AUDIO OBSCURA – ÉLIANE RADIGUE TRIBUTE
Norfolk-based Neil Stringfellow (Audio Obscura) made this tribute to French electronic music pioneer available upon her sad passing earlier this year. At the time she left us, I had been making enquiries about interviewing her for Electronic Sound, but was well aware that her appetite to do such an interview as she approached her mid-nineties was remote. These two long-form pieces were only available briefly, and only accessible to Stringfellow’s Bandcamp subscribers. In the message that accompanied their release, he spoke about how inspirational Radigue was to him (after a work colleague handed him a CDr of her music in 2004), and how her passing prompted him to spontaneously create these pieces from the same source sounds. They lean into Radigue’s trademark soft drone style; deeply-layered, consciously-structured, never static, always moving, forever evolving (yet ever-so-gently). The first piece focuses its attention on the drones alone, while the second piece adds an emotive, exceptionally sparse piano motif that delivers a melodic offset to the undulating long tones that sit beneath it. A poignant and reverential tribute. Released February 26 2026.
MACRO AVITABILE – NOW TRANSITIONING
I was fortunate enough to hear this album a long time before it was released, and consequently I feel highly connected to the latest collection from Italian guitarist Marco Avitabile. Fully improvised, it finds Avitabile at his most introspective and thoughtful, his playing delivered under the weight of profound emotions. On the first piece, ‘Waiting For Something Good To Happen’, he introduces a melodic motif which appears, in often dislocated form, throughout the pieces here. In its opening appearance, it is presented as anticipatory and expectant but also realistic, as if suggesting that he knows the path ahead if far from certain. So it is that on ‘Broke Up And Cried’, the melody is subjected to angry distortion that renders it almost unrecognisable. The centrepiece of this collection is ‘Let The Children Play!’, which is languid and serene, evoking the carefree lives we enjoy as children, while a sudden pivot into graceful, elegiac textures is nothing short of devastating. Released March 20 2026
https://marcoavitabile.bandcamp.com/album/now-transitioning
HOLODEC – TRU FOLK
On first listen, the new album from LA-based Holodec (aka Jieh) is a collection of drifting, beat-less gravity-free ambient pieces, rich in textural tapestries and often fleetingly melodic. In his description of TRU FOLK, Jieh makes a seasoned case for how these pieces connect to folk music, but it is not obvious, at least initially, how that link manifests itself. Each of these pieces incorporates field recordings made in various locations across California and Taiwan. Most ambient music that embraces field recordings as situational devices goes for naturalistic sounds, and there is definitely some of that in evidence here, particularly on the meditative ‘quiet water, loud water’.
Jieh’s field recording focus is more squarely placed on overheard conversations, snatches of dialogue, the naïve joy of children playing, disagreements and idle chit-chat, all dropped in almost indiscriminately alongside his soft, enveloping compositions. When your attention rests on these human interactions, that’s when Jieh’s idiosyncratic view of this being a uniquely progressive and electronic form of folk music makes sense. Folk music has always been about the stories of people, and that’s ultimately what we realise we are hearing here. Released April 17 2026 by Phantom Limb.
https://holodec.bandcamp.com/album/tru-folk
RUPERT LALLY – WARM COMPUTERS
I’ve known Swiss-based electronic composer Rupert Lally for a long time now. I’ve followed his music, I’ve interviewed him, I’ve collaborated with him and I’ve released two of his albums through Mortality Tables. I like to think I’ve got a pretty good handle on his music. Warm Computers, his latest release, proves that familiarity doesn’t always afford a complete understanding of where an artist might decide to take their music.
This is Lally at his most objectively and surprisingly rhythmic, eschewing his recent forays into modular improvisation in favour of an electronic dance music which leans into a sort of late-80s / early-90s vibe. ‘You Gotta Be Respectful’ drills into a defiant electro style, filled with hard-hitting rhythms and a wild, attention-grabbing bass line. Elsewhere, Lally hitches resolute beats to emotive textures and the effortless melodic nous which his years spent researching overlooked film soundtracks has informed. ‘Corrupted’ has a dirty, post-hardcore edge, while ‘Selected Ambient Postcard’ nods toward the Aphex Twin album of a similar name. An exciting departure by Lally toward an under-explored zone in his music that I truly hope he continues to investigate. Released May 1 2026.
Further. 