TSUNDERE TWINTAILS — HAPPY WEDNESDAY

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Part inescapable groove, part pastel playground, ‘happy wednesday’ by apparent composer of “comfort synth” tsundere twintails is a tumble through an upbeat world washed with cute video game sensibilities. The organic beat rattles and thuds alongside FM bass, bold and booming as the backdrop to the soft and colourful gloss of glassy keys.

The whole track is characterised by small noises, giving the perspective that somehow it is smaller than other sounds: a car going by, shutting the fridge door, K-pop. Accordingly, synths like virtuoso birdsong swaying into the air, and scattered vocal chops wobble and snap, adding humanoid minutiae to proceedings.

In an interview with Real Simple, forensic psychiatrist Varun Choudhary said: "Subconsciously, we positively associate tiny objects with the security and comfort they brought us in an earlier time in our lives.” Does the same go for small noises? If so, well, then this really is comfort synth.

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• 🔔 If you liked 'happy wednesday' you'll be happy to know there's more where that came from. And if you really liked it, you can purchase it on Bandcamp.

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ROGER LINDAHL — SEASONS IN THE MESOPELAGIC

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The mesopelagic zone begins at a point deep in the ocean where only 1% of light filters through, and ends where there is no light. The prospect of such a place is terrifying — the pressure, the darkness, the blobfish — which is why Swiss artist Roger Lindahl’s exploration of it is all the better.

Rather than submerge listeners in these baleful depths, Lindahl’s ‘Seasons in the Mesopelagic’ is a natural history museum in miniature; an indistinct, four-note bass keeps things civic, like the calculating eyes of gallery-goers, while before them floats an adumbral ambient symphony.

Slow, bubbling, and splashed with a harsh yet hazy wash of sound, the sweeping soundscape from Lindahl’s submersible is superb.

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• 🔔 'Seasons in the Mesopelagic' by Roger Lindahl is the inaugural release of Unmade Records, the new sub-label of Zurich’s Red Brick Chapel. You can stream and/or purchase it on Bandcamp.
• 🔔 Roger Lindahl is actually the alter-ego of Florian Schneider — part Jacques Cousteau, part Brion Gysin, and named after a character in Philip K. Dick’s Puttering About in a Small Land (1957).

  "I first started thinking about the [upcoming album] Pacific Dream Machine around 1954 as a device to induce a hypnagogic state when listening with your eyes closed by stimulating the alpha waves in the brain. The first tests on tape were promising, so I hope it helps you too," says Lindahl.

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MAGNETIC VINES — MAGNETIC VINES

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⌾ LISTEN TO MAGNETIC VINES BY MAGNETIC VINES ⌾

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Billing itself as “a soundtrack for tending rooftop gardens by moonlight”, Magnetic Vines’ eponymous release is a selection of essentially relaxing soundscapes. Many of the tracks have evocative titles; for example, there’s ‘Vines and Old Concrete’, ‘Night Bloom’ and ‘Quiet Old Shipwreck’, all of which feature age-warped acoustic guitar, plucked as if from a bygone time and space entirely.

Particularly interesting are the pieces forming the second half of the album; four tracks titled ‘Cyanotype’ and four named ‘Constellation’, ordered by key like an etude or a prelude. While the later Constellations are expansive and magnetic, the Cyanotypes — named after the blue-hued photographic printing process — are melancholic, inward looking, and range from space-filled and poignant (‘Cyanotype in G# minor’) to starkly ambient (‘Cyanotype in Eb minor’), with a warm nocturne in the form of the finale in C major.

Overall, the tones and textures of its Mediterranean-flavoured guitars, crooning brass, cradling harmonicas and subtle synthwork are perfectly paired with album’s core value: imagination. Magnetic Vines in its entirety is a wash of soft clarity, like holding an old book in your hands for the first time, or as its concept suggests, tending to the new sprouting leaves on familiar shrubs — all bathed in moonlight, of course.

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• 🔔 You can stream and or download Magnetic Vines variously by following this link right here.

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FIVEIGHTHIRTEEN — SOME QUESTIONS ARE ANSWERS

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Pulsing to the velcro snap of hip-hop infused drums, yawning ambient synths roar at the base of fiveighthirteen’s ‘some questions are answers’. But being the chimeric track it is, there’s more to it than that. It’s a mix of sensitive drones and legible grooves, an urgent, infiltrative bassline, a shuffling math rock spirit, with an indefinable synth melody played in soft, mythic sweeps.

The bass becomes distorted, rampaging in a steady gallop in the track’s most propulsive parts, with officious vocal samples (reminiscent of Public Service Broadcasting) topping it off like a psychedelic trip through archival ruins centuries from now.

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• 🔔 'some questions are answers' is taken from fiveighthirteen's upcoming album a fever of rays due out on 13th August.

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EMMA JOHNSON'S GRAVY BOAT — SUN STONES

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⌾ LISTEN TO SUN STONES BY EMMA JOHNSON'S GRAVY BOAT ⌾

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If there was ever a fitting title for an album, Worry Not is one. You can thank jazz outfit Emma Johnson’s Gravy Boat for that. It’s on this collection of tracks is where you’ll find ‘Sun Stones’, a joyful piece that flits between boundless energy amid ozone skies, and the drugged, tender haze of an afternoon alcoholic beverage.

Angular, minimalist riffs persist in a storm of skittering drums, while Emma Johnson, the Leeds-based bandleader and saxophonist, brings a wakeful dreaminess to proceedings, swaddled in waves of piano like scudding clouds. Bubblingly bookended by clusters of kinetic ostinato, and with this floating core of calm, ‘Sun Stones’ feels like a reflective yet escapist soundtrack for these times.

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• 🔔 'Sun Stones' is taken from Worry Not, the debut album from jazz quintent Emma Johnson's Gravy Boat. You may purchase it or just steam it over on Bandcamp.

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