Forty Minutes Of Music For Sunday

Today's mix is just some music that seemed to fall together well. I was rediscovering some tunes from five years ago, some of them by ambient/ Balearic duo Seahawks*, and started weaving them and some much more recent tracks into one piece. No theme, just some music, mainly ambient or in the ambient area, I like and that strikes a chord with me right now. 

Forty Minutes Of Music For February 2026

• Seahawks: Islands
• Kevin McCormick: Passing Clouds
• Hawksmoor: Storm Bird- Storm Dreamer
• Le Carousel: Echo Spiegel (Psychedelic Mix)
• Private Agenda: Malanai Ascending (Seahawks Remix)
• Thurston Moore: Asperitas
• Boards Of Canada: Olson Version 3 (Peel Session)
• Olodum: Farao Divindade Do Ogito (Pandit Pam Pam Deep Into The Bowel Of A Dub)
• Maria Somerville: October Moon

Islands is from Seahawks 2014 album Paradise Freaks, a beautiful piece of music that comes in at under two minutes long but which says and suggests so much in that time. It's the final track on Paradise Freaks, a short closer after an hour of longer tracks that seems to sum the whole album up. 

Kevin McCormick is a guitarist from Manchester, who should be better known than he is, whose early 80s recordings were recently re- issued and who plays on the 12" from Arrival that came out on Before I Die last month, a highly recommended release. Passing Clouds is from October 2024, a guitar meditation on sky watching.

Hawksmoor's Am I Conscious Now? will be out on Before I Die soon and is going to be one of the best ambient releases of 2026. Last year a two track EP called Life Aboard The International Space Station came out, reprising two unreleased tracks from 2021- one of them was this one, named after a JG Ballard short story. Storm Bird- Storm Dreamer is several guitars, acoustic and electric, playing together.  

Le Carousel is Phil Kieran from Belfast. Next month he's going to release one of 2026's best post- Weatherall/ electronic albums, The Humans Will Destroy Us. Last year's WE're All Gonna Hurt was a big tune round Bagging Area way and Echo Spiegel came out right at the end of last year. Phil's own Psychedelic Mix is an ambient/ psychedelic journey, four minutes of beatless, floaty, slightly trippy synths that spin further and further with each passing bar.

Private Agenda are a duo split between London and Amsterdam. Their six track mini- album Submersion came out in May 2021- remixes of material from their Ilse de Reve album. Seahawks created something spectacularly otherwordly with their remix of Malanai Ascending. Malanai it turns out is a gently cooling breeze found in coastal parts of Hawaii which makes perfect sense when you listen to the music. 

Thurston Moore's Asperitas came out last Monday, a ten minute guitar instrumental with drum machine taken from a six track album of instrumentals based on the skies as seen in England, wales and Ireland. All six tracks are named after types of cloud. Asperitas is a total joy, thudding primitive drum machine and Thurston's chilled, repetitive and evocative guitar parts. 

Now I'm looking at the tracks I've chosen for this mix and wondering if there is a theme after all, one I wasn't even aware of as I was pulling the tracks together- islands, clouds, skies, storms, breezes... 

I've been on a Boards Of Canada binge recently and their Peel Session, released by Warp in 2019 but recorded for Peel back in 1999, has been on repeat. Olson is one of four tracks from the session, the one that made the most sense in this mix.

My friend in Sao Paulo Eduardo records as Pandit Pam Pam and has been featured at this blog several times. Last month he sent me two new tracks, one out at the end of the month and also this one, an edit of a song celebrating the Pharaohs and deities of ancient Egypt. Eduardo said his wife was listening to it and his kids loved it too and it drew him in, and with carnival approaching he did a new version, something dark, danceable and dubby. Mardi Gras is on Tuesday next week, 17th February, and the carnival started over this weekend- it seemed apt to put it into this mix.

Maria Somerville's album Luster came out last year and I slept on it a bit, not really appreciating it, or just giving it enough time, until recently. It's an album inspired by the mythic and the real, the wild coastal landscape of Connemara, Ireland, a mystical swirling record that blurs ambient, early 80s 4AD and dreampop. Another subliminal nature nature- how strange that this only became apparent after pulling the tracks together and I began writing about them.

* Maybe this was subliminal influence from the Superbowl, not a sporting event I take any interest in, but Seattle Seahawks were in the Superbowl- the final I think we call it in most other sports- and they beat the New England Patriots 29- 13. I didn't know that until I looked it up. The main interest in the Superbowl from my end over here was that trump didn't go 'because it was too far away', and the half time entertainment was by Bad Bunny who sang entirely in Spanish (he's from Puerta Rico) and this was widely viewed as an anti- Trump, anti- MAGA performance especially when he announced 'I love America' and began listing countries from South, Central and North America while his dancers carried their flags. Trump predictably said that it was, 'absolutely terrible, one of the worst EVER!' and added 'no one understands a word this guy is saying'. Trump is a cunt.

