between inevitability and choice. An incredible record.
ben link collins To Be Human (parts 3 & 4) (somnimage)
To Be Human (Parts 3 & 4) grinds forward with a raw, unyielding momentum, pulling the listener into a space where sound is less texture than force. The tam tam and steel cable return, no longer passive resonators but instruments bent into new shapes through processing and pressure. These compositions lurch and shudder, full of distortion and volatile energy, refusing stillness or submission. It feels like a confrontation with material itself, sculpted through impact and agitation. The result is volatile, ecstatic, and rooted in the stubborn truth of presence.
