CHARLOTTE DAY WILSON — IF ONLY

'If Only' is deceptively conventional. We have R&B vocals, keys and a groove; structurally, we have verses, pre-choruses, choruses, post-choruses, a bridge. But additions and quirks that elevate this song into a shining beacon of timeless romance, a paragon of bygone pop.

The creation of Toronto-based producer, singer and musician Charlotte Day Wilson, 'If Only' brims with textures that make it a fully-furnished room of a song. Glassy keys glisten, resonating with fireplace warmth, providing a juxtaposition between cold and hot, outer and inner — the yearning heart. Drums tick and bump with subtle kicks and snares, bass bubbles and booms keenly below, while now and then synth vox hop up and down a keyboard following the brassy voicebox fuzz of saxophone melody.

It's a flavourful mix. The approach to thick chorus and almost sparse verses is also a satisfying contrast, as is the cheerful Charlie Brown-esque intro melody against the expressive rising chorus, like the difference between accepting lost love with something like nonchalance, and then the sudden wave of longing reality, a feeling matured.

Day Wilson's lyrics to 'If Only' spell out this ache of loss told in the music. Take the chorus, for example, a play on counterpoint with deep, heart-rending bass, keys and vocals in wondrous syncopation.

And times move slowly without you
Heaven if only you could hold me
and turn it all around

The hopeful prayer-like tone of the chorus then shifts in mood for the final two lines, where clocks have stopped and grief is currency instead of seconds:

Tell me the time comes back
Still stuck in visions of what we had

In this lyrical weaving, her vocal tones add to the song's textural wonderland, alternating between deep silkiness and skipping acrobatics, layers upon layers to give a rich fullness to the sound. It's this overall fullness combined with the classic R&B structure of the song that gives it such timeless mystique.

To this end: Are we listening to this in 2026? Or could we intersperse this with muted crowd appreciation and feel as though we are four fifths of the way through a hazy live concert in 1992, candles lit on the stage, a smoke machine, a collective swoon in the audience as Day Wilson's masterwork sweeps through yet another gorgeously evocative chord change — are we there?

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• 🔔 The gorgeous 'If Only' is taken from Charlotte Day Wilson's new album Patchwork. You can purchase it digitally over on Bandcamp.

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SELKOLLA — SOLARIUM

'Solarium' by composer and pianist Selkolla (who is named after a being from a spooky chapter in Icelandic legend; real name Sara Jackson-Holman) does more than simply summon Erik Satie. But you'd be correct in hearing his ghost in this piece of music.

"I absolutely love Satie," Jackson-Holman tells us over email. "I learned Gymnopédie No. 1 when I was in third grade, and it was memorably one of my favorite pieces I learned growing up. I love the spaciousness of his pieces, and the way that they’re gently supportive rather than flashy and demanding."

Certainly there is Satie in 'Solarium', but there is also a sensitivity to pop melody that can only have come from a cocktail of influences on a modern musician; the four-note ascending melody in the mid-section, for example, is tinged with pre-chorus preamble, the stepping stones before tumbling into a Lana Del Rey-esque refrain. And then there are flourishes that feel more virtuosic, Chopin-flavoured, showcasing Jackson-Holman's classical background.

Written with "a memory of sun on water, the feeling of being suspended and weightless in a deep green lake", 'Solarium' serves as "a sonic portal" for the composer, taking her back to this time. It's achieved through this Satie-level intentional simplicity, and in its three-part, sonata-esque brevity.

Themes are introduced, reversed and inversed, transposed into the relative minor and recapitulated in the final third — a reflection of the constant cycle of memory and the fluid nature of our connection to recollections as we hark back, ache with yearning, and return to hazy remembrance. And all played with a seamlessly phrased singing tone — wizardry, an incantation for that "sonic portal".

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• 🔔 The disarmingly simple 'Solarium' is Selkolla's first foray into the classical world. It is currently available to stream on Spotify.

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MORIMOTO NAOKI — INSIDE IX - CONNECTION

Stillness pervades 'Inside IX - Connection' by Japanese ambient musician morimoto naoki — the kind of stillness that could, on some days, invite a certain melancholy into the air. Instead morimoto's delicate soundscape, intended for listening within four walls (and ideally with a view), captures introspection that is calm over fragile, peaceful rather than close to collapse.

That said, the sounds that skip and chitter throughout this piece of music feel as though they could fit in the palm of your hand. We find toy-like scrapings and found-sound aesthetic, varying layers of background fuzz that shear through the dust of everyday silence like an old electric fan; high-pitched artificial beeps and electronic twangs add to the sense of miniaturised aesthetic.

