Category: Album reviews

Various Artists – Celebrating The Bat Chapters 1 & 2

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The Dustopian Frequencies imprint has developed an enviable knack for curating themed compilations. I most recently wrote about Insects, which was focused, as its name deftly implies, on artists contributing sound works inspired by the imagined stories of specific insects. Split over two volumes, Celebrating The Bat does something similar, only this time the label’s curatorial gaze is trained on bats.

It is a vast and, if I’m honest, initially daunting project. There are 44 artists here, making this a mammoth set of volumes to work through, filled with familiar names and many that have totally passed me by. It is certainly worth the effort to listen to this all, however. The first volume (Darkness Falls) was intended to evoke the idea of the sun slowly setting, ushering bats out from their daytime hiding places into the darkening skies, while the second compilation (Into The Night) seeks to document bats as they dominate the night sky, hard at work hunting, right through to daybreak.

On the first volume, highlights include tracks by HDRF, MikeKSmith, Giants Of Discovery, Justice, Exit Chamber, Rawtrachs, Lukas Fraktal, PG Warren, Moston Priory and Ali O’May. There is a sense of accumulating darkness in these pieces. Across the first volume you hear lots of drones, grim tones and skittish, randomised sounds that evoke both the sonar communication methods of the bats, and also the dizzying way in which they skim, flip and perform head scratching acrobatic manoeuvres rapidly through the skies. Two tracks which occupy a determinedly different space come from Foster Neville, whose ‘Phoebus Denied’ offers a brief and mournful theremin elegy fringed by buzzing, metallic sounds, and Pocket Dimension, whose ‘Lady Jacaume Of Bayonne’ presents a sparse post-punk electronic cut that would have found a welcome place in the early Mute or Rough Trade catalogues.

Where the first volume feels somewhat brooding and sinister, the second feels, in some ways, more obviously celebratory. Where some tracks approach the bat’s mystique and mystery, there is a sense of joy in a track like 30 Door Key’s ‘Bat(Amax)’ which springs and hops along on wonky rhythms and melodies, while the spoken word contributions on Autumna’s ‘Interceptor’ makes the point that most experienced aerobatic pilots would love to pull off the moves that bats are able to perform so effortlessly. These tracks join other superb pieces by Warmfield, Hexham Wolf, svefn, The Music Liberation Front Sweden, M. Francisco, Trevlad, Scholars Of The Peak and Bernard Grancher.

Postscript

I have two bats which used to visit our garden but who I didn’t see at all in 2025. They reappeared a few weeks ago when we enjoyed a brief run of evenings that were blessed by entirely clear skies.

On one weekend day during that period, the temperatures had been so unseasonably warm that we’d been able to hang some washing on the line. In the evening, I went outside to get the clothes in just as the pair of bats started their elliptical dances right above my head. It was thrilling to watch and to feel a brief but perceptible rush of air from frantically-beating wings, sometimes right by my ear.

I went into the lounge and gushed about what had happened to my youngest daughter, who looked uncomfortable and slightly circumspect – fearful, almost. In some ways, the two sets of very different reactions – my amazement and my daughter’s discomfort – sum up the two sides of this collection; the dark and the light. It makes me think that bats have been given a pretty bad reputation, mostly thanks to Dracula, The Lost Boys and countless other films derived from Bram Stoker’s root idea.

What Dustopian Frequencies have achieved here, in a highly maximalist way, is to rescue the industrious bat from mischaracterisation. Celebrating The Bat offers, across 44 absorbing, evocative and smartly-executed tracks, a reverential celebration of these wonderful and frequently misunderstood creatures.

Celebrating The Bat Chapter 1: Darkness Falls was released April 2 2026. Celebrating The Bat Chapter 2: Into The Night was released April 17 2026. Both releases were issued by Dustopian Frequencies.

