AM Gold 2025

Trying to sum up a year’s worth of listening is never easy. I thought I’d get ahead of the curve in 2025 and do a better job of tracking every album that stood out to me throughout the year, but instead of making the job of list-making easier, all that did was give me even more choices than usual.

Which means this year’s AM Gold is even longer than usual—200+ albums, all told—and I’ve gone back to the unranked list because last year’s task of deciding on an order was honestly a nightmare even with 100 albums. Instead, I’ve grouped it into 50 favourites, and 150+ others that are still very much worth a listen.

Bandcamp links are included wherever possible, which is the vast majority of them. I’ve also thrown a track from each album into playlists on Apple Music and Spotify. Throw ’em on shuffle and you’re sure to discover at least a few new favourites.

50 favourites: The AM’s best of 2025

Adrian Younge – Something about April III
Younge’s stunning psych-soul series takes a welcome detour to Brazil.

Alabaster DePlume – A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole
Earnest, soul-searching, ambient-leaning jazz & spoken word.

Anika – Abyss
Stripped-down, grunge-influenced art rock from the former Exploded View singer.

🇨🇦 Avi C. Engel – Mote
Drone-folk, rich and loamy, and my introduction to the haunting tone of the gudok.

Ben Morales Frost, Violetta Vicci – Forest Music EP
Downtempo neo-classical (piano, keyboards, and strings) suited for escaping into imaginary woodlands.

Bertrand Belin – Watt
Belin’s gravelly voice often reminds me of Bryan Ferry’s later work (Avonmore especially), and the music backing him isn’t worlds removed from Roxy either, but the Franco-pop underpinnings give this its own swooning sense of romance.

Black Market Karma – Mellowmaker
Big-beat psychedelia, evoking ’90s Dust Brothers productions as much as the genre’s ’60s heydey with its sing-song melodies, loping rhythms, and looping structures.

Black Taffy – Out Moon
Simple instrumental beats with lush, cinematic production. Heavy on atmosphere and more than willing to tug on the heartstrings.

Blue Lake – The Animal
A wondrous expansion of Blue Lake’s folk-kosmische sound, blending pastoral beauty and ambient folk with some of the playfulness of Pengion Cafe. Organic and unpredictable, whirling and wandering like a wayward breeze.

Brown Fang – Netherfield Lagoons
Autumnal soundscapes, pitched somewhere between the Hardy Tree and Durutti Column.

🇨🇦 Buildings and Food – Provincial Park
Ambient compositions inspired by Canadian landscapes. Not so much about buildings, then, but still nourishing. Don’t miss the excellent remix EP, too.

Cerys Hafana – Angel
A remarkable album from Welsh triple-harpist Cerys Hafana. A beautiful fusion of folk & traditional tunes with neo-classical minimalism.The songs are dynamic, living things, deeply affecting with & without Hafana’s haunting voice.

Essendon Airport – MOR
Charming minimal compositions from a reunited ’70s/’80s Aussie duo; breezy & whimsical with an air of melancholy. Slide guitar, wurlitzer, gently chugging drum machines—everything you need to float through the daily drudgery.

Felbm – winterspring/summerfall
Splitting each season into 6 songs, this 24-track concept album is a pastoral jazz triumph, and a gorgeous blend of Felbm’s interests in natural & musical cycles.

🇨🇦 Fortunato Durutti Marinetti – Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter
Marinetti (aka Daniel Colussi) has been planting a flag alongside esoteric Canadian songwriters like Sandro Perri, Dan Bejar, and Leonard Cohen. Storied company, but the vivid arrangements, elliptical lyrics and offbeat delivery make a compelling case.

🇨🇦 Foxwarren – 2
Shauf’s side-project gives him the opportunity for a modest reinvention, sampling and remixing his band’s contributions into wooze indie-pop delights.

Go Kurosawa – Soft Shakes
The former Kikagaku Moyo drummer/ GuruGuruBrain co-founder tackles all the instrumentaiton and production on this one. Gentler and more eclectic than KM, and more rewarding for it, especially on the Kraftwerk-ish “Autowalk.”

Gustaf Ljunggren, Emil de Waal – Mikroklima
A melodic, meandering, and marvelous set of jazz-influenced instrumentals grounded in warm, rustic tones.

Ichiko Aoba – Luminescent Creatures
It’s rare for an album to feel this gentle and this unpredictable at the same time. Chamber folk and dream pop, intricate and delicate in equal measure.

Immersion, Suss Nanocluster, Vol. 3
The gentler of Immersion’s two 2025 albums (both are excellent, but I slightly preferred this one). Suss adds ambient Americana to Immersion’s kosmische strains, the collaboration bringing out the best in both.

🇨🇦 Jairus Sharif – Basis of Unity
Questing and inquisitive spiritual jazz—genuinely spiritual, not just a genre affectation, but a real search for meaning through breath, melody, and sonic texture.

Jilk – Fix Your Heart
The closest thing to pop structures I’ve heard from Jilk, without compromising on the experimentation and musical restlessness that makes the whole project so appealing. A truly gorgeous blend of melancholy French pop, skittering beats, and ambient electronics, easily one of the year’s best releases.

🇨🇦 Laurie Torres – Après coup
Confident and tranquil ambient jazz that rarely rises above a whisper, and is all the more engrossing for it.

Loaded Honey – Love Made Trees
Channeling vintage AM-radio soul: Warm, crackling, with the occasional surprising production choice breaking it out of a nostaglic haze.

M. Sage – Tender / Wading
The audio equivalent of laying down in a bed of leaves warm and soft from the midday sun, rich scent of humus filling your lungs, comforting and consciousness-dissolving in a way I can’t quite articulate.

Magic Fig – Valerian Tea
Starts with Starcastle prog-pop arpeggios, moves through an assortment of Canterbury-adjascent soundscapes, all in all a delightfully trippy slice of warm psychedelia.

🇨🇦 Memory Pearl – Cosmic-Astral
Apparently a re-imagining of a 1970s LSD soundtrack through a nurturing new-age lens; some pronounced jazz and easy listening influences, but still a trip in its own right.

Mess Esque Jay Marie, Comfort Me
Dirty Three guitarist Mick Turner’s latest project is comfortingly off-kilter, preferring to paint around melodies and hint at structures without ever taking the obvious route.

🇨🇦 Moon Apple – Four Pillars
The Montreal musician’s first full-length in five years offers “ritualistic rhythms and tribal soundscapes for a modern era,” an electronic ode to & subversion of traditian & ritual.

Mulatu Astatke Mulatu Plays Mulatu
Astatke helped define Ethio-jazz more than half a century ago and yet this is the first of his albums I’ve heard start to finish. Truly my loss—this is warm, rhythmic, complex, and captivating. Better late than never.

🇨🇦 No Joy – Bugland
Omnivorous shoegaze, with bold production that leaves no sound left unturned. No Joy’s inspirations run from Deftones to Enya, finding no contradiction in all the disparate sources.

🇨🇦 Orbital Ensemble – Live at Gold Standard
This live album and the self-titled debut from the Toronto latin jazz/psych ensemble are both full of groovy magic, but the slightly more muscular sound gives Live at Gold Standard the edge.

Oruã & Reverse Death – Reflectors Vol. 1
A split cassette featuring Reverse Death’s first music since their 2022 debut and demos from Oruã’s Slacker (also excellent). RD’s tracks are blissful slow-flowing psych; Oruã rougher-edged and garage-y, both glorious.

🇨🇦 Patche – Mode
Not sure what to call this outside of invigorating. It reminds me of hearing Holy Fuck’s live electronics for the first time, that mix of energy and possibility. Krautrock, maybe, but aimed at the dance floor, party music refracted into abstraction.

Persica 3 – Beauty in the Noise
Cindy Lee + C86 = jangle-pop bliss. Seems simple enough, but the quality of the songwriting goes well beyond any formula.

Phi-Psonics – Expanding to One
Consciousness-expanding spiritual jazz journeys. Three separate Wurlitzers are credited, which says everything you need to know.

Piotr Kurek – Songs and Bodies
Should be instantly adopted into the space rock/post-rock canon. Floyd at their most cosmic with vocals courtesy of a garbled voicemail—and I mean that as the highest compliment.

Pneumatic Tubes – Runner’s High
A fine follow-up to 2022’s A Letter from TreeTops, bringing together kosmische synths, warm woodwinds, and new age bliss.

Polypores – Cosmically a Shambles
December’s Hungry Vortex is a bit more brash, but Cosmically a Shambles was my favourite of 2025’s Polypores releases, a masterful analog workout, clattering, whirling, and playful.

🇨🇦 Population II – Maintenant Jamais
The evolution of this Montreal trio from their initial space rock odysseys to the concise but still ambitious psych-prog of Maintenant Jamais still blows me away.

Rachel Kitchlew – Flirty Ghost
A must-listen for fans of Dorothy Ashby and the more groove-based, less celestial side of jazz harp. Elegant stuff that manages to stay on just the right side of easy listening.

Rival Consoles – Landscape from Memory
I’m never sure how to describe the Erased Tapes aesthetic, but Rival Consoles must be its apex; synthetic but deeply affecting, overwhelming in the best sort of way.

Rural Tapes – Oneiric
“Flower Labs” is pure Clay Pipe, bursting with pastoral bliss, but Oneiric roams wider grounds—”Fantasia” with its swooning vocoder, “Hypermnesia” evoking early 2000s post rock, “Lingering Souls” pure paisley pop, just wonderful.

Sanam – Sametou Sawtan
Unexpected and unpredictable, dream pop in its more jagged original form filtered through Arabic musical traditions and a drive to create new sounds. If it’s ok to call this rock then it’s one of the more vital rock records of 2025.

Sessa – Pequena Vertigem de Amor
An evolution of the impeccably arranged MPB on 2022’s Estrela Acesa, laid back grooves and unafraid of a good hook. Fans of Arthur Verocai take note.

Sewell and the Gong – Patron Saint of Elsewhere
I’m such a sucker for pastoral British electronics. Pure contentment, and followed up by a solid remix EP.

Shrunken Elvis – Shrunken Elvis
A collaboration between Spencer Cullum, Sean Thompson, and Rich Ruth that doesn’t sound much like any of them, instead drawing from krautrock and ambient jazz for something fresh and open, with an easy, unflashy virtuosity.

🇨🇦 T Gowdy – Trill Scan
Prog-influenced electronics that draw surprising connections between medieval European music, contemporary electronic sounds, and artful experimentation.

🇨🇦 Thanya Iyer – Tide/Tied
Iyer’s jazz-and-soul-inflected pop is a warm breeze: nourishing and refreshing but also a force of nature. Healing sounds for a broken age.

🇨🇦 Viviane Audet – Le piano et le torrent
Solo piano compositions, quiet and unadorned. Songs like Barlicoco evoke Satie (at least to my untrained ear), and that strain of haunting minimalism is always welcome.

Another 150 or so albums you really can’t go wrong with, especially if you’re into the general genre

Apologies for the lack of blurbs/notes on many of these, but (and I insist this is true) there is simply too much good music out there, and more keeps getting made every year. The writing may be half-baked, but the music certainly isn’t.

Aaron Fisher and Rob Stephenson – Actual Place (Ambient folk)

Action & Tension & Space – New Dimensions (Kosmische)
Spaced-out Norwegian instrumentals with strains of psych, post-rock & jazz

Akasha System – Heliocene (Electronic)
A blend of Balearic beats, breathy synths and cosmic-minded new age atmosphere; too propulsive to really be called ambient, but definitely aimed at the chillout room more than the dancefloor.

Alex Albrecht – The Arboretum (Electronic)

🇨🇦 Alex Stevens and Ethan Levy – Two Silent Passengers (Instrumental folk)

🇨🇦 Altus – Terraform (Electronic)

Ami Taf Ra – The Prophet and the Madman (Soul, art-pop)
Maximalist jazz-prog, high-concept, played without a whiff of restraint but who needs it.

Andy Bell – Pinball Wanderer (Psychedelic)

Andy Boay – You Took That Walk For The Two Of Us (Psychedelic)
Solo offshoot of the always-brilliant Tonstartssbandht

Applesauce Tears – Balcony Confidential (Dream pop)

Apta – The Pool (Electronic)
Playful, soul-soothing modular synthesis.

Astrobal – L’uomo e la natura (Psychedelic)
Modern multicultural lounge-pop, for fans of Stereolab’s kitschier side

Automatic – Is It Now? (Art-rock)
Deceptively catchy synth-driven post-punk. At times sounds like a less haunted Broadcast, thanks to the band’s ear for distorted sonic textures and hypnotic melodies, but the killer basslines and off-kilter hooks are all their own.

Babe Rainbow – Slipper Imp and Shakaerator (Psychedelic)
Effortless bubblegum psych-pop—all mild highs and sunny days

🇨🇦 Badge Epoch – Furry Worried Ape (Groove)
Solo-leaning effort from Badge Epoque Enemble’s Max Turnbull (hence the slightly different name, but thankfully very much in the same vein)

Barker – Stochastic Drift (Electronic)
Experimental electronics inspired by the chaos and randomness of the universe

Basic – Dream City EP (Art-rock)
A bit like if Durutti Column listened to more Kraftwerk but also wanted to embrace more groove

🇨🇦 Beat Sexü – Dernière Chance (Electronic)

🇨🇦 Bells Larsen – Blurring Time (Indie folk)
An indie-folk album recorded both pre- and post-transition, allowing Larsen to harmonize their past voice with their present.

Ben Lamar Gay – Yowzers (Jazz)
The title track is the apocalyptic climate change anthem I didn’t know we needed.

Bitchin Bajas – Inland See (Ambient)
Four songs, 40 minutes, and every bit as immersive as you’d hope from these BBs. A wonderfully confident album, willing to let each track unfurl, patient and unforced.

Black Milk & Fat Ray – Food from the Gods (Hip hop)

Brown Spirits – Cosmic Seeds (Kosmische)

Bryan Ferry – Loose Talk (Art pop)
Spoken-word poetry over remixed Roxy demos; surprising and mysterious

C.R. Gillespie – Island of Women (Ambient)
Warm & balmy ambient sounds, gently percussive & consistently inventive.

