HoneyBones’ “The Call of Baba Yaga” draws on Eastern European folklore to build a song around a mysterious invitation. The lyrics begin with a call to loosen the imagination, then move into images of temples, earth, and the northern lights.…
Kitty Coen’s “Psycho From Texas” tells a love story through the language of Western outlaws, with two people who know they are bad for each other but keep coming back. The narrator calls her lover a pistol and herself a…
Le Beaubo’s “Faerplay” retells a Guernsey folktale with the strange logic of a children’s rhyme. Petit-Jean hides among cabbage leaves but gets swallowed by Le Grande Bimbaloo, a cow whose grey teeth appear in the lyrics as the first sign…
Instupendo’s “a99” uses bright, slightly warped sounds to create a place that seems familiar without being easy to name. Chimes and string tones flicker around an accordion-like synth, with melodies that wander off before settling into a clear pattern. Some…
Kazimi’s “Errant Nodes” pushes the Manchester duo’s mix of jazz and dance music toward the club, with synths taking the lead and a strong melodic hook holding the track together. Tom Chapman and Jon Needham have made their most electronic…
Thylacine and Nils Hoffmann’s remix of “Nawa” brings the original’s recordings of the Himba community in Namibia into a more progressive electronic setting. Hoffmann keeps the track’s airy character but gives its rhythms a different direction, with flowing grooves and…
In A False Sky works with lo-fi electronic textures and English vocals, using repetition and restraint rather than conventional song structures. “Narrative Training” and “Floating Devices” approach that sound from different directions, one built around a handful of recurring phrases,…
Sotto James’ “Are We Running Out Of Time” comes from the worry of watching a parent grow older and wondering how much time is left to get things right. The song began while James was playing with an old synth…
Reiyo The Giant’s “Trick of the Night” follows a mind caught between suspicion and the fear that it might be wrong. She tries to get better, loses sleep, checks her reflection in the mirror and wonders whether what she sees…
Valoramous and Scarlett’s “Techno Makes Me Lose Control” puts the rush of the dance floor at the center of a fast electronic track. At 140 BPM, it brings techno rhythms, hard house drive and the atmospheric melodies of trance into…