Eluvium PIANOWORKS (2019)

nursery music for your future Sorbonne dropout

Kelly Moran ORIGIN (2019)

it can take a minute to get lured into Moran's prepped piano, imagine waking up in a strange castle and hearing a distorted but familiar melody exploring and changing itself in the distance, and you explore the grounds and can't find the source anywhere so you suppose it must be the castle itself, some captured energy repeating, never dissipating, defying even Lord Kelvin and his damned thermodynamics

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma TRACING BACK THE RADIANCE (2019)

He has an MDiv in Buddhism and it fucking sounds like it! Not ambient nor minimalism, more like essentialism, have some tones that you want to play with, use a variety of instruments to frame them when helpful, and disappear when not.  How do you take your tea? Yes!

Carly Rae Jepsen DEDICATED (2019)

We finally just got to see everybody's Canadian girlfriend a couple weekends ago, and it was as delightful and uplifting as you could imagine.  The room was full of librarians!  And kids, and buff gay men in jean shorts, and the assorted other phenotypes of incurable sweetheart.

I was slightly let down the first few listens, as my expectations were unreasonably high after E*MO*TION, but I think I was mostly underwhelmed by the lead singles choices.  The top five are excellent and it all hangs together really well. 

5. Happy Not Knowing
4. Right Words Wrong Time
3. Too Much
2. Want You In My Room
1. I'll Be Your Girl

Fennesz AGORA (2019)

I was always interested but not sold on Fennesz--the glitchiness interrupting the beauty seemed an easy way to defy genre expectations, a sort of feedback-makes-us-legit trick that lame rock bands use in concert.  Here he's on his back on scaffolding, laying tempera on ceilings above chapels busy with weddings before the war.