Now Loic Moonmattress has returned to see out the year with another EP, Last Nostalgia, and as the title suggests, the collection builds upon the themes of its predecessor to explore ideas of memory and fondness. Again drawing upon a diverse range of influences, the songs combine lush ambient textures with hip hop and bedroom pop sensibilities to weave soundscapes at once expansive and intimate, delving into the small, personal moments to excavate the full warmth within.

The title track of the EP is a great place to jump in. A perfect example of the patient, slow-moving style, with Loic Moonmattress taking the time to examine a specific moment in all of its varied, wistful texture. “[It’s] a song about the clarity, overwhelm, and sense of finality that comes with looking backward on era of ones life that has just come to pass,” the artist describes. The result is something touching, melancholic and more than a match for its title. An attempt to preserve a fleeting moment in sound.

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Now, Michael James has returned with Our Sun Will Clean its Holy Wounds, a new album from The Exit Bags, again released by Drongo Tapes and Joyless Youth. A release which again uses a blend of post-punk, slowcore, ambient and drone to weave a sound at once dense and drifting. Take the plaintive opener ‘Vanishing Cloud Burial’, which builds with an intangible quality as the vocals barely break a murmur, though eventually precipitates into its own storm. The result is something fearful and sublime, a mood typified by ‘At Least I Know Now’ and its direct reference to mortality. “I said I wasn’t scared,” as James sings. “I lied.”

i don’t like letting you down
i will try to find my own way
across the end line
i will try to find the infected wound
that makes the choice mine
will you pull, and will you feel inclined
i wouldn’t judge you if you tried

album artwork by airick delgado / design a.d.

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Lead single ‘Summer in Your Mouth’ introduces the new album’s direction, offering a literate and impassioned picture of seasonal depression amid changing seasons on the prairie. Not that lead Joel Stretch necessarily set out to write a song about such themes. “The title of this song references an Al Purdy poem called ‘Transient’ about travelling across Canada by train as an adolescent,” Stretch explains. “The opening lines are about crossing the prairies ‘so close to the violent sway of the fields it’s like running and running naked with the summer in your mouth.’ I borrowed that line as a starting point for this song.”

The song’s direction was decided by a matter of circumstance. Because Starpainter were writing within a long prairie winter, meaning Purdy’s image took on a newfound resonance. What emerged was a song which longs for the season on the other side of the spectrum, unfolding with a slow-burning richness that holds onto the promise of change as one might the sensations of a fond dream. Or, as Stretch puts it, “an ode to summer that I wrote in the dead of winter.”

Rattlesnake Dream is out on the 2nd June via Neon Moon Records. Pre-order it now via the Starpainter webstore.

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Best Fern is the ambient pop collaboration between New York’s Alexia Avina and Montreal’s Nick Schofield. The pair met while in residence at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, where they drew on the surrounding Rocky Mountain landscape to devise a style that sits in the ethereal middle ground between ambient and pop. The debut Best Fern album, Earth Then Air, releases early next year on Backward Music and Youngbloods, and lead single ‘Way Inside’ is an indicator of what is to come. A track at once soaring and earthy, the fecund mistiness eradicating any distinction between organic and dream matter. The song comes complete with a video directed & edited by Hugo Bernier. Watch it below:

Earth Then Air releases on 3^rd February via Youngbloods. Preorder it now via the Best Fern Bandcamp page.

CO-ED DORMS – Milk Drinker

Part of what they call the “Neo-Classical Post-Industrial Post-Punk Revival,” English four-piece CO-ED DORMS have shared new single ‘Milk Drinker’ as a statement of intent. A finely crafted track which grasps for a number of stylistic influences, the lush instrumentation held in line by almost marching percussion, while the near spoken-word vocals are sardonic and playful and wry.  Think Black Country, New Road fronted by Mark E. Smith, this time sponsored by Big Dairy. Drink the damn milk.

Cynthia Hamar – Where Your Love Lives

Back in June, we wrote about Alberta-born Métis singer-songwriter Cynthia Hamar, labelling single ‘Shaken’ as “a track which finds a balance between soulful confidence and poignant sadness, led by the kind of bitter assurance gained only from learning the hard way.” Again out via Neon Moon Records, latest track ‘Where Your Love Lives’ is no less mature and reflective in its tone, taking a nostalgic look at the past in all its bittersweet glory. Charting the things gained and lost along the way, and the slow change constantly unfolding. The song’s video furthers this excavation of bygone years, with director Korban Hamar and editor Jessica Lowe creating a collage of home videos from Hamar’s family collection.

‘Where Your Love Lives’ is out now via Neon Moon Records and you can listen in the usual places.

Dunebug – Still Dreaming

Now based in London, Dunebug is the project of Manchester-born Chi Limpiroj. Regular readers will be familiar with her work as we’ve covered a couple of singles in the last few years which, along with a self-titled EP released in 2019, have established a distinctively bittersweet lo-fi indie pop style. Now Dunebug has returned with a new single, ‘Still Dreaming’, the latest release ahead of a forthcoming debut album. Limpiroj describes ‘Still Dreaming’ as “a song about being afraid to sleep due to recurring nightmares of an abusive past lover,” but despite this heavy subject matter it’s presented as a surprisingly sweet laidback pop song. The track comes complete with a contradictorily bright video by Alyssa Mello, which you can check out below:

‘Still Dreaming’ is out now and available from the Dunebug Bandcamp page.

Esme White – Pearly Gate Crashers

Hailing from New York and now based in London, singer-songwriter Esme White started writing during the early months of the pandemic and has worked with Spiritual Records in Chalk Farm on new tracks. Single ‘Pearly Gate Crashers’ is a great introduction to White’s sound, an infectiously upbeat folk rock track with real narrative weight. God is real but heaven is closed, great crowds gathering at the gates demanding to be let in. Shady snakes in suits bribe angels for backdoor entries as old ladies threaten to burn the whole thing down, the rhythm building as a sense of desperation grows.

Yeah I may be human
but that’s not on me, that’s on you, man

‘Pearly Gate Crashers’ is out now. You can find Esme White on Instagram.

LIES – Camera Chimera

The new project of Mike and Nate Kinsella, LIES have won attention with a string of singles which combine beauty and strangeness into something fitting for the contemporary moment. Latest track ‘Camera Chimera’ further develops this style, an exploration of life online which starts out seductively mellow and soon morphs into something dark and unnerving. “It’s about not only feeling manipulated by others, but also being confronted with the reality and consequences of your own lies and manipulation,” Mike Kinsella explains, “and how that can mentally and emotionally cause one to spiral.” The song comes with a video directed by Rachel Cabbit of POND Creative which furthers these themes, amplifying the mood of shadowy mystery by printing and scanning frames to produce a distorted, lo-fi style.

‘Camera Chimera’ is out now via Polyvinyl Record Co. and available from the usual places.

Mizan K – Go

‘Go’ is the latest single from New York’s Mizan K, an effortless pop song that bubbles with quiet energy that she describes as a “four-minute fever-dream inspired by fragments of fantastical children’s novels.” Built on an infectious melody and adorned with quirky embellishments, the track is a strange, kaleidoscopic commentary on our hyperactive, money-focused world. As Mizan K goes on to explain: “A dozen celestial characters including myself, float in a space-casino and chase their fate in a speedy and unstable world. The singer (me) is a trickster, presenting glimmers of opportunity, then changing voices to relay worldly wisdom and warnings of failure. The song winds its way through a frantic universe while angling towards fun and optimism.”