Cate Francesca Brooks – Lofoten (Ambient / Electronic)

Charif Megarbane – Hawalat (Psychedelic / Library groove)

Charles Webster & the South African Connection – From the Hill (Electronic / Deep house)

Chloé Antoniotti – Bouquet II EP (Ambient / Neo-classical)

🇨🇦 Cris Derksen – The Visit (Neo-classical, Indigenous)

Cristina Lord – If It All Falls (Electronic)
“Genre-fluid electroacoustic works that explores concepts of texture and identity,” per Bandcamp. Headphone candy for those of us who revel in clicks and buzzes, in other words, but also unafraid of pure melody.

Dalham – Cobra / And The Sun (Electronic)
Speculative sci-fi soundscapes that have caught the ear of Ridley Scott.

Damon Locks – List of Demands (Jazz)

Dania – Listless (Electronic / Trip Hop)
A fusion of dream pop and trip hop, with a darkness rich as black velvet. Vocals echo and dissolve, the lyrics often indiscernable or oblique, the meaning coming through in sonic textures evoking 3am streetscapes and starless nights.

🇨🇦 Daphne’s Demise – The Heart is a Garden (Psychedelic)
Cosmic Canadiana with a pleasant lofi jangle.

Deradoorian – Ready for Heaven (Psychedelic)
Pop-infused psychedelia bringing together the best elements of Deradoorian’s various musical personae.

Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – Yarın Yoksa (Psychedelic)
“Outernational” psych-pop & Anatollian folk songs

🇨🇦 Destroyer – Dan’s Boogie (Art-rock)
As evocative as you’d hope, another fine extension of the Destroyer mythos

Diablo in Alpujarras – Diablo in Alpujarras (Psychedelic)
Guitar-forward psych, groovier than the constellation over at El Paraiso but just as dedicated to the expressive potential of extended jams. Inspired by mountain hikes, and as soaring as that implies.

Dirty Projectors – Song of the Earth (Art pop, Neo-classical)
A little overstuffed and overambitious, but gorgeous nonetheless

Disiniblud – Disiniblud (Dream pop / Experimental)
Rachika Nayar, Nina Keith, and a range of collaborators creating glitchy, fractured pop soundscapes.

Dissolve in Sepia – And Also (Ambient)
Moody but optimistic ambient out of Brazil

🇨🇦 drummachinemike – I Hope This Never Finds You (Electronic)
Dark, minimal, but oddly reassuring. Has grown on me significantly with each listen.

Edena Gardens – Dispossessed (Psychedelic)
More sprawling psych jams from the good folks at El Paraiso Records.

🇨🇦 Eiyn Sof – Empyrean Death Rites (Psychedelic)
Mystical & mythical psychedelic folk

🇨🇦 Elyot – Small Dances (Experimental)

Fabiano do Nascimento – Cavejaz (Jazz)

Falls – nothing but the best for everyone (Electronic / Electroacoustic)
A four-track EP that doesn’t even hit the 10-minute mark, but still manages to be everything I want in a hit of folktronica. A bit like Bibio before Ambivalence Avenue, tape warped, beautifully played & atmospheric.

Flur – Plunge (Jazz)
Harp jazz is having a moment right now (see also: Rachel Kitchlew, Brandee Younger, a plethora of Dorothy Ashby reissues). Flur mostly land on the more spiritual/abstract side of the genre; the GoGo Penguin-ish “Bolete” being a pleasant exception.

🇨🇦 Full Moon Bummer – First Night of Summer (Indie Rock)
A new alias from Chad VanGaalen, for a more off-the-cuff creative outlet

Futuropaco – Fortezza Di Vetro Vol. II (Psychedelic)
Fuzzy & beat-driven psych-funk instrumentals

Fuubutsushi – Columbia Deluxe (Ambient / Jazz)

Golden Brown – Patterner (Cosmic American Music)

Greg Foat – 6 Days in Leysin (Jazz)

Gwenifer Raymond – Last Night I Heard The Dog Star Bark (Folk)
The British folk-horror version of Fahey’s American primitivism. A track title nodding to Jack Parsons hints at the occult atmosphere Raymond creates with tangled knots of melody & plenty of buzz.

Gwenno – Utopia (Pop)

Heal Mura – The Limited Repetition of Pleasure (Electronic)

🇨🇦 Hélène Barbier – Panorama (Indie rock)

🇨🇦 Hermitess – Death and the Fool (Psychedelic)
Heady, thoughtful freak-folk bursting with vitality. Love that cover, too.

Hilary Woods – Night CRIÚ (Dream pop)
Folk noir that fits perfectly with the Sacred Bones roster. Rarely rising above a whisper, Woods has perfected the sort of hushed that inspires you to lean in, an album witnessed through a keyhole or across a vast empty hall.

Hollie Kenniff – For Forever – The Reworks (Ambient)
Inspired ambient reworkings of an already lovely late-2024 release

Ian Boddy, Harold Grosskopf – Doppelgänger (Electronic)
Tangerine daydreams expanding the possibilities of kosmische

IE – Reverse Earth (Psychedelic)

Immersion – WTF?? (Kosmische)
Never quite matches their collaboration with SUSS from February, but by trading that album’s ambient-folk trappings for motorik jams and semi-spoken vocals, it’s easily the more instantly accessible of the two releases.

Ivan the Tolerable & Hawksmoor – Atoms in the Void (Psychedelic)
Haunted jazz, ASMR, cosmic jazz—trippy in all the right ways.

JB Dunckel, Jonathan Fitoussi – Mirages 2 (Electronic)
Mostly meditative, with some appropriately Air-y grooves along the way

Jeff Greinke – Late Rain (Experimental)
Textured & atmospheric electroacoustic compositions

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma – Gift Songs (Ambient)
Compositions so gentle they nearly don’t exist

Jelena Ćirić, Snorri Hallgrímsson, Cécile Lacharme and Oliver Patrice Weder – Tramuntana Tapes I (Art pop)
Patiently improvised dream-pop digressions

Jenny Hval – Iris Silver Mist (Art pop)
Experimental pop’s finest lyricist, in one of her more musically adventurous moods.

Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer – Different Rooms (Ambient / Jazz)

🇨🇦 Jonathan Personne – Nouveau Monde (Psych-pop)
Lighter/poppier psych-rock from the Corridor singer/guitarist

🇨🇦 Joni Void – Every Life is a Light (Electronic)
Given the subject matter, Void’s pedigree, and Constellation’s general vibe, this is urprisingly welcoming, but unsurprisingly idiosyncratic

🇨🇦 Joseph Shabason, Thom Gil – Mississippi River Styx (Indie / Ambient)

Juana Molina – Doga (Indie rock)

Junk Drawer – Days of Heaven (Psychedelic)

🇨🇦 Kara-Lis Coverdale – A Series of Actions in a Sphere Forever (Experimental)
Her second of three albums of 2025 is a collection of piano nocturns for the darkest hours. Elegant use of sustain and decay, notes and chords overlap, ripple, and evaporate in patient combinations.

🇨🇦 Khotin – Peace Portal (Electronic)
Glistening downtempo compositions from one of Canada’s finest producers

Kibrom Birhane – Lisané Bahir (Jazz / Experimental)

🇨🇦 King Khan and Wolf Clan Jo – Wolf Clan Jo & King Khan (Psychedelic)
Sitar-and-flute-based spiritual protest songs.

🇨🇦 Kogane, Thomas White – tomkog (Electronic)
Vibrant, bouncy, off-kilter electronic instrumentals.

Korb – Korb IV (Psychedelic)
Soundtracky psych that’s willing to get wonky, but never loses sight of the groove.

Kronstad 23 – Sommermørket (Psychedelic)

Lael Neale – Altogether Stranger (Indie rock)
Nobody else today is this good at taking rock’n’roll into the mystic.

Lake Ruth – Hawking Radiation (Dream pop)

Le Motel – Odd Numbers / Số Lẻ (Ambient)

Light-Space Modulator – The Rising Wave (Psych-pop)

Limiñanas – Faded (Psych / Dirty French Pop)

Lord of the Isles – Signals Aligned (Ambient)
I miss the poetry from 2023’s My Noise is Nothing, but the textures on this one are pure ear candy for those who like their synths hazy and distorted. “United Wire” is its best moment and mission statement; start there.

Lorelle Meets the Obsolete – Corporal (Psychedelic)
Cavernous drums, walls of feedback, towering synths, thick to the point of oppression, the production on LMtO’s latest is massive. That heft insists on your attention, a counter to the weightless algorithmic cloud.

Loula Yorke – Hydrology (Ambient)

🇨🇦 Made-Up – World Making (Art-pop)

Makaya McCraven – Off the Record (Jazz)
Four EPs recorded at different times with different lineups. PopUp Shop is the most immediately appealing to me, Techno Logic the most intriguing. Only a few songs each, but still too much to absorb in an easy sitting.

Mansur Brown – Rihla (Dream pop)
The AR Kane school of dream pop—at turns silky, noisy, hushed & grand. Rainy city streets & existential angst.

Marshall Allen – New Dawn (Jazz)
The Arkestra leader makes his solo debut at 100. Wise, radiant, masterful

Mary Sue and the Clementi Sound Appreciation Club – Porcelain Shield, Paper Sword (Jazz)

Matt McBane – Buoy (Ambient)
A buoyant balance of synthesis and strings

Mattias Uneback – Harry Garth Jones Presents Music for Love (Exotica)
Effortless pop exotica conjuring tropical expanses and easy living.

🇨🇦 Men I Trust – Equus Caballas (Indie pop)
Their second album of the year, dreamier than the first and every bit as accomplished.

Milkweed – Remscéla (Folk)
If this is folk (and they say it is), it’s one of the most unique spins on the genre you’re likely to find this year.

🇨🇦 Moat Bells – Nap Bud (Ambient)
Inspired by animal naps, Moat Bells’ latest is a bit of a snooze, but in a pleasant way. Grounding, restful, and always imaginative.

Modern Nature – The Heat Warps (Indie rock)
After a few albums seeing how diffuse their sound could get (to brilliant effect), this probably counts as forceful?

Monde UFO – Flamingo Tower (Psychedelic)
More polished than 2023’s Vandalized Statues, but still like a fractured art-pop radio transmisssion

Morgan Szymanski / Tommy Perman – Songs for the Mist Forest (Jazz)

🇨🇦 Mount Maxwell – Birds of Paradise (Ambient)

Nyron Higor – Nyron Higor (MPB / Brazilian pop)

Okonski – Entrance Music (Jazz)

Oneohtrixpointnever – Tranquilizer (Electronic)

Oono Yuuki Band – Mawari – michi, Kaze no (Post Rock)

🇨🇦 Ora Cogan – Bury Me EP (Psychedelic)

Organic Pulse Ensemble – Oppression is Nine Tenths of the Law (Jazz)
Worth it for the title alone. Fortunately the one-man spiritual jazz band is also soul-affirming.

🇨🇦 Pacific Coliseum – Voice Wave (Electronic)
Balearic/deep house from the always excellent Teen Daze

Papir – IX (Psychedelic)

Park Jiha – All Living Things (Ambient)

Patricia Brennan – Of The Near And Far (Jazz)
Jazz improvisation, new music inventiveness, neo-classical melodicism, embracing dissonance & discord but just short of outright chaos. There’s always a through-line, an inner symmetry to keep from falling apart.

🇨🇦 Peace Flag Ensemble – Everything is Possible (Jazz)
Ambient prairie jazz & post-rock for fans of Fuubutsushi

Pedro Mizutani & Skinshape – Mostrando os Dentes (Psychedelic, MPB)

Peel Dream Magazine – Taurus (Indie-pop)
Opener “Venus in Nadir” is spot-on Belle and Sebastian, but while those twee influences persist, so does the dronier indie-pop that endeared PDM in the first place. Immaculate melodies played with appealing restraing.

🇨🇦 Postnamers – City Songs (Art-pop)
Post-goth cut & paste compositions. Often discordant and unsettling, but also strangely captivating—and at times hauntingly beautiful.

Prepared – Module (Neo-classical))

Project Gemini & Wendy Martinez – Time Stands Still / Le temps s’arrête (Psychedelic)
PG always sounds like the score to an excellent forgotten film; Martinez (of Gloria) brings a different melodic sensibility, a bit like a gentler, folkier Limiñanas. Groovy Franco-psych.

🇨🇦 Proxima Psychoacoustics – Whynott (Ambient)
Nature-inspired Canadian electronics: Proxima’s most varied album to date draws from a youth spent in rural Nova Scotia, evoking the wonder of forest walks and bike rides under endless skies.

Ray Barbee – Little Postcards From Home (Kosmische)
A more mellow set from Barbee, but his albums are so sporadic I’ll take whatever I can get.

Resonating With Life – Resonating With Life (Electronic)
Space synths turned inwards, meditation aimed not at quieting the mind but opening it to the breadth of existence. That’s a lot to put on an instrumental synth album, but its optimism is very welcome right now.

Salami Rose Joe Louis – Lorings (Art-pop)
More grounded than you might expect from such a proud pop-art weirdo—but still one of the oddest pop releases of the year

Sam Prekop – Open Close (Electronic)
When it comes to modular synth, Prekop is one of the finest, and Open Close is up there with his best. Just the right balance of patience and payoff, endlessly evolving variations aiming for transcendence.

Sankt Otten – Tote Winkel (Kosmische)

Satomimagae – Taba (Folktronic)

Scholars of the Peak – Transmissions from Mother Hill (Electronic)

Sharp Pins – Balloon Balloon Balloon (Jangle pop)

SHOLTO – The Sirens (Psych / Library Groove)

Simon Pyke – Aurelume (Experimental)

Snails – Just Look Around (Indie rock)

Snakeskin – We live in sand (Dream pop)
The 2nd Beirut-based act to catch my ear this year after SANAM. Snakeskin is similarly experimental in its textures, though often brighter & more indebted to dream pop. Not all sunshine, but even at its darkest, hope remains.

Sounds of New Soma – The Story of Sam Buckett (Kosmische)

Stereolab – Instant Holograms on Metal Film (Art-pop)
Plenty of others have taken inspiration, but no one else does it quite like them.

Steve Hauschildt – Aeropsia (Electronic)
Six years and one transcontinental migration since his last release, Hauschildt’s latest picks up right where 2019’s Nonlin left off, maybe a little hazier and more ambiguous, but as rich & rewarding as anything he’s released.

Sulk Rooms – Rewilding (Electronic)

Sven Wunder – Daybreak (Easy listening)
Somewhere between library groove and easy listening (not that those poles are particularly far apart). Too sophisticated to be written off as schmaltz, but let’s say it’s at least conversant. Cinematic, openhearted, and uncynical.

