A CLOSER LISTEN weekly #86.5

Mid-Year Mini-Reviews Marathon Part 3: Under the Radar (L-Z) + Archival

Listeners; Joseph. The final installment of my three-part Mid-Year Mini-Reviews Marathon, this time closing out the alphabet from L-Z, with four reissue/archival releases highlighted as a little bonus treat. Let’s get right into it.

Mid-Year Mini-Reviews Marathon

Short highlights featuring 25 releases we’ve enjoyed during the first half of 2025 that haven’t received full reviews

Lucy Railton ~ Blue Veil
The lauded electroacoustic cellist known for her collaborations with Kali Malone and Stephen O’Malley strips down for a solo cello work exploring harmonic resonance. Railton’s use of just-intoned intervals draws particular inspiration from her realisations of the work of Catherine Lamb and Ellen Arkbro. Recorded in the domed space of Paris’s Église du Saint-Esprit, the 40-minute work is less a performance than an excavation in slow-motion.

Lucy Liyou ~ Every Video Without Your Face, Every Sound Without Your Name
Liyou’s second album, Dog Dreams (​개​꿈​), was included in our best of 2023 under the radar list, among many others. The response to that work seems to have given Liyou enough confidence return to demos she’d abandoned many years ago. The artist, who identifies as trans, reflects on themes of love, longing, and loss, framed initially as a desire for parental acceptance before converging in a more general sense of the precarity of love. The album is reminder to love beyond the picture perfect moments and memories, buttressed by compelling soundscapes and plaintive piano chords.

Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force ~ Khadim
Another stellar installment from Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force. Ernestus is best known as half of Basic Channel/Rhythm & Sound and founder of Berlin’s beloved Hard Wax record store. The minimal techno pioneer convened the Ndagga Rhythm Force to explore Senagalese music, here paired down to just a drummer or two on each track. It’s no surprise that Ernestus shines at his most reduced, and these deep grooves leave plenty of space for listeners to get lost in and for DJs to mix.

Mat Ball ~ Four Amplifiers
The guitarist of Montreal’s BIG|BRAVE trio has been increasingly delving into the more experimental side of his instrument, particularly with his solo work. For Four Amplifiers, his second attempt at reinterpreting the late great Tony Conrad’s Four Violins for bowed amplified electric guitars, Ball combined two takes each using two separate amplifiers. Chance plays an important role in bringing the composition to life, injecting additional texture and depth.

julien demoulin ~ A Trial Of Distances
A Trial Of Distances is a mesmerizing long-form three-part suite blending lush brass and ethereal synths. The limited edition CD also included remixes from HTDC, .foundation, and a deep 30-minute deconstruction by Past Inside the Present boss Zakè. Demoulin specialized in deep emotive soundscapes, in which the artist's eerie synths and melancholic drones dissolve into Kelly O'Donohue’s expressive trumpet, trombone, and flugelhorn. Perhaps no surprise for an artist who was once in a project called Silencio, A Trial Of Distances is an introspective work that carries a dreamlike quality, sure to appeal to fans of gentle ambient and atmospheric soundscapes.

Marshall Allen ~ New Dawn
Few artists manage a career so long and storied as Marshall Allen, but none have ever released their debut solo album at 101 years old. Leading the Arkestra since Sun Ra’s death, New Dawn finally presents Allen’s vibrant fusion of cosmic jazz, blues, and avant-garde energy on his own terms. Featuring guest vocals from Neneh Cherry and backed by an ensemble of the finest players, this album is a century of musical brilliance distilled into seven transcendent tracks. Full of energy and looking as much ahead as it does back, New Dawn is a timely reminder to keep on carrying on.

Mary Halvorsson ~ About Ghosts
Mary Halvorson is simply one of the great contemporary guitarists, and every new album she releases is bound to be a contender for album of the year. The sextet from 2024’s excellent Cloudward has expanded to an octet, adding alto and tenor sax to the already rich combination of drums, bass, vibraphone, trombone, and trumpet. Halvorson’s playing is of course the main draw, but this ensemble really sings together. She also brings out the pocket piano on half of these eight tracks, yet a further augmentation. While sometimes reaching ecstatic heights, the octet more often holds back, balancing arrangements that are at once complex and accessible.

