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 little known guitarist from Manchester 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 sport or 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.