It’s December, with 3 Sundays left of the year, so that’s Best of 2025 Parts 1, 2, and 3! Tonight it’s “songs” – well, that includes raps. I’ve had to leave SO much out, y’all! As usual, the amount of music being released only goes up, and it’s not like the years are getting longer…
clipping. – Night of Heaven (feat. Counterfeit Madison & Kid Koala) [Sub Pop/Bandcamp]
So yeah, back in March, clipping. released one of the albums of the year… or did they? If so, then what’s this? Why does my CD now seem to be missing tracks? It’s because Dead Channel Sky Plus is in town, baybee! I love clipping., but I hate these insta-deluxe reissues that the digital age has brought us. I mean fine, the additional tracks are rad, but you just released the album 6 months ago in various physical formats… Annnyway, an album more fitting for the digital age could not exist – this is clipping. doing cyberpunk, employing Daveed Diggs’ incredible wordsmithery and Jonathan Snipes & William Hutson’s backgrounds in noise, breakcore, soundtracking and more to bring to life the genre that’s both decades out of style and horrifically descriptive of our current-day dystopia. So, finally we have the “pt. 1” to the original release’s “Mirrorshades pt. 2” (the deadly Molly Millions in William Gibson’s cyberpunk ur-text Neuromancer “wears” mirrored sunglasses – except they’re permanently sealed into her skin; a couple of years later Bruce Sterling edited a definitive anthology of early cyberpunk titled Mirrorshades). Needless to say, following their previous concept albums on afrofuturist space opera and horror & blaxploitation, clipping. nail the cyberpunk genre here, both in terms of “style” and intertextuality. But anyway, not only is “Mirrorshades pt. 1” a certifiable banger, but on “Night of Heaven” clipping. collaborate again with the astonishingly-voiced Sharon Udoh aka Counterfeit Madison, with cuts provided by Kid Koala. My CD player aches with jealousy.
Note: clipping. did a brilliant Tiny Desk Concert late in the year, with electro-mechanical percussion, harmonium and the aforementioned Sharon Udoh on piano and vocals, and while every rendition is a highlight, this song is the second-last, and Kid Koala hops up on the turntable!
Armand Hammer & The Alchemist – Dogeared (feat. Kapwani) [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp]
It’s been a huge year for Backwoodz Studioz, and a few others of their releases appear tonight, but here’s the second full-length album from Studioz boss billy woods and E L U C I D‘s Armand Hammer working exclusively with The Alchemist. Like Haram, their first collaboration, Mercy benefits from The Alchemist’s commercial experience, but the producer perfectly mindmelds with Backwoodz’ aesthetic, with bizzaro samples that are by turns wonky and sinister – but whatever the loop is that “Dogeared” is built around, it’s the most earwormy sample of the year, and Kapwani brings beautifully melodic vocal layers along with it. In his verse, a woman asks woods, “What’s the role of a poet in times like these?”, and while he’s still grappling with it by the end of the song, it’s not unfair to say that it’s this very grappling that’s their added value – as well, I’d like to suggest, as their pure artistic worth.
billy woods – Waterproof Mascara [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp]
The most notable hip-hop release of the year – albeit with much competition – must be Golliwog, the intense new album from billy woods. The sinister imagery of the deeply racist ragdoll character that gives the album its name is a pointer to what’s inside. It’s a kind of take on horrorcore from a Black perspective, and as usual it’s got brilliantly murky production with weird interludes and great guests on beats, instruments and verses, sparsely but smartly used. The murky production from Preservation on “Waterproof Mascara” underlines a truly disturbing autobiographical story from Woods.
SUMAC & Moor Mother – Scene 1 [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
Last year, alongside their remarkable, heavy-as-fuck album The Healer was released, sludgey hardcore supergroup SUMAC released an EP called The Keeper’s Tongue with two remixes: recent Wire Magazine cover star, Pulitzer Prize-winner Raven Chacon, and the brilliant avant-garde hip-hop/free jazz genius Moor Mother. And what a combo the latter was! SUMAC leader Aaron Turner was singer & guitarist with two of my favourite post-metal bands, ISIS and Old Man Gloom (the latter not in past tense), but SUMAC feels like his purest vision, engineered with precision along with the rhythm section of Baptists drummer Nick Yacyshyn and bassist Brian Cook of hardcore legends Botch and post-metal legends Russian Circles. Turner also ran the greatest metal/experimental label in the world, Hydra Head, and now has a smaller – impeccably curated – operation with his wife Faith Coloccia called SIGE. After the incendiary impact of that Moor Mother remix, it still came as a surprise to discover that this full album collab was just around the corner. The Film is one large work split into tracks, with as much (disquieting) quiet as crashing noise. And who but Moor Mother could compete with Aaron Turner’s roar? Poetic and deeply political, scathing about colonialism and capitalism, it’s incredibly powerful.
doseone & Steel Tipped Dove – Restaurant Not [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp]
It’s been so lovely reading the background of this album. Adam Drucker aka doseone was one of the founding forces behind alt. hip-hop or whatever you want to call it in the last 1990s and early ’00s, founding with various other hip-hop outliers the Anticon collective and label (it took me ages to realise that the name referenced their “ant icon” logo). He’s played a part in a lot of the music that was this here radio show’s bread & butter for many years, including collabs with indietronic/postrock bods like Hood and The Notwist – and the album Circle that he made with Boom Bip way back in 2000 was massively influential. In 2018, beloved fellow Anticon founder Alias passed away from a sudden heart attack, and Anticon slowly fizzled out. So yeah, years later dose started hearing the output of billy woods’ Backwoodz Studioz – specifically I believe a ShrapKnel album – and felt the creative spark that he’d been missing in grief and isolation. He hooked up with frequent Backwoodz producer Steel Tipped Dove, and they quickly created a whole body of new work. Some of the anything-goes abandon of Jel & Odd Nosdam’s early Anticon productions can really be heard here (and, I’d suggest, across the Backwoodz catalogue), and Dose spits out his poetic, circumspect lyrics with all the energy of the best of Themselves, Subtle and the rest. It’s nice to see Andrew Broder aka Fog – a frequent Anticon collaborator and lately a brilliant producer – adding turntable to all tracks, and there are notable features across the album from hip-hop legends like Mykah 9 and Antipop Consortium’s M.Sayyid, Open Mike Eagle, and Backwoodz’ own billy woods.
The second track here, “Restaurant Not” has a deconstructed Anticon-style beat that upturns dose’s vocals perfectly – and it also has a fun, colourful video.
Haykal, Julmud, Acamol | هيكل، جلمود، أكامول – A’saab أعصاب [Bilna’es/Bandcamp]
Cross-media artistic duo Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Ramme formed the record label & publishing platform Bilna’es along with producer Muqata’a as a space for artistic expression & criticism in Palestine & beyond. Along with the amazing productions of Muqata’a, a highlight was the 2022 solo album from Julmud, Tuqoos | طُقُوس. Now Julmud teams up with label founder Abbas, the latter under the name Acamol (Arabic for Panadol/paracetamol), along with Palestinian rapper Haykal on a new album Kam Min Janneh | كم من جنّة (How Many Heavens). The beats, produced by Julmud & Acamol separately & together, present a glitched version hip-hop drawn from the music & percussion of the MENA region, while Julmud & Haykal swap verses evoking the life of dispossession under occupation, colonization & genocide. It bears mentioning that while the killing continues in Gaza despite the so-called ceasefire, settlers continue to violently disrupt the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank with impunity – destroying property, beating and killing people and blocking access to their own land. In that context, this is a powerful work of resistance and solidarity (and some injections of humour). As I’m writing this late, you can read Emad Al Hatu’s excellent article on fbi.radio, as this was made album of the week at the beginning of November.