My Politic – Cursing at the Night & the Morning

Next month, Nashville-based duo My Politic will release Missouri Folklore: Songs & Stories From Home, an album grounded in the landscape of the Ozark Mountains which looks to explore the nuanced and often conflicted identities of those who call Missouri home. “There are songs about judgment, existentialism, forgiveness, love, death, growing, and healing,” as Kaston Guffey explains. “It’s a lot of material focused on the nuance and mundanity, in some sense, of being a person.” Latest single ‘Cursing at the Night & the Morning’ captures this spirit of imperfection with a keen eye and careful charm, steeped in the wistful ache of all the best folk music but choosing to confront this nostalgia too.

What I know and what I’ve heard
Are different things I’m sure
But the differences all blur
Cuz time’s a warping glass

Siv Jakobsen x Ane Brun – Sun, Moon, Stars

With new album Gardening coming next January on The Nordic Mellow, Oslo songwriter Siv Jakobsen has unveiled latest single, ‘Sun, Moon Stars’. With Jakobsen joined by renowned Norwegian songwriter Ane Brun, the track weaves a plaintive mood scored with careful details and evocative harmonies. An ode to the people who stand steadfast through the worst moments, reliable points which allow us to navigate our own ways through. The song is “inspired by my least favourite month of the year and the heaviness I tend to feel during it,” as Jakobsen explains, “as well as the beauty and hope I’ve found in a companion that has the ability to pull me out of the dreariest corner of my mind, even during the darkest month of the year.”

Gardening is out on the 20th January via The Nordic Mellow.

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The work of Royal Leamington Spa’s Bastien Kalb has always reached wide in search of inspiration, be it toward Zinedine Zidane for 2015’s Dinking In The Shadows of Zizou or Giallo and 70s crime flicks for 2020’s The Killing of Eugene Peeps. Latest record Organ Recital, out next month on Gearbox Records, is no less ambitious. Something of a sequel to Eugene Peeps, the album is conceived as a fantasy world beyond our own, a dimension distinct from reality if not entirely insulated from it, various elements leaking through just as real sounds and sensations might enter a dream. Single ‘In The Woods’ displays just how immersive such a style can be, VHS textures and cinematic strings combining into a collision of real and unreal.

Cynthia Hamar – Shaken

Cynthia Hamar is a Métis singer-songwriter from Alberta who has just released brand new single ‘Shaken’ on Neon Moon Records. With its languid rhythms and evocative delivery, the track finds a balance between soulful confidence and poignant sadness, led by the kind of bitter assurance gained only from learning the hard way. “‘Shaken’ is an internal conversation about trauma,” Hamar explains, “recognizing the deep groaning and the need to let go of the pain to embrace a brighter future.” Hamar wrote the song over a period of years, addressed to herself amid changing family dynamics and relationship issues. “It’s written from a point of exhaustion,” she continues, “surrendering to a solution and I hope it inspires the listener to process their own pain and see the comfort in choosing to forgive and move on.”

Rise up and take the place you been
Designed for from the start
Leave the haunted place behind my friend,
Boldly make your mark
But you gotta let it go
love knows when to let it go
I know

Dolfiin Alexander – Free Wheeler

Dolfiin Alexander is set to release new album Free Wheeler via Anxiety Blanket Records on the 1st July, with the title track offering a glimpse of what you can expect. The release was for the most part written and recorded during a summer road trip through Germany, Italy and Estonia, and the single possesses that hybrid blend of wonder and melancholy unique to travelling. Its lo-fi textures and heartfelt vocals capture a heightened awareness of both the surroundings and the self, appreciative of the small moments yet already mourning their passing.

Free Wheeler is out on the 1st July via Anxiety Blanket Records and you can pre-order it now.

Emily Fairlight x The Shifting Sands – Head Above

Ahead of collaborative album Sun Casts A Shadow on Fishrider Records and Occultation Records, Emily Fairlight and The Shifting Sands have unveiled brand new single, ‘Head Above’. The track serves as a perfect introduction to the stripped-back intimacy of the album, where stylistic excesses are stripped away in favour of direct emotion. “We never meant it to result in an album,” explains The Shifting Sands’ Mike McLeod. “We went to record a song or two and got on a roll. After making heavily layered sonic pop albums with the Sands, where I’d hide behind my songs with layers of guitars and synths and bury my vocals, I wanted to get past that. This album sounds like playing in your lounge, a complete work that captures a special moment.”

