Sep. 11, 2025
I thought I’d make it to the end of the quarter before posting, but the third quarter releases are piling up and September looks like it will be busy, so I’m going to share my July and August favorites here before the list gets too unwieldy. As usual, artists with a strong connection to the PNW are in bold, titles link to the albums, and blurbs in quotes are lifted directly from the artist’s PR or sometimes from credited reviews. Blurbs not in quotes are by me. I also think it’s worth noting not one but two compilations of gorgeous Ethiopian lyre music released just weeks apart by different labels – what are the odds?
Atletas - Reflexão Meteórica (Brazil)
"Atletas (Mario Cascardo) has spent the last few years as an office worker in Rio de Janeiro – and a kind of office-musician, equipped with no more than a guitar and a laptop on the desk in his room...The songs have a sketchy and solemn feel, with Mario singing quietly into his laptop's built-in microphone – without sound isolation and while leaving the TV on or people talk in the background. The unexpected sounds and effects that arise from this method are used both discreetly and structurally, so that his lo-fi style becomes something between a no-fidelity and an all-fidelity to the things around him."
Leo Chadburn - Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator
"A radiophonic lullaby for a half-forgotten place and time... close-miked spoken word, framed by slowly revolving harmonies, intense drones that evoke the hum of electricity, enigmatic field recordings, shimmering bells and the distant rumble of metal percussion."
Andy Clausen - Heart of Tones: Solo Trombone at The TANK, Vol. 2
"Recorded in the profound reverberation of a converted railroad water silo known as the TANK Center for Sonic Arts in Rangely, CO, new original works are presented alongside existing repertoire spanning multiple centuries of musical history. Volume Two, Heart of Tones, makes use of the resonance in the space with classical and minimalist compositions from leading composers Nico Muhly, Pauline Oliveros, Jeff Beal, and more."
Beverly Glenn-Copeland - What's Going On / Save the Children (Canada)
“...moving cover versions of two Marvin Gaye classics... These new recordings are Glenn’s personal response to our current times and articulate the mission behind all of his music: to bring communities together, build collective resilience and speak truth to power.”
Pablo Diserens & Ludwig Berger - tracing basalt in the onsernone valley (Switzerland)
"In the Oratorio di Niva, deep in the Onsernone Valley (Ticino, Switzerland), Ludwig Berger and Pablo Diserens found loose sheets of paper in a folder marked with the name “Basalt.” These aphoristic and personal notes conveyed a profound philosophy of listening and belonging. Amazed, the two artists unearthed the origin of these writings. It is said that Basalt (1910 - ?) was a gender non-conforming person born and raised in Berlin. They studied geology while being part of the city's vibrant queer scene before escaping the Nazi regime in the 1930s. For years, they traveled through Europe until they settled in the Onsernone Valley in the 1950s. Here, Basalt developed a keen ear and relationship to the environment informed by early theories of bioacoustics, psychoacoustics, and ecology. Oozing with poetry, Basalt’s notes revealed a hypothesis of their own emerging from a singular methodology of listening. Inspired by Basalt’s life and writings, Diserens and Berger put Basalt’s thinking and methodologies into practice. The duo followed these aphorisms like a map, listening to the Onsernone Valley and recording the sounds it fostered."
Avi C. Engel - Mote
"Despite the fact that the eight songs on Mote are based around voice and acoustic guitar, they defy the singer/songwriter label. Engel’s song-forms are more akin to poetic stanzas than verses or choruses, and their lyrics are rich in imagery that seeks to transcend the self rather than magnify or elevate it."
Lori Goldston - Open Space
"I recorded Open Space within a single continuous take: my cello, an amp, and a distortion pedal. I was watching a film that was a static shot across a very large canyon, the light slowly shifting." "Her tones are gritty and opaque, with generous doses of constructive interference and harmonics. Her movement of the bow is deliberate, creating rich overtones that incorporate feedback. Despite its harshness, listen to Open Space long enough and its grinding takes on an ambient nature. In this manner the album can be meditative, not because the textures soften, but because the ear adjusts." (Avant Music News)
Vinny Golia Chamber Quintet - New Chamber Idiom
"An improvising chamber ensemble. Romanticism remade in the crucible of freely improvised music." A pioneer of the LA area creative music scene, recorded live at the Chapel Performance Space, Seattle, with a stellar group of local musicians:. Vinny Golia: Ab (piccolo) & Bb clarinets, soprano & baritone saxophones, flute; Neil Welch: bass & tenor saxophones; Steph Richards: trumpets & flugelhorn; Aniela Perry: cello; Kelsey Mines: bass & voice.
