Happening Again #53
Extra extra
Hello!
Too often I feel that I start these things talking about the weather but it was only the other day, when it felt like the sun decided to show itself for the first time this year, that I realised how dark 2026 had been. In a very literal sense. But you know, in an everything-everywhere-all-at-once sense, as well.
My good friend Neil Mason, he of Moonbuilding, asked me to review Conflux Coldwell’s ‘Shadows And Simulacra’ EP in last week’s edition, a record that was made partly with generative AI. There was lots to write about, and it was great to talk to CC about the process and thoughts behind the album. Get it read before the new Moonbuilding comes out tomorrow.
I’m also happy to say you can also find my writing as part of Cantilever, the streaming service that wants to do things a bit differently. I’ve written about it before, but the conceit involves albums only being available for a limited time, but with accompanying reviews, interviews, and other tidbits. It’s £4.99 a month, with a free trial, and a fairer share of royalties goes towards artist. Subscribe, and you can read my words on Iglooghost’s 2017 debut album ‘Neō Wax Bloom’.
Anyway, here’s what I’ve been spinning recently…
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Yapping Portal
BLUE FIFTY-SIX
Blue Tapes
Angel Marcloid is a woman of many personas. You may, in fact, have heard her music before. She’s (probably) more commonly known as Fire-Toolz, and she’s been a somewhat regular feature on Hausu Mountain. But she also has a whole host of monikers (sometimes one-use) that she uses to create music under all sorts of genres (my favourite, taken from Discogs: “␍◥☳ ⏨⍳⏨⎹⎹⍲⍝↸⏨♨♸ ☃⑆ - A one-off moniker used by Angel Marcloid aka Fire-Toolz. Electronic noise/glitch”). Here a new alias births a new album, or maybe it’s the other way around. “Yapping Portal material is composed in several stages” Marcloid explains. “There are hours of exploration and experimentation that go into it: Yapping endlessly. An open portal of expression.” Collected here as ‘Blue Fifty-Six’, Marcloid shares with us 18 sound portraits, all with varying degrees of experimentation. Easy listening this certainly isn’t, but I love an artist who isn’t afraid to get muddy. There’s suitable bonkers song titles as well. ‘Into Volo Bog ! Sapphire Slug Parliament’ is a swirling vortex of gurgling liquid static being poured down a plughole, while on ‘Web Gloss Flexible ! Infinite Blue Scroll’ a thick, heavy drone is peppered with alien bleeps and a stream of light percussion. Marcloid gets top marks for ‘Orphaned Automation Complete ! Carbonated Parroting Theory’, fizzing and crackling electronic textures so visceral they feel as though they’re dribbling out of your speakers. This won’t be for everyone, but I’ve always got time for someone who messes this intuitively with sound.
bvdub + East Of Oceans
REPLICANT MEMORIES
LILA लीला
I’ve been really taken with ‘Replicant Memories’, the album that Brock Van Wey put out at the end of last year in which two of his aliases join forces. Van Wey, who more commonly records as bvdub, is originally from San Francisco but is now based in Shaoxing, China and has released over 70 albums since 2007. He primarily makes ambient techno under bvdub, with his Earth House Hold and East Of Oceans used for deep house and drum ‘n’ bass respectively. So is ‘Replicant Memories’ a fusion of ambient techno and d ‘n’ b? Sort of. Across four tracks, each 20-minutes-ish apiece, Wey takes us across a sea of textures, beats, and genres. There’s something very dreamlike in the way tracks shift, in that it can seem sudden and left-field, yet make perfect sense (the way ‘We Felt The Glowing Rain’ fades from ambient soundscape into avant-IDM is a treat). It’s all very hazy, all very nostalgic, and even at its most breakneck crystalline drum ‘n’ bass, all quite melancholic. But I keep returning to ‘Replicant Memories’ for both active and passive listening, and finding glints of instrumentation that I hadn’t heard previously.
Kirinji
TOWN BEAT
Syncokin
Maybe summer has been on my mind subconsciously, but I’ve been listening to a lot of Japanese city pop recently. A friend recently switched me on to Kirinji, who have been making serene, jazz-inflected city pop since the late-90s. With an ever-changing line-up, the group now appears to be a solo vehicle for OG founding member Takaki Horigome, with a rotating cast of former band members. ‘Town Beat’ is the group’s 17th album, and there’s something just infectiously joyous about it. The keyboard solo on ‘What A Night’? The fast-paced ‘Lemonade’ with some vocal help from composer Tomomi Oda? In contrast to the smooth funk of ‘Curious About Your Weekend’? It’s buoyant, it’s fun, and it will be perfect for those hazy summer nights, pint in hand, the sky glowing orange as it slowly turns purple. Well, we live in hope. Just got to pray it stops raining soon.
Oklou
CHOKE ENOUGH
True Panther
Sometimes a song is able to touch a certain emotion, grip on, and refuse to let go. And it was through another listen of Oklou’s debut ‘Choke Enough’, that a certain number of songs had that effect. I think I was first made aware of Oklou (pronounced “Okay Lou”, the stage name of French musician Marylou Vanina Mayniel) via Sega Bodega. Musically, she slots somewhere between hyperpop menace and Y2K optimism, and is somewhat PC Music-adjacent. At the risk of sounding like an ageing millennial, Mayniel feels like a quintessential pop diva for Gen Z, from her futuristic sound to her insistence in stylising everything in lowercase. It’s the deluxe edition of ‘Choke Enough’ that caught my attention, particularly ‘Viscus’, a delicate avant-pop track she recorded with FKA Twigs, and ‘What’s Good’, a sombre yearning piano number that less tugs at your heartstrings and more takes a chainsaw to them. But there’s lots of good stuff here (‘Family And Friends’, ‘Obvious’, ‘ICT’), and she’s an artist well worth exploring. It all feels a bit star-in-the-making, and it reminds me of the early days of Charli XCX.
Time will tell, but for now Oklou’s trajectory is only upwards-facing.
That’s it for this time. As always you can find my ramblings elsewhere in both print and online in Electronic Sound. I am going to tentatively dip into the world of microblogging again, so follow me on Bluesky if that’s your sort of thing.
But before I go, here are some things from across the internet that have caught my eye…
Some Stray Thoughts
// It’s a shame Marvel malaise is in full-swing, because I really enjoyed ‘Wonder Man’. A self-referential, briskly-paced mocking of superhero fatigue, Hollywood, and the trials and tribulations of trying to get a foot into showbiz. Well worth your time for those inclined.
// Big fan of this video for Carpenter Brut’s recent single ‘Speed Or Perish’, taken from upcoming album ‘Leather Temple’. Which is great, by the way. Look forward to words on that very soon…