Latest news with #ambient
The Guardian
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Yingtuitive's dream-logic electronics plus the week's best tracks
From Singapore/LondonRecommended if you like Fennesz, Four Tet, Laurel Halo Up next Ongoing monthly show on Noods Radio The baked floral scents and hot breezes of the UK's mini heatwave this week pair perfectly with the work of Yingtuitive, AKA Singapore-raised, London-dwelling musician Hannah Chia – though you sense that her shifting, almost synaesthetic music will take on new colours in the drizzle or snow. Chia's debut album Letters To Self 寫情書 was released late last month: recalling the bucolic electronics of early Four Tet but subtly nodding to a range of ambient and club sounds, it doesn't ever settle into predictable emotional beats. Chia focuses on piano on tracks such as Pandan, poignant ambient jazz in the style of Matthew Bourne or Ryuichi Sakamoto; Blue, a study in thick, aqueous reverb; and Do U Forget a Feeling?, with more reverb set against a crisp beat, as if tapped out on an MPC sampler. It's the first of three excellent rhythmic tracks at the album's heart: make sure to stick Exhibition on the best system you can to appreciate the penetrating bass, as well as the melodic effects which recall grime productions (especially Skepta's signature video-game squelch). As this cosmopolitan album plays through, it's like being carried with dream logic from garden to mall to club and back again. Chia has said the album is, in part, borne out of 'a contemplation of a split soul from living between two places for so long'. She captures the poignancy of living so restlessly, seeing such varied beauty, but never fully building a life around it. Ben Beaumont-Thomas Dijon – Higher!After co-writing Justin Bieber's recent UK No 1 Daisies, the R&B musician follows up with his own astounding, surprise-dropped second album. Higher! is charged with gospel fervour, and touched with greatness. BBT William Tyler and Claire Rousay – Covert ServicesThe Nashville guitarist's recent foray into haunted ambience makes him a perfect match for the Canadian experimentalist, though the result is surprisingly poppy, like a whacked-out Alex G. LS Militarie Gun – B A D I D E AHardcore punk's Hot To Go!? Those letters are chanted as if by a demotivational cheerleader squad, as the brilliant LA band return with 109 seconds of pop-minded pogoing. BBT The Belair Lip Bombs – Hey YouThe Third Man-signed Aussies tone down their debut's power-pop euphoria for this tough confrontation of a relationship on its uppers, produced by Joe White of their equally excellent countrymen Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. LS Just Mustard – We Were Just HereThe only trace of dream pop left around the Irish band here is in Katie Ball's searching vocals; the music buzzes, vibrates and grinds like a city electrified. LS Neko Case – Winchester Mansion of SoundA very Neko devotional: comparing a wild friend with 'too much life for just one body' to a haunted mansion, seemingly played on its piano and swooping through its ballrooms. LS Chy Cartier – Miu MiuA masterclass in rap hook-writing from the north London MC, her rhyme scheme locking with perfect symmetry as she trumpets her purchasing power, not forgetting a Merc for mum. BBT Subscribe to the Guardian's rolling Add to Playlist selections on Spotify.
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Yingtuitive's dream-logic electronics plus the week's best tracks
From Singapore/LondonRecommended if you like Fennesz, Four Tet, Laurel Halo Up next Ongoing monthly show on Noods Radio The baked floral scents and hot breezes of the UK's mini heatwave this week pair perfectly with the work of Yingtuitive, AKA Singapore-raised, London-dwelling musician Hannah Chia – though you sense that her shifting, almost synaesthetic music will take on new colours in the drizzle or snow. Chia's debut album Letters To Self 寫情書 was released late last month: recalling the bucolic electronics of early Four Tet but subtly nodding to a range of ambient and club sounds, it doesn't ever settle into predictable emotional beats. Chia focuses on piano on tracks such as Pandan, poignant ambient jazz in the style of Matthew Bourne or Ryuichi Sakamoto; Blue, a study in thick, aqueous reverb; and Do U Forget a Feeling?, with more reverb set against a crisp beat, as if tapped out on an MPC sampler. It's the first of three excellent rhythmic tracks at the album's heart: make sure to stick Exhibition on the best system you can to appreciate the penetrating bass, as well as the melodic effects which recall grime productions (especially Skepta's signature video-game squelch). As this cosmopolitan album plays through, it's like being carried with dream logic from garden to mall to club and back again. Chia has said the album is, in part, borne out of 'a contemplation of a split soul from living between two places for so long'. She captures the poignancy of living so restlessly, seeing such varied beauty, but never fully building a life around it. Ben Beaumont-Thomas Dijon – Higher!After co-writing Justin Bieber's recent UK No 1 Daisies, the R&B musician follows up with his own astounding, surprise-dropped second album. Higher! is charged with gospel fervour, and touched with greatness. BBT William Tyler and Claire Rousay – Covert ServicesThe Nashville guitarist's recent foray into haunted ambience makes him a perfect match for the Canadian experimentalist, though the result is surprisingly poppy, like a whacked-out Alex G. LS Militarie Gun – B A D I D E AHardcore punk's Hot To Go!? Those letters are chanted as if by a demotivational cheerleader squad, as the brilliant LA band return with 109 seconds of pop-minded pogoing. BBT The Belair Lip Bombs – Hey YouThe Third Man-signed Aussies tone down their debut's power-pop euphoria for this tough confrontation of a relationship on its uppers, produced by Joe White of their equally excellent countrymen Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. LS Just Mustard – We Were Just HereThe only trace of dream pop left around the Irish band here is in Katie Ball's searching vocals; the music buzzes, vibrates and grinds like a city electrified. LS Neko Case – Winchester Mansion of SoundA very Neko devotional: comparing a wild friend with 'too much life for just one body' to a haunted mansion, seemingly played on its piano and swooping through its ballrooms. LS Chy Cartier – Miu MiuA masterclass in rap hook-writing from the north London MC, her rhyme scheme locking with perfect symmetry as she trumpets her purchasing power, not forgetting a Merc for mum. BBT Subscribe to the Guardian's rolling Add to Playlist selections on Spotify.