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's card read this- Imagine the piece as a series of disconnected events- and I plundered my music folders for random songs about events by unconnected artists- Simon and Garfunkel, Gram Parsons, Captain Beefheart, Broken Chanter and Echo Ladies. My friend Chris suggested Ultra Vivid Scene's Not In Love (Hit By A Truck), a list of disconnected and unexperienced events narrated by singer Kurt Ralske over a pleasingly shambolic lo fi Velvets guitar noise. 

Today's card was much more straightforward and could only be read one way. It said this...

Cluster Analysis

Cluster's Sowiesoso came out in 1976, the group reduced to just Roedelius and Moebius and the duo's relocation to Forst in rural West Germany. Sowiesoso has none of the driving motorik of Neu! or the energy of Can or the beatnik lunacy of Faust. It is almost ambient, pastoral music made in response to their surroundings, mixed by the legendary Conny Plank. Slow paced and gentle with odd quirks, it is a post- Eno album- as in it is influenced by his pioneering 70s ambient albums and post their own work with him on previous Cluster albums. It reflects some kind of peace and tranquility gained from rural living- green fields, trees and forests, birdsong, nature's calm...

Zum Wohl

Electric piano chords, birdsong, rising chords, the sun slowly rising over Forst, Baden- Württemberg. 

Feel free to drop your own responses to Cluster Analysis in the comments box. 

Tears, Tech, Loneliness

Last month I wrote about two new songs from Halifax born/ Manchester based trio The Orielles, a single ahead of their forthcoming album Only You Left, an album that ties up all their loose ends and creativity at the end of a self proclaimed seven year cycle. You Are Eating A Part Of Yourself/ To Undo The World Itself were both really impressive, blurry, shape shifting guitars riffs and FX and poetic/ expressive lyrics uttered on top. It felt like something significant was being communicated, a point arrived at. 

This week's new song, Tears Are, is even better. Those guitars are back, played through some lovely amps, drums kicking away and singer Esme giving another cool vocal, free form and ambiguous. Esme said the lyrics were partly about 'imagery of wood versus metal' and how 'everything fell naturally into either category'. The song collapses into an acoustic guitar coda, circling notes and whispers. A mid- February treat and one that suggests the album, when it comes next month, will be one well worth paying attention to. 

Also out this week is a new song from Anna Calvi sharing vocals with Mr. Iggy Pop. Iggy sang with The Moonlandingz last year, a song that was one of my favourites of 2025. He's repeats the trick here with Iggy showing no signs of letting go and Anna's getting the best out of him and herself. Iggy, once 'the world's forgotten boy' is now God's Lonely Man... thumping drums, a thunderous rhythm that calls classic mid- 70s Iggy to mind, Anna more than a match vocally and some wailing guitar to punctuate the two minutes forty nine seconds the song sticks around for. 

Kim Gordon's solo career continues, a post- Sonic Youth adventure that is more experimental and more adventurous than many people half her age. On Dirty Tech she half sings/ half speaks over low fi electro and skittering drums. It's so electric and vibrant it could probably wipe tape clean at close quarters and scare wild animals. Kim Gordon is 72. 

Union Versions

Marconi Union are an ambient/ electronic trio from Manchester with a dozen albums behind them dating back to 2003 and most recent one in the middle of 2025, The Fear Of Never Landing. Last month a remix EP of three tracks from the album came out, remixes of Marconi Union by Pye Corner Audio and Carbon Based Lifeforms plus a new version by MU themselves. 

Carbon Based Lifeforms remix of Eight Miles High Alone takes a synth arpeggio and builds around it, a slowly simmering, uplifting version of the track with vocal sighs, synth whooshes and a voice fading in and out. It's an electronic dream, the sort of track that has been made using machines but could only have been created by humans, full of moments and pauses, pulsing synths and atmospheres. Life affirming sounds that seem to celebrate just the act of existing. 

Pye Corner Audio, a regular on these pages, remixed In Motion- a deep synth chord intro, some topline notes that dance about and then the thud of a kickdrum and FXed choral sounds and we're off into rhythmic, analogue rave territory. Forward momentum. Walls of synths. A little drama. 

If those two aren't enough- and getting past them is a job, each track begs you to replay it as soon as it fades out- there's a remix of Cloudsurfing by Marconi Union, a reinterpretation that sends the original down a synth pulse tunnel, the sort of track that plays with montages of futuristic cityscapes, speeding 22nd century vehicles flying through seventy mile long underpasses beneath the sea, Marconi Union filtered through a Detroit retro- futurism. 

Three pieces of vivid, emotive and hypnotic electronic gold. TFONLEPRMX can be found at Bandcamp. Highly recommended. 

