Ana Roxanne returns with an album on which she wants her voice to be clearly heard. To that end she has removed the tape noise, looping and layering that has dressed the vocal in the past, so that Poem 1 employs a raw presentation of her, ‘heartbroken and reflective’.
The piano assumes greater importance, with Roxanne noticeably shifting towards classical music, both in titles (Berceuse in A-flat minor, Op. 45) and in her use of source material, with One Shall Sleep taking its lead (or should that be lied?) from a Robert Schumann song.
What’s the music like?
In a word, intense. Roxanne’s voice is an extraordinary instrument, and leaving it in a raw state was the right way to go for maximum emotional impact on these songs.
The music is slow, which only heightens the strength of feeling, the concentrated impact akin to that of a David Lynch movie. For Roxanne could easily have been the centrepiece of Twin Peaks on this evidence, the likes of Untitled II reaching almost uncomfortable strength of emotion as she somehow controls the vocals. Berceuse in A-flat minor, Op. 45 is one of the standout pieces, just Roxanne and her listener in the room, while the Schumann-inspired One Shall Sleep is preoccupied with feelings of loss and grief.
The close-up recording means the intake of breath can be clearly heard on Cover Me, while Wishful (draft) finds deeper hues in the production.
Does it all work?
It does, though given the strength of emotion it helps for the listener to be in the right mood to appreciate Ana Roxanne’s power as a vocalist.
Is it recommended?
Yes. A powerful song cycle for modern times, headed by an extraordinary voice.
For fans of… Julee Cruise, Cocteau Twins, Keeley Forsyth
adapted from the press release by Ben Hogwood. Photo (c) F. English
Lawrence English announces a new album The Rest Is My Ghost, which is, to some extent, the conclusion of a trilogy including Wilderness of Mirrors (2014) and Cruel Optimism (2016). The album arrives on Room40 on 7th August and is preceded by the single Sodium Vapour Halo, which you can watch below:
The Rest Is My Ghost is an expression of iteration told through a kind of sedimentary layering and then erosion, a methodology which Lawrence describes as “almost geological”.
“Over the months and years, the pieces would go through massive moments of expansion and compression.” Lawrence comments. “Sometimes they’d crack wide open and something else would erupt through. I’m not always in control, and that’s what keeps me seeking in these sound worlds.”
He continues, “The players on this record are absolutely critical. In some moments, their performances were a catalyst for how a piece might evolve. In other moments, their contributions opened more subtle qualities and suggested new ways the pieces might breath. I am in awe of how people like Chris Abrahams, Madeleine Cocolas or Norman Westberg can add so much to this record through their given instruments.”
Taking in the record as a whole, the music evolves like a storm cloud – at times, it’s heavy like a downpour; sometimes lightning strikes, and sometimes there is a beam of sunlight when the storm passes. The album provides an environment in which to be consumed, one which invites us to find our own path or narrative through it.
A note from Lawrence English:
Nostalgia is not an ideology, though in this moment, we could be mistaken for thinking it might be just that. Over the past years, the idea of nostalgia has been filtered through various political and technological lenses and has become a tool used for forgetting, rather than remembering. Instead of embracing histories’ complexities and inconsistencies, this version of nostalgia seeks only singular recollection. This contemporary phenomenon of nostalgia has become a methodology at best, and a weapon at worst, used to erode the past and project forward a collapsed and unimaginably sanitised version of things, places, and ways of being from former times. It’s this projection that sees it playing a mounting role in a social pathology associated with reducing the imagined possibilities of future.
The Rest Is My Ghost is a record that interrogates the manifestations of this reductive futuring and celebrates those that have tried (and failed), and those who continue to push back against decayed and revisionist positions. It’s a record that considers the weaponisation of nostalgia for the purposes of cloaking possible futures.
In recent times, I’ve proposed a term for this weaponised use of nostalgia, something I have called Acid Nostalgia. I offer it as a shorthand to describe the de-contouring of the future through a corrosive fixation on a flatten rendering of the preceding times. It is, in part, a certain type of lazy cultural scripting where tropes of the past are presented in the absolute, as empty pictorials; photocopies without any original from which to draw actual meaning, or useful detail. Acid Nostalgia describes an increasingly common political projection of nostalgia that exists without any subjective connection to the memory surrounding and contained within it. Like acid poured onto a surface, this use of nostalgia seeks to erodes and smooth out the complexity and texture of lived connection and longing, which has until recently guided contemplations of nostalgia.
Acid Nostalgia instead erases the texture of histories and de-contours the past, and in doing so dematerialises the horizon of possibility, which by its very nature marks the beginning point for any (and all) imaginable futures. Acid Nostalgia is a dreamless screen, where uncertainty, restlessness and aspiration are subjected to corrosion, breaking down and neutralising the wellspring of futures which are birthed from within the ambiguously charged, complex and at times chaotic atmospheres of the present.
The Rest Is My Ghost is not however some universal reading of these things and happenings. Rather it draws its breath from a very personal pathway carved through my own fraught experiences of nostalgia and framed through a disparate collage of chance encounters, situations, places and provocations. It takes oblique notes from civic and architectural references such as Japan’s Metabolist movement, Hong Kong’s ‘one line sky’ and Los Angeles’s vanished Sodium Vapour lights. It interpolates texts – factual and fictional – by authors such as Franco Berardi, Kate Crawford, JG Ballard, Katsuhiro Otomo, Mark Fisher and Alexei Yurchak who have each so wonderfully sought to rupture the familiarity of now, and push us towards other ways of imaging ourselves, our surroundings and our very ways of being in this world.
