Cave Cricket – The World Pt. 1
Cave Cricket is the project of Portland, OR‘s Kira Sassano, who makes drone and ambient-inspired folk music that seems to emanate from another plane entirely. Her latest album, The World, is being released later this week on cassette by the good folks at bud tapes, a release in which the label say “cascading tones and abounding noises ebb and flow like the mellow waves of a lake or sand on a beach shifting in the breeze.” Lead single ‘The World Pt 1’ offers a glimpse of this in action, a song that feels at once spacious and intimate, Sassano’s vocals ringing out like an otherworldly choir above soaring drones and pulsating drum machine.
There are so many problems in our world
Oh the world moves so fast
it makes my head spin
Oh the world is so vast
with all its moving parts
hojascirculares – asleep
hojascirculares is the recording project of Mexican-American producer, songwriter, and visual artist Ara Hernandez. Latest single ‘Asleep’, released to coincide with last month’s full moon, sees hojascirculares continue to perfect a dark and spiritual brand of synth-based ambient music. There’s a ghostly, gauziness to the song, something which shares an uncanny alignment with its overall sense of dissociation, of feeling somehow unreal. “It’s about those states, gliding through life like a ghost, stuck and frozen inside my own mind,” Hernandez describes. “Paralyzed by my fears of the unknown, the future.” But the song isn’t a simple descent into inky anxiety, it offers a sense of reprieve and respite too. “But I know the flood always returns and sets me free again.” she continues “I am grateful for those moments, when I can feel everything again.”
MF Tomlinson – A Cloud
Born in Brisbane/Meanjin and now based in London, MF Tomlinson is a singer-songwriter who knits psych and sixties sensibilities into his folk style to conjure something as detailed as it is evocative. Having recently signed with PRAH Recordings, Tomlinson has unveiled new track ‘A Cloud’ in preview of his second album which is due sometime next year, developing his sound into an almost orchestral richness. The song picks up where the last record left off, finding Tomlinson suspended within a bittersweet dream-state, where the pain of longing is counterbalanced by an appreciation of the beauty inherent in even the smallest moments of life. Check out the video by Daisy JT Smith below:
‘A Cloud’ is out now via PRAH Recordings and you can grab it from Bandcamp.
PACKS – iknowiknow
Fresh off the back of debut album Take the Cake released via Fire Talk Records and Royal Mountain Records last year, Toronto‘s PACKS is back with a brand new EP, WOAH. We described the previous release as “a delightfully fuzzed-out balance between dreamy stasis and forward motion, all tied together by [Madeline] Link’s inventive, wry lyrics.” WOAH continues the conversational-yet-poetic style within more subdued, acoustic arrangements. Latest single ‘iknowiknow’ is a great example, a confessional track undercut by a sardonic edge that’s all tumbling acoustic guitar and downbeat vocals.
RA Washington / Jah Nada – Bobbi Lynn
It seems futile to attempt to sum up In Search of Our Father’s Gardens with a single track. The debut record from Cleveland duo RA Washington and Jah Nada out later this year on Astral Spirits, the release is an epic double LP split into four sides (or five, if you count the bonus digital addition), with each taking on very different moods and styles. They are even designed so that they can be played simultaneously if you have two record players at hand. All that said, single ‘Bobbi Lynn’ isn’t exactly an average song either. Representing ‘side D’ of the album and a culmination of everything which comes before, it clocks in at over eighteen minutes and highlights the full ability of the supporting fourteen-piece ensemble.
Trout – bugs
Trout is a throwback to the golden age of MP3 blog gems, when mysterious projects emerged from nowhere with no social media presence, no EPK or press campaign, hardly any information on who they are at all. New single ‘bugs’ is “about watching the bugs outside your window be more productive than you,” is as much as we get by way of explanation, though no more is needed. A song sitting between bedroom pop confession and gauzy Gleemer-esque weight, its downbeat drift captures a day passing in a torpor, sparks of energy appearing and disappearing like flares of frustration.
Waterbaby – Thin Air
Avant pop duo Waterbaby, AKA sisters Martha and Jessica Kilpatrick, have made their name weaving soundscapes which play with the distinction between lightness and weight. Having signed with untitled (recs), the pair are back with single ‘Thin Air’ to further this style, a track at once ethereal and dense. “It’s a song about duality,” they explain. “We shapeshift from being in the driver’s seat to going along for the ride […] and travel from day to night.” And further changes take place across this journey, not least a rise and fall which offers the listener both the joy of the ascent and the rush of the plummet back down. As the band put it “Throughout the song you soar and crash, sometimes looking down on the world below, existing somewhere in the clouds like an angel watching earth.”
‘Thin Air’ is out now via untitled (recs) and you can find it in all the usual places.
Zoon – Oil Pastel / Dope Sick (ft. Cadence Weapon)
A few weeks ago we previewed Big Pharma, a forthcoming album from Hamilton‘s Zoon on Paper Bag Records. An exploration of the “enduring face of colonialism via the power and violence of the pharmaceutical industry,” as we described, which also worked to uphold indigenous language. Latest single ‘Oil Pastel/Dope Sick’ invites Cadence Weapon to meld shoegaze and hip hop into a sound rich and detailed enough to capture the experience of being on the ground amid the opioid crisis. His intuitive, flowing verses take aim at the corporations who caused the catastrophe, looping in meditative cycles until they become something like a mantra for instigating change from the bottom up.
Big Pharma is out now via Paper Bag Records and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.