Nadah El Shazly = ندى الشاذلي – Kaabi Aali [One Little Independent/Bandcamp]
In July 2018, The Wire put Nadah El Shazly on the cover as part of an in-depth look at the underground music scene in Cairo & Egypt – a couple of months after featuring a fantastic playlist from El Shazly of experimental Egyptian music. I already knew a few of the players in the diverse, experimental and creative Egyptian music scene, but her playlist and then interview were the introduction to many more, and showed what an important figure El Shazly herself was in that scene. She’s now Montréal-based, and her beautiful 2024 soundtrack The Damned Don’t Cry was recorded at the legendary Hotel2Tango studio mentioned above, with Radwan Ghazi Moumneh on the mixing desk, and Canadian musicians like the brilliant harpist Sarah Pagé contributing essential performances. Laini Tani, El Shazly’s second album outside of soundtracks & collaborations (many, many collaborations), was also recorded with Moumneh at Hotel2Tango, with one of Cairo’s most creative electronic musicians, 3Phaz, on co-production duties. It’s honestly a quite incredible album, one I have returned to as best I can against the weekly/daily onslaught of new music. It’s a re-setting of trip-hop into Arabic musical traditions, experimental pop of the highest order.
SANAM – Sayl Damei – سيل دمعي [Constellation/Bandcamp]
I was instantly hooked when I first heard the music of Lebanese singer Sandy Chamoun on some compilations a few years back. Two years ago, her new band SANAM released their debut album on London’s Mais Um, featuring other Lebanese luminaries like guitarist/electronic musician Anthony Sahyoun and two members of legendary Beirut shoegazers Postcards – their drummer Pascal Semerdjian and guitarist Marwan Tohme. Rounding out the band are Farah Kaddour on buzuq and Antonio Hajj Moussa on bass. The band have now signed to legendary Montréal postrock/experimental label Constellation – an unusual endorsement as they’re not Canadian let alone from Montréal. But the album was recorded & mixed by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, the Lebanese-Canadian musician who’s made astonishing music as Jerusalem In My Heart and who co-founded the Constellation-affiliated Hotel2Tango studio in Montréal. OK, that’s a lot of background; this second album is a brilliant synthesis of Arabic music, folk, experimental rock, and dream-pop. There really are many different directions taken here, from trip-hop like pieces with auto-tuned vocals to punky numbers with jagged guitars – I note that the Bandcamp page has tags for both “post-folk” and “free rock”. Love it.
Yasmine Hamdan – Vows سبع صنايع [Crammed Discs/Bandcamp]
While I’ve featured quite a bit of Lebanese music on this show, it’s leaned towards the experimental. Yasmine Hamdan‘s career goes back to the late ’90s with indie/trip-hop band Soapkills, all three of whose independent albums have been re-released by Belgian powerhouse Crammed Discs, whose catalogue covers postpunk and experimental music as well as “world music” from all over the planet. Hamdan released two previous solo albums with Crammed, and after a few singles (of which I’ve played a couple), her third album I remember, I forget is out now. It’s no surprise that this is album deeply affected by what’s happened to Beirut and Lebanon over the last few years, including the horrific port explosion in 2020, the intensifying of its economic collapse as well as continuing incursions by Israel. It’s actually a bittersweet album as Hamdan, who is based in Paris, has great affection for her birthplace of Beirut. It’s a beautiful, compulsively listenable collection of songs that easily fuses Arabic pop and trip-hop.
Aesop Rock – The Red Phone [Rhymesayers Entertainment/Bandcamp]
There’s none more genius than Aesop Rock in the hip-hop world, with vocabulary to spare, and quite honestly the most comforting tone of voice. Going back a few albums now, Aes has been producing all his beats himself, and they’re just so good. Whether the subject matter’s a climate apocalypse or the horrors of late-stage capitalism or the horrors of getting older, Aes has elliptical lyrics delivered with perfect flow. Incredibly, after this great concept album, Aes released a second full album in October, I Heard It’s A Mess There Too, stripping the beats down to the basics and rhyming commiseratively about this fucked-up world – a world that’s nevertheless better for having Aesop Rock in it.
