After travelling to the island of Kimitoön in the halcyon summer of 2019, where field recordings and acoustic experiments lent a bright and sometimes plaintive air to three days of studio material, the New York trio Sontag Shogun departed Finland and the home of the composer and vocalist Lau Nau only to be bogged down by the ensuing coronavirus pandemic. Stilled while carrying the scent and breadth of the landscape, their resulting collaboration arrives after two years of careful restructuring, with overdubs recorded between Los Angeles and Montreal while stems were sent like postcards or shafts of light scattered across the surface of the ocean.
Mitch Stahlmann summons sacred incantations and scrawls chaotic collages on the flute for the Polish label Mondoj. The Ivor Novello and BIFA-nominated pianist and composer Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch conceives a mourning diary in the form of an album as her third record for the FatCat imprint 130701 dwells on the loss of a parent. Susanna dashes to avoid destruction rapt in the decadent poetry of Charles Baudelaire, and Taralie Peterson adopts the name Tekla as eighties pop forms strive for ecstatic release amidst anguish and turmoil at the end of a twenty-year relationship.
Hot on the heels of the incendiary five-part KiCk series, Arca continues to explore nonbinary self-states, while Loraine James allows her subconscious to dictate over the glacial breaks and temperate moods of her ambient alias Whatever The Weather. Written and recorded in a 72-hour stretch, Ohyung navigates the flora and fauna of tucked stomachs and weeping frames on their first for NNA Tapes, while the preacher’s daughter Ethel Cain finds that every beginning ends and every ending begins with an act of forgiveness. Tracks by Van Morrison, S. Carey, Yama Warashi, Spencer Zahn, and East Portal also feature in the latest roundup of new music.
Playlists: Spotify · Apple Music · YouTube
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Sontag Shogun & Lau Nau – ‘Leikkikalu’
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Yung Lean – ‘Bliss’ (feat. FKA twigs)
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Tekla Peterson – ‘Swarm of Gnats’
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Van Morrison – ‘Pretending’
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Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch – ‘Ravage’
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More Eaze – ‘Heartbreaker’ (feat. Claire Rousay)
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East Portal – ‘Breakfast on Ground’
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Arca – ‘Cayó’
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OHYUNG – ‘yes my weeping frame!’
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Ethel Cain – ‘Strangers’