Shameless Plug: The Music Liberation Front Sweden released ‘Even Though It Was The Blink Of An Eye, I’m Sorry For What We Have Become’ as part of The Impermanence Project, part of my Mortality Tables collaborative endeavour. It can be found here.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

Shots: Xuma / Asher Levitas & Margaret Fielder McGinnis / Brass Clouds, Fog Net & Volcanic Pinnacles / Hiro Ama / Pas Musique

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XUMA – FREE BETTY

‘Free Betty’ is a protest song by Xuma, the Brighton duo duo of Harriett and Chris Robbins Kennish, whose debut album Jasmine I wrote about two years ago. The focus of their ire here is on the jailing of one Ibtissame Betty Lachgar, imprisoned in squalid conditions in Morocco for wearing a slogan t-shirt – in London, where the last time I checked we still enjoyed freedom of speech and expression – that supported two women sentenced to death in Iran for being lesbians. ‘Free Betty’ contains four mixes of the track, fronted by Harriett Robbins Kennish’s angular, punky vocals, the mixes all pack their own political punch, ranging from crisp electro to fast-paced minimal techno. You can read more about the Free Betty campaign here. Released January 18 2026.

https://xuma.bandcamp.com/album/free-betty

Shameless Plug #1: Chris Robbins Kennish released ‘Wedding Piano’ under the name Ultrachill as part of Season 3 of my Mortality Tables LIFEFILES project. It can be found here.

ASHER LEVITAS & MARGARET FIELDER MCGINNIS – THROUGH THESE RED WINDOWS

This collaboration between sound artists Asher Levitas and Margaret Fielder McGinnis uses two discrete inputs as the jumping-off points for the four tracks presented here. The first is a series of sculptures by McGinnis which are named after Wallace Sabine (1868 – 1919), a physicist whose pioneering work on acoustics was integrated into the architectural design of the Boston Symphony Hall. The second input is a recurring childhood dream that Levitas experienced, which, when approached as sound sculptures, become textures that range from dreamy and resolved to tangled and impenetrable. These were then played through McGinnis’s sculptures, fringing them with a metallic crackle like a rattling air conditioning unit which gives even the most elegiac tone a sense of deep and complex uncertainty. A remarkable release from these two seasoned artists. Released February 13 2026.

https://asherlevitas.bandcamp.com/album/through-these-red-windows-2

Shameless Plug #2: Asher Levitas released ‘It’s Like Last Time But This Time You’ve Got A Gun’ as part of another Mortality Tables initiative, The Impermanence Project. It can be found here.

BRASS CLOUDS, FOG NET & VOLCANIC PINNACLES – DIVE 2: SONOLUMINESCENCE

It’s hard not to describe the second release from the Bathysphere imprint’s Dive series as immersive. Recorded in a single day by the mysterious Brass Clouds, Fog Net and Volcanic Pinnacles, Dive 2 is part-jazz, part-ambient, part-soundscape and all, well, immersive. We hear unobtrusive, atmospheric field recordings, singing bowl tones, evocative saxophone melodies, and big blocks of floating texture, often all at once. It is a highly emotional suite, sidestepping specific classification. The inquisitive piano melodies, fluid synth-brass notes and fluttering electronics of ‘Spectral Visions’ combine together to make one of the album’s emotive highlights, its discernible instrumentation briefly collapsing into a dense web of enveloping drones. ‘Phosphor Signals’ trawls through rich, bass-heavy low-end thanks to a combination of sonorous sax and heavy synths, though which poke a joyful melodic pairing of chiming percussion and piano. Immersive, like I already said (twice). Released February 26 2026 by Bathysphere.