Hand to Earth - Ŋurru Wäŋa (Australia)
"The Hand to Earth sound emerges from an unlikely combination of disparate members: Yolŋu song keepers Daniel and David Wilfred, Korean-born vocalist Sunny Kim, trumpeter and electronic musician Peter Knight, and woodwind player Aviva Endean. Daniel Wilfred sings in the Wagilak language, stated to be the oldest continuously practiced music tradition in the world. It’s dreamy and contemplative, and gently provocative simply by existing. It’s elemental and visceral, windswept, punctuated with rustles and chitters." (Steve Smith, Night After Night/For the Record)
Herbert & Momoko - Clay (UK)
"Orbiting around Herbert’s fleet-footed productions and the ingenuity of Momoko Gill’s dexterous, melodic writing, Clay is at once stripped-back and rhythmically complex, drawing on a variety of found sources - from Japanese kotos to basketballs - to give the sound an unmistakably organic feel. Bringing together original sampling techniques, live improvisation and lush, expansive arrangements, Clay is lifted into higher realms by Momoko Gill’s intimate vocal performance..."
Steve Layton - Ever Days
One of the most prolific composers I know, Layton's catalog is so vast and varied and his output so rapid, I can hardly keep up. Stylistically, he's all over the map. This is as good a place as any to jump in. I don't know much about his process, other than that he draws heavily on sample libraries and occasionally recruits other far-flung online comrades to send him bits that he slices and dices. This one has a kind of abstract trip-hop vibe at first, thanks to the sultry vocals by Sandy Dunes. Then all hell breaks loose and things get weird. In a good way.
Luna Moss - Dosti
Singer/bassist Char Easter was in a pretty great 90s post-punk band called Common Language that got sadly buried in the lumbering avalanche that was the Seattle grunge phenomenon. Now, after a long hiatus, she's back with a few friends in a new project that isn't so far removed from her past work, but takes it strongly into the present - less noisy, more mature and spacious, which works for me. I honestly don't go out to rock shows much these days, but I'd love to see Luna Moss share a bill with somesurprises.
Six Microphones - Environmental Studies
"Six Microphones is a site-determined composition of audio feedback by designer and composer Robert Gerard Pietrusko... 'Environmental Studies' is an iteration of the piece created specifically for the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (CCVA) in Cambridge, MA—the only building in North America designed by famed architect Le Corbusier... Installed, Six Microphones illustrates the simplest and most legible diagram of feedback—a microphone pointed at a loudspeaker. The piece transforms the gallery from a space in which sound simply propagates, to the medium required to bring sound into being... All tones and modulations produced during a performance emerge from the continual interaction between the system and the space itself."
Benedicte Maurseth - Mirra (Norway)
"Innovative folk musician Benedicte Maurseth [hardanger fiddle] once again invites us to the vast Hardangervidda plateau – this time with a focus on the wild reindeer...native to Maurseth's home area of Eidfjord in Hardanger. The work follows elements of the reindeer's distinctive sounds and annual cycle...The music is repetitive and marked by the hypnotic repetitions of folk music, also inspired by American minimalism, krautrock, and free improvised music...further developed and arranged in collaboration with Håkon Stene on melodic percussion, Mats Eilertsen on bass and electronics, and Morten Qvenild on keyboards."
Tar Bo Naiang - Patya Thit (Myanmar)
"This is traditional music from Myanmar in Southeast Asia. [Well, not exactly "traditional music", but new music for a traditional ensemble.– SP] Contemporary composer Dira More composed this piece based on an ancient style that has been passed down in Mandalay, the ancient capital of Myanmar."
Zeena Parkins - Modesty of the Magic Thing
"...documents a project inspired by the drawing series Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1989), in which the Bay Area artist Jay DeFeo drew eleven variations based on the shape of a pink mug given to her by ceramicist Ron Nagle. Confining herself to that sole shape, DeFeo derived wondrous variations. Likewise, Parkins limits her palette to her acoustic harp and a range of percussion instruments played by William Winant, including a set of 11-limit just-tuned bells designed by composer Lou Harrison. Within those boundaries, the range of tones, timbres, and attacks is diverse and enchanting, from limpid shimmers to obsessive pattern-making." (Steve Smith, Night After Night/For the Record)
Aran Poole - Line Drawings
"Layered improvisations converge to form a duo of longform drone harmonies, composed entirely with the bow chime. This esoteric instrument, comprising a large stainless steel resonating sheet paired with an array of tuned rods, produces a rich spectrum of tones and pitches when bowed. The recording emphasizes its deeply resonant qualities, unfolding in a continuous sonic line — fluid, unbroken, and immersive."
