After a frantic few weeks, which included hosting a Q&A conversation with New York writer Liz Pelly (the author of Mood Machine), recording a mixtape for Radio New Zealand, writing about the New Zealand ambient/dub techno legend Denver McCarthy aka Mechanism/Micronism, looking into the late 90s NZ IDM scene, and some bits and pieces of DJing, I'm starting to find a bit of quiet and solitude again. Today, in the depths of a very still Sunday, I decided to write up a few blurbs on some recent (and forthcoming) records I'm digging. There's an atmosphere that connects all of them. I'd like some more of that before the year is up. Read on below.
After over two decades of absence, Australian ambient pop trio Hydroplane (an offshoot of the cult indie-pop group The Cat’s Miaow) return from the void with a new album titled "A Place In My Memory Is All I Have To Claim". Opening with the staggeringly bleak yet somehow inspiring line, "In The End, It Was The End", the LP's first track, "Houdini’s Plane" seems to capture it all - emotional ambiguity and uncertainty served up within a cloudy soundscape that makes one wonder if nostalgia ain't what it used to be. If you've got some feelings you need to sit with, this late-career 9-track comeback just might be the place. I absolutely adore this music. Due October 31 through Efficient Space.
Here's a properly moody one for the weird waters we find ourselves in right now. "Friend" is the third album from the New York singer and producer Jamie Krasner, aka james K. Straight out of the dream-pop, post-punk, shoegaze, and trip-hop constellation, "Friend" is the sound of an artist turning their internal world into something more universally relatable, while infusing counterculture aesthetics with pop-aspirational songwriting. A few days ago, I heard 'Days Go By' playing from the speakers of a streetfront cafe. james K's foggy soundworld stopped me in my tracks. Sit with it for a while.
Naarm/Melboune's excellent longstanding Chapter Music label reboots the legacy of Jeremy Dower, a Dja Dja Wurrung electronic artist who began performing in the late 90s as Tetrphnm (you can't pronounce it) before gradually exiting the beats-based world of the dancefloor in favour of something closer to an interior castle (or dungeon) of richly textured sound. "Sentimental Dance Music For Couples" was Jeremy's debut album, originally released by LA's Plug Research in the early 2000s. Following a leave of absence, this digital reissue brings the music to Bandcamp and streaming services. A form of plastic jazz or synthetic lounge, the eleven-song project evokes the feeling of wandering through a 3D maze-oriented video game, or perhaps a particularly forlorn session playing Leisure Suit Larry. It was very much ahead of its time. Chapter Music has also chucked up his follow-up mini-album, "Music for the Young and the Restless."
If Varda's "Farthest Shore" EP was forty years older, I'm pretty sure I would have discovered it as a reissue via one of the many great reissue labels down here in the antipodes. Nevertheless, what we're dealing with here is a four-song collection of yearning synth-pop cuts crafted by a low-profile duo from Wellington, New Zealand. In an interview with Maddy Barnes for Dunedin's Radio One 91 FM station, they reveal themselves to actually be a trans-Tasman project, before discussing dubbing their own cassette tape releases and heading to Japan and Taiwan on tour. You can check it out here.
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