The Guardian
13-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Safi Bugel's experimental album of the month
After establishing herself as a techno DJ in some of the wonkiest corners of underground dance music, Gwenan Spearing has spent the last few years settling into slower, more abstract territory. Alongside her club sets, she co-organises an ambient deep listening series in Berlin and spends her spare time experimenting with modular synthesis. Phase Space is the latest expression of this interest, a project rooted in generative electronics and real-time responses. Degrees of Freedom is Spearing's first outing under this new alias: an EP of meandering ambient tracks that blur the lines between electronic and acoustic as instruments are sampled, warped and overdubbed through her synthesiser. On the subaquatic opening track Sync, cowbells are stretched and delayed beyond recognition against a pulsing analogue rhythm. Towards the end of Some Pluck, a dense shimmer almost sounds like steel pans, but you get the impression it's something more elusive. Her improvisatory approach is the core of this album. Time signatures are varied and sounds are layered randomly by control circuits while Spearing tinkers along. What could just be friendly easy listening material is tipped off-kilter by these strange elements – and is all the better for it. Generator I, as uncanny as it is beautiful – much in the way that Mica Levi's film scores are – is where this approach shines most. The deep, woozy melody is enough to induce a dream-like state, but instead keys tumble around it. On Sleep Pressure, a self-styled 'lullaby for grownups', the soporific sequence is unsettled by the faint clatter of metal, which has the same soft dissonance of wind chimes, delicate but jarring. Even closer Generator II, the record's most straight-up atmospheric composition, is flecked with subtle fuzzy glitches. It's a lovely, drifting listen with just the right amount of curiosity and texture to keep you locked in. Pool Jams is the latest record by the Berlin duo INIT, made up of Nadia D'Alò and Benedikt Frey (R.i.O). As the name suggests, there's a summer sensibility here, but only in the most feverish sense: think smoky vocals, sluggish grooves and clouds of synths – hypnotic music for hot, late nights. On Openness Trio, guitarist and producer Nate Mercereau, saxophonist Josh Johnson and percussionist Carlos Niño join forces to create a collection of compositions that are as expansive and beguiling as the California hills and canyons they were recorded in (Blue Note). Another great collaborative effort comes from Brazilian sound artists Anelena Toku and Carla Boregas (Other People). Marking a decade of their multidisciplinary project of the same name, Fronte Violeta is both soothing and ghostly. Across the 10 tracks, soft, droning electronics are interlaced with whining vocals and samples of found natural objects including branches and feathers.
