This is my weekly(ish) answer to the question “What have you been listening to lately?” It’s lightly annotated because I don’t like re-posting material without providing some context. In the interest of conversation, let me know what you’re listening to in the comments below. Just please don’t promote your own work (or that of your label/client). This isn’t the right venue. (Just use email.)
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▰ Femi Shonuga-Fleming records as Sadnoise. The just-released album Droner is far more exploratory and aggressive than its title might suggest. It’s filled with dense atmospheres, yes (numbered “Droner 00” to “Droner 09”), but they generally feel like the listener is on the receiving end of some intense industrial power plant’s exhaust. Which is to say, it’s exhilarating.
▰ Julianna Barwick has a new album due out July 10, and judging by the first two tracks to be made available, “Insight” and “In Light” (the latter featuring Jónsi of Sigur Rós), Healing Is a Miracle is going to be a masterpiece of melted pop, deep in shoegaze territory. Also guesting: Nosaj Thing and Mary Lattimore. Due out on Ninja Tune.
▰ The one downside about Fact Magazine’s Patch Notes series on YouTube is there aren’t actually any patch notes. That peculiar shortcoming aside, the latest is up to the series’ high standard: a solo performance of slow-motion, pastoral ambient from the excellent r beny.
▰ Robert Henke has added another archival bit to his Bandcamp account. Two bits, actually, from 2015. There’s the 90-BPM drones and clangs of “Dolores,” by Anstam (Lars Stöwe), and Henke’s own “VT-100,” antic yet spacious techno recorded entirely using one instrument: the Linn Drum.