We’ve been more behind than usual. 2021 cast WHM out of Philadelphia and into the warm embrace of Brooklyn. It took us from depressed to focused, from stir crazy to stir crazier, from happy to sad to happy again. But after all that change, we’re finally dipping our toes back into the pools of cyberspace to splash our thoughts at you. We’ve been listening and learning and yearning the whole time. To kick off 2022, here are a few of the projects we found along the way to this bright new year. Hope you enjoy. Talk soon.
HBJ🍍 & LJL☔
PALLADIAN & HAELIUM - Freckles (Single)
June 4 - Future Archive Recordings
The Barcelona-based duo team up with fellow all-caps-named HAELIUM of Paris for a dreamy, plucked synth time-travel track rounded out by soft, introspective piano chords. 🍍
Kings of Convenience - Peace or Love
June 18 - EMI
For the first time in what feels like forever (12 years, to be more exact), Norway’s indie-folk-pop-lullaby duo Kings of Convenience have released a new album. And it’s exactly what we expected it to be, and it’s exactly what we wanted. Crooning, soft melodies over strumming guitars, they sing close to the mic and soothe the loves lost and the existential oblivion. They have certainly grown older, more sophisticated in their melodic craft, with a few new unexpected compositional plot twists and influences, and the topics have grown in complexity with our aging baggage and worries. It all remains pristine and full of hope, singing of pain but stripped of anything painful. Feist makes a brief appearance or two. ☔
Salvatore Ganacci - Step-Grandma
July 13 - Zatara Recordings
Hide your grandma. Hide your kids. Hide your house? Hide your trees. Hide your sandwiches. Hide your heart. Salvatore Ganacci makes fun videos that are good to watch and good to listen to. 🍍
Peach Pals, Vol. 2
July 16 - Peach Discs
A strong collection of minimal-leaning bangers steeped in the essence of summer coming from Shanti Celeste and Gramrcy’s Peach Discs. 🍍
Robag Wruhme - Spoddy Spy EP / Avo Thal EP
July 23 / November 26 - Tulpa Ovi Records
Gabor has branched out with his own imprint, providing the world with two new satchels of music. The EPs feel timeless in the context of his catalog, tracking through intimate memories and deep rhythms. 🍍
Celia Hollander - Timekeeper
July 23 - Leaving Records
LA-based artist Celia Hollander dropped an interesting electronic experiment with Timekeeper, an abstract concept album that features musical impressions of moments in time built from field recordings and synths. Each track, titled after a specific time of day, acts as a slice of life, an almost mundane record of an energy or mood in a place in a moment. Listening, you may be reminded of something unknown shuffling in the dark, a dream where the rain travels upward, the wind in your ears, hearing a catchy tune out of an open car window as it passes, someone passive aggressively cleaning the dishes in the other room, or the soundtrack to an old science VHS tape about matter from the 80s that your high school physics teacher puts on when they need a break. ☔
Chinwe - Scar Tissue EP
August 5 - Self-released
London R&B singer-songwriter Chinwe shares an EP that is minimal and airy but rich in atmosphere. She croons with a throaty strength, wide open intonation, casual cadence, honest words, and an uplifting emotional generosity that’s so nice to hear, even a little utopian. The production supports her perfectly, with simple guitar and roomy beats, where drippy trickles of loose rhythm fall effortlessly into motion, and where her various creative influences are folded in without losing any cohesion or identity. ☔
Mary Lattimore - Piece for Dance
August 12 - Self-released
Lovely Lattimore as always, and I particularly enjoy how seamlessly she moves energy from one state to another in this piece. Like water to steam to rain, and I am tiny. I wish I was there in the cemetery with them all, listening, heart dancing with the living, the dead, and the stones. ☔
Sally Decker - In The Tender Dream LP
August 13 - NNA Tapes
An abstract exploration of introspective chittering, dark poetry with synths released on my 30th birthday. Not for easy listeners, this is art for art’s sake in a gallery with walls that many are afraid to touch. But it does resonate with a certain sort of melodramatic existential mood when you want to disappear into a buzzing void and rediscover light. ☔
Caribou - You Can Do It
August 24 - Merge Records
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TSHA - OnlyL
August 27 - Ninja Tune
London’s TSHA rounded out the summer with one of the tightest EPs of the year. The three short tracks span oceans and continents on their journey with immaculate sampling, infectious beats, and a level of polish that has us impatient for more. 🍍
Kanye West - Donda
August 29 - GOOD
Kanye West released an album. ⬛
DJ Seinfeld - Mirrors
September 3 - Ninja Tune
DJ Seinfeld places another trail marker on his sonic journey—more of an outpost than a marker—with his second album Mirrors. The artist calls into focus wisps of nostalgic emotion threaded together with crisp percussion and watery synths. An introspective piece that has something for everybody. 🍍
Kassian - Breath EP