Aside from casting a scale model spell on one's domestic surroundings, morimoto's guitar graces 'Inside IX - Connection' with half-tunes, melodies that never start, anti-refrains that in their simultaneous quietude and strong non-statement noodling elevate procrastination to a thing of beauty. We drift into his audio daydream, refreshed and ready for our own.

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• 🔔 'Inside IX - Connection' is taken from morimoto naoki album Still Inside, released by Lontano Series (a division of Sardinian indepedent label ROHS!). You can purchase the album digitally and as a compact disc over on Bandcamp, should you so wish.

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「PREMIERE」PEIRIANT — SONG IN PARTS

At the risk of sounding prosaic, 'Song in Parts' is a song in parts. But that's putting it too simply. The first musical morsel taken from Plant – the upcoming third album by Hay-on-Wye-based duo Peiriant (Rose Linn-Pearl, violin, and Dan Linn-Pearl, guitar) – rather than "parts", or even the modest label of "song", this piece of music evolves like a tone poem (see the dynamic waveform on Soundcloud for visual evidence).

Folk-spun violin and glimmering guitar strike a balance between earthy and mystical, the atmosphere deepening with columns of drone, dipping into quietude with theremin-esque synths calling like slow electric whippoorwills. It's a contrast of textures, the organic skitter of bow on strings vs. blooms of synthetic bass — part jam session, part country dance, part ambient reaction to space and sound.

Structurally reminiscent of a sonata, the folksome melody that introduced 'Song in Parts' at the beginning returns in the final richly layered portion of the piece, where in bright bold tones it almost erupts into a jig among the watching trees, but restrains itself.

'Song in Parts' speaks of the illusions folk songs have always cast over their listeners – of better days, spring, winter, of outlaws, love, landscapes – stories fashioned by strings and vocal chords. Except Peiriant do more: not only do their violins soar and spin grass-fed cloud-borne melodies, their guitars picking notes like threads of tales, but true to their name (peiriant means machine in Welsh) they drone and beep, glistening with spells worked in production, granting them further capacity to evoke unnamed, unknown things and feelings in the air.

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• 🔔 'Song in Parts' is the first single from Peiriant's new album Plant (their third; and which means "child" in Welsh), due out on 27th February via Recordiau Nawr. You can pre-order it as a limited edition 12" vinyl, or indeed as in compact disc form, over on Bandcamp.
• 🔔 The album artwork is taken from Violette enters the world by glass artist, painter and sculptor Amber Hiscott.

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FLOOR BABA — DO NOT LOOK AWAY

In 'DO NOT LOOK AWAY' Pittsburgh-based producer and visual artist FLOOR BABA (Jesse Martin) takes us on a journey to the suburbs where all is not what it seems. Well, it's more than seeming not what it is. Panning over low-poly renders of greenery-lined streets, playgrounds and parking lots, we see trees fragmented in post-exploded stillness, trucks chewed by digital rot, skies sinking into corroded community pools.

Over this, with no regard to x or y axes, stomp faceless figures remiscent of Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask-era ReDead (for those unfamiliar, see here). As the title suggests, in Martin's animated illustration we are privy to the things we usually look away from — in the melted, corroded visuals we sense the unease that lies behind apparent perfection, while the ReDead-esque figures symbolise those who trample unchecked over the green grass and picket fences and, by extension, over the lives of others.

It's all soundtracked perfectly. Cricket-like chirps and destructed background fuzz add supplementary percussion the boom-tick of a forboding beat, while echoing detuned synth vox flutter unsettlingly on a bed of disarmingly warm chords that move in impresonal lounge-flavoured progression. In the final third, we enter a quasi-West Coast groove with a flute refraining a simple melody over clanging synthetic plucked strings. Martin mixes ambient textures with a more attention-forward dynamic to create an atmosphere that is at once detached but invested in the accompanying scenes.

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• 🔔 For more FLOOR BABA fun, you might want to check out their most recent album waking, self-described "experiments in soft music" that are full of incredibly pleasing noises and soundscapes. You can do this by tapping or clicking here to move your digital attention to Bandcamp.

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AUS + THE HUMBLE BEE — BELOW THE SURFACE WE SHIMMER AND SHINE

The connection between music and place is inextricable, both the power of the former to soundtrack the latter, and for location to alter our listening experience. This is deftly put into practice by Tokyo-based producer and musician aus (Yasuhiko Fukuzono) on 'Below the Surface We Shimmer and Shine', a track originally intended to be listened to whilst bathing in an onsen — a hot spring, thousands of which are nestled in the forested folds of Japan's mountainous interior.

