may 2026

benoît pioulard - radial

been thinking about a lot of the ambient records i've listened to over the years and how they all helped me in my darkest times in my life. benoit pioulard's radial is one of those records that no matter how i feel like in life, it is always apart of me. it's eternal. i feel like i'm dying yet being reborn listening to it, especially with "the very center of its flame". it makes me feel like i'm restarting my playthrough of life. you could call it the menu music to life itself and i would believe you.

bibio - phantom brickworks

if you've known me for quite a long while you'll know that ambient is essentially my #1 genre to listen to. yeah sure, i love a lot of other music like hard rock, phxc, emotional hardcore, and even a lot of metal in some way or another. ad as much as i love all of them in their own equal ways, not a lot of them get into the deeper parts of my soul and/or psyche as ambient does.

bibio's phantom brickworks is one of those albums that kind of hit close to home. it has this longing feeling that i get from artists like william basinski, leyland kirby, or even celer at points. it makes me feel like im back in maine when i was living with my ex's friends who turned out to be not that great people to begin with. we were hotel-hopping for a few months before we almost had no money left and had to ask my mom to send over some money to afford a long bus ride home into my home city of indianapolis, IN.

bibio - phantom brickworks (IV & V)

decided to check out the one other ambient release he's put out and i kind of wish he had put both of them on the album and got rid of atleast the last four tracks off of the album as this ep he had put out as a companion piece to phantom brickworks is really stunning.

afterlife - hypnautic rise

short but sweet little ambient record. feels like im going through some mystical forest in the aurora borealis.

the clash - the clash + singles

so i have found out while downloading this record that there are two different versions of the clash's debut. different tracklists and everything so i decided to merge both versions together into one. it's been a long time since i last heard it. not since post-high school anyways i think. pretty explosive i will say!

didn't know that even around this time they were occasionally showing their pop punk and new wave sounds that eventually show up in their later albums like london calling and combat rock in some instances. also hearing the singles that some of the us tracks were on because the completionist in me said so. honestly think the cost of living (that i fought the law is from) might be their best release for me weirdly enough. four songs and they're all very good in my opinion.

francisco lópez - la selva

just a super relaxing nature recording of the amazon rainforest. theres some slight manipulation here and there but it is for the most part untouched.

michael stearns - planetary unfolding

admittedly i havent heard much berlin school outside of the likes of tangerine dream. reminds me, i need to revisit their stuff at some point. anywho, really digging the first track "in the beginning".

amadie breaux - ma blonde est partié / vas y carrement

it's actually more of a single but keeping it there for consistency purposes. i've always had a knack for 1920s type music and i loooooove the accordion on this. overall a really good single.

hecker - sun pandämonium

was listening to the first track during the night but i suddenly got sleepy hearing it so i saved it until just now. super cool sound textures i'm hearing.

everybell and whistle - everybody wrestle

twinkly inspired midwest emo. a bit more mathy than normal which is nice. apparently it was even produced by one of the people in american football which is cool to know.

marc baron / mark vernon - post-chance

a recording from two people who did not know each other manipulating each others recordings. it's very sparse, kind of encapsulated what i was feeling at the time when i was having a moment of depression.

bug bus piano - jurassic period dishwasher

didn't expect this to be as stunning as it should be judging by the genre and descriptor tags on this album but it reminds me a lot of stan brakhage, if he decided to make albums one day. a lot of his films has that "child-like yet mature" feel like im getting with this music. didn't even notice an hour had passed by because it felt a rather quick listen.

7seconds - the crew

short but one note straight edge hardcore punk record. i dont have much to say about it other than it was okay.

neurosis - through silver and blood

revisiting this for the first time since 2021 and holy shit i dont remember this being as heavy as i thought it did!! purify honestly reminds me a lot of tool's third eye in the climax part of the track. giving me the stank face during 8:17 into the track.

the crystal method - vegas

always a big fan of big beat stuff. i kind of love how psychedelic the record gets sometimes. makes me wanna check out more psytrance or something.

loveliescrushing - xuvetyn

unfortunately not my thing, as enticing as ambient shoegaze sounds to me. i do get the appeal however.

jupiter lander - s/t

i've heard from a user that this was considered to be one of the best emo revival records ever made, and while i can kind of see it, i had high expectations for the ep and they weren't exactly met the entire time. all the songs slapped but not to a higher plateu for me.

