Tag Archives: Mary Lattimore

On Record – Panda Bear & Sonic Boom: A ? OF WHEN (Domino)

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Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

The second collaborative album between Animal Collective’s Panda Bear and founding member of Spacemen 3, Sonic Boom, looks to build on their successful work together on the Reset album of 2022.

A ? OF WHEN takes a different approach, using as its source material harp loops from Mary Lattimore, together with steel drum sequences, pedal steel webs and fragments of a mariachi band.

While the music might sound detached, it is actually a sharply observed commentary on the state of the world. As the album progresses they look at online exhaustion and progressive depression, political upheaval and the environment.

As the text on the press release states, “The goal is for the music to create physical connections between people, to encourage them to enjoy a real experience in the world with it and each other.”

What’s the music like?

In relation to the objective of the album, it is very much job done – for a listen to this album gives the listener a lasting positivity.

There may be some lyrical dark spots on the surface but musically this is bright sunshine, a celebration of two musical minds meeting and sparking some genuinely uplifting music.

The obvious reference points are The Beach Boys, with a frisson of The Mamas and the Papas and also The Zombies, but all updated with electronic knowhow and hazy production warmth. The source material – Lattimore’s harp and the accompanying steel band brightness – is economically used, and proves the perfect complement for Panda Bear’s vocals.

These are as distinctive as ever, and burrow into your brain via the incredibly catchy Lucky Charm or the light / dark alternations of Graveyard, up in tempo but down in lyrics.

The chorus of Never Givin’ In is a lasting show of strength, while the upbeat title track follows suit. Pray to you is immersed in watery strings, while Somethin’ that lasts shows this music has staying power, finding grace and tender moments among the woozy reverb.

Does it all work?

It does. The two work easily in each other’s company, and the resultant sound is like a musical heatwave.

Is it recommended?

Heartily. Music can be so much fun in collaboration, and A ? OF WHEN celebrates the outcome. Pure musical enjoyment was rarely so immediate!

For fans of… Animal Collective, The Beach Boys, Peaking Lights, Supertramp

Listen / Buy

You can explore purchase options for A ? of When on the Domino Music website

Published post no.2,981 – Thursday 13 August 2026

Switched On – Mary Lattimore & Julianna Barwick: Tragic Magic (InFiné)

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Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

This is the first chance for Mary Lattimore and Julianna Barwick to realise their ‘musical telepathy’ in recorded form. The two artists, who have been friends for years, use their own instruments of voice and harp, but augment them with contributions from the instrument collection of the Musée de la Musique in the Philharmonie de Paris.

Tragic Magic was recorded in the space of nine days in 2025, just after the two friends had arrived in Paris from Los Angeles and is in part a response to the wildfires in California that they witnessed first-hand.

Instrumentally, Lattimore uses harps that trace the instrument’s evolution from 1728 to 1873, while Barwick, along with her vocal contributions, used analogue synthesizers including the Roland JUPITER and Sequential Circuits PROPHET-5. There is a striking cover in the form of Rachel’s Song, from Vangelis’s soundtrack to Blade Runner, while Roger Eno contributed Temple Of The Winds specially for the album.

What’s the music like?

Magical. It is clear there were some very special musical happenings in these sessions, with an unusual synergy between the two forces that reflects both their long-standing friendship and their pained response to the natural disasters occurring on America’s West Coast.

And yet much of the music here has a restrained beauty that is immensely soothing. This comes in part from the freeform improvisation, but also from the sheer space producer Trevor Spencer helps to secure. Barwick’s vocals move in perspective from foreground to a spacious backdrop, while Lattimore’s gently oscillating harp lines are often supported by drone-like bass movements, as in The Four Sleeping Princesses.

Haze With No Haze is richly expressive, Barwick’s harmonies like snowflakes falling slowly towards the ground, while Eno’s striking Temple Of the Winds looks east in its musical focus. Stardust has a thrilling rush of synthesizer colour at its outset, panning far and wide, its massive sound enveloping the ears, while Lattimore’s intricately plucked harp line makes Melted Moon a special epilogue.