🇨🇦 Teen Daze – Splashes of Colour (Electronic)

🇨🇦 Test Card – Signals (Electronic)

The Baker Fields – Frankley My Dear (Electronic)
Another dose of pastoral bliss from the label that does it best.

The Circling Sun – Orbits (Jazz)

The Cords – The Cords (Jangle pop)
Precocious talent—two teen sisters tossing out some of the best jangle-pop this side of the 1980s like it was nothing. “Yes It’s True” adds some shoegaze warble to the production, hinting at new directions yet to come.

The Cosmic Tones Research Trio – The Cosmic Tones Research Trio (Jazz)
Spiritual jazz explorations and incantations, confidently balancing invention with reassurance. The energetic “Sankofa” is the standout, but there isn’t a track here that isn’t worth some concentrated reflection.

The Laughing Chimes – Whispers in the Speech Machine (Jangle pop)

The New Eves – The New Eve is Rising (Post-punk)

The Sorcerers – Other Worlds And Habitats (Jazz)

The Sure Fire Soul Ensemble – Gemini (Soul)

🇨🇦 The World Next Door – Chaotic Mixing (Ambient)
Don’t let the title throw you, these are absolutely meticulous soundscapes (in the best way).

Thought Bubble – Mostly True (Psychedelic / Trip hop)

thruoutin – A Desolate Hue (Ambient)
Mellow, abstract, downcast

Titanic – HAGEN (Art rock)
Calling this art rock because I don’t know what else to say, but that doesn’t begin to touch on the drama, the dynamics, the effortless shifts from abrasive noise to harmonic bliss. I feel like I’ve barely begun digesting this one.

Tony Molina – On This Day (Jangle pop)

Uh – pleroma EP (Experimental)
A “wondrous coalescence of rave, pastoralism and futurism” resolving as Eno-ish pop. “I Want My Life Back” pops into my head regularly.

Vanbur – Of Becoming (Dream pop)

Vega Trails – Sierra Tracks (Jazz)

Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan – Public Works and Utilities (Electronic)
WRNTDP’s urban synthscapes are never less than excellent; the optimistic “Renewal and Regenration” & the sprawling “The People Matter” are welcome additions to the plan.

🇨🇦 Wihtikow – ᐊᐦᒐᕽ (Electronic)
Darkly beat-driven shoegaze, or distorted BoC-ish electronica, or both at the same time.

Winter – Adult Romantix (Indie rock)
More muscular than her usual gossamer-gaze, but no less considered & intricate.

Woo – Music to Watch Seeds Grow By 001: Woo (Sweet Peas) (Experimental)
Patient as the title impies, one of the cult duo’s most consistent releases.

🇨🇦 Yoo Doo Right, 🇨🇦 Population II, Nolan Potter – Yoo II avec Nolan Potter (Psychedelic / Space Rock)
Space rock, psych, Zappa-esque jams, free jazz skronk — everything you want when it’s time to crank the volume and hide in a wall of sound. The kind of noisy that loops back to soothing.

bandcamp music new-music review reviews

AM Gold 2024

I would never be so bold as to declare a list of the best albums of a given year. More music now comes out in a day than used to get released in a full year; with a field that large, it’s an act of hubris to speak with any confidence about objective standings and impartial rankings.

Instead, this is just a list of ~~100~~ 101 albums that made their way to The AM in 2024 that are worth a listen if you enjoy the show’s mix of off-beat easy listening. Hosting the show is a great way to force myself to listen to as much new music as I can—but it also means I tend to listen for a particular mood, namely songs that sound good as you’re waking up on a Monday morning. That means this list gravitates heavily towards that vibe, so if you’re looking for abrasive and energetic tracks, this list isn’t that, by and large.

For the first time in many a year, the albums aren’t listed alphabetically—it’s an honest-to-goodness countdown. There are so many lists out there that it felt unfair to throw another 100 albums at you without at least some effort to help you pick where to put your attention. That said, I still fully believe music isn’t a competition and this ranking should be taken with a grain of salt. Ask me tomorrow and I might end up with a very different order; the fine gradations are arbitrary, and even the broad sweeps are a matter of mood as much as anything.

Skim through it in order from #100-#1* or just throw the playlist below on shuffle—but do make a point of checking these albums out. And an honorable mention goes to The Cure’s three-hour concert video of Songs of a Lost World and classic songs; the album is solid, but I think it works significantly better in a live format, and kudos to them for releasing such an epic performance free on YouTube.

*The Spotify playlist is missing about five tracks that weren’t in their system. All albums below link to the relevant Bandcamp page if it was available, or to Spotify if not.

100. Tomo Katsurada – Dream of the Egg

Recommended if you like (RIYL): Kikagaku Moyo, homemade psychedelia, eggs

99. Hélène Vogelsinger – Ethereal Dissolution

RIYL: Cascading modular synths, unexpected harmonies, and overwhelming sonic textures

98. Trees Speak – TimeFold

RIYL: Tangerine dreams and concise kosmische explorations

97. The Sorcerers – I Too Am a Stranger

RIYL: Upbeat Ethiojazz by way of northern England

96. Loula Yorke – speak, thou vast and venerable head

RIYL: Droning downtempo compositions, atmospheric field recordings

95. Ivan the Tolerable – Time is a Grave

RIYL: Haunted home-made psych-jazz

94. Drum & Lace – Onda

RIYL: Hypnotic ambient beats, winter landscapes

93. Church Chords – elvis, he was Schlager

RIYL: Experimental pop for weirdos and jazz heads

92. Ariel Kalma, Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer – The Closest Thing to Silence

RIYL: Inner journies and meditative moods

91. Lynn Avery, Cole Poulice – Phantasy & Reality

RIYL: Patient, spacious ambient jazz

90. Osmanthus – Between Seasons

RIYL: Intermingling neo-classical and experimental electronic impulses

89. Tristan De Liege – Fields

RIYL: Intricate but hazy downtempo electronics

88. Temporal Waves – Temporal Waves

RIYL: Tabla, synthwave, psychedelia, and grandeur

87. Group Listening – Walks

RIYL: Long walks through the countryside

86. Hollie Kenniff – For Forever

RIYL: Patient, melodic ambient sounds, slow builds, reverb

85. Warrington Runcorn New Town Development Plan – Your Community Hub

RIYL: Municipal planning, analog synths, ridiculous band names, ’70s sci-fi

84. Seahawks – Time Enough for Love

RIYL: New age soundscapes, gentle pulsing beats

83. Clinic Stars – Only Hinting

RIYL: The gauzest of dream-pop sounds

82. Mark McGuire – Anhedonia

RIYL: Emeralds (the band), looping guitar lines

81. Charbonneau / Amato – Enflammer le désert (OST)

RIYL: Melodic synths and vast expanses

80. The Hologram People – Isola Dei Morti Viventi

RIYL: Italian horror soundtracks, library grooves

79. Jane Weaver – Love in Constant Spectacle

RIYL: World-weary psych pop that still manages to shimmer

78. Dean McPhee – Astral Gold

RIYL: Acoustic explorations of distant galaxies

77. Miyauchi Yuri – Beta 2

RIYL: Blissfully glitchy Japanese electronics

76. p:ano – ba ba ba

RIYL: Nick Krgovich, Kellarisa, contemplative indie pop

75. Yasmin Williams – Acadia

RIYL: Joyfully melodic fingerpicked guitar

74. J ahari Massamba Unit – YHWH is LOVE

RIYL: Trippy instrumentals, Karriem Riggins, Madlib

73. Bananagun – Why is the Colour of the Sky

RIYL: Sun-baked (and otherwise-baked) psychedelia

72. Circles Around the Sun, Mikaela Davis – After Sunrise

RIYL: Harps, disco, basking in the afterglow

71. Jilk – Soft in Shape and Meaning

RIYL: Post-rock improvizations and experimental collectives

70. Retep Folo & Dorothy Moskowitz – The Afterlife Album

RIYL: Outsider electronics, ’60s psychedelia, hauntology more broadly, great cover art

69. Hawksmoor – Oneironautics

RIYL: German art-rock from decades past, Robert Fripp, feeling a little pretentious

68. Dissolve in Sepia – Spaciousness

RIYL: Jazzy genre-fluid downtempo compositions

67. Ana Butterss – Mighty Vertebrate

RIYL: Groove-based experimental music, Jeff Parker, the future of jazz

66. Molly Lewis – On the Lips

RIYL: Whistling, easy listening, exotica, more whistling

65. SHOLTO – Letting Go of Forever

RIYL: 60’s library grooves, ’70s movie soundtracks, 2000s chillout music

64. Big Brave – A Chaos of Flowers

RIYL: Folk music written by thunderclouds

63. Misha Panfilov – Frutaria Electrónica

RIYL: The very cheesiest synth sounds, getting lost in whorls and eddies of melody

62. Polypores – Unlimited Lives

RIYL: Self-contained sonic universes coaxed from modular synths

61. Beak> – >>>>

RIYL: Haunted folk, the gentler side of krautrock, Portishead, pervasive eerieness

60. Fourtet – Three

RIYL: Anything Keiran Hebden has done in the last 20 years

59. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead

RIYL: Slow builds, catharsis, walls of noise

58. Daisy Rickman – Howl

RIYL: Spooky psych-folk, Nico, drones and jangles

57. Einstürzende Neubauten – Rampen (apm: alien pop music)

RIYL: Subtle melodies, balancing abrasion and beauty, pop music made by aliens

56. Jon Hopkins – RITUAL

RIYL: Patience, subtlety, guided journies through altered states

55. Von Spar, Eiko Ishibashi – Album I

RIYL: Contemporary Japanese movie soundtracks, German art-rock, experimental sounds

54. Badbadnotgood – Mid:Spiral

RIYL: Instrumental jazz, neo-soul, soundtrack jazz, hearing people mellow out a bit

53. Erki Pärnoja – Rumba

RIYL: Playful Estonian instrumentals, tasteful little guitar licks, avoiding being too flashy

52. Unessential Oils – Unessential Oils

RIYL: Plants & Animals, Tropicalia, Canadian indie pop

51. Bibi Club – Feu de garde

RIYL: Jangling guitars, bilingual vocals, spritely energy

50. Dummy – Free Energy

RIYL: Transient random noise bursts, drone-pop

49. Jon McKiel – Hex

RIYL: East Coast Canadian indie-pop experimentalism

48. Andre Ethier – Cold Spaghetti

RIYL: Subdued, observational singer-songwriters

47. Various Artists – TRANSA

RIYL: An expansive and affirmational exploration of transition

46. maya ongaku – Electronic Phantoms

RIYL: The softer side of Japanese psychedelia

45. Luka Kuplowsky – How Can I Possibly Sleep When There Is Music?

RIYL: Poetry, Sandro Perri, Bohemianism, revelling in beauty but in a fairly chill way

44. Psychic Temple – Doggie Paddlin’ Thru the Cosmic Conscousness

RIYL: The most cosmic of cosmic American music, subdued space-country jams

43. Ethnic Heritage Ensemble – Open Me, A Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit

RIYL: 50-year-old jazz collectives trying cello, viola, and violin on for size

42. Nala Sinephro – Endlessness

RIYL: Dissolving the boundaries between jazz, neo-classical, ambient, and electronic

41. BASIC – This Is BASIC

RIYL: The Durutti Column, Chris Forsyth, sideways approaches to art-rock instrumentals

40. Peel Dream Magazine – Rose Main Reading Room

RIYL: Breezy, unpretentious bedroom pop

39. Laurent Dury – Organic Minimalism

RIYL: TV soundtracks, library music, contemporary classical sounds

38. Scions – To Cry Out in the Wilderness

RIYL: Experimental, affirmational, confrontational art-rock

37. OHMA – On Loving Earth

RIYL: Open-hearted instrumental collaborations, acoustic guitar and flute

36. Jennifer Castle – Camelot

RIYL: ’70s folk, alt-country, impeccable songwriting

35. Earthen Sea – Recollection

RIYL: A downbeat, dubby, tribute to ECM jazz

34. The Smile – Cutouts

RIYL: Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner just living in the moment

33. Dialect – Atlas of Green

RIYL: Sonic sculptures and electroacoustic experiments

32. Project Gemini – Colours & Light

RIYL: Funky psychedelia, deep soundtrack grooves, haunted forests

31. Bernardino Femminielli – Opéra Bouffe

RIYL: Serge Gainsbourg, melodrama, indulgence

30. Memorials – Memorial Waterslides

RIYL: Electrolane, Wire, art-rock excellence

29. Jessica Pratt – Here In the Pitch

RIYL: “spectral ’60s pop, Hollywood psychedelia and bossa nova” (because the bio says it best)

28. Eric Chenaux Trio – Delights of My Life

RIYL: Lost jazz standards flipped inside out

27. Zachary Gray – Suburbia EP

RIYL: East-coast IDM, headphone beats, wistfulness in musical form

26. Bilal Nasser – How Can We Say Nothing

RIYL: Post-classical guitar, shoegaze, tension, beauty and catharsis

25. Ayal Senior – Ora

RIYL: Psych-folk instrumentals, desert soundscapes, tasteful prog overtones

24. Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown

RIYL: Portishead without the trip-hop, melancholy folk, realizing you’re aging and should probably accept it

23. Elori Saxl – Earth Focus OST

RIYL: PBS, high-concept jazz, erasing the lines between nature and architecture

22. The Soundcarriers – Through Other Reflections

RIYL: Impeccable throwback psych-pop, trippy harmonies, bands that deserve more attention

21. Nick Schofield – Ambient Ensemble

RIYL: Ambient ensembles, electroacoustic collaborations, feeling at peace with your surroundings

20. Buildings and Food – Echo the Field

RIYL: Hope, warmth, and comfort conveyed through buzzing synths and ASMR beats

19. Geotic – The Anchorite

RIYL: Baths, Bibio, tape hiss, surprising moments of distorted bliss

18. Shabaka – Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace

RIYL: Beauty, grace, ambient jazz, woodwinds, Moses Sumney, Laraaji, breathing

17. Fuubutsushi – Meridians

RIYL: Subtle, meditative jazz and post-rock with the occassional melodromatic flourish

16. Sam Wilson – Wintertides

RIYL: Intricate instrumental folk-jazz, an unusual blend of invention and accessibility

15.5. Loving – Any Light

(.5 because I missed this on the initial draft and that’s unforgiveable)

RIYL: Classic AM radio, Jungian psychology, pitch-perfect folk-rock

15. Organic Pulse Ensemble – Zither Suite

RIYL: Can’t think of anything clever because I don’t understand how it’s possible for one musician to singlehandly make a jazz album that feels this multifaceted