This piece of ambient music, with additional production magic courtesy of Manchester-based the humble bee singularly encapsulates the onsen experience. In its granular textures are promises of mineral goodness, countless intricate rough-hewn gemstones that speak of hygiene in body and mind, while a golden glimmer of sound illustrates a refraction of light in the hot spring waters.

Not only the onsen itself and its ephemeral liquidity but its surroundings, captured by aus in his field recording work, are brought to life. A coarse backdrop echoes a bristling tree-clad mountainside and the vast unknowable nature that surrounds the onsen town. Icy tuned percussion hints at frigid winter air contrasted with the waves of warm synth representing the steaming hot spring waters themselves. (A warm bath outdoors is super nice).

Though there's a contrast between human warmth and our desire to control nature (i.e. bathing in an onsen, comfortable hotel surroundings), and nature in its giant forboding splendour (i.e. the reason hot springs exist naturally, the harshness of the mountains), here they exist timelessly and harmoniously etched in sound.

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• 🔔 'below the surface we shimmer and shine' is taken from the collaborative album Chalybeate, which is scheduled for release on 13 February via flau. Originating as a sonic document of the onsen (hot spring) town Ikaho, Gunma Prefecture, by aus during a month-long stay, he enlisted the humble bee (Craig Tattersall, known for his releases for labels like Dauw and IIKKI) for production and mixing duties.

  The album is available for pre-order on Bandcamp, either in compact disc or vinyl form.

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[PREMIERE] JOSS JAFFE × JIM WEST × KAZU MATSUI — ACROSS THE OCEAN

A broad spectrum of ambient, instrumental music is written about on yes/no. Rarely does it follow a formula; creativity has a way of being unpredictable, even within the constraints of adherening to particular aesthetics espoused by whatever genre one has sought to somehow inhabit. But still when we think of "ambient music" there is a certain mental image that pops up.

Why? Being ambient does not have to be the sonic equivalent of clean lines and polished concrete. Be unobtrusive, yes; create a calm atmosphere, yes; but there are many ways to be and create such things. Case in point: 'Across the Ocean'.

A collaboration between musician Joss Jaffe, award-winning guitarist Jim West (decades-long guitarist for "Weird Al" Yankovic) and shakuhachi master Kazu Matsui, who's contributed to movie scores from Willow to Jumanji, this piece of music takes a different path to reach the meditative, refraining realm at the heart of ambient music.

Jaffe had already recorded two albums with West – Aum Akua (2022) and Santhi (2024) – but it was a chance meeting with Matsui that led to his involvement in the project. Jaffe explains that he was performing with TAKURO (Takuro Kubo, guitarist for Japanese rock band Glay) in Tokyo when Matsui was brought on as a special guest. "We hit it off," he says via email, thanks to their shared experience playing with many different world music artists.

In 'Across the Ocean' the trio find a singular groove that summons the vast ocean under a vaster sky. Flowing chorused guitar melody sets the piece in motion, a drum heaped in considered reverb deepening the sense of space as it and guitar begin a slow swaying call-and-response, as if between continents. The texture of Matsui's shakuhachi adds to the shifting momentum of the piece, like running a hand over raw silk — soft but teeming with organic detail.

The track is a fluid mix of post-rock jamming and the reflective nature of suizen (literally "blowing meditation", the Zen practise of mindfulness while playing flute). Though uncharacteristic of what may be called ambient music, there is no lure to snag listeners into feeling any particular emotion, no lyrics to inform you of the musicians' own feelings. Instead we have a mesmeric, fitingly oceanic sense of calm.

'Across the Ocean' shows that ambient music – an evocative blend of sounds and spaces between intended as a canvas daydremaing and soundtracking the everyday – can take many different shapes.

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• 🔔 You are free to listen to, and purchase a digital copy of, 'Across the Ocean' over on Bandcamp. You may also stream it on Spotify among other platforms for such things.

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ERIK HALL — STRUMMING MUSIC (CHARLEMAGNE PALESTINE)

Minimalist composer Charlemagne Palestine's 1974 piano composition 'Strumming Music' is an intriguing of music. Beginning with just a couple of notes, struck over and over again with the sustain pedal pressed down, each note blends into the next creating a chord. But being played as singular notes spilling into each other rather than a strict chord, a natural wave begins in the spillover between one frequency and the next, creating an glimmering soft ambient drone beneath the hefty percussion of each note.

Gradually we are hypnotised as Palestine adds more notes in to the proceedings, increasing the thickness of the sonic mist that gathers beneath the hammering hands. The tempo increases gradually and you're caught in the frantic playing, the untethered yet very controlled trance-like energy of it all, and at the same time soothed by the waves of sound that ooze from the overlaps and sustain. Slowly built crescendoes appear like a sunrises, hands moving down the keyboard, the sound less icy, richer and roaring.