Gabe ‘Nandez & Preservation – Nom De Guerre (feat. Ze Nkoma Mpaga Ni Ngoko) [Backwoodz Studioz/Bandcamp/Bandcamp]
In 2022 billy woods released the incredible Aethiopes album, fully produced by Preservation. One of the guests was Gabe ‘Nandez and it was there that the seeds of this full-album collaboration were sown. The darkness of Preservation’s productions suit ‘Nandez’ searching lyrics, but also notable was the fact that both are French speakers: it’s ‘Nandez’ first language, via his Haitian side, and Preservation is half French. So apart from the album title Sortilège being French, some of the movie samples that always litter Backwoodz Studioz releases are here heard in French, and ‘Nandez swaps lines with his frequent collaborator Ze Nkoma Mpaga Ni Ngoko, switching between English & French without breaking the flow. The range of sounds Preservation uses is wild, from weird proggy synth drones to piano jabs, beats that boom and bap and shuffle and slap. It’s a journey, it’s a trip.
aya – the names of Faggot Chav boys [Hyperdub/Bandcamp]
No longer requiring “fka LOFT”, aya brings us her second album on Hyperdub, but it’s still as full of angst as im hole was, just in different ways. Here, aya is concerned with addiction, as it often is, indelibly twisted around trauma. The themes are carried by her always sardonic vocal delivery (this time round there are no other guests, except James Ginzburg of emptyset/Subtext Recordings helped out with the mixing), and to be clear, the music can be really claustrophobic and discomfiting. Or it can be cathartic. It’s also funny that aya tends to keep the more straight drum’n’bass or other dancefloor styles off her full albums – which makes sense as they’re more conceptual affairs, imagined as a full-length work, and showcasing her incredible talent & skills. Prettttty damn impressive.
I want to note that I got to see aya twice this year – launching the album in London at Ormside Projects in May, and then at Unsound Adelaide in July. Both were utterly energetic, calculatedly chaotic performances, hilarious and brilliant. The album topped many best-of lists this year, and deservedly, but even so, those performances were hard to beat.
Rainy Miller – Chrome, Hallowed be. [Supernature/Bandcamp]
A clear highlight of the first half of 2025, Joseph, What Have You Done? is the brilliant new album from Rainy Miller, collaborator with the likes of Blackhaine, Space Afrika and Richie Culver. Like these collaborators, Miller’s art focuses on the drab oppressiveness of life in England’s north, and the sociopolitical realities – which Miller or his protagonist does his best to resist – of class and culture. It’s done through the lens of broken-down drill, grime and jungle as well as desolate ambient. That all these elements pull together into something devastating and beautiful is a huge achievement. On this album Miller has overcome any Predetermined Definitions and more than realised his potential.
California Girls – Sorrowful Meat [Blue Void]
Eora/Sydney’s California Girls is the work of Angus McGrath, a multifarious musician who’s also Gus McGrath of fbi.radio mainstays Sleepless in Sydney with longtime musical collaborator/flatmate/etc Marcus Whale. With California Girls’ third album Wheel of Ashes, Gus has created a work of glitchy club-infused industrial pop with fractious shouty vocals that fight back against the anxiety of modern life.
Teether & Kuya Neil – SCRATCH THE FLEA POINT (FT NERDIE) [Chapter Music/Bandcamp]
Working out what to play out of 6 weeks’ new releases is a challenge, but there’s been a suite of great underground hip-hop that’s come out since the start of May. Following their landmark mixtape STRESSOR from 2023, Naarm rapper Teether & producer Kuya Neil have now released their debut album proper, YEARN IV (which I’ve just realised is a pun). I’m never sure why some releases are dubbed mixtapes, because all the elements were there 2 years ago – Teether’s laconic flow and Kuya Neil’s rave/bass-influenced beats. Teether did release his remarkable 5th solo album, It Must Be Strange to Not Have Lived last year, but there’s definitely a spark of genius between the two together.
I’d like to add that Guy Blackman & Ben O’Connor have released scads of great music across countless genres with Chapter Music over 3 decades, and it’s sad news that the label is kinda-sorta closing down (for new releases at least!), but also totally understandable.
BAYANG (tha Bushranger) & Nerdie – Bankistan [CONTENT.NET.AU/Bandcamp]
Korean Australian producer/sound-artist Angus Alec Minhyuk Jin does incredible sound design for TV commercials, films and more, but as Nerdie his roots are in hip-hop. BAYANG (tha Bushranger), mind you, has roots in death metal, but on their collaborative album WAR WITH CHINA the pair address Australia’s cultural alienation, as they put it, riffing into punk as much as hip-hop. Good stuff.