14. ROY – Spoons for the World

RIYL: Scott Walker, Lee Hazlewood, deep voices singing cosmic country

13. Andrew Wasylyk, Tommy Perman – Ash Grey and the Gull Glides On

RIYL: Perfect pairings, jazz-folk-electronic fusions, subtle details, chanted vocals, small doses of Arab Strap

12. Tomin – A Willed and Conscious Balance

RIYL: The International Anthem version of large-ensemble jazz, featuring strings and horns aplenty

11. Lau Ro – Cabana

RIYL: Wax Machine, MPB, soft psychedelia, instrospection

10. SW Hedrick – Devotional Drift Vol. 1

RIYL: Metal guitarists embracing transcendental rhythms and meditative compositions

9. Hiro Ama – Music for Peace and Harmony

RIYL: Japanese synthesizers, romantic ideals, gentle reassurances

8. Cindy Lee – Diamond Jubilee

RIYL: Singular visions, impeccable musicianship, girl group pop, subversive instincts, the sound of letting people in, at least just a little

7. Caméra – Caméra

RIYL: Slowing down, getting playful, making music for the joy of it

6. Peggy Lee & Cole Schmidt – Forever Stories Of: Moving Parties

RIYL: Unusually expansive cello and guitar-led compositions pulling from post-rock, experimental jazz, ’70s prog and beyond

5. SiP – Leos Ultras

RIYL: Fourth-world ditties that radiate warmth, wisdom and joy

4. Tristan Arp – a pool, a portal

RIYL: Closing your eyes, opening your ears, and getting lost in strange new world

3. Hypnodrone Ensemble – The Problem Is In The Sender – Do Not Tamper With The Receiver

RIYL: Waves of sound enveloping you until the rest of the world just disappears

2. Fabiano do Nascimento, Sam Gendel – The Room

RIYL: The year’s purest expression of melody, acoustic artists in absolute alignment

1. Ezra Feinberg – Soft Power

RIYL: Beauty in simplicity, sipping drinks from the Penguin Cafe, feeling like maybe it’s going to be ok

bandcamp music new-music

Best Albums of 2024 (So Far)

A selection of the finest ambient, experimental, dream pop, and otherwise blissful releases from Jan-June 2024. One song each from most of these (minus three) are in this Spotify playlist and this Tidal playlist, or listen to the albums in their entirety with the links below.

Ariel Kalma, Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer – The Closest Thing to Silence (Feb. 2, 2024)

A lush blending of electronics and woodwinds, capturing the best of both strands of the current ambient jazz boom. Its improvised tracks are inquisitive, intelligent, grounded, and grounding.

Ayal Senior – Ora (June 19, 2024)

Invigorating instrumental psych-folk—lovely melodies anchored by Senior’s resonant 12-string guitar. Meandering without sacrificing momentum, like a river flowing confidently to the sea.

Beak> – >>>> (May 28, 2024)

More of Beak> doing what they do best, exploring the haunted side of kosmische and post-rock. Unsurprisingly for a Portishead spinoff (though it’s a well-established project in its own right), this is perfect autumn music—maybe set it aside until then.

Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown (May 17, 2024)

Another Portishead-related project. Shocking that former frontwoman Gibbons waited until 2024 to make her solo debut (2002’s brilliant Out of Season almost counts, but was still a collaboration with Rustin Mann). Less shocking that it’s also a fantastic piece of work, a moody meditation on life and loss. “Floating on a Moment” even manages to make a children’s choir effective, no small feat.

Bibi Club – Feu de garde (May 10, 2024)

Jangling pop and post-punk sung in both official languages. Strongest in its most upbeat moments (see “Le feu” or “Reu du Repos”), but the moodier moments work well, too.

Big Brave – A Chaos of Flowers (April 19, 2024)

Like folk songs played on thunderclouds—doom-laden dirges riding some of the crunchiest distortion you’ll hear this year.

Bilal Nasser – How Can We Say Nothing (February 15, 2024)

An inspired fusion of classical guitar, shoegaze atmospherics, and post-rock pacing, and a haunting statement from the Palistinean-Canadian composer.

Buildings and Food – Echo the Field (May 10, 2024)

Stripped down compositions from Toronto’s Jen K. Wilson that reveal more with every spin. Inspired by the expanse of the Mojave and just as easy to get lost in.

Caméra – Caméra (April 5, 2024)

A fantastic debut from this Montreal trio that’s very much flying under the radar. Gently cinematic sounds that never fail to surprise; a Quebec post-rock spin on Yann Tiersen, or a more sedate take on Torngat’s early 2000s explorations. Either way, this one’s a stunner.

Cindy Lee – Diamond Jubilee (March 30, 2024)

Say what you will about the release strategy and the hype, this double-album from former Women singer Pat Flegel deserves all the acclaim its received. The first Cindy Lee album that doesn’t push listeners away with walls of confrontational distortion; just haunted pop bliss from a spectral ’60s girl-group.

Circles Around the Sun and Mikaela Davis – After Sunrise (April 5, 2024)

Speaking of pop bliss, who would’ve thought disco cosmonauts and expressive harp would sound this great together? Tailor-made for lounging beachside without a care in the world.

Daisy Rickman – Howl (March 20, 2024)

Nico is the lazy comparison, but it’s not like it isn’t apt. Droning folk compositions and icy-cool and strikingly deep vocals; you could easily convince me that Rickman has tapped into some deep well of earth-magic.

Dana Gavanski – Late Slap (April 5, 2024)

A bit more of a pop effort, but still every bit as quirky and inventive as anything she’s released—the melodies are always unconventional and accessible all at once.

David Allred – Apocalypse Rose (June 20, 2024)

Gentle and brief neoclassical compositions, slow, melodic, and a little melancholy. Not an attention-grabber, but when the right mood strikes, it’s an easy one to get lost in.

Dean McPhee – Astral Gold (February 16, 2024)

Solo guitar looped, echoed and reverberated until it conjures the cosmos. Influenced by kosmische, dub, and experimental electronics, Astral Gold drifts slowly and inevitably, a score to distant, unfathomable clouds of interstellar dust.

Eric Chenaux Trio – Delights of My Life (May 31, 2024)

Chenaux’s ongoing collaborations with Ryan Driver are never less than gorgeous, and the first release from this new trio (rounded out by percussionist Phillipe Melanson) is as lovely as anything in his rich catalogue. Chenaux’s voice is in top form, and no effects can hide the beauty of these guitar melodies. Lounge music from an alternate dimension.

Ethnic Heritage Ensemble – Open Me, A Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit (March 8, 2024)

50 years on, Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethic Heritage Ensemble is still adding new dimensions to its sound. Open Me adds cello, violin, and viola to the mix, and the gritty textures are hypnotic. The opening spin on Miles Davis’ “All Blues” and the pulsing take on the traditional “The Whole World” are highlights among a very solid collection of spiritual, consciousness-expanding jazz.

Ezra Feinberg – Soft Power (May 31, 2024)

East coast ambient from former Citay member (and current psychoanalyst) Ezra Feinberg, who benefits from some exceptional collaborators. Mary Lattimore lends her always-welcome harp to closing track “Get Some Rest,” Jefre Cantu-Ledesma adds flutters of synth to “Pose Beams” (along with Robbie Lee’s expressive piano); each song feels more discovered than written, open to possibilities and inviting to the listener.

Fabiano do Nascimento, Sam Gendel – The Room (January 26, 2024)

An instant favourite from the first strums of album opener “Foi Boto.” do Nascimento’s seven-string guitar is exceptional but never showy, prompting Gendel to indulge in his most melodic impulses. Nothing more than guitar and saxophone, but easily among the most captivating releases of 2024.

Fuubutsushi – Meridians (June 27, 2024)

The expectations set by Fuubutsushi’s fantastic four-part tribute to the seasons, released in 2020 and 2021, can’t have been easy to manage. That project was a band discovering itself—the project didn’t even have a name when the first part was released—whereas Meridians is by necessity a fleshing out of and reaction to those first releases. Good news: Meridians is absolutely a worthy successor to the ambient-jazz torch, or post-rock, or whatever you might want to call a blend of lush violin, field recordings, exploratory percussion, and wandering woodwinds.

Geotic – The Anchorite (February 21, 2024)

Will Wiesenfeld’s latest conjures up early Bibio in all the best ways, with fingerpicked guitars, heavy reverb, and plenty of tape hiss evoking an old cassette dug up from the forest humus. That is, until “The Lime of Stars” unleashes the distortion and reaches for a droning cosmic crescendo.

Group Listening – Walks (May 10, 2024)

I would’ve been quite content with Group Listening sticking to their formula of covering cult classics on clarinet and piano, but I can’t begrudge them branching out into original compositions. Especially when it keeps the playfulness of the previous approach while expanding the sonic pallette as expertly as they do here.

Hochzeitskapelle – We Dance EP (March 22, 2024)

Four covers—Pavement, Yo La Tengo, Low, and German pop band Wir Sind Helden—transformed into Hochzeitskapelle’s trademark autumnal “Rumpelljazz” might seem a bit slight compared to some of the albums on this list, but after the expanse of last year’s double-album The Orchestra in the Sky, the brevity is understandable. And regardless of the length, as always with Hochzeitskapelle, the mood is magic.

Ivan the Tolerable – Time is a Grave (June 7, 2024)

Time is a Grave is Ivan the Tolerable (aka Oli Heffernan)’s sixth release of 2024 (with another due out in a few days as I write this), which might make you assume it’s tossed off, but the strange thing is he’s as consistent as he is prolific. Jammy, psychedelic jazz, slightly spooky with no shortage of musical ideas.

Jahari Massamba Unit – YHWH is LOVE (March 1, 2024)

Karriem Riggins and Madlib reteam after 2020’s Pardon My French for an album of hip-hop-influenced spiritual jazz. Given those names and those genres, you probably already know if you’re sold. Deep grooves and good vibes.

Jeffrey Silverstein – Roseway EP (June 14, 2024)

Silverstein’s sound has evolved quite a bit since 2020’s You Become the Mountain, but the basic gist—a fusion of country boogie and new age atmosphere—is still solidly in place. The boogie is at the forefront here, with Akron/Family drummer Dana Buoy providing the backbone, and Connor Gallaher’s pedal steel ramping up the twang.

Jessica Pratt – Here in the Pitch (May 3, 2024)

Classic pop songcraft that pulls from the sounds of the ’60s (or earlier), but never succumbing to nostalgia—Pratt may have tapped into an older vein, but she isn’t pretending the past 50 years of musical history didn’t happen. Haunting, resilient, and unplaceably odd.

Jon McKiel – Hex (May 3, 2024)

Oddball psychedelia from New Brunswick. McKiel and collaborator Jay Crocker both know how to write pop tunes and how to subvert them. Inspired by ’60s-’70s singer songwriters (see the Terry Jacks cover or the Everley-aping “Everlee”), but through a filter of East Coast experimentation.

Kilometre Club – An Alphabet of Distance (June 1, 2024)

Twenty-six ambient collaborations, from “Airliner” (with Holly Kenniff) to “Zone of Harmony” (with Sun Rain), each artist adding their own unique textures to Kilometre Club’s droning ambiance.

Lau Ro – Cabana (May 31, 2024)

Wax Machine’s Lau Ro explores their Brazilian roots on their solo debut. The results are heavy on atmosphere (tape hiss and field recordings are par for the course), but also airy and melodic, intimate and experimental.

Los Days – Dusty Dreams (May 31, 2024)

Easygoing easy-listening instrumentals from Tommy Guerrero & Josh Lippi. Surf, psych, and breezy tropicalia baked under the desert sun.

Loving – Any Light (February 9, 2024)

Laurel Canyon vibes via Canada’s West Coast, with lyrics inspired by Jungian insights and melodies that rarely rise above a whisper, because they don’t need to.

Luka Kuplowsky – How Can I Possibly Sleep When There Is Music (May 31, 2024)

It’s hard not to fixate on the breezy title track and its chief sentiment, but the 24 tracks here cover a lot of ground. Poetry set to music, and occassionally as indulgent as that surely sounds, but even if it inspires the occassional eye-roll, it inspires bliss much more often.

Magic Fig – Magic Fig (May 17, 2024)

An excellent distillation of the best parts of psych, Canterbury, pop-prog, and jangle-pop, reconfiguring familiar elements into a sunny summer soundtrack.

Molly Lewis – On the Lips (February 16, 2024)

The queen of contemporary exotica makes it all seem so effortless. Ten songs anchored by Lewis’ immaculate whistle, this time adding a few more contemporary sounds to the mix, still straddling the line between kitsch and classic in all the right ways.

Nick Schofield – Ambient Ensemble (February 9, 2024)

With Ambient Ensemble, Schofield moves gracefully from synth soundscapes to chamber music. Collaboration suits him—the clarinet flutters and violin swells add a vibrancy that’s often missing from solo ambient work.

OHMA – On Loving Earth (April 22, 2024)

Abandoning the synths they used so effectively on 2022’s Between All Things, OHMA’s Mia Garcia and Hailey Niswanger stick to organic sounds for On Loving Earth. The narrower musical focus brings the melodies to the forefront, lilting and lovely, paying tribute to the beauty of nature.

Organic Pulse Ensemble – Zither Suite (January 5, 2024)

Despite the name, OPE is actually one man, Gustav Horneij, layering sax, flute, bass, and zither into spiritual jazz bliss in an apartment outside Gothenberg. How Zither Suite captures the freewheeling spirit of improv so perfectly without an actual ensemble is hard to imagine, but the results speak for themselves.

Osmanthus – Between Seasons (January 30, 2024)

Not the Toronto alt-rock band, the Calgary collaboration between ambient synth maestro Valiska and violinist Laura Reid. Improvised sessions reworked digitally, sometimes subtly and other times more obviously; it’s at its most engrossing in the longer compositions, but the ear for unique textures is always there.

Project Gemini – Colours & Lights (April 5, 2024)

2022’s The Children of Scorpio was a solid enough debut, but Colours & Lights ups the ante in every respect. Acid-folk grooves, psychedelic vocals, and folk-horror vibes—it’s a perfect Halloween album without being so on-the-nose that you couldn’t play it year round.