https://bathysphererecords.bandcamp.com/album/dive-2-sonoluminescence

HIRO AMA – BOOSTER PACK

In 2024, I reviewed Japan-born, London-based Hiro Ama’s Music For Peace And Harmony for Electronic Sound. This seems to happen to me increasingly rarely these days, but it is an album that I returned to countless times after the review was written. Its gentle, mellifluous atmospherics left a real impression on me, and I found myself playing it during moments where things were getting on top of me or I felt anxious. Honesty, it’s a beautiful collection. Please do check it out. The Hiro Ama of Booster Pack is very different. This is music designed to move your feet, not soothe your troubled soul. In fact, the only trace of the Ama from Music For Peace And Harmony I can find is on ‘Cloud 9’, where a wonky melody briefly offers a glimpse of the lightness of spirit that coloured his 2024 album. The EP proves Ama to be a highly dexterous and unpredictable producer. The intense ‘Lava’ belongs in a Moby rave DJ set from 1992, with a savage, almost EBM bass line. Opener ‘Booster’ is the highlight, occupying a euphoric (but often skewed) deep house zone that, like the spiritual side he showed on Music For Peace And Harmony, Ama makes entirely his own. Released April 10 2026 by PRAH.

https://hiroama.bandcamp.com/album/booster-pack-ep

PAS MUSIQUE – 8 PHRASES

Hot on the heels of the solo Pas Musique performance by founding member Robert Pepper at the Pictor Gallery in New York last week, there’s a new album out this week. 8 Phrases is the soundtrack to a film comprising eight short segments, and finds the trio of Pepper, Michael Durek and Jon Worthley returning to the instant composition / filming approach they used between 2008 and 2011. The full film can be found here. ‘Whisper’ occupies the dead centre of this collection, finding them intoning a nursery rhyme I’d forgotten all about over a sound bed of swirling, slightly discordant electronics doused in phasing, fluctuating reverb. The words are delivered in a low, conspiratorial whisper which imbues them with a grim sense of discomfort and unease, not dissimilar to how The Residents often usher the familiar toward the nightmarish. Elsewhere, ‘Inside A Clock’ fuses a pulsating, restless low-end with murky, shrouded voices from which emerges a dense sequence of unpredictable sounds. ‘Garden Echo’ might have the most beatific title of all of these pieces but it is also one of the collection’s darkest moments, as a polite cloud of pretty textures gets hitched to a dirty, faltering rhythm, accompanied by urgent sirens, and grubby blocks of distorted noise. Released April 24 2026.

https://pasmusique.bandcamp.com/album/8-phrases

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

The Doomed Bird Of Providence – Metoric Heralds Of Danger

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I have an awkward relationship with graphic scores. On the one hand, I can’t read music, so the idea of an alternative way of providing instruction to musicians that doesn’t use traditional notation really appeals to me. On the other hand, I find them utterly baffling. I can’t ever figure out what they’re trying to convey, whereas sheet music has at least a sense of order (unless you’ve ever tried to decipher one of Charles Ives’s scores). All of this is irrelevant because I can neither read music nor play an instrument anyway, though I find it pretty easy to follow the score for John Cage’s 4’33”…

I mention all of this because the fifth album from the London-based The Doomed Bird Of Providence makes use of an especially bewildering graphic score. “The scores are circular in shape,” writes Mark Kluzek (accordion, bass, glockenspiel, percussion). “They are split into rings which are the stages of the composition. The performer moves from the centre, outwards, through each ring and responds to the symbols assigned to them. The symbols are prompts suggesting a certain way of playing…”

I’ve followed this collective for a number of years. I’ve always found their semi-improvised music leans into a sort of sea-shanty style mournfulness, and in fact the first album of theirs I ever wrote about was inspired by stories from the sea. The jumping off point for Meteoric Heralds Of Danger was an 1874 prison novel by Australian novelist Marcus Clarke, For The Term Of His Natural Life. All the titles contain a nautical reference reflecting the fact that Clarke’s book details the horrendous treatment of a man transported by boat to Australia, his punishment for having been accused of committing a crime.