Free Lunch – Burnt O

Bournemouth duo Free Lunch are set to release mini-album Dumbwaiter this July on Devil Town Tapes, and single ‘Burnt O’ gives an indication what to expect from the release. Drawing from their parents’ record collection (Neil Young and Supertramp are cited) and possessing a rich country twang, the song builds with a loveably leftfield sensibility, harking back to the lo-fi beginnings of the Free Lunch project and culminating with best duelling banjos this side of the Chattooga River. Just one slice of a release described as “an audio scrapbook of characters—mostly loners and oddballs, but each with a heart of gold.”

Hunter Ellis – For the Beast (feat. Lady Dan)

Later this summer, Earth Libraries are releasing Princess Daddy, the new album from songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Hunter Ellis. Recorded between Prairie Sun and Hunter’s own Koala Pocket Studios and featuring an array of friends and guests, the LP draws on Ellis’s Californian roots to develop a psych- and surf-inflected sound. Single ‘For the Best’ shows how such a sound can produce a nuanced and immersive atmosphere, with labelmate Lady Dan lending vocals to a soundscape simultaneously stark and colourful.

Princess Daddy is out on the 26th August via Earth Libraries and you can pre-order it now from the Hunter Ellis website.

Matthew Bailey – Full – Time Hobby

Matthew Bailey views forthcoming album Peachfruit as a collection of short stories. The Toronto-based songwriter, guitarist, producer and recording engineer uses each track to interrogate the influence memories can have on our sense of identity and history. Written while on tour playing guitar for Andy Shauf, single ‘Full – Time Hobby’ wrestles with Bailey’s experiences in the music industry, and how its insidious facets, be they rooted in finances or pride, can wither the purity of creation and lead the artist away from the reason the work started in the first place.

Melanie MacLaren – Orion

Back in August we wrote about Nashville-based songwriter Melanie MacLaren with the single, ‘Graveyard Shift‘, a song which “possess[ed] the timeless country spirit without sacrificing any sense of immediacy.” New track ‘Orion’ lives up to this style, its slow, rich opening soon giving way to a palpable urgency. A declaration of love and intent rising on a bed of synths and pedal steel, MacLaren’s voice at once affectionate and fierce. “And I know I said that I would die before I settle down,” she sings, the sentimental tone wielding a cynical edge, “but Jesus Christ, its just nice when you’re around.”

‘Orion’ is out now and available to purchase from the Melanie Maclaren Bandcamp page.

Sigh Down One – Durocher

Sigh Down One is the recording project of Vancouver resident Sasha J. Langford, who this month released their latest album, Desire, or a Common Place. Signalling something of a pivot away from the ‘contemplative grunge’ of previous records, the album sees Langford embraces a vivid dream pop aesthetic, swapping out raw energy in favour of drifting richness. Single ‘Durocher’ channels the Lynchian brand of dream pop, its tender tones possessing a certain otherworldliness which gradually gathers a sense of weight, taking the listener by the hand to show them something new.

Slim Wrist – The Soft

Consisting of Edinburgh duo Fern Morris and Brian Pokora, Slim Wrist combine the organic and the digital to conjure an unconventional pop somewhere between Sylvan Esso and Kraków Loves Adana. With album Closer For Comforting forthcoming later this year, the pair have released new single ‘The Soft’, a perfect introduction for those unfamiliar with the band’s dreamy and dramatic style. A sound at once spacious and detailed, its glitching electronics washed with lush textures, the fragmented beat eventually making good on its promise to kick into rhythm as Morris’s vocals soar above.