battles - gloss drop

iam williams is slowly becoming a bit of an obsession of mine recently with his stuff in don caballero and storm & stress. battles is not a band i really enjoy all too much but i do like how electronic their whole sound is, like some sort of titanic being. gloss drop surprisingly got some stuff out of me.

most surprising of all is the collaborators on the album, especially yamatsuka eye who's notably well known with boredoms, hanatarash, and working with artists like john zorn, sonic youth, otomo yoshihide, and mike patton. the music is basically just like their debut but more in line with math pop in some degree. fairly enjoyable.

kali malone - living torch

revisiting this lovely drone record while i wait for another album to download from the same artist. just as good as i remembered, II especially gives me a lot of feeling.

kali malone - the sacrificial code

fuuuuuuuuuck this is gorgeous. it honestly just reminds me of anna von hausswolff's all thoughts fly which is basically a carbon copy of what this album is i think. like almost down to a tee.

acronym & kali malone - the torrid eye

really cool collab ep from kali malone and acronym. very much in vain with ambient techno and dub techno in some ways.

the police - outlandos d'amour

havent heard this one since i did a 70s albums dive back in 2021 and i remembered the debut sounding surprisingly good but it's tighter than i remembered it being. so many good songs, punk as shit, and i have no idea why they're never considered to be power pop at all.

squarepusher - big loada

super solid ep from squarepusher. not as good as i was hoping. only heard it because i heard a live version of come on my selector and thought it was a super cool version of it.

la monte young - the well-tuned piano

relisten! i think im only gonna hear the first two hours of this but i've always loved how distant and broken this album sounds. the crazy thing to me is that it was all performed live in a span of 5+ hours with no stops. la monte young in general is a musician i heavily admire as someone who's into avant-garde type music.

the used - s/t

honestly i really like the first quarter of the album but i think it leans a little bit too much on the ballady side at points for my liking sometimes. otherwise, it's prime scene/emo.

tom and jerry - scooby's dreaming

banger jungle and breakbeat hardcore ep from start to finish.

off minor - the heat death of the universe

apparently it's from the dudes over in saeita as a side project of sorts from them. i dont know i thought this was pretty uninteresting outside of the first two tracks. sorry to the people who thought this was cool.

patife - corredor polonês

this shit is so fucking cool i don't even know how to begin. firstly, big fan of post-punk when it gets in the artsy side of things. second, this gets weiiiiird. "poema em linha reta"s precussion was super stimulating in the best way possible for me. the vocalists can get pretty expressive sometimes which i'm always a fan of if used right. would recommend for punk enjoyers. i myself need to dive deep into the world of the vanguarda paulista scene in brazil at some point.

nick keeling - a slow dance with someone who is leaving you

this album is just soul-crushing to me. it reminds me of all the past relationships i've gotten through in high school. i don't know, people thought i was too clingy or too affectionate for them for some reason. they might be right in some ways but they really made me feel really self-conscious about how i interact with people in an intimate level. hell even with my best friend that i was dating for a long while i wasn't exactly myself around her most of the time. i still tried my best to give her all the love in the world but theres only so much i could have done without thinking i was possibly doing too much.

mdc - millions of dead cops

to quote rateyourmusic user calys: "white punk moment on this one."

i don't know, this album is kind of fun despite the weird n-word usage on "dead cops / america's so straight". banger song but did they really have to use it to stir up controversy?

harry partch - u.s. highball

one of the oldest known avant-garde records in existence i think? idk, this thing is pretty weird and quite frankly gives me a bit of a headache hearing it so i think it did its job quite well.

the rapture - echoes

wanted to throw on something while i was doing a google spreadsheet on my endgame backlog full of different types of media. big fan of the techno/house sound that is kind of sprinkled throughout the record. the dance-punk tracks on their own are quite good and it has JUST the right amount of art punk that i enjoy.

weiss / cameron / hill - drumgasm

ex-machina

at first i thought it was a fairly predictable movie (and in some ways it kind of is) i was just not expecting this movie to go into so many twists throughout the middle of the film

Иди и смотри (come and see)

holy fuck, i had low expectations for this movie but.. man i'm so speechless. visuals are really stunning! honestly reminds me of a lot of 90s or 2000s films in some way. but man i was really feeling a lot of empathy towards flyora towards the ending of the film.