Mike Cooper ~ Eternal Equinox
I got used to encountering Cooper around Rome, either playing pedal steel on his ipad or as a welcome splash of bright color among the city’s darkly dressed audiences. The post-everything master returns for Room40, a suite of simple melodic improvisations for virtual pedal steel, with a few post-production adornments for additional texture.

Nuke Watch ~ "Wait For It..."
Nuke Watch’s “Wait For It…” stretches time across two sides of warped percussion and drifting electronics, full of unhinged rhythms and murky atmospherics. The jauntier a-side twists sampled percussive chaos into hypnotic patterns, while the b-side dives into modular abstraction with a little help from fellow NYC resident Bryce Hackford, spiraling into the surreal. Patience rewards those who linger, if you just wait for it.

Panacre ~ Papotier
Papotier is the final panel of Panacre’s triptych, where their modular MIDI-controlled “Organous” meets the towering presence of an 18th-century Silbermann pipe organ. The ensemble further weaves a diverse selection of equally interesting instruments—including baroque violin, gaïda, sheng, and fractured AM radio transmissions—into a dialogue that interrogates breath, voice, and resonance within the hollow of a centuries-old church. The title refers to carved wooden masks once affixed to organs (see the cover art), which became the guiding metaphor as the ensemble explored human speech after feeling gagged by nearly a year and a half of lockdown. The resulting, often intense, 19 tracks, are a study in sonic anatomy, where pipes, reeds, and human membranes converge in a clamor that echoes early experiments in synthetic speech.

Pye Corner Audio ~ Lake Deep Memory
I’ve been a fan of Martin Jenkin’s Pye Corner Audio since his early releases for labels like Ghost Box and Dekorder. For whatever reason I don’t always check for new releases, but this isn’t one to miss. Lake Deep Memory emerges from the volcanic mysticism of Guatemala’s Lake Atitlán, where Jenkins translates the sacred landscape into expansive, textural electronica. Field recordings recorded in Guatemala while he was there performing merge with his signature synth alchemy, crafting shifting panoramas where harmonic swells dissolve into spectral whispers, each layer amplifying quiet hums and hisses. The album mirrors the lake’s quiet beauty, rendered in analogue photography and accompanying fine art print. In the inverse of Rafael Toral’s beloved Spectral Evolution from last year, the CD version of Lake Deep Memory consists on a single-track mix of the album, to better encourage deep listening.

Raven Chacon & Present Music ~ Voiceless Mass
Raven Chacon’s practice is rooted in deep listening, amplifying the unheard through compositions that blur the boundaries between chamber music, noise, and site-specific sound. This release collects the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Music winning composition “Voiceless Mass” (2021) alongside two other works. The eponymous track confronts colonial violence by interrogating the very spaces where sound, and silence, hold power, while “Biyán” (2011) and “Owl Song” (2021) explore repetition, shifting timbres, and cultural resonance in contrasting ways. Each piece challenges listeners to engage with histories, absences, and the fragile presence of voices rendered invisible.

Sadie Powers ~ Souvenir
How does one grieve alone? Denied traditional rituals, the pandemic forced this question on many of us. Sadie Powers answers this question with Souvenir, a sonic collage dedicated to the memory of those she lost between 2020 and 2022. The English word “souvenir” comes from the French “to remember,” or “memory,” and the dual noun-verb function of the French carries an important weight for me in approaching this record. With Souvenir, Sadie Powers produces a sound collage of remembrance, layering imperfect improvisations on fretless bass with programmable music box, bells, sheet metal, cardboard box, and field recordings all made on the same spot. Sometimes we need to create our own rituals, and I’m grateful to Powers and Room40 for sharing these with us.

Salomé Voegelin (tape score compilation) ~ Cassette Album
Cassette Album compiles sonic responses to Salomé Voegelin’s tape scores, featuring eight artists—including Pisitakun, Heather Frasch, and Mariam Rezaei—who reinterpret the plasticity, fragility, and temporal play of magnetic tape. Voegelin’s writing on the philosophy of sound are deeply evocative, and her scores provide new insight into her theories. But listeners needn’t be familiar her academic work to enjoy Cassette Album. Voegelin’s scores frame cassettes as a medium that bends chronology, creating a "sonic pluriverse" where repetition and decay shape unexpected auditory textures. Launched with live events in London and Berlin, this release for the great Flaming Pines continues Voegelin’s exploration of sound as a relational, socio-political practice.