Psychic Temple – Doggie Paddlin’ Thru the Cosmic Consciousness (May 31, 2024)

You never quite know what you’ll get with Psychic Temple—a 15-minute spooky-jazz cover of Black Sabbath? 20 minute cosmic-synth experiments?—but the surprise with the ninth and possibly final Psychic Temple album is how straightforward it is. Just laid-back cosmic country grooves and chooglin’ guitars, backyard music for semi-stoned summer days (even for those of us who don’t partake in anything stronger than music).

Retep Folo & Dorothy Moskowitz – The Afterlife Album (March 1, 2024)

Hauntological audio collage of the sort you’d expect from Ghost Box recordings or maybe Broadcast, cobbling together bits of psychedelica, Mort Garson synthscapes, and otherworldy exotica. Co-creator Moskowitz was in ’60s psych act United States of America, and apparently the 60 years since that psychedelic moment has done nothing to dim her musical adventurousness.

ROY – Spoons for the World (April 19, 2024)

ROY’s retro-minded psych-glam never quite worked for me, but his re-emergence as a country-tinged Scott Walker/more melancholy Lee Hazelwood is nothing short of stunning. Maybe it’s another schtick, but when the songwriting is this impeccable, who really cares?

Sam Wilson – Wintertides (April 5, 2024)

Folk-influenced instrumental jazz, taking inspiration from nature in its cyclical compositions. For an album inspired by winter, it’s surprisingly warm to my ears; maybe this is winter viewed through a window from inside a warm cabin, admiring the iciness outside but feeling cozier from the contrast.

Shabaka – Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace (April 12, 2024)

2022’s sparse Afrikan Culture foreshadowed Shabaka’s decision to put away his saxophone (sorry Sons of Kemet and Comet is Coming fans) in favour of flute, clarinet, and other, more obscure winds. Shabaka’s latest builds on that foundation but enlists others to expand the sound, with Moses Sumney, Saul Williams, Laaraji, and Andre 3000 among the talented many here. Gentle, varied, and highly rewarding.

Shabason, Krgovich, Sage – Shabason, Krgovich, Sage (April 5, 2024)

The third partnering of Shabason & Krgovich adds M. Sage’s pastoral electronics to the mix, and if it’s not exactly a departure from the past two releases, it’s still a welcome variation. Krgovich’s observational lyrics are insightful as ever, consistently elevating the everyday into the borderline-transcendent.

Temporal Waves – Temporal Waves (April 12, 2024)

Tabla isn’t typically associated with sci-fi futurescapes, but Temporal Waves debut makes it sound like a natural fit. A retrofuturist vision, rich with synthwave influences and the occasional psychedelic solo from Besnard Lakes’ Jace Lacek, who also produced.

The Sorcerers – I Too Am a Stranger (February 9, 2024)

Deeply groovy stuff, the kind of sound you sort of wish was from a recently unearthed slab of ’70s vinyl instead of three lads from Leeds indulging in Ethio-jazz adventures, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Unessential Oils – Unessential Oils (May 31, 2024)

Easily my favourite release from Warren Spicer since Plants & Animals debuted with With/Avec almost 20 years ago. It embraces a loose jazziness that has always suited Spicer’s songwriting, with elements of folk and Tropicalia keeping the sounds nice and varied.

Yu Ching – The Crystal Hum (April 26, 2024)

No surprise that Yu Ching shares a label with the Space Lady and Ela Orleans—all three embrace idiosyncratic approaches to lo-fi synth songwriting. Like Orleans, Yuching Huang prefers the oblique and mysterious to anything like an obvious hook. It’s unearthly, but still oddly ear-catching, unexpected and inviting at the same time.

dorothy moskowitz fortunato durutti marinetti loving minhwi lee misha panfilov music penza penza retep folo

Recent Listening: February 2024

I’ve been getting into the habit of sharing sporadic reviews on Threads when it strikes me, and figured it’d be an idea to start compiling them here, too. I’m not in the habit of writing about duds, so if it’s here, consider it an endorsement.

Retep Folo & Dorothy Moskowitz – The Afterlife EP (2023)

Moskowitz’ psych credentials date back to her time in LA art-rock project The United States in the ’60s. Nearly 60 years later, she still has an adventurous ear, teaming with Folo for a release that wanders the same cosmic byways as Alain Goraguer’s Fantastic Planet score, with hints of Broadcast, vintage library music, and other retro-futurist sounds. My only complaint is that it’s too short—but fortunately there’s a full-length due next month.

Fortunato Durutti Marinetti – Eight Waves in Search of an Ocean (2023)

pener “Lightning on a Sunny Day” treads a little close to Destroyer’s postmodern spin on ’80s easy listening, but by the time you hit the strut of “Smash Your Head Against the Wall” there’s no doubt this is something special. Flutes flutter, synths buzz and soar, and Marinetti’s not-quite-spoken-word vocals dryly deliver enigmatic lines, pitched somewhere between Lou and Leonard.

Penza Penza – Electricolorized (2023)

I missed this record from Misha Panfilov’s primitivist side-project last year because Penza Penza’s previous releases were a little garagey for my taste. This one hits a sweet spot, though—fuzzy, catchy, and groovy through and through. Should’ve known better than to doubt Estonia’s master of library instrumentals.

Loving – Any Light (2024)

Laid-back pop perfection that pinches some of Nilsson’s effortless melodicism and the Bryter side of Nick Drake (though considerably more subdued). With music like this, I always find it difficult to pin down what makes one artist sound cliched and another invigorating, but Loving have always landed on the right side of that divide. Call it charisma, craft, or just personal bias, but they haven’t led me wrong yet.

It feels like there’s a ’60s/’70s singer-songwriter renaissance around the corner (see ROY’s newest single, or Fortunato above), and if that happens, Loving should be at the forefront.

Minhwi Lee – 미래의 고향 Hometown to Come

Singer-songwriter fare from South Korea. Hushed, a little melancholy, always elegant. At its best when the jazz influences come to the fore, but there really isn’t a bum note, and the tasteful arrangements (strings, flute, melodic percussion) make for fine evening listening.

accordion bassoon contemporary classical jazz music

Recent Listening: January 2024

Recent instrumental music that seemed worth highlighting. I’ve been getting into the habit of sharing sporadic soundtracks on Threads, and figured it’d be an idea to start compiling them here, too.

Tuulikki Bartosik – Playscapes (2023)

Neo-classical accordion with harmonium, omnichord, and zither. More than a gimmick, the unconventional instrumentation gives this one a real sense of warmth. A very engaging combination of style & timbre, somewhere between Nils Frahm, Terry Riley, and Penguin Cafe.

Frank Horvat – A Village of Landscapes (2023)

A song cycle for bassoon (with piano, synths, and solo) inspired by Canada’s landscape, performed by Sebastien Malette and Allison Wiebe. I’m a sucker for music inspired by natural spaces, and these compositions have a very appropriate mix of tranquility, grandeur, darkness, and beauty. Bassoon isn’t what I’ve typically thought of as a feature instrument, but there’s no denying its versatility.

Felbm – Cycli Infini (2023)

Kicking myself for not including this low-key masterpiece on my year end list. Blame the format—a single 40-minute track is harder to fit into my normal listening habits—not any lack in the composition. A single bedroom jazz journey built from tape loops large and small, softly spiraling into infinity, each moment complete in itself and also subsumed in those around it.

Fabiano do Nascimento & Sam Gendel – The Room (2024)

An album of captivating duets—do Nascimento on seven-string guitar and Gendel on soprano sax—up there with the best of Brazillian jazz. The musicianship is stellar but never loses sight of melody and mood. Released less than a month into 2024, and setting a very high bar for the rest of the year to meet.

AM Gold 2023

Here it is: AM Gold 2023. 100 albums from 2023 that made the year a little more bearable. The list spans genres and continents, but all these selections fit the general AM aesthetic of chill vibes and musical invention. It’s a testament to how much good music comes out in a given year that 100 hardly seemed like enough, but, well, you have to draw a line somewhere.
The playlist above has selections from all of the albums that are on Spotify, plus a handful of singles that were too good not to share, even if their albums didn’t quite make the list (clearly I am no good at drawing lines).
Hope you enjoy them.
PS – Apologies in advance for typos and repetitive writing—putting together 100 blurbs in a few days is a bit of a task.

🍁 Alexandra Streliski – Néo-Romance

Streliski composes solo piano pieces that are romantic in the historical sense, emphasizing emotion and imagination. Lovely and contemplative.

🍁 ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT – “Darling, The Dawn”

Droning experimental pop and shoegaze from Godspeed’s Efrim Manuel Menuck and La Force’s Ariel Engle; slow-moving walls of sound with surprising melody and much emotional heft.

Andrew Bird – Outside Problems
It’s always a treat to hear Bird indulge his more unstructured side. These looping, freewheeling takes may be less polished than his pop work, but they’re joyful, spontaneous, and immersive.

April March & Staplin – April March Meets Staplin
30 years on from Chick Habit, March is still a master of utterly charming French pop and psych rock. With Staplin, she’s created some wonderfully gritty textures and upbeat melodies.

Baby Cool – Earthling on the Road to Self Love
Breezy, coastal psychedelia, sometimes like a sunnier spin on the Brian Jonestown Massacre, others like the country side of the Byrds, all with an undercurrent of Aussie pop jangle.

Benoit Pioulard – Eidetic

Pioulard (AKA American musician and poet Thomas Meluch) is better known for his ambient works, but his folk-rock detours are always a highlight. Eidetic sees him at his most polished and structured, but still well served by his ear for atmosphere.

Blue Lake – Sun Arcs
Acoustic kosmische that verges on drone in parts, but is at its strongest when it coalesces into more structured sounds, like the jazzy “Bloom” and acoustic opener “Dallas”.

🍁 Blume – Inner Vision
A dense fog of hypnotic psychedelia and shoegaze, sprawling, droning, repetitive and engrossing in a way that only space-rock can pull off.

Brendan Eder Ensemble – Therapy
A set of healing neo-classical (neo-age?) sounds for woodwind and horn, with a pair of unexpected Aphex Twin covers thrown in for good measure.

The Brights – Oyster Rock!
Every year deserves a great laid-back jangle-pop record, and this year’s best comes courtesy of Sydney’s The Brights.

🍁 Bristol Manor – The Other Side
Downtempo and trip-hop from the foothills of the Rockies.

🍁 Bry Webb – Run With Me
A welcome return for the former Constantine, and one run through with melody and sensitivity.

🍁 Buildings and Food – Infinity Plus One
Electronic soundtracks for blank slates and infinite possibilities. The undercurrent of hope and optimism makes for a much-needed retreat.

The Clientele – I Am Not There Anymore
Alasdair Maclean & co. always manage to stay on the right side of consistency—instantly identifiable, but still finding ways to expand and experiment.

Contagious Yawns – Intramental

Building beautifully on 2020’s Dream of Consciousness, Intramental mixes intriguing spoken-word samples, deliberate drum loops, and simple synths into something deceptively existential and endless.

Decisive Pink – Ticket to Fame
Deradoorian and Kate NV teaming up to produce pop sounds that are quirky, mystical, satirical, and endlessly inventive

Early Fern – Perpetual Care
Gentle, melodic ambient music and field recordings, a pleasant ramble through creeks and lakeshores in audio form.

Edena Gardens – Dens
The latest permutation from the frighteningly prolific Jakob Skøtt and Martin Rude’s is a gentler spin on psych and space rock, nodding to the Durutti Column and Mark Hollis in its improvised odysseys.

Eluvium – (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality
Ambitious, extravagant, and uplifting, Matthew Robert Cooper has outdone himself on his most recent effort—a “whirring marvel” of cascading strings and slow-drifting compositions.

Ensemble 0 – Jojoni (Made to Measure, Vol. 49)

This international trio has found a unique voice mixing acoustic guitars and metallic percussion, influenced by cult composers like Arthur Lee and Moondog, but finding their own thematic and musical obsessions to mine.

Fabiano do Nascimento – Das Nuvens
An immersive fusion of Brazilian guitar, beat-driven electronics and ambient jazz, on the always-excellent Leaving Records.

Faex Optim – Crystal Pleasures
You can still hear the Boards of Canada influence that dominated Faex Optim’s early releases, but it’s expanded here into something clean, crisp, and more uptempo.

Faten Kanaan – Afterpoem
Somehow sounds like it emerged from underground catacombs where strange creatures spend their days devoted to creating devotional music for unlikely cthonic gods. Haunting, possibly haunted, but also capturing something quite pure.

🍁 Freak Heat Waves – Mondo Tempo
“In a Moment Divine” is the unmissable highlight, with Cindy Lee’s vocals lending the perfect degree of swoon to FHW’s dubby dancefloor productions.

Futuropaco – Fortezza di Vetro, Vol. 1
Instrumental psychedelic grooves that are tight, propulsive, and unpredictable—a suitable soundtrack for a futuristic ’70s space thriller, if you happen to be making one.

Gilroy Mere – Gilden Gate

What begins as a meditative stroll gradually becomes something more mystical, as rolling hillsides descend to the abandoned streets of an underwater city in Mere’s moving instrumental journey through Dunwich’s sunken landscape.

Golden Brown – Weird Choices
An ambient-kosmische fusion of pedal steel and meandering keyboards, each channeling the cosmic in their own way.

Golden Ivy – Kammarn
Instrumental compositions that straddle the line between folk and neoclassical on a bed of electronic impulses, gentle strings and breathy winds, alien and earthy at once.

Green-House – A Host for All Kinds of Life
Joining the proud tradition of plant music that goes at least back to Mort Garson, Green-House’s ambient bliss reflects a search for joy and connection with the natural world.

🍁 Harrison – Birds, Bees, The Clouds & The Trees
Jazz-infused beats, beat-infused jazz, and moments of pure pop bliss.

🍁 High Five – Salad Balloon
Improvised kosmische epics with slacker-rock and MPB undercurrents; sprawling and unpredictable and alive with the joy of creation.

Hochzeitskapelie – The Orchestra In The Sky [Kobe + Tokyo Recordings]
Two hours of blissful, inventive orchestral pop from a quartet featuring members of the Notwist, in collaboration with Japanese indie legends including Tenniscoats and Eddie Macon.

🍁 Hollie Kenniff – We All Have Places That We Miss

Kenniff creates ambient music the old-fashioned way, with live instruments, heaps of reverb, and endless patience. Somewhere between dream-pop and drone, and among the most beautiful music of this type in recent memory.

Holy Wave – Five of Cups
Hazy Texas psych enhanced by a pair of strong guest spots from Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, Estrella del Sol.

Huw Marc Mennett – Days Like Now
An unplaceable and omnivorous instrumental blend of folk, jazz, and groovy psychedelia, global in range but filtered through traditional Welsh sounds.

