MARY OCHER — THE NARRATIVE (FIRST MOVEMENT)

How so much power exists in one minute and thirty-seven seconds of music! 'The Narrative (First Movement)' by Berlin composer and musician Mary Ocher exists in a state of defiance, atonal chords and stuttering staccato rhythms battling against a tide of silence, with such force exerted on the keys in some places that my own fingertips started aching.

An essentially minimalist piece, we move quickly from a conventional arpeggio into a frenzy of figuration, a simple melody exploded into frenetic collages of rapid-fire playing, notes cut up in a succession of glitching fractions of themselves, shifting between soft moments of surrender and violent fury — occasionally the left hand erupts in storms of thundering bass notes leaving a thick smoke of sustain in their wake.

We have a narrative, as intimated by the title of the piece. But in trying to spell out that narrative, in telling her story, Ocher jettisons the regulated ascending notes in triple time like a deadweight and takes the wheel, cutting through the void in sturdy acrobatics, siphoning her craft not to tell us listeners but rather show us the de-profundis-clamavi depths.

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• 🔔 Mary Ocher's 'The Narrative (First Movement)' has also been visualised by artist Boris Eldagsen in video form. Using generative AI, the video depicts a psychically pained man merging with, and being destroyed by, a derelict piano that folds in on itself, falls apart and deposits ephemera among other things, kind of like a dream in which one's teeth fall out, in a series of monochrome vignettes. You can watch the video here.
• 🔔 This piece of music is taken from her upcoming album Weimar which is will be released on 13th March 2026. You may, if you choose, pre-order the vinyl or digital form of the album on Bandcamp.

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LONG — FUIMOS ELECTRIC

The hope of warmer days and uncertain love lies in the glittering chimes and laid-back guitar of 'fuimos electric' by New York band long. We start appropriately enough with an audio walk in the park, what with the spring reverb drums and allegretto bass, the sun-summoning bossa-esque guitar chords. Lilting vocals weave themselves in: “Fuimos al parque / para conocernos un poco más...”¹

Lyrically (in Spanish, in case you didn't notice) the lines shift between statement-of-fact and figurative, such as “me mirabas como el río”² — the poetic contents of the heart wrapped in city-flavoured indie pop packaging.

The song grows in vignettes parallel to the love story told by the vocals – meeting each other in the park, sharing a bottle of wine, not knowing what to say. Before long, we are in a triumphal block party crescendo, crashing cymbals and brass breezily lifting us up and out of the park, out of the moment, to look back on all that has been, joy and more joy still in the unknowable tomorrows.

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¹ We went to the park to get to know each other a little more
² You looked at me like the river

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• 🔔 You may stream the song 'fuimos electric' by long over on Spotify, if you feel like it. In addition, you may see a video for the demo version of the song on YouTube also.

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「PREMIERE」COLIN RILEY, LOTTIE P, NIC PENDLEBURY & STEVE PRETTY — EBB AND FLOW

How do you capture the sea in sound? Maybe you'd record the sound of waves on a shoreline, or perhaps you'd focus on replicating the contrasting sides of the ocean, calm and catastrophic. Or, as is the case with 'Ebb and Flow', you create a piece of music that sounds instead like a grand adventure on the open seas.

"It's a huge blank canvas," says composer Colin Riley, "and we wanted to have lots of sounds to draw on."

Along with violist Nic Pendlebury, Riley is one half of Sonic Collaborations, the creative partnership behind 'Ebb and Flow' in its initial form. It began when the pair were tasked with creating a soundscape for visitors to the Cutty Sark (a late 19th-century tea clipper and once the fastest ship of its day).

"One of the pieces was crying out to be a song," says Riley, "and we really just followed our nose with it." For this they enlisted Lottie P (vocalist of London band Goat Girl).

The piece was 'Ebb and Flow'. It begins as if in ancipation of a voyage, pizzicato strings tense and poised with potential play a simple, shanty-aligned melody in kinetic syncopation with soft minimalist piano. Rising from this mist, slow vocals provide a textured sirensong crossed with a dawn chorus, aching for the land and sea simultaneously.