Server Farms ~ Thrills Collapse
Montreal’s Disfold Ltd. label launched in 2023 with Server Farms’ Parks That Were Never Built as their inaugural release. Both the label and the project are shrouded in mystery, forcing us to listen rather than get caught up the baggage of history of the whims of press cycles. Now two years after that mysterious debut, Server Farms returns with Thrills Collapse, a surreal blend of rickety digital realms and slick artificial illusions. Rendered strings stretch into chaotic hazes, haunted data breathes artificial life into dreamy knockoff voices, and VST muck transforms into perfectly flawed playbacks. These synthetic yarns continually veer off-script, collapsing into a glitching wreck of bit-rot intervals. Disfold has also released music from Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Actors Artificial, with more on the way, so be sure to follow for more surprising explorations of the surreality of contemporary digital culture.

she spread sorrow & luca sigurtà ~ the grimorian tapes
Alice Kundalini (She Spread Sorrow) and Luca Sigurtà continue to develop their collaboration with the grimorian tapes, a death-industrial invocation where whispered incantations slither through crumbling loops and spectral half-melodies. Sigurtà previously produced She Spread Sorrow’s Huntress (2021) for Cold Spring, and the two are also members of the Junkie Flamingos, dark-ambient/industrial group whose debut was also released by the Helen Scarsdale Agency. Drawing from esoteric grimoires, their latest work weaves alchemical dread into tape hiss and whispered invocations, channeling the occult lineage of Coil and Current 93. This sonic ritual is a haunted séance of distorted talismans and metaphysical unease, where fear dissolves into the seductive pull of the unknown.

SLEEPDIAL ~ RV LIGHTS
For a decade, Luke Thinnes’ (Dubharp, French Kettle Station) sole release as SLEEPDIAL was a 2013 cassette, but after dusting off the alias for a 2023 DJ mix, the project finally gets a proper album with RV LIGHTS. Released on West Mineral Ltd, the imprint run by Brian Leeds (Huerco S, Pendant, Loidis), RV LIGHTS is a dubbed out slow-motion dive into submerged frequencies. Rhythmic undercurrents flicker against ethereal tones and shifting densities, sometimes chaotic and always hazy. Even at its most fragmented, there’s a tactile logic to the way sounds fold into one another, as if the mix itself is breathing.

Stefano Pilia ~ Lacinia
Italy’s unmatched guitar maestro Stefano Pilia returns with Lacinia, a profound new cycle of compositions that extends the metaphysical inquiries of Spiralis Aurea (2022). While the guitar isn’t wholly absent, this cycle demonstrates Pilia’s gifts as a composer, working with flutes, strings, horns, percussion, and organ in various combinations. Once again drawing from sacred geometry and numerical archetypes, Pilia’s luminous tonal architecture blends drone, chamber music, and electroacoustic processes into meditative, almost liturgical, resonances. Echoing the transcendent minimalism of composers like Eliane Radigue, Arvo Pärt, and Sarah Davachi, these pieces trace a circular, rhizomatic path, suggesting time as both linear and cyclical, an eternal return of transformation, where matter shifts but the hidden principle remains.

Stephen Vitiello, Brendan Canty, Hahn Rowe ~ Second
Our Listeners are no doubt familiar with Vitiello’s storied career in ambient and sound art: contact-mic recordings of the World Trade Center, curating the first major museum exhibition dedicated to sound art, various collaborations with the late lowercase pioneer Steve Roden. When he joined forces with Fugazi’s drummer and the guitarist of cult band Hugo Largo for First (2023), for Longform Editions, some surprise was understandable, but any apprehension was immediately dispelled by just how good it all sounds. Where First grew out of freeform improvisations and studio assemblage, on Second the trio crystallizes into structured yet spontaneous compositions melding ambient drift with krautrock propulsion, dub-inflected grooves, and the raw energy of punk. Featuring a surprise hurdy gurdy cameo from Geologist (Animal Collective), the record thrives on chance encounters and surprisingly fluid juxtapositions.

