#29: Watch you while you’re thinking
New music from Austyn Wohlers, daarling, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds + Slowdive remixes
This week’s new music:
Spotify
Apple Music
K. Yoshimatsu, “Violet”
In the first half of the 1980s, Koshiro Yoshimatsu released around 40 albums on cassette—all on DD Records, and with beautiful, photocopied artwork. Now some curated tracks from that period are being re-released on streaming and vinyl, but thankfully the frenetic, done-in-one-take sound—how else are you going to release that many albums that quickly?—remains. / Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, YouTube
Austyn Wohlers, “How Heavy the Slow World”
This year Austyn Wohlers has released a third album with her band Tomato Flower, signed a deal for her debut novel, and come out with her first solo album—which is all sorts of wonderfully gaze-y, gauze-y ambient—and it’s barely September. / Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, YouTube
daarling, “Arrangements to Change”
A welcome dose of off-kilter power emo, complex and immersive in a way that recalls early Sunny Day Real Estate. Initiate repeated listens. / Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, YouTube
Jamie xx, “Dafodil” (feat. Kelsey Lu, John Glacier, Panda Bear)
Up to now all the new Jamie xx songs have been awesome grooves, and great stuff for sure—but this, this here is different. Eerie, cinematic, emotive, built more for headphones than a dance floor. This got me officially excited for the new album. / Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, YouTube
Mint Field, “El mar me veía” (feat. Mabe Fratti)
Continuing the eerie, cinematic vibe, this song practically hangs in the air, disconnected, losing gravity until it finally touches down back down again. You can practically feel it as it happens. / Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, “Song of the Lake”
It’s pretty easy to forget that some of Nick Cave’s most powerful songs aren’t found in the dark, interior work from his past couple of solo albums, but in his full-throated, lyrical, and even humorous side—like on Wild God, his new album with the Bad Seeds, and this, its lead-off track. It would be bullshit to call this a return to form for Cave, but it is a return to a form. / Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
maya ongaku, “Meiso Ongaku 3”
Recommended if you like listening to krautrock while chauffeuring David Lynch on a nighttime drive to nowhere. / Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, YouTube
Godfather Don, “Definite”
Crisp, classic flows, and just undeniably good. / Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, YouTube
Seefeel, “Multifolds”
I still can’t believe there’s new Seefeel music out, and I’m going to keep posting it until they finally receive the attention they earned long ago. / Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, YouTube
gorse panshawe, “the warp”
Still blending the digital and organic, the artist now known as gorse panshawe has traded the darker natures of Slugabed, his former moniker, for a warm and inviting sound on this new track. / Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, YouTube
Slowdive, “kisses – sky ii” (Grouper Remix) / “kisses” (Daniel Avery Remix)
In late 1993, six months after the magnificent Souvlaki, Slowdive released the mostly electronic 5 EP, which right from the lead-off track “In Mind” signaled a radical departure from the guitar-forward shoegaze that was their sound up to then. Neil Halstead, it seems, was as wrapped up in Warp Records as the rest of us were that year. A natural progression was to follow that EP with a pair of “In Mind” remixes, which I loved at the time (and still do), but I recall that it further irritated anyone who thought the band should stick to staring at their pedals. (And those same people would be overwhelmed with irritation when the wonderfully austere, decidedly non-shoegaze Pygmalion arrived a little over a year later.)
So seeing that, once again, we have a pair of Slowdive remixes—this time of their 2023 single “Kisses”—thrills me in the same way it did then. And in this case, while I never cared for the original version of “Kisses”—it’s a little too one-sided and missing the emotional undercurrent or unexpected hooks found in their best work—these remixes show the song’s beautiful core shining through whether reimagined as an ethereal, reverb-laden track or a breakbeat ballad.
“In Mind” / Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
“In Mind” Bandulu Remix (Out Mind) / Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
“In Mind” Reload Remix (The 147 Take) / Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
“kisses – sky ii” (Grouper Remix) / Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
“kisses” (Daniel Avery Remix) / Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube