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A joint release by Drongo Tapes and Joyless Youth, Tower of Quiet was mixed by Kyle Bates of Drowse and mastered by Mount Eerie collaborator Nicholas Wilbur. Both Bates and Wilbur have worked with stalwart label The Flenser, the latter working with acts such as Midwife, Have a Nice Life, Planning for Burial and others, and The Exit Bags aesthetic is very much positioned within this cohort. Take single ‘Shingles’, which occupies the gloomy space between drone and heavy rock, its depths filled with an insulating fuzz which even the screamed vocals struggle to puncture.

The sound is fitting for a record concerned with depression, evoking an unreal, disturbing mood that’s somehow both the sharpest and dullest edge. Unlike many attempts to chart such a headspace, The Exit Bags refuses to romanticise the experience, or to pretend that some level of catharsis can clear the air. What’s left is a collage of a life within such conditions, a composite of images, feelings and references swirling beneath a density of noise both digital and organic. A life swaddled against the flames, numb but still burning.

Latest single ‘Gargoyles’ encapsulates such a style. What appears to be a slow and spacious song which creeps forward with unnerving purpose, the vocals like the pleas of something small and insignificant, the deep percussion like the footsteps of something too large to fully comprehend.

pull me up over the guard rail, and
pull me up onto the other side
lay me out in the pavilion
you told me that I would make it through the night

Check out the suitably ominous video by Rikkets below:

Tower of Quiet is out on the 22nd October via Drongo Tapes and Joyless Youth and you can pre-order it now from The Exit Bags Bandcamp page.

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The breezy ‘Celebration’ and earthy ‘On My Grind’ open the release, Audet blending vocals and field recording to great effect, before ‘Open Sesame’ really points to the scope of things with its urgent, mystical vibe. Similarly devotional instrumentals like ‘Exercise A’ and ‘Heat of the Afternoon’ offer landscapes which the other tracks populate, so when gentle, swelling folk songs like ‘Staying in Line’ arrive it feels like a convergence from four corners, the consequence of great distance travelled and firm belief in peace and joy. “Good will come to you,” he sings in the latter, echoing the title. “Good will come to me. Good will come to us.”

Indeed, much of the album is infused with this sense of positivity and goodwill, a sense of spirituality which binds the tracks despite their diversity. Many of the songs are short, succinct snatches and textures, and all are grounded with a certain intimacy, the spirituality not some vast cosmological fear but instead a human communion, joyous meetings of small groups of people thankful to be alive. From the tropical jam of ‘Take Me Higher’ and finger-clicking swells of ‘The Real Way’ to the sensual ‘A Level Playing Field’ and bluesy and soulful ‘Rain Cannot Change’, Good Will Come To Us is brimming with a confidence in the world, its inhabitants and their ability to transcend ‘normal’ existence in favour of something altogether more wonderful.

Good Will Come To You is actually the second part of a trilogy the label describes as “genre-spanning”, each of the three records exploring a different aspect of Audet’s musical talents. The first part, Water the Next Day, was released in April and sees an Un Blonde that use synths and electronic drums in place of the acoustic. Blending jazz with R&B and soul, here the songs are spheres and down-tempo and drowned in space. Audet is either lifting the avant garde into listenable territory or pushing popular R&B into exciting new place. 

You can buy  Water the Next Day and Good Will Come To You now via the Egg Paper Factory Bandcamp page or the Un Blonde Bandcamp page.

Photo by Derek Haussecker

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“I certainly value simplicity in my stories, the straight-forward expression of desire and love, a direct relationship between work and fulfillment… My stories often reverse the ‘classic’ love story – my male characters are very vulnerable, their emotions and desires are on display, as prominent as their strength. And my female characters can be strong and demanding.

[The album Violence] is a critique of western masculinity. I live in a place where masculinity often means taking up the most space, being the loudest, having the biggest truck. I think the working characters on this album, and the shift in the sound toward country music provide a critique of this masculinity, showcase a lifestyle in which work is constructive, not violent.”