Does it all work?

It does. Voice and harp have always made for a winsome musical combination, but the addition of electronics gives Tragic Magic a rare, ethereal quality.

Is it recommended?

Wholeheartedly. Already Tragic Magic can be declared one of the albums of the year, a document of often stunning beauty where the musical chemistry between Mary Lattimore and Julianna Barwick is laid bare.

Listen / Buy

Published post no.2,769 – Friday 16 January 2026

New music – Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore: Melting Moon (InFiné)

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adapted from the press release by Ben Hogwood

Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore have formed a formidable duo to release a new album, Tragic Magic, due out on 16 January 2026 via InFiné. Today they release the new single Melted Moon, one of “seven immersive, evocative songs” that make up the album. The press release details how, “together in freeform dialogue, voice and instrument, Barwick and Lattimore render a meditation on tragedy, wonder, and the restorative power of shared experience.”

The story continues: “Co-produced by Trevor Spencer (Fleet Foxes, Beach House), Tragic Magic came together in just nine days, a testament to the “musical telepathy,” as Barwick puts it, that has developed between the two artists over the years traveling the world as friends and tourmates. Sessions crossed improvisation with loose ideas they arrived in Paris with from Los Angeles, shortly after the January 2025 wildfires while still reeling for their community.

Barwick and Lattimore were given access to the extraordinary instrument collection of the Philharmonie de Paris’ Musée de la Musique in partnership with InFiné. The two artists embraced a divine setting, overwhelmed by the beauty and history at their fingertips. Lattimore selected three harps tracing the evolution of the instrument from 1728 to 1873, and Barwick chose several analog synthesizers that have shaped decades of exploratory music, including the Roland JUPITER and Sequential Circuits PROPHET-5, among other treasures.

“We were so lucky to have access to this experience. There was a lot of reverence, working with people with such warmth and enthusiasm, bringing these instruments into a modern context, literally taken off the shelves of the museum,” says Lattimore. “We wanted to honor the past while making music that we feel is a true expression of ourselves,” Barwick adds.

Today’s release of Melted Moon is accompanied by a video of Barwick and Lattimore performing the song live. Directed and edited by Joel Kazuo Knoernschild, the performance was filmed at Lou Lou’s Jungle Room at the Lafayette Hotel in San Diego this past April.”

The first single, Perpetual Adoration, is followed by the album’s closing track Melted Moon, a direct response to the Los Angeles wildfires in January 2025. The bold strokes of Lattimore’s harp soften as a calming chord progression asserts itself, before Barwick’s seraphic vocal adds a beautiful counter melody.

Barwick recalls “packing up her life under the dark ash clouds, “What do I need for these trips, but also, what do we need if we can’t come back to this house?” Lattimore lends a harp refrain that loops and echoes in the eventide, a measure in which she plays above as Barwick, uncharacteristically free of effects, offers her lyrics in poignant clarity, both haunting and hopeful (“Under the melted moon / The lights are all out / A strange taste in my mouth / You may never go home again / At least not the home you know”).

The notion embodies Tragic Magic as a whole: two artists and friends processing life through music, observing moments and working through emotions, contributing what they can to the world, within a lineage of creative expression and visionary invention represented by the very tools they used to realize this project.

Published post no.2,688 – Wednesday 15 October 2025

Switched On: Mary Lattimore – Goodbye, Hotel Arkada (Ghostly International)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

This is an album about change and the lasting effects it can have on people. Its title bears the name of a beloved hotel in Croatia visited by American harpist Mary Lattimore, and closing for renovation. She takes this as a stimulus for six pieces that explore the theme of change and how nothing can ever be the same again.

The musical material has its roots in improvisation but Lattimore honed the album over two years, both in a solo capacity and in the company of a host of collaborators. To that end she was joined by The Cure’s Lol Tolhurst, Meg Baird, Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, Ray Montgomery, Samara Lubelski and Walt McClements.