Singulars - Spate
"This is music that oscillates between nervous energy and calm tension, recalling the adventurous spirit of Endtroducing-era DJ Shadow while never feeling beholden to its influences... Polished and technically accomplished without sacrificing the free-wheeling exploration that makes experimental music vital. The kind of record that fills a void in the current landscape and would have been essential in 2001 and remains essential today."
Laeticia Sonami - Dangerous Women: Early Works (1985-2005)
"This collection of early works covers a period when Sonami transitioned from live mixing with cassettes, homemade analog synths and objects in the early eighties, to working with MIDI, MAX software and “off the shelf” synths and samplers. At the same time, she begins a long collaboration with Melody Sumner Carnahan, using her dramatic texts to evoke characters and behaviors to inhabit musically and visually."
Squanderers - Santiago
"...a supergroup featuring two guitars and one bass: David Grubbs (Gastr Del Sol, The Red Krayola, Squirrel Bait, Bastro), Wendy Eisenberg (Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, Editrix, Whait), and Kramer (Shockabilly, Butthole Surfers, John Zorn, Laraaji, The Fugs, etc...)" "What we’re left with is not so much a pristine work of collective genius as a testament to the transcendence that can occur when a group of individual geniuses sit down together with no greater aim than melding their minds for a while." (Pitchfork)
Statues in Fog - Statues in Fog (UK)
"...the recordings you have here, some conceived over a decade ago but only recently matured, might be admired as electro-acoustic tapestries or perhaps even pastoral vignettes. Drum-machines and synthesizers thread seamlessly with violins, pedal steel, guitars, flutes, piano, melodica, cello, field recordings and voice. As Johnson explains, “I was attempting to create a sort of pastoral plasticity if you like…A synthetic, utopian landscape you’re more likely to encounter in a dream than in reality.”
tsuadatta - Not here but somewhere (Japan)
"...the Japanese ambient guitarist crafts freeform soundscapes that feel less composed than discovered. Each track unfolds like a whispered conversation between emotion and environment — guitar lines ripple like wind over water, subtly shifting direction, as if carried downstream by a current of pure intuition. The result is a quietly enveloping odyssey, where every piece becomes a new place, felt more than defined."
"...this is the untold story of a sleepy Navy town that became the unlikely gathering point for some of the most innovative, unclassifiable American artists of their time. The late '60s arrival of Harry Partch...jump started a revolution that was as much social as it was musical... Artists as diverse as Partch, Pauline Oliveros, Kenneth Gaburo, Roger Reynolds, Diamanda Galás, Warren Burt, David Dunn, Robert Turman and Master Wilburn Burchette may have pursued different paths...but they also sought to dismantle the systems of American life and replace them with a radically inclusive and socially responsive aesthetic that looked to the future even when it sometimes referenced a distant, idyllically imagined past...these disparate artists constitute a shadow history of American experimental music far removed from the European and East Coast models of the time."
Various - Elders of the Begena: The Harp of David in Ethiopia
"The Begena is one of those rare musical instruments of the world that has survived for more than 5800 years. What is fascinating about it is not only its age but the fact that both its manufacture and the purpose for which it is being played have never changed during all these years. It is still made of wood and animal products, such as the intestine of the sheep for the strings, the leather that covers the sound box. It is used for praying, for praising God and for meditation, just as it was in the olden days and it has survived until the present day."
Various - The World Is But a Place of Survival: Begena Songs from Ethiopia
"The begena is a large ten-stringed lyre which is part of the traditional Amharic heritage of Ethiopia. The Amharas...follow the monophysite Orthodox Tewahido Church established in the early fourth century AD. Music plays a very important part in the life of the church... The begena occupies a special place because it is the one melodic instrument exclusively dedicated to the spiritual repertory... The characteristic buzzing timbre equalled by no other Amhara instrument is due to the enzirotch, that is, small bits of leather placed between each string and the bridge."
Worksite & Workshop - Carreira's Cross (Portugal)
"Portuguese duo Worksite & Workshop — Zé Quintino and Tiago Maduro — wove together a sonic tapestry where shifting electronic textures met finely detailed field recordings and subtly hypnotic rhythmic patterns. The result is a work that feels at once exploratory and deeply cohesive, a dialogue between structure and instinct, clarity and mystery."