The Guardian
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Add to playlist: James K's downtempo dream pop and the week's best new tracks
From New YorkRecommended if you like Caroline Polachek, Voice Actor, Vegyn Up next New album Friend released via AD 93 on 5 September Pull up your beanbag, light a lava lamp and crack open the Vicks VapoRub: downtempo is back. New compilation Telepathic Fish documents the 90s south London ambient night; Logic1000's latest DJ-Kicks mix would barely register on an ECG; there's none more languid than even the summer's flagship pop album, Addison by Addison Rae. New York producer and musician James K has been dabbling in trip-hop – and various shades of experimental pop and club music – for more than a decade, but nonetheless, her new album, Friend, arrives right on time for summer's wind down. (What is autumn if not the chill out room to escape the year's most hectic season?) While the accompanying text around the record speaks impenetrably of 'oneiric fogs' and a 'gaseous halo', its many pleasures are in fact immediate and enveloping. These songs bob along on sleepy breakbeats wreathed in liquid, shoegaze guitar and angelic atmospherics; K's melancholy falsetto is self-possessed, tracing its own hypnotic path through the blissed-out clouds she spins like candyfloss. (Fans of the more evanescent end of Caroline Polachek's catalogue will find lots to get lost in.) Over repeat listens, this dreamy record leaves stronger impressions, of soft Balearic ecstasy on Peel; a little dank post-punk on pop gem On God; liturgical awe on Rider. Seductively slow it may be, Friend nevertheless seems primed to accelerate this cult hero's emergence from the underground. Laura Snapes Zuli – Care Following up his acclaimed 2024 album Lambda, the title track of the Egyptian producer's new EP is skittering, splintered, symphonic trip-hop, with bells and whispers reaching across the uncanny valley. BBT Titanic – Gotera Mabe Fratti's duo with Héctor Tosta returns, channelling the astonishing metal energy of their recent live sets into an epic where Fratti's ragged voice pierces ceaseless rounds of artillery-fire drums. LS Sophie – OohA deep cut from the 10th anniversary reissue of Product: 'I'm your Play-Doh baby / Push me to my knees,' a female voice pleads, starkly melancholy against the rubbery bass and ecstatic synth blurts. LS Cass McCombs – PeaceA riff that's like sunlight on the broken surface of a pond powers the latest stunner from an artist who, coming up to 12 solo albums, has amassed one of the great bodies of American song. BBT Mark William Lewis – Still AboveAfter May's beautifully brooding Tomorrow Is Perfect, the enigmatic London songwriter lets the light in, splicing strangely sweet, jazzy harmonica into his deep-voiced lyrics on off-kilter relationships, whether narcotic or romantic. LS Sombr – We Never Dated The lad with the sharpest cheekbones in pop made the heartbreak anthem of the year with Back to Friends. His new one goes from hurt to outright bitter, but the sturdy chorus scans just as satisfyingly. BBT I Jordan – An Angel (ft Tom Rasmussen)You can practically feel the throbbing walls and rushing skin on this grounded yet celestial rave hymn to rebirth and transition, with more than a little Pet Shop Boys in its DNA. LS Subscribe to the Guardian's rolling Add to Playlist selections on Spotify.
The Guardian
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Kara-Lis Coverdale: From Where You Came review
Kara-Lis Coverdale has a CV as confounding as it is impressive. For many years, the classically trained pianist and composer split her time between soundtracking local church sermons in Montreal and performing in international concert halls. Meanwhile, she became entrenched in the electronic music world, joining forces with producers such as Tim Hecker, Actress and Caribou. As such, her music is hard to pin down, slinking somewhere between modern classical and electronic, with shades of jazz and new age, too. But for all its dimensions, nor is the Montreal-based musician's sound particularly challenging: her new album – her first in eight years – is a gentle listen, made up of short, dreamy compositions that are light and quietly ecstatic. Despite the modest track lengths – 2017's Grafts was made up of three extended parts – From Where You Came is an exercise in spaciousness. Built from strings, brass, keys, synthesisers and wind instruments, the arrangements are slow and sparse, with each song sighing softly to a close. It's exciting, then, when a stirring motif comes in – something Coverdale is really good at. On standout Flickers in the Air at Night, a spritely melody bubbles through a wash of atmospheric synths and strings; Daze perfectly captures a feeling of sweet melancholy in its gorgeous Balearic-ready woodwind trills. Offload Flip, the most straight-up electronic track on the record, takes things a little deeper with its distorted, metallic drum loop that occasionally strays off beat. It's less convincing on Eternity, in which Coverdale drafts in her own voice. Though her grave vocals match the gloomy, almost eerie, quality of the composition, the lyrics are more corny than evocative: 'I'm sorry life is beautiful.' Still, it does little to detract from the world Coverdale has built, one that's focused and full of feeling. After a string of collaborative releases, the California-based composer and electroacoustic saxophonist Cole Pulice returns with their first solo album in three years. Land's End Eternal (Leaving Records) is a warm amble through floaty ambient textures and silky sax lines, wrapped up with a shimmering nine-minute closer. Another masterclass in epic slow-burners is Pleroma (Prah), the new EP from the London-based live electronics duo Uh, who sound like Laurie Anderson for the club. Across four extended tracks, they drift from futuristic breaks to sparkling synth pop, tied together by Fionnuala Kennedy's sometimes cutesy, sometimes strange pitched vocals. More club-not-club material comes via Tears Maker Chant (Ransom Note), the latest EP from French duo Froid Dub. As their name suggests, the record is filled with steely, low-slung dub rhythms, where glacial synths and smoky vocals weave in and around shuddering bass. A fitting soundtrack for late-night lurking.