Strategy ~ A Cooler World
Paul Dickow explores the tactile possibilities of sampling on A Cooler World, approaching his 1989 keyboard like an instrumentalist rather than a programmer. The result is a glacial, introspective journey of ambient techno slowed to a crawl. Textures blur into pensive, snow-draped soundscapes both futuristic and quietly human, where dance music dissolves into the crystalline stillness of a cooler world.

Vanessa Rossetto ~ Pictures of the Warm South
Pictures of the Warm South is a double CD from the prolific painter-turned-composer, whose idiosyncratic form of electroacoustic composition blends field recordings, found sound, and instrumentals. Vanessa Rossetto’s work is deeply intuitive, often drawing from everyday environments and accidental sonic encounters, which she transforms into evocative, narrative-like soundscapes. While a solo work, Pictures of the Warm South features guest piano from Lucy Liyou on “the warm south,” and Famous Ray’s live processing on “today’s special value.”

Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith ~ Defiant Life
Vijay Iyer, Wadada Leo Smith, and Manfred Eicher. If ever a record didn’t require the hard sell, it’s Defiant Life. Their second duo recording for ECM, Iyer and Smith are true titans of contemporary music, and Defiant Life finds the pair further refining their profound musical dialogue, blending Iyer’s piano and Rhodes textures with Smith’s trumpet in a meditation on resilience and transcendence. Captured in just two days, produced by ECM founder Eicher, the album is a testament to their ability to conjure vast emotional landscapes through spontaneous, yet meticulously attuned, collaboration.

XT + Anne Gillis ~ AnimauX veGeTal
AnimauX veGeTal is the second release from Anne Gillis and XT (Seymour Wright & Paul Abbott), continuing their collaboration that began remotely in 2018. Following live performances, including at Dalston’s storied Cafe OTO, the trio have continues to hone their rapport through real time experimentation. These two pieces, recorded at XTUDIOs in 2024, distill their evolving practice, grafting, pruning, and diffusing sound into pulsing, organic forms. The titles reflect the visceral, living textures they cultivate, where every gesture blooms audibly.

Various Artists ~ 31.9522° N 35.2332° E - a compilation for MAP
A compilation of 35 tracks by electronic artists to raise funds for the Medical Aid for Palestinians charity (MAP). The titular coordinates point near a large illegal settlement east of Jerusalem in the West Bank. While occasionally abrasive and beat driven, many of the tracks steer closer to contemplative, abstract, and mid-tempo.

Various Artists ~ Make Fuzz Not War
In contrast, Make Fuzz Not War is an exercise in turning rage into sonic expression. Even artists best known for their blissed out meditations or quiet fiddling embrace the fuzz for Palestine. 31 tracks all worth an attentive ear, including from Anne-F Jacques, Stefan Christoff, anthéne, and Philippe Batthikha. I believe all the artists are based in Montreal, aside from the final track, a posthumous collaboration between Peter Brötzmann and Jimi Hendrix.

REISSUES / ARCHIVAL

four recent reissues or archival releases from 2025

AnkAnum ~ Song of The Motherland
Shabaka Hutchings closed his 2024 Impulse debut with “Song of the Motherland,” featuring his father, Ayun Iyapo. That composition was originally from his father’s 1985 album, now reissued on Shabaka’s own imprint.

Bennie Maupin ~ The Jewel In The Lotus
This ECM classic of so-called “spiritual jazz” returns to vinyl. Featuring Herbie Hancock and an exceptional lineup backing up the multireedist Maupin.

Michael Ranta, Mike Lewis, Conny Plank ~ Mu
Sarah Hennies has championed the work of percussionist Michael Ranta, whose profile is gradually rising due to the steady (re)release of archival works, most recently Mu, consisting of unreleased studio recordings from 1970.

Stars of the Lid ~ Music for Nitrous Oxide
It’s still not a good idea to get high on nitrous oxide, but Stars of the Lid’s powerful debut is a great substitute, lovingly remastered for its 30th anniversary. RIP Brian McBride.