I also owe a debt of thanks to Adam Curtis in helping launch what has become this edition. It was his provocation, in a conversation we shared about an overwhelming and profound sense of uncertainty around being able to predict the immediate future and how to respond to that, which sparked the earliest inklings of this edition.
The Rest Is My Ghost is ultimately a record about the promise of constructions and connections to come, material, social and political. It’s a record that accepts the fragility of failure as a source of ultimate potential, and a position from which the deepest freedom of imagination might be sought and summoned forth to conjure even the most unimaginable, (but) possible futures.
Released earlier this year, A Sky So Close is the latest solo album from Thievery Corporation co-founder Eric Hilton.
“This record is an atmosphere, a state of mind. I indulge myself by making music that I want to listen to,” he says. “It’s a more solitary record than some of my other work, there is not a big list of guest performers on this one. It’s really like my stream of consciousness.”
What’s the music like?
This slow-paced, lounging music is the sort of thing Hilton can do in his sleep, but few can match the richness and sense of atmosphere that he achieves. Beats are slow, based on hip hop, but the music above has no restrictions in terms of colour or region, which makes it all the more intoxicating.
Hilton has a lovely sense of pace in his music, not to mention the colours the listener experiences in each. Akasha is languid and rather exotic, Breathe Me In is set in a sensual heat haze, while The Endless Raga is a beauty. There is an elegance to his writing that comes across in the title track, as the press release promised, and throughout he creates vivid pictures in the listener’s eye.
Ghatam goes deep, with some lovely sonorities, while the Natalia Clavier guest slot on Lalita is a rather special one.
Does it all work?
It does, largely. The only qualm – a very slight one from this listener – is that Hilton uses the same pitch (‘D’) for the root in a lot of his work. It would be lovely to hear him branch out from this a bit more.
Is it recommended?
It is indeed. Eric Hilton makes sultry summer music – and the hotter the temperature the more you’ll enjoy this rather seductive album.
For fans of… Thievery Corporation, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Nightmares On Wax, Quantic
The roots of Signals can be found in the Surrey Hills. There, James Dean witnessed a phosphorescent sphere in the sky above Pitch Hill, close to the Mullard Space Science Laboratory; a phenomenon seen by friends and reported in the local press.
The memory has stayed with Dean since, and now he uses his BUNKR alias to tell the story of the hills and their significance in his life, whether this mysterious event, childhood bicycle adventures or post-midnight raves.
What’s the music like?
Typically engaging, but this time around BUNKR’s music has more subtle yet far-reaching emotional depth. The Light We Saw paints an evocative picture of that night, but is only the beginning of the story, continued by the spacious 96 Refraction, where dreamy synth loops encounter distant breakbeats on the horizon, their initial ambience cleverly pivoted for them to take control of the track.
Quarry Transcendence is a hive of rhythmic activity, over and above the held chords, while the reflective These Hills goes into deeper, more thoughtful territory. Eyes Like Mirrors plays out without beats, a thick cloud of ambience that sparkles at the edges – the ‘sci-fi daydream’ that Dean hints at in his album commentary. This Side Of Forever wraps up the vision beautifully, a coda of analogue drums and bright synth lines glinting at the edges.
Does it all work?
It does, and thanks to clever sequencing the album has a really satisfying ebb and flow the whole way through.
Is it recommended?
Yes, with enthusiasm. BUNKR is becoming a real force to be reckoned with in electronic music, and this descriptive album is another valuable string to his bow.
Juha Mäki-Patola’s third solo album is his first release for FatCat Records’ post-classical imprint 130701.
It consists of twelve carefully composed and intricately layered pieces, “built around upright piano and Prophet 10 loops processed through tape echo and reverb”. The linked pieces were recorded during the dark winter of 2024–2025, where Mäki-Patola sought light and solace through memory and imagination. The pieces look to blend memories with the present for times of healing.
The album was recorded live in Juha’s Helsinki studio, using tape-based processing techniques, and with guests including his daughter Frida, Jessica Hébert, Tapani Rinne and Julia Gjertsen – with the addition of vocals, violin and bass clarinet.
What’s the music like?
Deeply calming. Rather than suggest a dark winter, this is music that captures the rarefied light Helsinki often experiences. The twelve movements have a simple musical language, but that is their strength – musical gestures that are easy to listen to, but which set an atmosphere all of their own.
Often the music hangs in the air like a suspended cloud, free of hassle but progressing onwards in a fluid and attractive way. Many of the moments are free of obvious melody, free to wallow in the bright textures that Mäki-Patola has formed. Moment 2 is one of those, while Moment 3 steps back for thoughtful introspection before introducing a lovely, thick duvet of sound to dive into.
Moment 6 is led by softly voiced keyboards with mottled textures around, before Moment 7 drops the frequency effectively for a slow, mellow stream of consciousness. Yet this turns out to be a prelude to the blissful Moment 8, where languid guitar hovers over a reassuringly dense drone. Moment 10 is similarly calming with its lazy loops, while Moment 12 ends with waves of calm.
Does it all work?
It works, through being a natural evolution of musical thinking. Mäki-Patola doesn’t try too hard at any point, being comfortable to let the music forge its own path – which it does effortlessly.
Is it recommended?
Momentary Movements of Landscapes is a deeply restful time out for the listener, at the same time offering pinpricks of light in the darkness. It is a cleansing experience, slowing the heartbeat and softening the soul.
For fans of… William Basinski, Tim Hecker, Stars Of The Lid, Machinefabriek
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