Hynta – Hyperobjects
Modular synths, field recordings, and ambient drones aiming to evoke concepts too big and too complex to fully comprehend.

The Ironsides – Changing Light
Soundtrack soul with a cinematic sweep, a mix of library music, David Axelrod’s symphonic grandeur, and a bit of Daptone strut for good measure.

Ivan the Tolerable – Under Magnetic Mountain

It’s hard to pick a favourite of the five albums Ivan released in 2023 (four new, one reissued), but Under Magnetic Mountain is maybe the most impressive in its mix of psych, jazz, and radiophonic explorations, a deep heady stew of subterranean sound.

Jambal x Tristan De Liège – Enterprises of Great Pith and Moment
A heavy title for an album that seems to float on air, a nimble fusion of jazz vibes and downtempo beats building to string-soaked triumphs of catharsis.

Jilk – Syrup House
The strongest of three releases this year from a collective that prioritizes play and invention, creating more optimistic spin on early-2000s post-rock and electronics.

Josh Semans – To Will a Space Into Being
One for the Erased Tapes fans—neo-classical in the vein of Nils Frahm and Olafur Arnalds, composed for the otherworldy soundscape of the Ondes Martinet.

Kalia Vandever – We Fell in Turn
An ambient instrumental trombone album that has changed how I hear the instrument.

🍁 Khotin – Release Spirit
Chill beats to transcend to—an optimistic set of mostly instrumentals (and one vocal from Tess Roby), best experienced with the sun on your face and fresh air all around.

🍁 L.T. Leif – Come Back To Me, But Lightly
A confidently inquisitive release from the Calgary ex-pat, lyrically rich and musically murky (in the best sort of way).

Lael Neale – Star Eaters Delight
Neale makes excellent use of mythic and mystical imagery, layering shimmering Omnichord over deliciously droney Velvets jams.

Landing – Motionless I-VI

With over two decades spent refining their sound, this Connecticut quartet has pretty much perfected its pioneering take on ambient psychedelia, shoegaze and drone. Immersive and atmospheric.

Large Plants – The Thorn
Rich, melodic prog-influenced psychedelia from the heart of the deepest woods. A folk-horror soundtrack in the making, albeit one with memorable riffs to spare.

Lonnie Holley – Oh Me Oh My
The blend of atmospheric soul, Eno ambience, and oddball flourishes would be intriguing enough, but that voice! Worn and warm, and wise, resilient, reassuring, and defiant.

Lord of the Isles & Ellen Renton – My Noise is Nothing
If the pairing of experimental synths and spoken-word poetry doesn’t sound immediately appealing, set your doubts aside for this one. An exploration of post-pandemic emotions, it’s as complex as it is comforting.

M. Sage – Paradise Crick
A multifaceted, contemplative ambient release layered through with the sounds of nature—or synthetic approximations, blurring them to such an extent that it almost doesn’t matter which is which.

🍁 Marker Starling – Diamond Violence
Masterful melodies, perfect pop instincts, and a cutting sense of playfulness from Canada’s answer to Gruff Rhys.

🍁 Markus Floats – Fourth Album

A noisy, unabashedly experimental, at times impenetrable mix of free jazz and electronic composition. It takes time to reveal itself, but when it does, the rewards are manifold.

Marlene Ribeiro – Toqui no Sol
Avant-electronics drift into dream-pop bliss, immersive throughout but finding its peak in the graceful seven-minute slow-build that is “You Do It.”

Mary Lattimore – Goodbye, Hotel Arkada
It’s undoubtedly a cliche to call harp-based music “shimmering” or “delicate,” but it’s still true of Lattimore’s gossamer sounds, so here we are.

🍁 Masahiro Takahashi – Humid Sun
Envisioned as “an auditory tool to cope with [Toronto’s] harsh winters,” Takahashi’s Telephone Explosion debut is a warm bath of meandering synths, rubbery bass, and gently chugging drum machines.

Maya Ongaku – Approach to Anima

Gentle, jazzy, laid-back psychedelia on Kikagaku Moyo’s Guruguru Brain record label. The songs rarely raise a fuss, preferring to let the cosmic vibes speak for themselves.

Mega Bog – End of Everything
Mega Bog abandon the winding guitars of 2021’s superb Life, And Another for a downright apocalyptic prog-pop album, an anxious, dour reflection on tragedies both personal and global.

Melenas – Ahora
Lead single “Bang” sets a high standard, but Melenas’ songwriting is up to the challenge. Nostalgic, synth-driven garage-pop with hooks aplenty.

🍁 Michael Peter Olsen – Narrative of a Nervous System
Multilayered electric cello that occasionally channels (and features) Owen Pallett, but the ambient impulses and noisy digressions are entirely Olsen’s.

Mike Reed – The Separatist Party
The glistening keys and warm trumpet melodies of “Floating With an Intimate Stranger” are a perfect entry point, but it’s the subtle Afrobeat pulse, exuberant spoken-word vocals, and voyages into spiritual skronk that keep me coming back.

Misha Panfilov – In Focus
Panfilov’s library jazz mastery is pure auditory sunshine. Unabashedly cheesy, but sophisticated enough to bear up to repeat listens.

ML Buch – Suntub
Performed on a seven-string guitar in open tunings, Buch’s experimental sound channels the spirit of ’80s art-pop heroes like Kate Bush and XTC without anything like direct reference.

Modern Cosmology – What Will You Grow Now
Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier and Brasil’s Mombojó team up for an album of conceptual space-pop and psychedelia. Every bit as charming as you’d hope.

Modern Nature – No Fixed Point in Space
After two albums pointing in this direction, Jack Cooper’s post-Ultimate Painting project fully embraces its spare, minimal approach to songwriting. Conjuring free jazz and evoking Mark Hollis’ solo work, this is music that is deeply personal, intimate and exploratory.

🍁 N Nao – L’eau et les rêves

Folk and dream pop elevated by atmospheric production and an endless arsenal of effects pedals; L’eau et les rêves refuses to settle into a fixed form, ebbing and flowing from song to song with a remarkable fluidity.

Nabihah Iqbal – Dreamer
Nearly six years in the making (owing in part to a studio robbery in 2020), Iqbal’s latest was worth the wait, a confident fusion of dream pop’s moodiness and dancefloor euphoria.

Nashville Ambient Ensemble – Light and Space
Ambient country is having a moment lately, with excellent releases from SUSS and North Americans, not to mention essentially everything on Aural Canyon, but Light and Space is the finest of the bunch, a twilit haze of pedal steel, violin, and glacial guitars, smothered in reverb and drifting into eternity.

🍁 Netrvnner – Phantom
Calgary’s finest synth-wave artist embraces post-punk and the results are essentially perfection, atmospheric and energetic instrumentals that are at once retro-minded and full of vitality.

Nico Georis – Cloud Suites

Exactly what a concept album about clouds should sound like—impressionistic shapes briefly forming and drifting apart, weightless and immersive.

🍁 Ora Cogan – Formless
Another leap forward for the musically restless Cogan, moving effortlessly from haunted folk to post-punk edge to cosmic Americana.

Orange Crate Art – Cinema Exotica: The Imaginary Films of Ryan Simpson
This doc soundtrack ably showcases the softer side of OCA’s My Bloody Valentine-via-The Beach Boys aesthetic—equally kitschy and sophisticated, and always inviting.

🍁 The Organizing Committee – Communication in the Presence of Noise
High-concept art-pop from Montreal, with echoes of the Notwist and Octopus Project (high praise in these parts). Party music for intellectual cyborgs.

🍁 Peace Flag Ensemble – Astral Plains
Spiritual jazz improvisations from the Canadian prairies, anchored in gentle piano and electric bass, striking a rare balance of melody and experimentation.

Pearl & The Oysters – Coast 2 Coast
Sweet summer sounds from LA. Retrofuturistic indie-pop for fans of Stereolab (Laetitia Sadier makes an appearance), but replacing the motorik detours with crisp, concise pop hooks.

Pedro Ricardo – Soprem Bons Ventos
Released in February, Ricardo’s debut was an early favourite and hasn’t released its grasp. A brilliant, enthralling blend of Portuguese folk, latin jazz, and experimental electronics.

Penguin Cafe – Rain Before Seven
Joyous, infectious, and deceptively complex, Arthur Jeffes has hit his stride in his incarnation of his late father’s Penguin Cafe Orchestra project.

Rozi Plain – Prize
It’s hard to pin down exactly what makes Rozi Plain’s idiosyncratic folk-pop so hypnotic, but there’s no denying the magic. It’s hopeful, warm, and unpredictable, a difficult feat in any genre and one Plain makes look effortless.

🍁 Ryan Bourne – Plant City

Often a secret weapon for others in the Calgary psych-rock scene, serving in Chad VanGaalen’s band and in Ghostkeeper, among others, Bourne rarely steps out on his own—his last solo release under his own name was in 2010. Plant City shows the delay isn’t due to an absence of ideas; its glammy, hook-laden songs span genres, laced through with cynicism, humour, and classic songcraft.

Salami Rose Joe Louis – Akousmatikous
One of pop’s most inventive voices expands the conceptual worldbuilding of 2019’s Zdenka 2080 with more inimitable dream-jazz-soul-prog-psych bliss.

Saloli – Canyon
A day in the life of a bear, rendered solely through a modular synth—live, not programmed—and a delay pedal.

Skyphone – Oscilla
Sparse electroacoustic post-rock that evokes decaying landscapes and impossible architecture, a journey through ancient, overgrown alien ruins.

Slowdive – Everything is Alive
The Slowdive comeback has no right to be this good. More than three decades after their debut, they’re in absolute top form on Everything is Alive, more vital, more inspired, and somehow less nostalgic than most shoegaze acts a quarter their age.

Spencer Cullum – Coin Collection 2
Cullum’s reedy voice and impeccable melodies recall Robert Wyatt, and so does his omnivorous musical taste. Coin Collection 2 is solidly grounded in pastoral ’60s-and-’70s folk-rock, but it’s the opposite of myopic, with tasteful flourishes and surprising moments around every corner.

Spencer Zhan – Statues II
Zhan’s three albums this year included a full-length cover of a Harry Styles album, and two sculptural ambient-jazz releases—all of them deserve an ear, but if you only have time for one, choose this.

🍁 Test Card – Channels
Canada’s answer to the pastoral electronics that UK labels Ghost Box and Clay Pipe specialize in. Consider that high praise.

Tommy Guerrero – Amber of Memory

Guerrero describes this collection as “surf goth,” but there’s nothing bleak about it. Just swoon-worthy dream-pop instrumentals beaming sunshine into your darkest days.

Ulrika Spacek – Compact Trauma
Leaning more towards post-punk than 2017’s shoegaze-influenced Modern English Decoration, and does it as well as anyone out there right now.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra – V
Just a flawless lo-fi pop record, with impeccable guitar, a low-key but irresistible sense of groove, and a melancholy that adds salt to the sweetness. Wins me over more with every listen.

Veryan – Reflections in a Wilderness
A chilly, crystalline ode to the beauty of frozen landscapes—which, in the middle of a Canadian winter, doubles as a reminder to find happiness where you are instead of wishing for escape.

Vic Mars – The Beacons
In some ways, Mars’ pastoral folktronics are worlds away from his early educational-video-inspired releases, but the through-lines are there: the appreciation of melody, the ability to create complete worlds in a few short minutes, and the commitment to an aesthetic have all remained, and all serve Mars beautifully on his latest for Clay Pipe Records.

Violetta Vicci – Cavaglia
A nostalgic, melancholy release from the UK composer, recollecting childhood summers and reflecting on the fragility of nature through swooning strings, ghostly vocals, and subtle analog synths.

Wax Machine – The Sky Unfurls, The Dance Goes On

Offering a more sophisticated spin on the tropical psychedelia of their earlier releases, Wax Machine’s latest is also by far its strongest. Spacious, dreamy, subtle and subdued.

Whatitdo Archive Group – Palace of a Thousand Sounds
Like the Ironsides, Whatitdo Archive Group specialize in library grooves creating the kinds of sounds that would get crate diggers salivating if they’d been recorded in the ’70s and still should today. Hints of exotica and global influences, but the beat is always front and centre.

🍁 White Poppy – Sound of Blue
Crystal Dorval specializes in the dreamiest of dream-pop songs. Her bio says it best: “Music for memory gardens and pastel horizons, dreaming of bliss and distance”

Y La Bamba – Lucha
Warbly, off-kilter, Latin-influenced indie folk that isn’t afraid to undercut a pop hook with an experimental digression, and vice versa.

Yo La Tengo – This Stupid World
Its got your noisy jams, your indie gems, your gentle ballads—YLT may be comfort food at this point, but who doesn’t need a bit of comfort? Especially in the face of all the everything thrown at us by, as the title says, this stupid world.

🍁 YOCTO – Zepta Supernova
Sci-fi space rock from a supergroup of Quebec psych-rockers. Punky and energetic, virtuosic when it wants to be, and cool in that way that only half-spoken French vocals can be.

🍁 YouYourself&I – L’Amour des Anoures
Intimate, intricate bedroom folk from Montreal, from an artist with 26 releases on bandcamp and shockingly little other info online.

Yussef Dayes – Black Classical Music

Strange how a first album can feel like a greatest hits. Dayes’ funk-soul-jazz debut is wide-ranging, soulful, accessible, and does not let up.

ambient experimental instrumental psychedelic

Stray Sounds: February 26, 2023

Albums

Faten Kanaan – Afterpoem

This may be wide of the mark in terms of musical theory, but despite its minimal compositions and electronic textures, Faten Kanaan’s Afterpoem feels like a work of capital R Romanticism. Its songs hint at hidden worlds and strange presences, haunted like a landscape, where the word connotes enchantment and mystery and just a hint of danger.

The world of Afterpoem is foggy and elusive, its songs coalescing and dissipating, only occasionally lasting more than a minute or two. That’s usually more than enough time to make an impression, but the songs that linger also tend to be more memorable, like “Votive” and its minor-key melody and eery major resolution, or the swell of distortion in the otherwise somber “Ard Diar.”

In the album notes, Kanaan says she “find[s] pleasure in music as a language that nudges and hints” and that’s exactly what Afterpoem does. It is oblique and indirect, and all the more intriguing for it.

