Bathing You in Reflective Bliss

Two new albums to survive these dark days

Turns out my brief essay on the demise of the music business got quite a bit of traction earlier this week.

But not just the entertainment industry feels increasingly bleak.

In these past months, it often appeared as if the very idea of liberal democracy was dismantling right in front of our eyes – and with it, basic human values like compassion and solidarity seemed to be going out the window.

Here in Germany, the pivot towards a hostile culture of selfishness, misogyny, racism, homo- and transphobia, anti-intellectualism and warmongering becomes more palpable by the day.

Berlin’s city council is also planning more disastrous funding cuts that will heavily impact the experimental and new music scene. Let’s keep supporting artists and spaces dedicated to non-popular (not: unpopular) music.¹

To avoid the news doomscrolling trap and enjoy some community instead, I’ve been going out to many small-scale concerts these past weeks – like free improv shows with loads of incense filling the room, that type of vibe.

At home I’ve been listening to a lot of 1960s and 1970s free jazz lately. It’s an era and a style of music I’m regularly returning to. That revolutionary, wild and powerful spirit feels apt for the time. It’s not nostalgia that drives me – I’m experiencing this music now, and it’s relevant now.

Still there are two new albums I want to recommend to you – one rather dark and melancholic, the other one dense and chaotic. Both just came out yesterday. I’ve included a few quotes from the artists too.

Take care of yourselves and each other,

Stephan

Poppy H – Treadwater Fury (Fort Evil Fruit, 2025)

Throughout 2024, this anonymous UK experimental musician released a flurry of diverse works – albums, tapes, EPs, collections, all predominantly recorded and mixed on their smartphone. I was blown away by their hauntingly beautiful album Grave Era, which inspired me to conduct an in-depth interview.

Poppy H’s newest full-length Treadwater Fury marks an exciting departure from their previous ambient sound collages, moving into minimalist electroacoustic textures while doubling down on the intense melancholia of their compositions. I reached out for a few statements on the genesis of the new material.

I love when I can’t immediately recognize how a piece was constructed. Which instruments did you employ on Treadwater Fury?

Poppy H: Acoustic guitar – a three quarter length I’ve had for eternity. Epiphone SG – battered and buzzing, no top E. Melodica. Piano. Synth. Zither. MicroKorg. Vocals. Field recordings. GarageBand app – some sounds on it that I messed around with. Washing machine – the rhythm grabbed me, so I had to grab it. I don’t have a bass guitar, so I tend to play any bass parts on acoustic guitar and drop it down an octave in the mix.

I continued with the patchwork process of previous records – improvisations across various instruments and field recordings married off to create new collective meaning and tone. What changed was that I made a conscious effort to let the pieces breathe – giving them more time and space than ever before. Space is the very hardest thing to compose – I adore hearing space in music but I’ve always been afraid of it in my own work.

What was also new was how I benefitted from visualising each new track as they unfolded. I saw them as inhabiting different parts of my brain which would light up as they experienced the opposing intended emotions. I love records with consistent vibes throughout, but I have to follow the feelings as they take hold and refuse to bury a sound just because it doesn’t conform to all the others. That said, it is perhaps my most consistent of albums sound wise? I don’t know.

So, a newfound discipline was the biggest difference between this record and previous ones – without that discipline, which came at the eleventh hour, it would have been a very different record. As ever, my phone was my mic and mixing desk – I can’t see a world where that ever changes.

Could you name some of the new album’s inspirations and reference points?

Unlike with previous releases, I couldn’t give you specific modern music influences on this record – even though I am always listening to new stuff and could reel off a huge list of great new albums and artists – because I was unwittingly leaning on older reference points outside of the contemporary experimental zone I’m usually moving in.

I got heavily into classical Italian soundtracks a couple of years ago – and some of the films themselves. The unashamed drama and melancholy of it all felt liberating. Listening back to it now, I can hear the impact Rocco and his Brothers had on me, and Bicycle Thieves – a pretty much unrelentingly downbeat work of art. So, I see now that I was drawing on cinema and their instrumental soundtracks far more than I thought. Then there are the sounds and visuals of Yasujirō Ozu’s wonderful films, and composer Joe Hisaishi’s work on the Studio Ghibli films that I’ve binged since a trip to Japan this time last year.

Closer to home, a Francis Bacon exhibition visit reaffirmed my appreciation for his work – as it explored relatable themes such as the fine line between love and hate, and internal and external battles. Chancing upon a series of old BBC documentaries looking at Britain’s cultural tribes was a timely find as it took me to an era I was attempting to recall – that of my parents’ youth in East London.