And all this for 50 or so minutes. It's little wonder that Palestine, counted among the vanguard of minimalist music, preferred the title maximalist: while the approach may seem minimalist compared to a Bach fugue, for example, or Ravel's 'Gaspard de la nuit', the maximalism is in the dynamic of the music. There is no minimalism in the magnitude of those interweaving frequencies, stacking note and chord upon note and chord to produce whirring waves of powerful sound. (But, to be fair, the maximalist properties are truly grounded in minimalism: it all begins simply, with a rapid alternation between E and B).

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Charlemagne Palestine composed 'Strumming Music' as a commission for avant-garde French label Shandar

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'Strumming Music' is left in the earth like valuable shining carbon, until now, half a century or so later, the weight of time and earthly forces, but mainly of composer and musician Erik Hall, have condensed the piece, crystallising it into a 14-minute diamond. Hall's interpretations of minimalist music have captured attention; in 2020 his painstaking work on reinterpreting Music For 18 Musicians compelled its composer (Steve Reich) to personally congratulate him in writing. His rendition of 'Strumming Music' may earn him similar praise.

Hall preserves the foundation and intent of the original, repeating notes and chords, the sustain creating a heady all-encompassing flood of harmonious frequencies. However, with felted piano and the addition of guitars, which in a nod to the title are literally strummed, his version is a warmer and more intricately textured piece. Gone are the glassy, hammered notes of the original, its woody, thundering resonance, the cold clanging ferocity of Palestine's piano.

Instead, Hall gives us a different, more measured intensity in his flowing performance, with a more intimate, organic flavour to the recording as a whole compared to expansive feel of the original. A lot of this has to do with the recording and production process; Hall's layering of piano and guitar, among other things, immediately sets it apart from Palestine's 50-minute behemoth, for which he used a concert-ready Imperial Bösendorfer — a far cry from the Yamaha spinet (among other things) used by Hall.

Cosy rather than cosmic, cocooned thus in a gentler aesthetic and contained in a more digestible 14-minute, Erik Hall's 'Strumming Music' is a hot take on the original, an inspired update for our modern times that speaks of a collective nesting era, us behind windows and wood panels insulated from without.

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• 🔔 Erik Hall's very hot take of 'Strumming Music' by Charlemagne Palestine is taken from his latest release Solo Three. Released by Western Vinyl, it also features interpretations of guitarist-composer Glenn Branca's 'The Temple of Venus Pt. 1', 'A Folk Study' by composer of electronic music Laurie Spiegel and another piece by Steve Reich, 'Music for a Large Ensemble'. You may purchase Solo Three in vinyl form or indeed CD form, if you so wish; both are available on Bandcamp.

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CHINO YOSHIO — そのうちいいことあるよ

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'Someday, something good will happen' — so says the translated title of Japanese composer Chino Yoshio's latest piece. These words form part of the poignant refrain sung by collaborator Michiru (Michiru Tamaki), whose vocals ring with far-off hope. Michiru, a lyricist and doujin singer, brings more than a hint of anime OST to the song, resulting in a decidedly J-pop aesthetic.

But Yoshio's ambient approach to composition results in something different to pure J-pop — something meditative and magical, with the warm silky tones of his synth creating a smooth texture that underpins everything, wrapping it in a gossamer veil. Particularly evocative are the strings provided by MIZ (Mizuho Mori) — a prolific composer and musician who with credits in the classical, pop and video game music (including Final Fantasy Record Keeper) worlds.

Lyrically and sonically, Yoshio pieces it together like a modern-day, minimalist passacaglia: sombre and somewhat serious, yes, but also an optimistic mantra for simple wishes.

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• 🔔 If you really enjoyed 'そのうちいいことあるよ' by Chino Yoshio you can even purchase it on vinyl, if you like.

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MIDORI JAEGER — EXASPERATE

'Exasperate' feels like a heist. It's the way cellist midori jaeger plays her instrument in a syncopated dance of pizzicato swirl, body-popping its way through a what might as well be a tangle of red lasers and tip-toeing through shadows. It's fitting, given that jaeger says the song is centred on the "overpowering urge to break away from old patterns, to so desperately want the new at any cost, but to feel overwhelming regret for things lost." It makes sense that we have this sense of minimal noir jazz, like a break-in, except this is a break-out — from the old and what no longer serves, but to what, and at what cost?

"I’ll leave this door wide open / To remember how you filled my days, oh but now / I want something unfamiliar, unpredictable" she sings, amidst a lyrical labyrinth delivered in jaeger's cool tones and tumbling vocal style.