There is a curious sense of finality and hopelessness to these pieces, reflecting the fate of a prisoner doomed to spend the rest of his days in a penal colony. There are, however, moments of somewhat muted joy. The recurring violin and viola refrains by Joolie Wood and Rachel Laurence on ‘Darkly Rolling Waves Flashed Fire’ and the otherwise apocalyptic title track are two such relatively hopeful moments. Kluzek’s stirring Parisian bridge musician accordion on ‘A Long Low Line On The Distant Horizon’ is another.

There are four long-ish improvisations using the visual scores here, augmented by four shorter composed pieces. Without watching the musicians interpret the score in the studio, you’d be hard-pressed to know which was which apart from the lengths. Taken as a whole, Meteoric Heralds Of Danger is a remarkable collection, and exactly what I’d expect from them.

Meteoric Heralds Of Danger by The Doomed Bird Of Providence was released March 20 2026. With thanks to Mark.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

Xqui – Laying A Pipeline / Nocturnal Drift

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Two new releases from the anonymous and prolific Xqui highlight two different sides to the artist behind the mask – the noisy fan of processed found sound, and someone drawn to more melodic concerns.

Laying A Pipeline seems fully in thrall to Depeche Mode’s 1983 album, and explores Xqui’s fascination with field recordings. The primary source material for this, hence the nod to Construction Time Again, was a building site on the industrial estate where the mysterious Xqui holds down his day job (presumably in his mask, much to the amusement of his co-workers).

It’s an homage, of sorts, to the Depeche album, but also to the overall act of opportunistically making field recordings and then manipulating them into new shapes which render their source fairly unknowable. I guess that’s allegorical to what happens on a building site, where an empty space is transformed into something with definition and purpose.

‘Service Dust’ is the standout here, for no other reason than it shows Xqui at his manipulative best, building a weird and alien sound world out of heavily-disguised voices and what sounds like hissing steam from a dystopian Metropolis factory production line. If this had been the 1960s, someone would probably had this banned for containing subversive, mind-controlling messages.

And then there’s Nocturnal Drift, for which I was going to use the adjective ‘noir’ because of its evocative, Lost Highway-esque sleeve photography. Only that was me being lazy and I hadn’t even heard the album at that point (yeah, yeah – never judge a book by its cover etc etc). Instead, this finds Xqui in the same general vicinity of his Vince Clarke-tipped Hymns album.

Quite where Xqui sourced the sounds from here is, like everything he does, somewhat unclear, however it is presented as a melodic, often classically-minded suite, occasionally joyful and frequently contemplative. The centrepiece is ‘Progressive Modernism’, which runs for an epic 28 minutes and, despite very little fluctuation in its short looped sound, never seems to run out of steam. It rather reminds me of the Philip Glass Buddha Box I zoned out to during the work-from-home-torture of the 2020 lockdown.

It also reminds me of hours spent staring at Mark Rothko’s bleak Four Seasons series of paintings at Tate Modern until they moved them someplace else. Like Rothko’s impenetrably dark canvases, the conceit is the level of detail that reveals itself under close examination and intense focus. The pace of ‘Progressive Modernism’ may be hesitatingly slow, but there is extreme restlessness and volatility in its myriad surrounding textures.

I hate to call this profound, as that might give Xqui a big head. In turn, that would require him to buy a bigger mask. In spite of those concerns, I can think of no better or more fitting word to describe Nocturnal Drift.

Laying A Pipeline was released April 3 2026 by Eustress Tapes. Nocturnal Drift will be self-released on April 30 2026 through xqui.bandcamp.com

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

Rupert Lally – Norden

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Remember that TV show It’ll Be Alright On The Night? It was hosted by a guy called Denis Norden, who would introduce gaffes and outtakes while holding a clipboard, looking less like a veteran TV presenter and more like a safety inspector in a factory. Well, this album by Switzerland-based sound artist Rupert Lally is a tribute to him.

Only kidding. It isn’t, though it would be kinda fun if it was. But it is a tribute – of sorts – to the Nord Modular G1 synth, which Lally used to create this album. It consists of five long tracks which find Lally in full-on, long-form experimental electronic territory. I’ve followed Lally’s work for at least a decade now, and it’s really interesting to hear him venture down this path.

