WILTLW: April 27, 2025

Soapkills - Bater

Debut album from the first (only?) Lebanese trip-hop duo Soapkills. Rudimentary production that punches well above its weight in mood and groove. Amazing how good Arabic sounds against this backdrop, the language’s internal rhythms and natural catches interlock perfectly with the lurch. A lot here, much to be learned.

Ben Shirken - H.D. Reliquary

Searingly beautiful, a sparse landscape of the mind populated by ephemeral artifacts that stutter and whir through the ether. I can’t think of an album in recent memory that’s blurred the line between ambient music and sound design so effectively, it really does exist on its own plane. Perhaps a bit too austere for me in the end but I’m sure there are treasures I missed that others will find. Great work!

AshTreJinkins - BL-001

Another transmission from deep space beat traveller AshTreJinkins, the first on his new imprint Buried Light. Excited to see what he has in store for the label, but this one wasn’t for me, no particular reason, the songs just didn’t connect. Much prefer his previous project, the D-town techno leaning The Door, a career and year highlight in my humble opinion.

quinn - of the world

quinn’s been on an absolute run since interstate 185 came out two years ago, dropping some of the most consistently fun and inventive music in the underground during that span. Her approach to sampling has really evolved from her early hyperpop days, she gets an incredible amount of mileage out of each flip now, as evidenced by the first track on this latest EP being essentially just a chopped up SWV song. of the world is a quick four-track offering that features quinn skating across beats built from seminal 90s r&b cuts. It’s a great coda to her star fell on trench mixtape that came out at the end of last year which I also highly recommend.

Anysia Kym & Loraine James - Clandestine

Wow wow wow, talk about a stunner. James and Kym operate at the edge of consciousness, transcending space and time to enter into a free-associative dream world. Everything looks solid until your realize its vapor, time creeps along until you realize it’s passed you by. I couldn’t get a grip and I loved every minute.

Anthony Naples - Scanners

Slick and sexy dance music from the Incienso boss, call it house, call it techno, whatever it is, it grooves. In pursuit of dancefloor euphoria Naples opts for simple songs that embrace the core components of every great club record: rhythm, melody and mood. His approach echoes that of labelmate Brian Leeds’ on last year’s One Day which applied a similar methodology to microhouse and minimal techno. Scanners is decidedly more broad in scope but no less exact in outcome.