On a broadly jazz-inflected canvas, the London-based composer paints a bristling blend of organic and artifial, with icy reverb on her woody cello lines and understated synth gently blooping alongside intricate clattering percussion (provided by co-producer Felix Higginbottom). It feels earthy yet augmented, an idiosyncracy that more or less reflects the song's raison d'etre: restlessness, the desire and constant push for newness. Though sonically harmonious, this cocktail of living instruments and the synthetic figuratively creates the tension inherent in an unnatural pairing, a desperation like a tree wanting to uproot and sprint off into the sunset.

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• 🔔 'Exasperate' is taken from (Un)planted (due out 9th March), the result of ten days of recording in Lisbon. It's the first in a pair of upcoming EPs by midori jaeger.
• 🔔 Another track has already been released from the EP, namely 'dark green' — gentler and warmer than 'exasperate', but with a similar minimalism and that same characteristic stamp of living-and-breathing crossed with buttons-and-waveforms.
• 🔔 The EP's confessional cover art (as seen above) is the work of Glasgow-based photographer Inigo Blake.

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SAVNKO — WHYUFALLIN

Italian producer savnko delivers a high-octane treat with 'whyufallin', a breakcore number that mixes the symphonic heights of Balearic-leaning dance music with the murk and crunch of various lofi-infused '-core' offshoots. The beat scampers and soars alternately, intricate yet destructed, providing the jet fuel that underpins the rising synths and glimmering syncopated chord stabs, the pitched vocals like rare polygonal birdsong. And, despite the variegated textures and vitality of the track, there's conscious attention to a minimal soundscape here.

Ultimately, and if the title is anything to go by, in this track the Milan-based producer illustrates troubled flight and hindered movement — the desire to ascend or push forward while weighed down by futility, fear, anything that anchors us. 'Why are you falling? What is holding you back?' Or to put it another way: it's the last lap on Rainbow Road and you're in 11th but still you push on to the finish.

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• 🔔 'whyufallin' by savnko is taken from his BIGTHINGS EP, which you can listen to via spotify or apple music if you like.
• 🔔 You also might like to check out savnko's previous work, such as his notgood@sports EP for Milan label 51beats, where he exhibits a decidedly more analogue approach and aesthetic.

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WET LEG — POKEMON

There is some joy in Wet Leg titling this song 'pokemon' (or should I say Nurse Joy, right?). Mostly because, when 'Chaise Longue' popped into this material plane back in 2022, I never clocked them for a band that'd name a song after this mega-franchise. But that's just a small joy.

Lyrically, the 'pokemon' weaves a low-key less on-the-run Thelma and Louise love story. "Oh, to be yours, to be driving away..." sings frontwoman Rhian Teasdale, painting a poetic picture with cute couplets like

But nothing hits like you and me
"I love you, " I say casually

and

You taste so sweet, like grenadine
You are my favourite human being

There are a couple of references to partying, what with the grenadine (above) and getting "another round". Starting the song with "Get lost, get loose..." feels like an echo of famed rock hedonist Jim Morrison, who utters the words "Get loose!" in the intro for 'Changeling', the first track on L.A. Woman (1971), his final album with The Doors.

A more obscure reference can be found: "Giddy up, you want to go faster? / Call me the demon headmaster" — quite a throwback to a British TV series from the '90s called The Demon Headmaster (it was about a headmaster who was a demon). It is followed by the line that names the song (and another '90s reference): "You just gotta choose me, baby, yeah, I'll be your Pokémon."

Showing how far the Teasdale (and the band) has come, the chorus features a line about driving from Isle of Wight to Tokyo, which is really quite a long way culturally, population-wise, and geographically. Ultimately, it's a driving song, a mood evoked not only through the road-tripping lyrics but in the galloping rhythm of the track, the gleaming guitars like a half-setting sun glinting on the metallics of a car.

The video for the 'pokemon' basically illustrates the thoughts and feelings evoked within the song, except in place of another human being it's about a woman who's in a relationship with a giant egg. Which, incidentally, makes it feel a lot more Tamagotchi-coded than Pokémon related.

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• 🔔 The video for 'pokemon' by Wet Leg was directed by Elliott Arndt (from the band Faux Real, who often support Wet Leg on tour). The woman in the relationship with the giant egg is played by Alice Longyu Gao, who is a DJ, producer and all-round artist in her own right.
• 🔔 'pokemon' is, of course, taken from Wet Leg's much-anticipated second album moisturizer, which was released in July 2025 via Domino. You may stream the album, purchase it in vinyl form or digitally by heading over to Bandcamp.

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