There’s a sense of restraint, but also freedom, in these pieces. It’s like he’s symbiotically interfaced himself with the machine, building patches that rely on repetitions, subtle shifts in tone and slowly-evolving layered development. Outwardly minimalistic, each of these five pieces is actually a rich stew of interlacing ideas where a lot happens if you only listen closely enough.

Each piece here occupies its own unique sound world, but ‘Nord D’ is my personal favourite, specifically for the nostalgia its core bass refrain gives me for Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85-92, which runs for the first four minutes until a hesitant, oscillating melody ushers in the track’s discrete and mesmerising changes. And then there’s ‘Nord E’, a 27-minute epic that feels like a 1970s synth music experiment that has existed for fifty years in a undiscovered time capsule buried in Don Buchla’s back yard, all white noise percussion, pointillistic tonal sprinkles and dubby echoes.

Norden is an album with many such moments to explore, occupying a creative zone that I’d really like to hear Lally leaning into more – with or without a clipboard.

https://rupertlally.bandcamp.com/album/norden

Norden by Rupert Lally was released March 6 2026.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

Various Artists – Insects

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A warning: if you’re the kind of person that massively freaks out at the insect-based challenges on shows like I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here or The Challenge, Insects is not the compilation album for you. Containing 12 tracks each inspired by insects, if you’re even remotely scared of humming, buzzing, flapping or the amplified sound of insectoid limbs scurrying across a kitchen surface, this is likely to send you into a complete panic. For everyone else, this is a sharply-executed curatorial exercise by the always-remarkable Dustopian Frequencies imprint.

Key tracks for this reviewer include ‘Anopheles Genus Takeover’ by BMH (WCR’s Kate Bosworth and Matt Jetten) which has the sinister nihilism of an imaginary soundtrack to Iain Banks’ ‘The Wasp Factory’, until Bosworth issues the line “There are no tin openers anymore,” which is a trademark bit of wry humour I’ve come to look for in BMH’s savagely inventive music. Dave Clarkson’s squelchy techno banger ‘Hive Mind’ is another, providing further evidence of an alchemical skill that Clarkson has for turning pretty much any sound – toys, sweets, fairground rides, caves – into electronic music gold, in this case imagining a swarm of killer bees descending on an illegal outdoor rave.

At the other extreme, Linear North’s beetling, sub-bass-heavy ‘Brains Nor Backbone’ has a weird mournfulness and sensitivity toward the insect population, with phrasing that pivots on a quote nodding in the direction of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

A recurring memory kept popping into my head while writing this. It was of being in a room in London’s Natural History Museum when my daughters were very small, a curator pulling out drawer after drawer of glass topped boxes, each containing a selection of different insects. This compilation is a lot like being back in that room, only each successive display case is accompanied by a vivid, visceral and very occasionally panic-inducing soundscape.

Insects was released January 23 2026 by Dustopian Frequencies.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

Various Artists – Ephemeral Sounds Of The Gulf – Edition 1

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Ephemeral Sounds Of The Gulf – Edition 1 collates 13 tracks from artists either based in, or with links to, the Gulf region, and was compiled by VCUarts Quatar’s Erika Tsuchiya.

The album employs a wide angle lens as it surveys the sound art spectrum. We hear whispy, euphoric vocals on Ghayda Abdujalil’s sparse ‘Fast-paced Life’. We hear modernist, leftfield electronic pop on Khulafi’s ‘Touch Sand!’. We observe processed sound and field recording excursions on Toni’s evocative ‘Caught In A Sandstorm’, where you can almost feel the desert wind blasting your skin, and Sam Nester’s watery ‘Field Notes’. We hear playful, noisy, disruptive sounds from a train journey on TuaregBeats’ ‘Al Wakra Metro Station’. (I played the latter while on my commute home in England, and the interjection of train announcements on TuaregBeats’ track left me feeling utterly confused as to where I actually was.)