Ho99o9 – Godflesh [Last Gang Records/Bandcamp]
Few are doing hardcore punk/metal meets hip-hop quite like Newark’s Ho99o9 (it’s pronounced “Horror”). I’m not sure you’d call this horrorcore, but it’s ho99o9core at least. A perfect melding of punk riffage you could pogo to and the finest beats & raps. Not much more to say. They’ve been around a lot longer than you’d expect, and their style hasn’t changed dramatically since 2017’s United States of Horror, but damnit they do seem to have perfected it. And yes, there’s industrial metal trappings (there’s no way that the title “Godflesh” doesn’t refer to JK Broadrick & G.C. Green’s iconoclastic duo), but there’s an emotional undercurrent which surfaces particularly with the brilliant Chelsea Wolfe‘s guest spot.
Agriculture – Bodhidharma [The Flenser/Bandcamp]
With The Flenser you know you’re going to expect dark, probably metal-adjacent music, and you know it’ll probably diverge from typical genre norms. Ecstatic black metal band Agriculture do indeed employ black metal’s tremolo guitars and blast beats to reach for altered states, but then the thunder gives way to a different kind of ecstasy at times – gorgeous harmonies and clean guitar? The last track on the album somehow combines it all together – blissful chugging blackgaze, and a fragile interlude of just voice and guitar. Channeling Zen Buddhism and social collapse alongside queer history & survival, The Spiritual Sound is easily among the albums of the year.
Postcards – Dust Bunnies [Ruptured/Bandcamp]
We’ve heard a lot of brilliant experimental music from Lebanon in recent years, a lot (although by no means all) of it courtesy of the Beirut-based Ruptured label (now partly run out of Montréal). Among the highest of highlights are the songs of Julia Sabra, both with Fadi Tabbal as Snakeskin, and solo. But Sabra’s first band was Postcards, an indie rock/shoegaze band that’s among Beirut’s longest-lived, going back to 2012 (all members are active in many other Lebanese acts). So we’re fortunate to have an actual new album from the band, produced though it was (as always, by Fadi Tabbal) under the very dark cloud of Israel’s regional aggression. This song – the first single – was an impassioned scream of everything that’s gone wrong with Lebanon.
Snakeskin – Ready [Ruptured/Beacon Sound/Bandcamp]
A surprise release months after that Postcards album – singer Julia Sabra and their longtime producer Fadi Tabbal dropped their third album We live in sand in October, co-released by Ruptured with Portland’s Beacon Sound. The album was unavoidably influenced by the troubles of Lebanon and the horrors of the genocide being conducted by Israel. It’s mournful and sometimes angry, the product of two exceptionally strong music-makers. When I saw them live in London in May, both musicians had tables entirely covered in electronic equipment, noisemakers and effects, Sabra singing while processing her voice (given the setup, it was nearly impossible to tell who was making any particular noises other than that). This album might not seem as experimental as that performance implied, but it’s hard-hitting and there’s nothing else quite like it.
Laurén Maria – Filled Up Smile [Warm Winters Ltd./Bandcamp]
I first heard Berlin-based Laurén Maria on a 12″ from Yu Miyashita‘s label The Collection Artaud, two tracks of deconstructed electronics with processed vocals hidden within. Her second album, You’re Beautiful, is a masterpiece of deconstruction, in which guitar-led songs jostle with glitch-noise and the subs and fractured beats of the club lurk around the edges. Whether it’s indie-emo songs, screamo tangents or abstracted electronics, Maria somehow makes it all hold together into a strangely affecting album. Also notable, her duo with Diamantista, LICITIR.
anrimeal – 11. Chapter III – Source and time [Lost Wisdom/demo records/anrimeal Bandcamp]
London-based Portuguese musician Ana Rita de Melo Alves has appeared on this show under her anrimeal alias a lot since I discovered her music via The Leaf Library‘s Objects Forever label. This year she released her second album, Half Fool Half Empty, an album arranged in two halves – one more playful, one more serious – although all of Alves’ work can be seen as a combination of those two creative impulses. Beautiful acoustic songwriting is digitally interrupted or corrupted, gorgeous layered vocals hang in frozen stasis, musical elements appear in the midst of a field recording. This album is accompanied by a book, explaining the odd track titles, which are a guide to the sections of the text they mirror.