Khotin – Release Spirit

I’ve been enjoying this album since it was released two weeks ago, but listening to it today on an afternoon walk as the city edged its way out of a deep freeze, sunshine warming my face, it fully clicked. The Edmonton producer’s third album for Ghostly International is the soundtrack to a good day—not the forced “best night of our lives” from a pop anthem, but the kind where you catch yourself smiling for no particular reason and take a moment to just bask in that feeling.

Highlights change with every listen, but on this most recent spin it’s the quietest moments that hit: the ambient “Life Mask” is one of Release Spirit’s most immersive moments, a spa day in a fantasy forest, refreshing and subtly otherworldly; or the vocal samples in “3 pz” that slowly drift from reassuring to surreal. The more propulsive tracks are nothing to brush off, either—Tess Roby’s vocalas are right at home in the eddying undercurrents of “Fountain, Growth,” and “Lovely”, “Computer Break – Late Mix” and “Unlimited <3” are all pure downtempo bliss. It’s unflashy and unpretentious, but damn is this nice.

Yves Malone – A Hello to a Goodbye

For an album rooted in horror-synth sounds and inspired by the paranoid early days of the COVID pandemic, you’d expect A Hello to a Goodbye to be a more bleak listen. It’s certainly laced through with tension, minor key melodies, and the crystaline harmonies and buzz-saw bass of a John Carpenter score, but in spite of all that (and a write-up that describes it as “isolated paranoid landscape is mined with what-ifs and never-mores, a profound distrust of fellow humans,”) I’d swear it has a more optimistic core than it’s letting on.

Take album centrepiece “In Desperate Nights They Flee Towards Anything Safer” — the title tries to pass it off as an illusory hope, but there’s nothing half-hearted about its triumphant synthwave sounds. Along with “Smoke and Ash, Hand in Hand” and “ambiguous closer “No Matter How I Try, the Road Leads Away From You” it provides plenty of breathing room and even hopefulness. Other tracks embody the anxiety more fully: openers “A Splash of Palm Razors Across the Sky” and “Stiff Starter” are all frenzy and confusion, and while “Object Concern” starts on a more placid note, a mid-point plot twist cranks up the tension.

Calling it a plot twist feels appropriate, as Malone’s music has enough narrative thrust to justify the term. He’s an expert at crafting unexpected turns and building momentum through the album’s ups and downs, but like any good thriller, it’s the glimmer of hope that keeps you tuned in.

Singles

Edena Gardens – “Sombra del Mar”

Edena Gardens’ self-titled debut last year was a high point even for consistently fantastic label El Paraiso, fusing psych, jazz, and post-rock into a mind-expanding melange. So it’s a pleasant surprise to see the trio already releasing new music in 2023. “Sombra del Mar” doesn’t stray from their established sound, but it doesn’t need to—the contemplative pace, meandering melodies, and spiraling chord progression is as inviting as anything on the debut. Fans of Gunn-Truscinski Duo or Do Make Say Think’s more folk-leaning moments will find plenty to enjoy here.

Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer – Leaving Grass Mountain

Longform Editions’ releases are always worth visiting, but this latest single is a true standout. Like the label name implies, the point here is to give artists a chance to stretch out, and Chiu and Honer take advantage of every minute, using stuttering rhythms, modular synths, ambient interludes, and Honer’s luscious viola to craft a compelling narrative piece. Full without being busy, varied without losing coherence, it’s a masterclass in extended experimental songwriting.

Stray Sounds: New music for Feb. 10, 2023

Albums

Bendu – Portaling

Portalling is what happens when you transport Boards of Canada’s haunted Scotland to the shores of LA. Bendu’s second album for Edinburgh-based Werra Foxma Records has all the hallmarks of hauntology, but even at its most melancholy, there’s a sunniness that’s distinctly Californian. More than anything, it’s there in the bass, which bubbles and bounces, sometimes carrying the melody and sometimes accenting the hip-hop drums, but always full, round, and joyful.

It’s a refreshing sound in a genre that can get bogged down in its moodiness. Not that Bendu doesn’t indulge in some pensive moments—Portaling comes with its share of heady vocal samples and philosophical conceits. It’s just that you’re always relatively sure that, despite the questioning, things are all going to work out.

Drum & Lace – Frost

Like its title implies, this EP from London’s Sofia degli Alessandri-Hultquist is an intricate and fragile set of ambient compositions. Its five songs rarely rise above a whisper—even its brashest, most multilayered moments feel like they could be dissolved by a stray breath. Despite the title, though, and in spite of its crystaline character, Frost is an inviting album, and a comforting one. degli Alessandri-Hultquist’s wordless vocals are at the heart of the compositions, radiating warmth and reassurance with every breath, and minimal as the arrangements are, they feel complete and compelling.

Singles

Bobby Lee – Reds for a Blue Planet

Lee’s latest is a propulsive addition to the new wave of Cosmic American Music, a twangy instrumental that layers a desert-psych riff over a steadily swaggering beat. The song is all forward momentum, a soundtrack to an endless highway pointed at a perpetual sunrise.

Conic Rose – Learn to be Cool

The melodic echoes of Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” may or may not be intentional, but it’s hard to deny that cribbing from one of the most stylish outfits of the past few decades is a solid way of learning to be cool. The Berlin-based quartet bill themselves as jazz, but their sound seems to pull from plenty of other turn-of-the-21st influences, too, from Chicago post-rock to Kid A ambience and the slick easy listening of Zero 7. It could stand a bit more grit, but still, a promising sound.

Lael Neale – I Am the River

Speaking of cool… “I Am the River” takes the haunting but subdued sound of 2021′ album’s Acquainted With Night and kicks it into high gear, and the result is a head-bobbing good time. The video and song both seem to be channeling the Velevet Underground with a hint of Robert Palmer, with Neale’s droning omnichord serving as a sugar-coated version of Cale’s viola. A much-needed tribute to nature and movement and the magic of music.

Masahiro Takahashi – Cloud Boat

Due out in late March, Takahashi’s Telephone Explosion debut sounds like it’ll be a perfect springtime record. With a lush saxophone melody from Brodie West and tasteful piano from Ryan Driver, “Cloud Boat” lives up to its title—warm and buoyant, you can picture it at sail amid clear blue skies, drifting between updrafts and watching as the ground below comes to life.

ambient experimental folk instrumental kosmische psychedelic shoegaze

AM Gold 2022

In alphabetical order, 100 albums that made my 2022 a bit more joyful. Nearly all of these have been featured on The AM, so expect a mix of experimental electronics, ambient jazz, shoegaze, dream-pop, and other less easily classified sounds. There’s also the AM Gold 2022 Spotify playlist if you want to listen to a track from (almost) all of them—and while you’re at it, feel free to browse through the past lists here: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and A Decade of AM Gold.

Cancon is labeled for those who are interested in such things.

As with every year, even 100 albums isn’t enough to include everything that resonated with me at some point in the year, and I’m already feeling guilty about some of what’s been left out (god forbid an unknown Canadian community radio broadcaster’s list not be fully comprehensive, right?). Never let anyone tell you there’s no good music out there—there’s more being made every year than anyone could possibly listen to.