We also hear dark ambience on Salfeya Alblooshi’s ‘E-waste Contaminant’, which carries, on one level, a soundtrack-friendly brooding sense of threat and danger; on another level, it has a fragility, a barely-there lightness that recalls the near-silence of Thomas Köner. Its counterpart comes in the form of the dreamy ‘The Shand’ by WYWY, whose central melodic refrain and breathy vocal feel like they could have found a comfortable place tracking a scene of emotional uncertainty in Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Schrader’s The Canyons.

Tsuchiya appears her twice, under her 3R1K4 alias. ‘Compound’ clusters tinkly, bell-like notes and a 1990s Warp electronica sensibility before offering up a savage, stuttering bass shape that creates the notion of the track suddenly lurching into a blistering rage banger. That latency informs a pulse-quickening feeling of tension and drama which ultimately dissipates rapidly into gentle vocal loops and soft ambience. Her collaboration with mourad, ‘Sunrise Rain’, which closes the collection, leans more prominently into that ephemeral, textural sound, offering soft, shimmering notes alongside a field recording of a relentless, noisy rain shower.

A carefully curated and engaging collection of varied sounds and inventive ideas.

Ephemeral Sounds Of The Gulf – Edition 1 was released February 7 2026 through Ephemera Records

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

f5point6 – In Retrospect

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In Retrospect collects together key tracks from the body of work released by f5point6 on See Blue Audio. The alias of visual artist R. Cleveland Aaron, the goal here was to pick a representative track from each of his 11 See Blue Audio releases, in so doing charting a course through his catalogue and his musical development.

The album concludes with ‘La femme au port’, an entirely new track that leans into a sort of jazzy freedom, which sounds unlike anything else on the album. It vaguely reminds me of what St. Germain might sounds like if he was performing an ambient set in a disused church. ‘La femme au port’ offers a glimpse of Aaron’s future directional shifts, a far cry from the more obviously ambient tracks that dominate his other releases.

Not that these are derivative, aimless ambient pieces. Far from it. Aaron has a particular way of framing and evolving these pieces which set them apart from some of the bland sonic wallpaper that the genre has often embraced. ‘It’s Perfect Here’ opens with a undulating synth note before colliding kinetically with other a panoply of other sounds, including one that seems to corkscrew slowly ground-ward. It is serene, volatile, subtle and poised between darkness and levity. Elsewhere, ‘Hexapod’ offers a rhythm formed by resonant pulses that becomes fringed by a squelchy synth pattern. This is Aaron in slow-build mode, nudging the track out of pure ambient drift to a sort of low-key, dreamy slow-motion techno.

My personal favourite track here is ‘Fertile Ground’, which could be the high watermark of Aaron’s ambient explorations. It is a collection of movements, ranging from dub-like atmospherics to a coda that sounds like a piece of minimal classical music for orchestra and electronics.

An illuminating career survey, filled with rich texture and stylistic unpredictability.

In Retrospect by f5point6 was released February 13 2026 by See Blue Audio.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

 

Rupert Lally – Tiny Universes

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Earlier this year, my Mortality Tables collaborative project released Lunar Forms by Switzerland-based sound artist Rupert Lally*. That album found Lally at what I would argue was his most inventive, using a specific and quirky Eurorack module to trigger randomised rhythms on a daily basis, which he then used as the foundation for the pieces on the album.

The album also found Lally in deeply ambient territory. It’s an area of his work that I’ve always enjoyed, and for Tiny Universes, his latest album, we (pleasingly) find him going even further in that direction.

His choice of title is instructive, if somewhat consciously oxymoronic. These 11 pieces are like studying pinhead-sized universes through a microscope, revealing an incomprehensible vastness that would not be implied by their ostensibly small stature. Musically, there’s a whiff of jazzy Kosmische, a smattering of Vangelis-esque Bladerunner-y widescreen vastness and a determined melodic momentum that’s often missing from a lot of ambient music. Lally is not afraid of introducing unsettling, discordant textures, instilling a feeling of discomfort and uncertainty as much as they seem to evoke the idea of wide-eyed, slack-jawed wonder, surprise and incomprehension.