Herbert & Momoko – More And More [Strut/Herbert Bandcamp/Momoko Gill Bandcamp]
Back in 2022, Matthew Herbert released a short album called Drum Solo in collaboration with Swiss drummer Julian Sartorius. It was intended to be the first in a series of “Album In A Day” releases, but also the first in a series of collaborations with different drummers. Last year, Herbert revived his Parts EP series with Part 9 which opened with “Fallen”, featuring drummer & vocalist Momoko Gill. Gill is clearly as perfect a foil for Herbert’s glitch-infused, jazz-influenced productions as Dani Siciliano or Róisín Murphy, and as well as her silky-smooth vocals and sinuous melodies her percussion and drumkit are central elements throughout – notably more prominent on the remake of the Part 9 song, “Fallen Again”. The album benefits from the restraint of both artists, often using sparing arrangements with just enough – a minimalist rhythm, shuffling sampled hi-hats, a bassline… Often the only other elements are Gill’s vocals, multi-tracked and sampled. Lovely stuff.
georg-i & Older Brother – To Be A Man [GRACE/Bandcamp]
Portugal-based MC Darius Rodrigues aka Older Brother has been working with London producer George Harris aka georg-i for ages. Now the duo have finally come out with the Warm Skin EP on Berlin-based DJ Katiusha‘s label GRACE. And these four tracks of trip-hop-inflected bass music do walk with grace, holding Older Brother’s lyrics about the state of the world, and – on this closing track – seeking a new, post-patriarchy definition of maleness.
Crimewave – 155/160BPM [Fool’s Gold Records/Bandcamp]
Crimewave – Haemoglobin [Fool’s Gold Records/Bandcamp]
Manchester’s Crimewave makes a pretty unique mixture of UK bass & experimental electronic styles with shoegazey indie guitar music. Following a series of singles and EPs in 2023, he’s now hooked up with New York label Fool’s Gold Records and full album Scenes was released in November. It’s that perfect mix – everytime you think it’s all dance music (those BPM-shift interstitials), suddenly it’s jabbing postpunk guitars or shoegaze strums, and vice versa. Great work, very underrated.
gushes – CUT [PTP/Switch Hit Records/Bandcamp]
Trust PTP (aka Protect The Peace, fka Purple Tape Pedigree) to release one of the most bizarre & brilliant albums of the year (in conjunction with artist collective Switch Hit Records). Jennae Santos’ gushes presents an unrestrained amalgam of prog metal, psych rock, jazz & classical and electronic experimentation. But there’s more than just this: the album begins with voices talking in Tagalog, and influences from Indigenous Filipinx psychology and combat swirl around with land-sea ecologies, plant medicine and queer politics of decolonization… Delicious Collision is a fully-through-composed experimental rock opera, appropriately given Santos’ background (on top of everything else) in theatre, site-specific performance & dance.
Editrix – Another World [Joyful Noise Recordings/Bandcamp]
Last year’s Viewfinder album by Wendy Eisenberg was one of my albums of the year, and their “In The Pines” will be up there in songs of the decade I daresay. A guitarist’s guitarist, Eisenberg is a master musician, also playing tenor banjo and working with electronics, and playing in ensembles ranging from jazz and free improv to, well, what we have here: just brilliant avant-garde punk. I’ve seen Editrix described as math rock, and OK maybe, but really it’s just great, knotty, melodic punk to me, with Eisenberg joined by a great rhythm section: Steve Cameron on bass and Josh Daniel on drums. Here Eisenberg builds melodies where the intervals are all bent out at angles, making it catchy as hell. The whole album’s perfect riffs, noise sections and top-of-the-lungs vocals. They’ve just signed to Joyful Noise Recordings, and this is absolutely a joyful noise.