What’s the music like?

Beautiful. It is worth studying some of the stories behind Lattimore’s work, for it reveals something of her sense of humour as well as a softer side to her thinking. And Then He Wrapped His Wings Around Me – featuring Baird and Clements – is about a moment where she got to meet Big Bird with her mum, and he gave her ‘an incredible hug with this scratchy yellow wings’. The resultant track has a similar effect!

Arrivederci, with Tolhurst, is an intensely calming experience – written by Lattimore when she was at a low ebb after being let go from a project. It is styled as a round, a repetitive chord sequence where the harpist adds more and more melodic substance. Blender In A Blender goes on a compelling journey with Montgomery, becoming gradually more distorted and separated from a traditional harp sound and harnessing considerable power.

Lattimore’s titles are always eye-openers – so to speak – and Music For Applying Shimmering Eye Shadow gets music to match in the form of wonky, wobbly lines that falter over a much steadier base. It is as though one hand is faltering, the other an immovable object. There is a different kind of pitch variation in Horses, Glossy On The Hill, the idea of bells jangling together made by the clashing of semitones and microtones on the harp, before the instrument swirls in a gorgeous torrent of sound.

Yesterday’s Parties is a highly effective coda, the vocals of Goswell and Lubelski swooning as the harp plays delicate lines.

Does it all work?

It does. Lattimore’s imagination with the harp is key, producing some extraordinary sounds from the instrument in her manipulations and with studio trickery without ever becoming gimmicky or taking things too far. The underlying power in the music is also most impressive, as the likes of Arrivederci illustrate.

Is it recommended?

Wholeheartedly. This is music of beauty and inner resolve, and a powerfully moving album – arguably Mary Lattimore’s best yet.

Listen

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Published post no.1,988 – Tuesday 24 October 2023

Switched On – Mary Lattimore: Silver Ladders (Ghostly International)

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reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

The harpist Mary Lattimore has been busy in the two years since her last album release, Hundreds Of Days, with a good deal of touring and a remix package from that long player featuring work from Julianna Barwick and Jónsi among others.

For Silver Ladders she decamped from her Los Angeles home to the studio of Slowdive and Mojave 3 lynchpin Neil Halstead near Newquay, in Cornwall, working with him in sessions over an intense recording period of nine days.

What’s the music like?

Rather magical. The very different starting points of Lattimore and her producer are ideal, for the twinkling colours of the harp find their ideal match in Halstead’s very subtle guitar and studio work.

The harp remains the most prominent instrument and sets the tone with the beautifully poised Pine Trees, Lattimore’s silvery colours punctuated with pinpricks of intensity.

The album unfolds over seven tracks, with the centrepiece Til A Mermaid Drags You Under. This substantial piece of work begins in the lower register of the harp but gradually takes flight, the upper register adding wider perspectives and a twinkling edge. Halstead’s production touches reinforce the bass with sonorous notes and boost the reverberation, the listener given a sound picture akin to hovering over a vast bay.

Don’t Look is another extended meditation, Lattimore exploring the deep twang of a string in the harp’s lower register but with dreamy guitar from Halstead. The producer also provides thoughtful counterpoint to Sometimes He’s In My Dreams, then murmuring electronics to Chop on the Climbout, Lattimore’s harp flickering in the half light.

The closing Thirty Tulips is particularly beautiful, shifting phases and gently undulating, with a range of different sounds from the harp and broader electronic notes in the background.

Does it all work?

Yes, and repeated hearings only enhance the positive experience this album can bring. For an extra dimension, try the visual score accompaniment by Rachael Pony Cassells, which adds a further layer of enchantment to this already beautiful music:

Is it recommended?

With no hesitation. In these rather fraught times the subtleness of music like this can work wonders – though that’s not to say Mary Lattimore is without expression or imagination. Silver Ladders evokes starry ripples on the nocturnal waters with effortless ease, the listener borne away on the waves.

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