Lally has always been a masterful electronic composer and sound designer, capable of using an adaptable array of tools and techniques within his work. The sleight-of-hand he deploys here is the art of the slow build. His melodies begin as quiet, ruminative gestures, which coalesce and harden as they progress, often without you noticing. These magnificent, delicate, unexpected, low-key crescendos are critical ingredients of pieces like ‘Cosmic Countdown’, where that aforementioned sense of motion is most acutely felt. Elsewhere, Lally’s approach is to allow pieces to form stately, stirring gaseous structures out of oscillating, restless layers of white noise, lending a creator’s guiding hand while also allowing the tracks to evolve and develop by themselves.

Unlike Lunar Forms, there are no rhythms on Tiny Universes. None. Not even the slightest trace, inference or suggestion. Perhaps they haven’t formed yet in these universes that have caught Lally’s attention. It leaves his melodic and atmospheric prowess utterly naked and untethered; a brave move, for sure, but one that he is effortlessly capable of owning. The result is an album representing yet another high watermark in his expansive back catalogue. And yes, I know I’m biased.

https://rupertlally.bandcamp.com/album/tiny-universes

Tiny Universes by Rupert Lally was released December 5 2025. It is available for a limited period as a pay-what-you-like release.

* There are a small number of CD copies of Lunar Forms available here.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2025 Further.

Shots: A.M. Boys / Cloud Canyons / Marco Avitabile / Critical Objects

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A.M. BOYS – PRESENT PHASE

The second album from the NYC duo of John Blonde and Chris Moore is an enigma. As an example of leftfield electronic pop it’s up there with the best. Not only that, but Blonde and Moore’s conscious decision to evenly split the album between vocal tracks and instrumental pieces is unlike anything else on the market today. That largely from the way these pieces were written through intuition – if Blonde didn’t feel lyrics flowing when they were working on a track, he wouldn’t force them, and it would stay a pure instrumental piece. That gives each of these pieces an intentionality and purpose, not a sense of incompleteness. ‘Yesterday Yes’ is a good example of a track that exudes a bold, epically-building firmness – exceptionally lyrical in its melodic motif, only without lyrics. Elsewhere, the sublime ‘Ocean Ocean’ documents Blonde’s feelings as he sat watching the waves and surfers on Surfrider Beach, bringing some California warmth to their East Coast starkness. ‘Wounded Wrestler’ might be a note of romantic longing to an injured college sportsman, but its noisy, rough-edged delivery gives off an edge of a lost Throbbing Gristle track recorded live in a dark and murky Manhattan club. I interviewed Blonde and Moore for Electronic Sound. You can find that interview here. Released May 16 2005.

https://amboys.bandcamp.com/album/present-phase

 

CLOUD CANYONS – ECSTASY / DISCIPLINE

Cloud Canyons are an Italian quartet of Stella Baraldi, Michelle Cristofori, Laura Storchi and Nicola Caleffi. This single follows their 2023 debut album Dreaming Of Horses Running In Circles, and contains two long tracks that showcase a singular approach to electronic music. ‘Ecstasy’ is a dreamy affair, all pulsing arpeggios drenched in soft reverb to create hazy, gauzy, etiolated textures. There is a hint of white noise at the music’s fringes, like the lonely sound of rain on an apartment window. Over these sounds we hear mantra-like vocals that alternate between euphoric and uncertain, like the clipped voices of a half-heard conversation. ‘Discipline’ isn’t, alas, a Throbbing Gristle cover, but it does bear some similarity to Billie Ray Martin’s version of ‘Persuasion’. Over a grid of ceaseless beats, Cloud Canyons deploy a menacing bass pattern, minimalist, pointillistic high-pitched sounds and a fragile melody, while repeated vocals are processed into echoing beds of sound. It is at once energetic and insistent, carrying a sense of urgency and vital dark energy. The two tracks couldn’t be more different, but, really. who needs conformity anyway? Released July 25 2025.