The album cover image is Leyton, London, in the 60s – my family are from Leytonstone, just down the road. I imagine the woman and the girl holding hands in the foreground to be my late nan and my mum – of course, it is not. I have trawled online images for hours of that area and era to see if I could find a photo of a family member when young – captured unknowingly in a moment in time.

The album cover image, courtesy of collector Lawrence Skuse, is the closest I could find. My mum is one of three sisters, and their dad, my grandad – known to all as Poppy, where my artist name comes from – died young. So, I like that there are only women present in the image, and even a sign saying ‘Ladies’. Some of the album titles are inspired by hazy memories of the east end – a different world to what it is today.

Were you shocked when you first heard the result of your sessions?

The record could have been so different, as I was making some unholy noise in the early sessions – mad beats at differing BPMs, alongside helter skelter guitar and piano parts. One of those early tracks was underpinned by a sample of me ordering a vegetarian breakfast in a local café – it is about five minutes of that set to strident baroque piano. There was a bit of a self-hating theme going on – with me as a mindless consumer. Quite insane stuff really.

Then two things happened, a death in the family of a lovely man, and me getting a melodica as a gift. I struggle showing emotion apart from about, and through, art, so the arrival of this simple, mournful instrument, acted as a necessary outlet for my feelings around our bereavement in the autumn. Both events saw me shelve all the tracks I’d been working on for months – yes, even ‘vegetarian breakfast’ – and put me in a whole new position within the production process, that of a more conscious and present composer and curator. I guess I got more focused on what I wanted to say through the new departure in sound.

But, yeah, I was still shocked at the album I was left with. The style and sound of Treadwater Fury is not one I could ever have planned for – ultimately, I take no credit or blame for it.

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photo: Gabrielle Clarke

Earthball – Actual Earth Music Volume 1 & 2 (Upset The Rhythm, 2025)

I’ve featured an in-depth portrait of this Canadian free improv/noise rock group here last year, when their mind- and speaker-blowing album It’s Yours came out.

A few days after our interview, bassist and vocalist Isabel Ford reached out to me. She found it important to add that due to their instant composition approach, nobody knows what Earthball might sound like in a few weeks or months. The band was still young, she said, and it was shortly before they would embark on a UK tour including a two-day residency at London’s Café Oto.

Earthball’s newest release, Actual Earth Music, is a live album that contains two vinyl-side-long excerpts from landmark shows in the group’s recent history, one coming from that exact residency.

The A-side was recorded on 4 August 2023, when they supported their musical spirit ancestors Wolf Eyes in Vancouver. Guitarist Jeremy Van Wyck considers this “the gig that sent us into orbit, really”.

“You’re scared of it”, Isabel Ford proclaims repeatedly at the beginning of the noise onslaught. After a couple of minutes, we’re standing in the midst of a dense storm of frantic drums, guitar feedback and skronking saxophone – one that keeps building and releasing, contracting and expanding, until it just floats away.

“It reminded me of Von Trier’s Melancholia: the sound of a large sphere coming toward you to bring doom”, van Wyck says. “However, this one reverses course, heading away to some other shore, bathing you in reflective bliss before saying goodbye – instead of ending humanity as we know it.”

Side B is an extract from one of the Oto residency shows on 21 May 2024 and features two experienced improvisers as stage guests: Steve Beresford on piano and Chris Corsano on drums.

“To say I felt nervous would be an understatement,” Jeremy admits. “Between the attitude of our guests and the vibe of the crowd, all nervous energy was dispelled and alchemically transformed into the sonic stew you hear here. An unforgettable night. The image of Steve looming over the grand piano, scraping children’s toys along the strings, creating a horrifically transcendent sound that brought tears to my eyes, will be with me forever.”

The band coaxes strange, unpredictable noises from their instruments; Isabel’s processed voice sounds like a broken robot from a 1970s sci-fi B-movie. Seven and a half minutes into the recording, saxophonist Liam launches into a solo that feels like a homage to Japanese free jazz madman Kaoru Abe over Corsano’s free-form drumming and Beresford’s disorienting single piano notes and clusters.

1. “Not all music is meant for all people – that’s pop music, and that’s not what I make. Neither do most musicians. Music that isn’t pop is actually a thing – it’s not just unpopular pop. There are innumerable genres of music that don’t attempt to speak to everyone at once.” (Damon Krukowski)