Lucrecia Dalt – cosa rara (ft. David Sylvian) [RVNG Intl./Bandcamp]
I’ve been following Lucrecia Dalt‘s music since she was The Sound of Lucrecia, making lovely indie music that only fainly hinted at the highly experimental electronics or Latin music that would come into her music in latter years. Her last album, 2022’s ¡Ay!, somehow combined her modular synth work with the music of her Colombian roots and incredible, counter-intuitive orchestrations – a masterpiece. On her new album A Danger To Ourselves, the connection to Latin America is still strong, but it feels like Dalt’s electronics take more of a leading role. There are violins and cello, saxophone and percussion throughout, with some bass and guitar on some tracks. And as well as Dalt’s now-partner David Sylvian, who co-produced the album, there are a few prominent South American guests including Mexican singer & sound-artist Camille Mandoki and the wonderful Juana Molina, whose loop-based, hypnotic songwriting was a favourite on Utility Fog since 2004, and it’s a treasure to hear her voice with Dalt’s here. The balance, if you could call it that, between the experimental and the “pop” elements on this album is thrilling. The first single “cosa rara” was another slice of Latin experimental pop, with the added spice of a spoken outro by the aforementioned David Sylvian, who also contributed “feedback guitar” and completed the final mix. The song, whose title translates as “strange thing”, is sultry and just a little menacing, and the single release is rounded out with a typically radical rework by Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti and a “dopamine dub” remix by Chilean-German techno producer Mathias Aguayo.
Titanic – La dueña [Unheard of Hope/Bandcamp]
Speaking of Guatemalan (Mexico-resident) cellist Mabe Fratti, she and her longtime collaborator Héctor Tosta de la Rosa (who records as I. la Católica) released their first album as Titanic in 2023. The project is an outlet for I. La Católica’s compositions and arrangements with Fratti’s distinctive, creative cello playing and her emotive voice comfortably at home. Vidrio is now followed by Hagen. There’s some absolutely gorgeous songwriting on here, mostly by I. La Católica, with some co-writes by Fratti, whose singing on all tracks is possibly her best ever. Of course she plays cello too, all over these tracks alongside I. la Católica’s instruments and the pair’s electronics. Hagen has a guest spot from Daniel Oneohtrix Point Never Lopatin on one track, and Lopatin collaborator Nathan Salon adds instrumentation and production on about half the album; the brilliant drummer (and yes, OPN compadre) Eli Keszler also appears. As expected, this is evocative, glistening, and not quite like anything else. I’m tempted to declare “La dueña” song of the year, and it has a suitably melodramatic video to accompany it.
Mikoo – Ties [Sofa Music/Bandcamp]
Norway’s Sofa Music is a consistent home to music that’s off the beaten path – jazz, sure, but not only, or hybridised with contemporary classical, folk and electronics. Mikoo is a case in point, a band led by their drummer Michaela Antalova, a Slovakian musician based in Oslo. The music is mostly written by Antalova, in collaboration with the band, a highly talented collection of musicians on keyboards, guitars & zither, bass and vocals. Singer Ina Sagstuen does often write her own vocal melodies, and mostly the lyrics, which on their gorgeous new album It Floats mostly revolve around concepts of inheritance, including inherited trauma as well as traditions behaviours. These are dark songs in intimate chamber setting, with the percussion never far from prominence. It could easily pass you by – you may not hear about it anywhere else – and I really recommend giving it a listen when you have some quiet time.
soccer Committee – Little Sorrow [Morc Records/Bandcamp/soccer Committee Bandcamp]
I have been a dedicated fan of Dutch singer-songwriter Mariska Baars for many years, via Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek – both working with him under her own name, and then in equally mysterious projects such as Piiptsjilling and FEAN with the Kleefstra brothers and others. Where Jan Kleefstra performs his poetry in Frisian, Baars sings either wordlessly or in English. Her work, as soccer Committee and in other groups, is characterised by an exquisite restraint, whereby if you’re listening you can’t help but be drawn into the patiently unfolding melodies and subtle but essential textures. Even without Machinefabriek’s sensitive deconstructions around the edges of their collaborative work, Baars seems to dismantle and rebuild the fabric of her songs so that they are as attenuated as possible while still holding together. In 2023 she released /Lamb, her most confident and fully-realised album yet, and only 2 years later, she’s back on Morc Records with eye, which is equally gorgeous and tenuous.
I do want to point you to where I discovered Mariska Baars, with Machinefabriek on their incredible album Drawn, which birthed the Redrawn compilation of remixes and covers – an album I return to frequently.