https://cloudcanyonsband.bandcamp.com/album/ecstasy-discipline

 

MORAY NEWLANDS – THE RED RED EARTH (Wormhole World)

I’ve been meaning to write about this album for a while, ever since I read the opening line of Moray Newlands’ email that accompanied this album: “I’ve been ruminating on the inevitability of death and how it will come to us all at some point.” I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking the same thoughts, and my Mortality Tables project (which Newlands has contributed to) is almost entirely occupied with our essential impermanence. With a title inspired by the soil to be found near his home on the east coast of Scotland, the 16 pieces presented here represent his unfolding thoughts d reflections. Taking in soft and introspective piano, field recordings, wobbly vocal sounds, church bells, discordant strings, delicate electronics, inquisitive textures and quotes from Sylvia Plath, these pieces are far from maudlin, miserable reflections of Newlands’ thoughts. Instead, they carry a sort of openness and acceptance. The exception is ‘An Incident Has Occurred’ and its counterpart, ‘Another Incident Has Occurred’, which underline a brief sense of panicked uncertainty. The plaintive ‘(Put Me In) The Red Red Earth’, which closes the first half, and a version of Philip Glass’ ‘Closing’, which concludes the album, will just about finish you off and usher you to your own burial spot under the title’s red, red earth. Released August 15 2025.

https://wormholeworld.bandcamp.com/album/the-red-red-earth

 

MARCO AVITABILE – A FEW MEANINGFUL THINGS (Colectivo Casa Amarela)

Marco Avitabile is an Italian guitarist. There’s also a house DJ with the same name, but I’m guessing these aren’t the same person. Avitabile’s technique came out of heavier rock, but he has now established himself as a improviser, usually adding effects and processing to lift his music into a more structured style. His latest album for the Lisbon Colectivo Casa Amarela label is one freighted with tension, specifically the different directions we are all pulled in during our lives between family, work and our myriad passions. That essence manifests itself here in playing that is never angry or fractious, but which gently oscillates, as if Avitabile is using his instrument to ask questions in an attempt to make sense of his world. Key track ‘Copenhagen’ is an eight-minute guitar symphony, framed by an initial cluster of heavy guitar crashes and reverb that evolve into a poignant, heart-wrenching melody accompanied by subtle, unobtrusive electronics. The piece has a journeying, evolving quality, moving from the troubled, anguished darkness of its opening moments toward something much more euphoric. Released August 31 2025.

https://casaamarela.bandcamp.com/album/a-few-meaningful-things

 

CRITICAL OBJECTS – BLOSSOMING ACHE

In the last of these round-ups, I covered ‘Rewind’, the debut single from Critical Objects – the duo of Pinklogik and Veryan – and politely asked for more electronic pop from these two wonderful artists. Well, I’m pleased to say that’s happened. ‘Blossoming Ache’ is the duo’s second track, built from a powerful bass hook and determined beats, set in place beneath a series of spiralling melodies that have a fleeting, ephemeral delicateness. Pinklogik’s vocals are haunting and plaintive, alternating between innocence and world-weary disappointment, like a mournful choir heard through the haze of memory. As with ‘Rewind’, both Veryan and Pinklogik provide their own individual remixes to round out the release, offering up polar opposite explorations of the track’s layers – with Pinklogik ratcheting up the rhythmic element and Veryan turning the piece into a sparkling blend of vocals and textures that will have the hairs on the back of your neck standing to attention. I won’t repeat the earlier plea for more music from this duo; Veryan has already tipped me off that more is on the way. Released October 31 2025.

https://criticalobjects.bandcamp.com/album/blossoming-ache

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2025 Further.