Discover Blogly: Listen to new projects from Fields of Mist, Ibaaku, Hot Garbage, and more

Since its inception, techno has imagined different futures far beyond the dancefloor. Even without vocals, the music can use some aspect of our unjust present as kindling for a fire that casts shadows we’ve never seen before. Reading the track titles of Biosphere Farmers, the new project from Fields of Mist, it’s impossible not to imagine some kind of Ursula Le Guin-esque egalitarian biopunk space utopia. In the same way that the mythology of Drexciya feels fully baked into every note, Biospore Farmers is a journey whose shadowy corners and bottomless trenches feel deeper and more inviting with every listen.

In every way, Biospore Farmers is an improvement on Illuminated60, Fields of Mist’s debut album. The 2022 project was full of formidable promises, journeying through ambient techno, house, and funk; compared to Biosphere Farmers, that music is relatively tentative. The second project’s mix is more lush, and the music is far more labored over in the details of its collision of styles (it’s also more epic in scope, a fact reflected by its extended track lengths). Album opener “Sunrise On Moss Landing Platform 5” displays this new energy from the jump, all plush drums and Dam-Funk melodies in ambient techno synth patches. There’s a balance between meditation and momentum throughout the album: “Astral Projection Spores” builds from classic techno rhythms and melodies into something far more complex, before “Biological Lair” offers the project’s most abrasive moment with its noisy, lunch-table rhythms over electronics that are both glistening and charged with acid house skronk. Wherever Fields of Mist are conjuring with this sound, it’s someplace you’ll never want to leave — Jordan Darville

Following his revelatory 2016 debut album Alien Cartoon and two Neo Dakar mixtapes in 2021 and ‘22, respectively, Joola Jazz is easily Ibaaku’s most fully realized, intertextual project to date. Blending touchstones of its semi-titular genre with stylings evolved from the traditional music of Ibaaku’s birthplace, Casamance — the southern strip of Senegal that encircles The Gambia — as well as the club and hip-hop sounds of the country’s capital, where he lives now.

Though the record’s foundations are deeply rooted in West Africa, Ibaaku’s seamless fusion of distinct styles suggests a free-flying production approach: soaring high to survey all the moving pieces from a bird’s eye view, then swooping down to ground level for a more granular look; seeing both the forest and each individual tree, and knowing when to emphasize one or the other. Opener “Bombolong” sounds like glitched-out, polyrhythmic dubstep, whereas the standout mid-album track “Jazz Griots” centers heavenly singing from Alibeta, resonant spoken-word poetry, and bright jazz keys, before hand-struck percussion, double bass and elastic electronics enter the mix. The core of “Btwinen” is the trio of Dioba’s heavily reverbed vocals, a tactile desert blues guitar, and hand drums, with auxiliary elements ebbing and flowing at an unhurried, confident pace. “Naboom,” on the other hand, features a rare groove sample chopped footwork style, then nearly subsumed by a squelching synthesizer and galloping drums. And “Ancestral Intelligence,” the album’s lead single and closer, is a drifting odyssey across a looped, second-long sample that’s alchemized into an eight-minute drone, ultimately functioning as a sort of pedal point for Ibaaku’s experiments in rhythm and texture. — Raphael Helfand

Hot Garbage make psychedelic surf-rock that sounds like an aural fever dream, if that fever dream involved the Beach Boys embarking on their own Magical Mystery Tour where they only played underground cellars across Venice Beach — while also wanting a taste of whatever the Ramones were doing. Oh, and if the Beach Boys were from Toronto instead of California. Their latest release, Precious Dream, is a fuzzed-out, reverb-drenched offering with rollicking surf-rock guitars and psychedelic mayhem, a smoke cloud of garage pop and the hypnotism of krautrock. They play with doom-rock and punishing repetition on “Snooze You Lose” and “Tunnel Traps”; straight-up post-punk on “Blue Cat”; and witchy darkwave on “Lowering.” Surf’s up: get ready for a torrent of noise and feeling. — Cady Siregar

Jack Whitescarver and Coco Goupil's robust and pastoral sound mixes electronic drums with blues guitar to create something a little industrial and a little bit rural; like Nine Inch Nails if Trent Reznor kicked back on the patio. On their debut album Mother Engine, Amiture decamped to upstate New York and got lost in a thicket of samplers, amps, turntables, and more equipment to create their dense, gloopy take on wistful Americana; whatever they found in the greenery suits them. Before recording the album, Amiture's music leaned in a more austere, impersonal direction but Mother Engine is a notable surge forwards; full of longing ("Dirty") and, on "Cocaine," stark paternal revelations. Whitescarver's voice blows through the album like a cold breeze. Whether he's "howling in the hole" ("Billy's Dream") or struggling to remain in the light ("Law + Order") he sings with the desperation of a man on the edge of losing it all. In Goupil, however, he has a foil to color in between his charcoal admissions. Their work on Mother Engine, whether it's adding sleek grooves or jagged edges where necessary, elevates the album from genre splicing into something standalone and eminently replayable. — David Renshaw