Artist	Album	Link	Sounds Like
Akusmi	Fleeting Future	https://akusmi.bandcamp.com/album/fleeting-future	Pointillist melodies and side-eyed optimism
Alabaster Deplume	Gold: Go Forward in the Courage of Your Love	https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/gold	Self-help mantras snuck into slinky jazz arrangements
Andrew Wasylyk	Hearing the Water Before Seeing the Falls	https://andrewwasylyk.bandcamp.com/album/hearing-the-water-before-seeing-the-falls	Contemplatives journeys and cinematic arrangements
Asta Hiroki, Tristan de Liege	Untied	https://ahxtdl.bandcamp.com/album/untied	Freeflowing left-field electronics that you can dance to
🇨🇦 Badge Epoque Ensemble	Clouds of Joy	https://bbadgepoqueensemble2.bandcamp.com/album/clouds-of-joy	Joyous harmonies and (Stevie) wonderful jazz-funk grooves
Beach House	Once Twice Melody	https://beachhouse.bandcamp.com/album/once-twice-melody	Only the dreamiest of dream-pop
🇨🇦 Blume	Waves of Love	https://blumeband.bandcamp.com/album/waves-of-love	A wintry Canadian spin on Spiritualized shoegaze and krautrock
Carcascara	2	https://auralcanyonmusic.bandcamp.com/album/2	Meditative spaces built from deconstructed folk
Carla dal Forno	Come Around	https://carladalforno.bandcamp.com/album/come-around-2	Dubby, minimal post-punk
Cate le Bon	Pompeii	https://catelebon.bandcamp.com/album/pompeii	Oblique indie-pop from a familiar but foreign dimension
🇨🇦 Charbonneau / Amato	Synth Works Vol. 2	https://charbonneau-amato.bandcamp.com/album/synth-works-vol-2	Electronic lullabies from machines of loving grace
Clarice Jensen	Esthesis	https://claricejensen.bandcamp.com/album/esthesis	What the aurora borealis might sound like if it was a neo-classical composer
🇨🇦 Crystal Eyes	The Sweetness Restored	https://crystaleyesband.bandcamp.com/album/the-sweetness-restored	Bold, swooning, ’60s-inspired dream-pop
🇨🇦 Dana Gavanski	When It Comes	https://danagavanskifth.bandcamp.com/album/when-it-comes	Pop melodies that consistently find unexpected zigs to zag
Die Welttraumforscher	Liederbuch	https://diewelttraumforscher.bandcamp.com/album/liederbuch	A cassette found in a dusty corner of an abandoned apartment that you don’t remember entering
Duncan Marquis	Wires Turned Sideways in Time	https://duncanmarquiss.bandcamp.com/album/wires-turned-sideways-in-time	A near-perfect intersection of ’70s kosmische, early 2000s post rock, and ambient folk
Dungen	En Ar For Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog	https://dungen.bandcamp.com/album/en-r-f-r-mycket-och-tusen-aldrig-nog	Wide-eyed, jubilant psych-pop from Sweden’s masters of the genre
🇨🇦 Ecotype	Civil Version	https://ecotype.bandcamp.com/album/civil-version	Headphone music for a broken future
🇨🇦 Esmerine	Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More	https://esmerine.bandcamp.com/album/everything-was-forever-until-it-was-no-more	Existential ambivalence channeled into hushed post-rock
Exek	Advertise Here	https://exek.bandcamp.com/album/advertise-here	Wry, wiry post-punk with early Eno melodies
Felbm	Elements of Nature	https://felbm.bandcamp.com/album/elements-of-nature	Library jazz for mystical forest dwellers
Field Works	Stations	https://fieldworks.bandcamp.com/album/stations	Avant-garde electronics co-written by the creaks and groans of the Earth itself
🇨🇦 Fiver	Soundtrack to a More Radiant Sphere	https://fiverforreal.bandcamp.com/album/soundtrack-to-a-more-radiant-sphere-the-joe-wallace-mixtape	Scraps of protest songs from a picket line in a long-forgotten dream
Floating World Pictures	The Twenty-Three Views	https://floatingworldpictures.bandcamp.com/album/the-twenty-three-views	Ink-washed ambient jazz landscapes, open-ended meditations
Forgiveness	Next Time Could Be Your Last Time	https://musicforforgiveness.bandcamp.com/album/next-time-could-be-your-last-time	Sitting on a grassy hill as the mist rolls in (in ambient jazz form)
🇨🇦 Fresh Pepper	Fresh Pepper	https://freshpepper.bandcamp.com/album/fresh-pepper	Smooth-jazz songs about food, seasoned with ancient wisdom
Geotic	To Not Now, Nor To Ever, Despair	https://geotic.bandcamp.com/album/to-not-now-nor-to-ever-despair	Soft sounds and warm hugs
🇨🇦 Ghostkeeper	Multidimensional Culture	https://ghostkeeper.bandcamp.com/album/multidimensional-culture	Defiant, idiosyncratic psychedelia built on a foundation of love
Gloria de Oliveira, Dean Hurley	Oceans of Time	https://deanhurley.bandcamp.com/album/oceans-of-time	Expansive, ethereal dream-pop adrift on Cocteau currents
Golden Brown	Luminous	https://goldenbrown.bandcamp.com/album/luminous	Acoustic guitars spiraling sinuous sonic strands into the cosmos
Green-House	Solar Editions	https://green-house.bandcamp.com/album/solar-editions	Muzak in the grand cosmic elevator
Group Listening	Clarinet & Piano: Selected Works Volume 2	https://grouplistening.bandcamp.com/album/clarinet-piano-selected-works-vol-2	Reworking other people’s songs into the purest joy of music-making
Gwenno	Tresor	https://gwenno.bandcamp.com/album/tresor	Pop songs for wind-swept cliffsides
Hannah Peel, Paraorchestra	The Unfolding	https://hannahpeelmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-unfolding	An immersive blend of synth and symphony that doubles as an inclusionary statement
Jenny Hval	Classic Objects	https://jennyhval.bandcamp.com/merch/classic-objects-blue-lp	Artfully offbeat global pop from one of the best lyricists going
Jilk	Haunted Bedrooms	https://jilk-cis.bandcamp.com/album/haunted-bedrooms	Bewitching electroacoustic soundscapes
🇨🇦 Joyful Joyful	Joyful Joyful	https://joyfuljoyful.bandcamp.com/album/joyful-joyful	Transcendental folkways, Alan Lomax via Koyaanisqatsi
Justin Hopper & Sharron Kraus	Swift Wings	https://sharronkraus.bandcamp.com/album/swift-wings	A spoken-word storybook carried on the wind from the stone circle
Kikagaku Moyo	Kumoyo Island	https://kikagakumoyoggb.bandcamp.com/album/kumoyo-island	Trippy vibes and pop instincts honed into a funky, sitar-soaked swan song
Korb	III	https://korbmusic.bandcamp.com/album/korb-iii	A van airbrushed with Philippe Druillet art speeding through an endless desert
Large Plants	The Carrier	https://soundcloud.com/largeplants/sets/the-carrier-2	Psych-folk shredding from beyond the veil
🇨🇦 Living Hour	Someday is Today	https://livinghourband.bandcamp.com/album/someday-is-today	Hushed dream-pop exploring the expressive possibilities of the mid-tempo
Local Tourist	Other Ways of Living	https://localtouristmusic.bandcamp.com/album/other-ways-of-living	Stripped back slow-core with dark folk underpinnings
🇨🇦 Lunar Lemur	Sifting Stars	https://lunarlemur.bandcamp.com/album/sifting-stars	Brief but beautiful snippets of interstellar symphonies
Lynn Avery, Cole Pulice	To Live & Die in Space & Time	https://moonglyph.bandcamp.com/album/to-live-die-in-space-time	Jazz for sitting in caves and slowly turning into a crystal
Mabe Fratti	Se Ve Desde Aqui	https://tinangelrecords.bandcamp.com/album/se-ve-desde-aqu	Inventive avant-pop that’s sinister and soothing in equal measure
Magic Arm	Dance Mania	https://magicarm.bandcamp.com/album/dance-mania	Genre-flitting electronics capped off with one of the year’s best indie jams
Makaya McCraven	In These Times	https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/in-these-times	Soulful jazz that goes out on many a limb without ever missing a beat
Maria Chiara Argiro	Forest City	https://mariachiaramusic.bandcamp.com/album/forest-city	Jazzy art-rock that flirts with the ghost of trip-hop
Marina Herlop	Pripyat	https://marinaherlop.bandcamp.com/album/pripyat	A mystifying, multifaceted assemblage of future-jazz, art-pop, and fragmented vocals
Misha Panfilov	The Sea Will Outlive Us All	https://mpsc.bandcamp.com/album/the-sea-will-outlive-us-all-2	Pink Floyd stranded on a desert island but trying to enjoy the experience
🇨🇦 MISZCZYK	Thyrsis of Etna	https://miszczyk.bandcamp.com/album/thyrsis-of-etna	A tour-de-force of art-pop eclecticism, bound together by sheer force of will
🇨🇦 Moat Bells	Bones of Things	https://moatbells.bandcamp.com/album/bones-of-things	The moment your eyes start adjusting to the brightness
Molly Lewis	Mirage	https://cafemolly.bandcamp.com/album/mirage	What you’re hoping that dollar-bin exotica record will sound like, but it never does
Monster Rally	Botanica Dream	https://monsterrally.bandcamp.com/album/botanica-dream	Fragments of kitsch and exotica stitched into something unexpectedly poignant
Morgan Szymanski and Tommy Perman	Music for the Moon and Trees	https://blackfordhill.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-the-moon-and-the-trees	A crisp, evocative electroacoustic collaboration between two artists and their environment
Myna Cycles	Myna Cycles	https://neilcowley.bandcamp.com/album/myna-cycles	Contemplation and momentum at a point of pure equilibrium
🇨🇦 Netrvnner	Moonward	https://netrvnner.bandcamp.com/album/moonward	The score to the video game adaptation of a float tank experience
OHMA	Between All Things	https://ohma.bandcamp.com/album/between-all-things	Ambient jazz playfully pursuing the boundaries of bliss
Orange Crate Art	Contemporary Guitar Music	https://orangecrateartswc.bandcamp.com/album/contemporary-guitar-music	Shoegaze-inspired instrumentals rarely maintain this much joy & wonder
Oren Ambarchi	Shebang (or Ghosted)	https://orenambarchi.bandcamp.com/album/shebang	Tightly bundled and expansive all at once, string theory in musical form
Peel Dream Magazine	Pad	https://peeldreammagazine.bandcamp.com/album/pad	Easy-listening grooves for the space-age bachelor pad
Persica 3	Tangerine	https://persica3.bandcamp.com/album/tangerine	The lighter-than-air feeling of a pleasant memory, distant in time but alive in the mind
Personal Bandana	Geleezeit	https://personalbandana.bandcamp.com/album/wf-40-geleezeit	What ’80s educational videos probably sounded like at Hogwarts
Pneumatic Tubes	A Letter from TreeTops	https://soundcloud.com/ghost-box/sets/treetops	Organic and hypnotic, a nostalgic landscape of rolling hills and dense fog
Pocket Pavilions	Gondolas Traversing Lofty Peaks	https://pocketpavilions-cis.bandcamp.com/album/gondolas-traversing-lofty-peaks	The naive utopianism of worlds fairs and mid-century design in 24 perfect minutes
🇨🇦 Postnamers	Sissies & Sluts	https://postnamers.bandcamp.com/album/sissies-sluts	Strings warbling and bells chiming, the score to fantasy film watched on a psychic TV
Psychic Temple	Plays Planet Caravan	https://schlarb.bandcamp.com/album/plays-planet-caravan	The psych-jazz expansion of the Sabbath classic you didn’t know you needed
Rachika Nayar	Heaven Come Crashing	https://rachika.bandcamp.com/album/heaven-come-crashing	Deconstructed shoegaze at its most atmospheric and cinematic
Salamanda	ashbalkum	https://8salamanda8.bandcamp.com/album/ashbalkum	Leftfield compositions that are living, breathing, shapeshifting and sometimes downright silly
Sam Prekop	The Sparrow	https://samprekop.bandcamp.com/album/the-sparrow	Modular synths wrangled into sounds that are spare, soothing and warm
🇨🇦 Sanctums	Neon Wraith	https://sanctums.bandcamp.com/album/neon-wraith	Eyes closed and dancing while the world burns around us
Sankt Otten	Symmetrie und Wahnsinn	https://sankt-otten.bandcamp.com/album/symmetrie-und-wahnsinn-2	Pitch-perfect motorik evoking a hard-won optimism
Seahawks	Infinite Echo	https://oceanmoon.bandcamp.com/album/infinite-echo-2	The soundtrack at the pan-dimensional health spa at the edge of the Milky Way
Sessa	Estrela Acesa	https://sessa.bandcamp.com/album/estrela-acesa	Lovely, mellow Brazillian pop, recalling the glory days of tropicalia
Shabaka	Afrikan Culture	https://open.spotify.com/album/5fFftOUCiSbNfofIj8vXx0	Breathy, intimate, and introspective; so sparse listening feels like an intrusion
🇨🇦 Shabason & Krgovich	At Scaramouche	https://shabasonandkrgovich.bandcamp.com/album/at-scaramouche	A lesson in finding wonder in the smallest moments
Shintaro Sakamoto	Like a Fable	https://shintarosakamotoofficial.bandcamp.com/album/like-a-fable	A master of uneasy listening fully embracing his love of pop
🇨🇦 Steven Lambke	Volcano, Volcano	https://stevenlambke.bandcamp.com/album/volcano-volcano	Ebulliantly off-key vocals running ripshod through impeccable folk-rock arrangements
Svaneborg Kardyb	Over Tage	https://svaneborgkardyb.bandcamp.com/album/over-tage	Post-rock for jazz fans, or vice versa
🇨🇦 Tess Roby	Ideas of Space	https://tessroby.bandcamp.com/album/ideas-of-space	A polished opal—smooth, cool, and richly coloured
🇨🇦 Test Card	Patterns	https://testcardmusic.bandcamp.com/album/patterns	An excercise in low-key escapism, a sunset walk through idyllic fields
🇨🇦 Thanya Iyer	rest	https://thanyaiyer.bandcamp.com/album/rest	Restorative indie R&B, more rejuvenating than any 15 minuntes should be
The Advisory Circle	Full Circle	https://soundcloud.com/ghost-box/sets/full-circle	Confident, reassuring, subtly triumphant
The Hardy Tree	Common Grounds	https://thehardytree.bandcamp.com/album/common-grounds	A walk through familiar streets on a crisp autumn day
The Hologram People	Village of the Snake God	https://libraryoftheoccult.bandcamp.com/album/village-of-the-snake-god	Bad trips on good acid
The Orielles	Tableau	https://theorielles.bandcamp.com/album/tableau	Expansive art-rock, untethered and unafraid
Time Wharp	Spiro World	https://timewharp.bandcamp.com/album/spiro-world	Swirling cosmic dust on the verge of igniting into a star
tstewart	elysian	https://mkx.lnk.to/tstewartElysianWE	A much-needed dose of concentrated optimism and slow-building bliss
🇨🇦 Untrained Animals	Stranded Somewhere on the Planet Fantastic	https://untrainedanimals.bandcamp.com/album/stranded-somewhere-on-the-planet-fantastic-lp	An exercise in creative restlessness, from space rock to breakbeats to “beatless floaters” and acid freakouts
Videodrones	After the Fall	https://elparaisorecords.com/product/videodrones-after-the-fall/	A divey disco in a Mad Max wasteland
Wax Machine	Guardians of Eden	https://waxmachinebbib.bandcamp.com/album/hermits-grove	MPB and tropicalia meanderings, aimless in the best sort of way
Weils	Fugue State	https://weils.bandcamp.com/album/fugue-state	Transcendent cosmic blues, patient past the point of absurdity
🇨🇦 Where’s the Other	Relaxology	https://wherestheother.bandcamp.com/	Soothing transmissions from the new age of New Age
Winter	What Kind of Blue Are You?	https://daydreamingwinter.bandcamp.com/album/what-kind-of-blue-are-you	The salty-sweet blend of crunchy distortion and soaring melodies
Yonatan Gat	American Quartet	https://yonatangat.bandcamp.com/album/american-quartet-2	A loving, blasphemous, ultimately invigorating reimagining of a groundbreaking work
🇨🇦 Yoo Doo Right	A Murmur, Boundless to the East	https://yoodooright.bandcamp.com/album/a-murmur-boundless-to-the-east	Cacophanous, cathartic, and above all collosal space rock
🇨🇦 Yves Jarvis	The Zug	https://yvesjarvis.bandcamp.com/album/the-zug	Impulsive, inquisitive, impressively wide-ranging, and somehow his most controlled album to date
🇨🇦 Zacht Automaat	P is for Progress	https://zachtautomaat.bandcamp.com/album/p-is-for-progress-2	Can and Exile-era Stones jamming on a movie score for an impressionistic anticapitalist documentary
🇨🇦 Zoon	A Sterling Murmuration	https://zoongideewinmusic.bandcamp.com/album/a-sterling-murmuration-ep	Reverb, distortion, bliss

blues kosmische psychedelic

Hyperextended cosmic blues: Weils – Fugue State

Weils’ brand of blues demands—and rewards—an almost excessive degree of patience. Their songs consist of minimal riffs expanded to the point of absurdity, sometimes stretching minutes between a single chord change. But where that should create sheer monotony, they’ve somehow managed to invert the formula, tapping into something supremely comforting and occasionally even transcendent. The shortest song here is 13 minutes, the longest clocking in at over double that, and while the old “no wasted minutes” trope doesn’t exactly apply, it’s hard to see how anything here would benefit from being more concise. The shimmering bridge of album-closer “Ode to Joy” wouldn’t have the same impact if it was stripped out of context, but it’s not just the contrast that comes when the repetitive structures are interrupted that makes Fugue State so engrossing. It’s the weight of that repetition, the chance to get lost in slow music that drifts along without any concern for expectation. These are sounds to be savoured, a glistening structure built from the gradual accretion of gentle tones.

50 favourites: The AM’s best of 2025

Another 150 or so albums you really can’t go wrong with, especially if you’re into the general genre

100. Tomo Katsurada – Dream of the Egg

99. Hélène Vogelsinger – Ethereal Dissolution

98. Trees Speak – TimeFold

97. The Sorcerers – I Too Am a Stranger

96. Loula Yorke – speak, thou vast and venerable head

95. Ivan the Tolerable – Time is a Grave

94. Drum & Lace – Onda

93. Church Chords – elvis, he was Schlager

92. Ariel Kalma, Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer – The Closest Thing to Silence

91. Lynn Avery, Cole Poulice – Phantasy & Reality

90. Osmanthus – Between Seasons

89. Tristan De Liege – Fields

88. Temporal Waves – Temporal Waves

87. Group Listening – Walks

86. Hollie Kenniff – For Forever

85. Warrington Runcorn New Town Development Plan – Your Community Hub

84. Seahawks – Time Enough for Love

83. Clinic Stars – Only Hinting

82. Mark McGuire – Anhedonia

81. Charbonneau / Amato – Enflammer le désert (OST)

80. The Hologram People – Isola Dei Morti Viventi

79. Jane Weaver – Love in Constant Spectacle

78. Dean McPhee – Astral Gold

77. Miyauchi Yuri – Beta 2

76. p:ano – ba ba ba

75. Yasmin Williams – Acadia

74. Jahari Massamba Unit – YHWH is LOVE

73. Bananagun – Why is the Colour of the Sky

72. Circles Around the Sun, Mikaela Davis – After Sunrise

71. Jilk – Soft in Shape and Meaning

70. Retep Folo & Dorothy Moskowitz – The Afterlife Album

69. Hawksmoor – Oneironautics

68. Dissolve in Sepia – Spaciousness

67. Ana Butterss – Mighty Vertebrate

66. Molly Lewis – On the Lips

65. SHOLTO – Letting Go of Forever

64. Big Brave – A Chaos of Flowers

63. Misha Panfilov – Frutaria Electrónica

62. Polypores – Unlimited Lives

61. Beak> – >>>>

60. Fourtet – Three

59. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead

58. Daisy Rickman – Howl

57. Einstürzende Neubauten – Rampen (apm: alien pop music)

56. Jon Hopkins – RITUAL

55. Von Spar, Eiko Ishibashi – Album I

54. Badbadnotgood – Mid:Spiral

53. Erki Pärnoja – Rumba

52. Unessential Oils – Unessential Oils

51. Bibi Club – Feu de garde

50. Dummy – Free Energy

49. Jon McKiel – Hex

48. Andre Ethier – Cold Spaghetti

47. Various Artists – TRANSA

46. maya ongaku – Electronic Phantoms

45. Luka Kuplowsky – How Can I Possibly Sleep When There Is Music?

44. Psychic Temple – Doggie Paddlin’ Thru the Cosmic Conscousness

43. Ethnic Heritage Ensemble – Open Me, A Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit

42. Nala Sinephro – Endlessness

41. BASIC – This Is BASIC

40. Peel Dream Magazine – Rose Main Reading Room

39. Laurent Dury – Organic Minimalism

38. Scions – To Cry Out in the Wilderness

37. OHMA – On Loving Earth

36. Jennifer Castle – Camelot

35. Earthen Sea – Recollection

34. The Smile – Cutouts

33. Dialect – Atlas of Green

32. Project Gemini – Colours & Light

31. Bernardino Femminielli – Opéra Bouffe

30. Memorials – Memorial Waterslides

29. Jessica Pratt – Here In the Pitch

28. Eric Chenaux Trio – Delights of My Life

27. Zachary Gray – Suburbia EP

26. Bilal Nasser – How Can We Say Nothing

25. Ayal Senior – Ora

24. Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown

23. Elori Saxl – Earth Focus OST

74. J ahari Massamba Unit – YHWH is LOVE