We start with the opening of a poignant album by one of the most accomplished and revered musicians of the 20th century. Throughout 2021 and 2022, Ryuichi Sakamoto recorded elegiac and mournful pieces for piano and electronics in the wake of an advanced stage-four cancer diagnosis. Imbued with a sobering weight and recorded on the day of their corresponding titles, these soundscapes represent a foreboding sound diary at a time when Sakamoto is considering his own life and mortality.
In her 2022 album Image Language, Felicia Atkinson tries to capture the disorientation of moving between places and its effect on the creative process. With swelling chords reminiscing of a deep morning fog, 'La Brume' features a reverb-soaked saxophone softly emerging from a layer of drifting synthesizer.
The German band Bohren & Der Club of Gore plays a superb unhurried type of slow-core doom jazz with restraint in their music that creates as much tension as it does calm. Contemplative, flowing and mellifluous, 'Constant Fear' carries a solemn mood and sinister sensuality.
The great Angelo Badalamenti left us in December 2022. The American composer’s haunting and timeless soundtrack for David Lynch’s Twin Peaks is one of the best scores ever written for television. Both gentle and eerie, it borders on fever-dream jazz and has gone on to take a whole life of its own.
After a powerful debut album in 2019, Anadol’s eclectic follow-up EP explores the complexities and contradictions of happiness. Merging krautrock, twisted pop and cosmic jazz, it is highly idiosyncratic and positively disorienting. On 'Gizli Duygular', the Berlin-based Turkish musician opens the album with patience and delicacy until drums and guitar reverbs propel us into a rhythmic groove.
Since 2015, Berlin-based Sebastian Lee Philipp has been releasing concept albums and captivating music under Die Wilde Jagd. 'Perseverance' is taken from his new album ophio. Clocking in at 10 minutes, it lies in patience, and reminds us that music can be simple and beautiful if you let it breathe.
Oiseaux-Tempête enlists longtime friend Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (Jerusalem in My Heart) to collaborate on an entrancing track of utmost beauty. Stoner rock rubs shoulders with oozing blues and traditional music, slowly engulfing the listener in a mesmerizing swirl of psychedelia.
An intimate collage of string improvisations, abstract electronics, and field recordings, this album hit the spot, not just for its coherence and brilliant compositions but for the transparent creative process behind it. Montreal cellist and composer Justin Wright embraces vulnerability and authenticity to bring forward mistakes and edits that would have otherwise been removed to create a polished final product.
Coil's last studio album The Ape of Naples served as a final statement and summation of the iconic experimental band's multi-faceted career. It was released shortly after their lead singer Jhonn Balance died accidentally and was assembled from his final recordings and uncompleted material.
‘After the Storm’ is a dreamy and atmospheric piece by the prolific British pianist, composer and keyboardist Greg Foat, taken from his 2020 release Symphonie Pacifique. Unencumbered by rules and definitions, the subtly crafted composition has a pacifying majesty evocative of the calm that sets in after a storm.
Forty years in, Yo La Tengo’s sound keeps maturing and evolving. They’ve just released This Stupid World (their first studio album in 5 years) and listening to the ending song feels like sinking into nothingness. This is shoegaze brilliance that hits a sweet spot between foggy, intimate atmospherics and shimmering dream pop.
We end with a collaboration between Scottish band Cocteau Twins and American composer Harold Budd, taken from the classic ambient pop record The Moon and the Melodies. With its electric piano and infinite guitar, 'Why Do You Love Me?' is amazingly pacifying.