The self-titled EP from Butler’s latest project, Tyler Butler and his Handsome Friends, is the Tyler Butler we know and love but with some welcome additions. The Handsome Friends bring electric guitar, bass, percussion, keys and fiddle, fleshing out Butler’s folk sound into something richer but not necessarily more complicated. Take opening track ‘Bury Me in the Garden’ as an example – a chirpy country foot-tapper which follows the same ideals as all of his music, the added instrumentation managing to add depth without put-on complexity. The song could be said to be beautiful, sad or disturbing, depending on your point of view, and as it’s about life and love, the truth is probably somewhere in between (or maybe all three simultaneously). Here the sweet declarations of love traditional to country music (“I knew nothing until you held me in your arms”) are peppered amongst the dark and strangely comforting truth about our place in the environment, charting the same sort of territory as the Young Jesus album we loved, albeit in a very different way:

When I’m gone, my darling, she’s going to bury me in the garden
lay my weary head under the soil.
My body has been borrowed from the earthworm and the sparrow
I am everything that cycles and returns

‘Cradle Robber’ follows a similar path, the meandering romance of previous Tyler Butler releases coloured with crunchy folk rock instrumentation. This proves a perfect accompaniment to the surprisingly stark narrative, the gentle love story brought into relief by some rather high stakes, giving the whole thing a serious, severe edge. The natural world has often featured in Butler’s work (check out the track-listing for Winter King), and here it rises to prominence again, every inch of grace matched by a helpless and inadvertent cruelty, where everyone is hurting and each of their actions has a consequence beyond their control:

“I want to steal you from your man
he lays to sleep against your back
my child swells against your stomach
a raven tangle of wind.
So hide the things we do alone
I press my lips on your skin
and sing a song of the forest
I am the egg-thief, the cradle robber”

Like all good murder ballads, ‘The Stranger (A Death Foretold)’ has love and anguish and the swagger of a life well lived. It tells the tale of a travelling/sleeping narrator, the sort of quiet and determined hero William Gay wrote so well, living life with gentle simplicity and moral rules which push toward his darling and spiral toward tragedy (at least in his dream world). Closer ‘Wandering Man’ continues the Western theme, sung from two perspectives: That of the titular character and of his lover left at home. The song also comes with a three-part short film from one of the Handsome Friends Dylan Rhys Howard (whose beautiful work you can find at Truthful Work Films), which does a far better job of expanding upon the mood and themes than I ever could, so have a look at Pts. 1 & 2 below:

You can buy Tyler Butler and his Handsome Friends now via Bandcamp, and also grab a rather lovely t-shirt.

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The release opens with the title track, a gentle, atmospheric song with that falls somewhere between Joni Mitchell, Fleet Foxes and Horse Feathers, Foote’s lyrics steeped in the natural world and magnified by the backing harmonies:

“Morning song calls me so sweetly
begs me listen, begs you meet me again
Oh meet me again

Come with sorrow, bring me old news,
wicked weather, broken and blue
I just want you

I’ll find my stride on this path alone,
with songs of a sparrow and heart of a stone”

‘Strong Hands’ feels more direct, the writing moving away from metaphor in favour of candid communication. Variation is seen in Foote’s vocals too, the lush harmonies of the first track stripped back leaving something more conversational, her voice straining in places, pulled taut by emotion. ‘Maria’ sees this stretched further, a moody, bluesy song that teeters on the edge of something, while ‘Two of a Kind’ is soft and slow and finger-picked, Sydney Leard’s harmonies supporting the sense of simultaneous love and loss stitched through the lyrics:

“We’re still in a grey zone, a war-zone,
through telephones, the back of the bar.
Your eyes have been blood shot for weeks my dear
but still full of stars”

‘Passing Through’ is strong and certain, as if written from the other side of some nameless trouble, a place where new found perspective allows a sense of conviction in healing. Closer ‘Something I Know’ cements this idea, imagining future fear and grief gilded with a belief she will get through. What makes the song, and the release in general, so special is that Foote does not resort to grand, highfalutin ideals in order to get this idea across. Instead she favours a quiet yet firm faith in goodness, as if life, for all of its highs and lows, tends towards an equilibrium of peace.

“Things will get harder,
That’s something I know.
[…]
I know I’ll get better
That’s something I know”

This is one of those releases that breaks over you slowly. The harmonies make for an agreeable first listen but the songs grow in depth with each spin as you realise the prettiness is not in place of sorrow but in spite of it. Sparrow & Stone owes more to nature than even the title suggests, detailing an existence tough and sad yet infused with an insistent beauty, a sense of wonder and joy that sits high in your chest.

Sparrow & Stone will be released on the 13th August and you can buy it now from Eva Foote’s Bandcamp page. For those of you in/near Edmonton, Foote will play a release show that evening at the Yellowhead Brewey with Braden Gates. You can get tickets here.

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Doomking is a new synth-based project about “about being trapped by ones surroundings and spending too many late nights stuck in the internet”, which I’m sure is all too relevant for many of us. The sense of being stuck, both physically and mentally, runs through the record, clear thoughts and actions enveloped by a vague inertia and confusion. The general atmosphere is summed up by a quote on the Bandcamp page:

“I was out walking on the first hot night of the year. I was heading in the general direction of my old friends’ house, who I hadn’t seen in a while. My friend moved away last year. Realizing this I start to head back home. It’s 2 am, my friend would have been sleeping anyway.”

In a way similar to the Island Eyes record, A Mark of Something No Longer In Existence paints the familiar in a grand mythic way, late-night fever-thoughts turned fractured poetry. The desperation here is underlying yet abundantly clear, as if pushed backwards by the superficial stimulation of technology and the dull passing of time, long days turned short by the contemporary narcotic routine of information consumption.

Opener ‘Fernwood Detachment’ serves as a perfect example, the odd imagery and ambiguous visions swathed in expansive synths. The narrator is cast as alone, separated from the other character (a nameless ‘you’) by time and space. “I want to see the ocean,” he sings, lonely. “Without feeling like I don’t / Have anyone around”. ‘Ruin’ is similarly solitary, playing like the soundtrack to a walk through an abandoned town.

“Oh man, I don’t know
What to make of these dreams
I thought I saw
Something come to light
As though transfixed by these projections
And the path was open wide”

‘The Infinite Eye of Mount Douglas, I See My Love’ brings to mind Concatentating Fields by Trouble Books, its simmering synths feeling simple yet strangely organic, like some prehistoric sea. Dreamier still is ‘Home of the Ray Lake Dancers’, Soles’s vocals weaving in and out of finger-clicking percussion and synths which ebb and flow like a tide:

“Reading old emails
To get through the winter
Dragging my body
Behind you, behind you
I will stay inside
This empty room
I know it well
I saw a dancer
Waiting for summer
I saw a dancer
Waiting for summer”

‘Old House’ swells gently like a sunrise, like a city at night, before the vocals enter quiet yet prominent. “This, this is the house,” Soles sings, “where I plan to die”. The words are sung without fear, as if voiced from the clutches of an ever-deepening dormancy that numbs both mind and body. The end of the track sounds like a surrendering to this sensation, and album closer ‘Mark of Something’ is a 13-minute continuation, a float through a foreign landscape gently warped and obscured, the first footsteps into the final dream.

With its mixture of impassioned sentiments and general despondency shrouded in a haze of confusion, this is a release very much of and for our times: Where technological connectivity is driving, paradoxically, isolation and detachment, where words and videos from faraway places are piped into our silent twilit bedrooms like prescribed dreams.

You can buy A Mark of Something No Longer In Existence now from the Doomking Bandcamp page, including the novel and rather lovely picture frame/digital download format.

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