“Writing ‘sea music’ is a huge blank canvas and we wanted to have lots of sounds to draw on”

The percussion skitters, clattering like ropes fidgeting in the wind against sturdy a mast — in fact, these sounds are sampled rigging ropes, sampled and manipulated to form the sparse, echoing rhythm section of the song. Reflecting these rapid percussive elements, chopped vocals stutter throughout, providing an organic, human gabber that helps soften the harsh sounds of the ship.

The addition of a vocalist turned 'Ebb and Flow' into a song. But with the addition of trumpeter Steve Pretty, the song is elevated once again, and will be appearing in this form on Sonic Collaborations' upcoming album, Ocean Songs.

Pretty came aboard after performing back-to-back at sunrise with Nic Pendelbury at the UK's First Light Festival.

"Steve uses a lot of conch shell sounds treated with electronics in his recent music, and Nic uses electric viola with electronics, so there was a musical affinity," says Riley. "Plus, of course, Steve's work uses sounds that are literally from the ocean!"

As this piece of music continues onward, we hear the flugelhorn in all its splendour, adding not only a playful jazz lilt to proceedings but a sense of maritime charm. "The title of the track is so evocative," Pretty tells us. "When improvising flugel horn lines, I was very much working with this idea of overlapping, swelling, and the cyclical but unpredictable nature of the way that water - especially large bodies of water - moves."

Part epic voyage, part meditation on the nature of the sea itself, holding a mirror up to both ourselves and the briny deep, 'Ebb and Flow' showcases the power of collaborative songwriting — and how the life of a piece of music itself can evolve in fluid, oceanic ways.

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Ocean Songs · Ebb and Flow

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• 🔔 'Ebb and Flow' is out on 16th February, ahead of the upcoming album Ocean Songs, which is set for release on 24th March.
• 🔔 You can read more about the soundscape that Sonic Collaborations made for the Cutty Sark over here.

  "The idea for the soundscape is that it provides an alternative to the spoken audio guide," Riley says. "You listen in your headphones while walking around Cutty Sark. There’s no voiceover, just music and sounds of life at sea blended together, so it’s more meditative. We created music for different decks, each in three versions to match weather conditions from calm to near gale. Remixes if you like."

  Continuing, he says: "Participants in the immersive experience around the boat have an ever-shifting sonic experience, with the music changing automatically as they enter each deck, but they importantly also have some control. They can, in effect, make their own story by changing the weather conditions and hearing the music develop, growing or receding."

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MASAHIRO TAKAHASHI — DREAMIES

In 'Dreamies' we hear an awakening of the world. The slow trickle of water, the unfurling of leaves, the bursting of snowdrops through wet solid soil. It is a soundscape for the thawing of things, a farewell to winter while still on the threshold of its realm, with bare trees sparkling with crystallline fragments of rain.

Created by the Tokyo-born, Toronto-based composer and musician Masahiro Takahashi, the track is our first glimpse of his new album, In Another. For this project Takahashi builds on collaborative approach that characterised his previous album Humid Sun (2023), adding a small orchestra's worth of musicians to enact his creative vision.

The result of this – of his "trading Ableton sequences for lead sheets" – is a rich, full sound evolves with an organic quality of live music, an unseen magic in the air. In this musical mapping 'Dreamies' feels like an aestheticised symphonic tuning up, simple and synthesised to begin with, adding textures and different qualities of sound in a veritable sonic buffet, as if filling out the lines of a painting.

But there is also more than just a nod to the embryonic chamber pop that Brian Wilson brought to life on The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds — the intricacies and chimes and dynamic progressions of 'Let's Go Away For Awhile', for example, and the lavish layers in the final third of 'You Still Believe In Me'. In this regard, Takahashi's own singular vision and vocal additions in 'Dreamies' feel very kindred.

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• 🔔 As previously mentioned, 'Dreamies' is taken from Masahiro Takhashi's upcoming album In Another. It's due out 20th March via Telephone Explosion. If you like what you hear you may march yourself over to Bandcamp and pre-order your very own vinyl or digital copy of the album.

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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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