September 10 - Shall Not Fade
Kassian roll through with their second EP for Shall Not Fade, an infectious collection of tracks perfect for the return to public nightlife. The project takes a surprising turn inward, with thick cuts that run deeper than the glossy exterior of club culture; this EP shows the growth that can come from time spent in relative isolation. 🍍
Glenn Echo - Fixed Memory LP
September 30 - Self-released
Brooklyn singer-songwriter offers approachable indie folk music with an edgy undercurrent, playful production, curated textures, and surprising moments. For fans of Sufjan Stevens and José González who crave a little experimentation outside of the coffee shop. ☔
FaltyDL - The Wrath EP
October 1 - Studio Barnhaus
Sometimes crisp, sometimes broody, always groovy. A saunter through a city park’s woods, combining the best of both the natural and artificial worlds. The Brooklyner’s second project for Stockholm’s Studio Barnhaus goes hard, but not too hard as to prevent pleasant listening in pajamas on the couch with a nice red wine in a coffee mug. 🍍
James Blake - Friends That Break Your Heart
October 8 - Republic
James is back, channeling the energy of 2019’s Assume Form into a new project. Though the cadence and mouthfeel are in line with the previous album, Friends That Break Your Heart follows a new path carved out by its title. The pieces ebb and flow solemnly, stirring deep emotions and surface impulses equally. It’s starting to feel like an emotional tryptic, and I can’t wait for the third panel to be revealed. 🍍
Tristan Arp - Sculpturegardening
October 22 - Wisdom Teeth
Mexico City-based artist Tristan Arp’s Sculpturegardening is a collection of subtle, playful electronic musings that feel very physical, like solid objects in the room with you that undulate and break the laws of matter when you try to pick them up. Haunting and highly detailed, each composition is alive, buzzing, and drippy, pillowy synths commune organically with breathy analog instruments like our supersonic discovery of the forest floor’s primordial ecstasy. On display here are the things that grow underneath, the energy around and within that some know but most are quick to ignore. ☔
Sassy 009 - Heart Ego
October 22 - Luft Recordings
Sunniva Lindgaard aka Sassy 009’s new mixtape Heart Ego whips around thoughts and feelings and relationships and weekends, balancing subtly strong melodic lines and a voice that flows in and out of focus. 🍍
Patrick Shiroishi - Hidemi LP
October 29 - American Dreams
And now for my favorite discovery of 2021—Patrick Shiroishi’s Hidemi LP, an essay penned in jazz saxophone about Japanese-American identity and the experiences of his grandfather, after whom both he and the album are named, and whose adult life was irrevocably altered by internment at a Japanese-American concentration camp. Shiroishi plucks the ties to his grandfather with a duplicity of self, layering his melodies on top of one another, in alto, tenor, baritone, C melody and soprano sax, an ensemble of one. Again and again, he calls out and responds with wild abandon, lost-and-found in introspection, feeling, frustration and pain. Triumphant fanfares, onomatopoeia, and allusions to Japanese musicality break down into tense freeform composition, like muscles working against each other to make a body move and succeeding in the face of that burden. They honk, they sparkle, they grieve, they move, they undulate, and, ultimately, they come together and hope. ☔
Lone - Always Inside Your Head
October 29 - Warp Records
Lone is back with his 8th album, Always Inside Your Head on Warp Records. The project is great—that should be no surprise given Lone’s track record of amazing records. But the album catches you off-guard, cloyingly deep with layers upon layers of sparkling instrumentation, shimmering vocals, and a strong sense of the beauty that exists within the steps of the long march of time. Truly a wonderful record, and one of my favorite things I’ve listened to all year. 🍍
Cora Novoa - Two Faces
November 5 - Turbo Recordings
The latest from Cora Novoa and Turbo goes harder than it should for November, but owns it the whole way through. We see you. We are also drama inclined. And we like to hide in the dark. 🍍
Dusky - JOY
November 5 - 17 Steps
London-based duo Dusky released an album aptly-named JOY, and it’s a rave in a bottle, a love letter to the reckless dance floor of youth, and an ode to the roots of electronic dance music. Filled with the optimism of times gone by, the tracks are designed to take us away to a future-past vision, a cup of ambrosia poured out for lost Olympus before our weary pandemic eyes and ears. Step onto the conveyor to rapture, lose yourself in sweet, addictive repetition, an embrace of pristine, convivial chords, smooth waterfalling melodies, breakbeats, a re-imagining of techno saccharine. For those who need to find the witch who commands them to dance in the gingerbread house in the woods. ☔
LOELASH - Fantasia
November 12 - Self-released
London-based LOELASH sails in on the winds brought forth by his 2019 EP Lapse with his debut album FANTASIA. It’s just as vibrant as his previous work, and made even brighter by a host of talented guest vocalists. 🍍