Forget About Love

Something new from the creative wellspring that is Todmorden, a double A- side single from Lily Rae Grant. On Poison Ivy Lily's voice and guitar are the focus, close to the mic. There's a violin in the background and some production space between all three. The song is slow and sumptuous, a little bit indie, a little bit country, a lot of heart. Lily Rae Grant is just eighteen years old and already sounds like she's got decades of songwriting and recording years behind her. 

The other side of the single is even better, a song called Forget About, six minutes long and with a fuller sound, keys playing a twinkly, descending melody, some organ chords and drums, a cosmic soul/ dusty indie vibe- or dusty soul/ cosmic indie maybe, switch the words around however you like, and I'll throw in spacious and dreamy in too. The production is spot on, restrained but hinting at expansiveness, Lily's voice sinking into the track and then floating on top. 

The single came out on 7" in January. There may be some copies left somewhere- Piccadilly Records had some a few days ago but it looks like they're all gone now, unsurprisingly really, Lily's been on 6 Music recently and the always excellent Plain Or Pan wrote a post a couple of days ago. If you can't find the vinyl, you can get the digital at Bandcamp. 

Dawn Chorus

As noted on Saturday I've somehow manged to go over fifteen years of daily blogging without ever really writing about Boards Of Canada (apart from a mention in a post about a remix EP of The Sexual Objects back in 2018), a mystery to me really because in the period from the mid- to- late 90s to the mid 00s they made some startling and wonderful electronic music and two albums- 1998's Music Has The Right To Children and 2002's Geogaddi and two EPs, In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country from 2000 and Trans Canada Highway from 2006- that are among the best from that time and since. 

Boards Of Canada were two brothers, Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin (Sandison) born in Scotland and for a period in their childhood they lived in Calgary, Canada. The family returned to Scotland and both went to Edinburgh University. They made music from a young age, playing with tape recorders and found sounds from their early teens, layering their own samples recorded from short wave radio over of music they made. In 1986 they formed a band, Boards Of Canada, and released small quantity recordings among friends. In 1996 they sent a tape to Skam and signed to the label and then in 1998 released Music Has The Right To Children jointly with Skam and Warp. 

Music Has The Right To Children is a fully realised album, short pieces and longer tracks, made using tape to tape experiments, loops, analogue synths, drum machines, some super slowed down hip hop drums, samples from North American 1970s television, found sounds, the blurred guitar sound feel of My Bloody Valentine and some weird 90s nostalgia for a 70s childhood. It's futuristic and modern but aching for a past that maybe never existed- a feel that has become known as Hauntology. The vocal samples all seem to mean something but it's not obvious or evident where the answers are. 

By 2002 the brothers had recorded a follow up, the twenty two song Geogaddi. It was a darker, more ominous record, paranoia and mistrust added to the mellower sounds of the first album. This was partly a response to the geopolitical world of the early years of the 21st century- the 9/11 attacks and subsequent war on terror. Geogaddi like it's predecessor has short, one minute tracks, often just loops and samples that buzz into life for a minute or two, and longer ones that unfold at their own pace, never quite conforming to expectations. It's a wonderful album, one that works best taken in one sitting. Among its highlights is Dawn Chorus-

Dawn Chorus

Circling loops of off kilter sounds, slo mo drums, woozy synths and 70s kids TV melodies, some voices and vocal sounds- at times Dawn Chorus seems to be three or four different songs playing at once, each one slipping slightly out of time. It's magical and a little unsettling, like the solar flare you get when you accidentally stare at the sun on a summer's day, the grass all bleached, and the sense that time is getting on a bit, the day is running away with you. 

Monday's Long Song

Thurston Moore's latest solo work came out on Friday, a six track album released onto Bandcamp called Guitar Explorations Of Cloud Formations. All six tracks are long, clocking in between eight minutes and ten and a half. They were inspired by the skies and clouds of the British Isles, as seen by Thurston and his partner Eva Marie in England, Wales and Ireland. Thurston sketched the instrumental tracks out in 2025 backed by a drum machine ahead of a live performance in Dublin. There is plenty of noise in the six tracks especially the first three, but the last three are instrumental and experimental guitar at its best, meditative and absorbing, repetition as an artform. 

On the final track, Asperitas, nine minutes and forty seconds long, the drum machine kicks into life and Thurston's guitars play some lovely melody lines,  melody lines countered by backwards shimmers, single notes rippling out as slow bursts of fuzz and feedback glide in and out. Asperitas clouds are rough and wavy, looking like a rough sea in the sky. Apparently, despite appearing ominous, they always dissipate without a storm forming. 

Thurston's guitar playing ripples and flows, notes rising and falling as the drum machine keeps thudding away. It's a joy of a track, one to put on while you lose yourself in something or just sit staring into space- you can listen here. 

The previous one, Cirrus, is rather good too, a Velvets style riff repeated endlessly while two or three other guitar lines entwine themselves around it for ten minutes.