It's Bandcamp Friday, a day when all proceeds go to the artists. If you are like me, you bookmark your favourites through the preceding month and then make one grouped purchase to optimise the lives of artists.
Read on for five recommendations. And please post your own, so I can prepare for next month.
Una Oportunidad más de triunfar en la vida (2025) by Los Pirañas
This is what a Colombian supergroup of "Avant-Latin experimentalists" sounds like when let loose to improvise in the studio. After only one week they emerged with this jazzy, trippy, groovy collection, a testament to their years of work together... since high-school in fact! It's "One More Chance To Succeed In Life". listen
Nocturnal Consolations (2026) by Iztok Koren & Raphael Roginski
Slovenian Iztok Koren (banjo, gembri, balafon, kalimba, percussion, synthesizer) has played in noisecore and freak folk bands. Raphael Roginski is a guitarist and ethnomusicologist from Poland. Together they've created an album that sounds like an ambient folk group getting sucked through the latest Chase Bliss guitar pedal. It's a bit arbitrary but I like it. listen
Environments 1 (1969) by Syntonic Research
Back in 1969 this is how the world got introduced to field recordings, by way of the bizarrely titled "The Psychologically Ultimate Seashore". This is a computer-processed recording of Brighton Beach waves, released in anonymous corporate packaging. Nonetheless this appealed to the "tune in, drop out" desires of college students and was a massive hit... a decade before Eno's ambient series. At some point the catalogue (through 1979) was released on Bandcamp. So I am happy to replace a scratchy vinyl rip. listen
The One and the Other (2021) by Lara Solnicki
Trained in opera, Solnicki weaves a strange magic in this album of art songs and poetry, supported by some of Toronto's best jazz musicians. One might begin a description by imagining a much happier Scott Walker, fixated on walks to the laundromat instead of the deaths of fascist dictators. Well, that ruined the mood! Sorry.
Anyway, I am a simple person. I see the name Hugh Marsh and I buy the record. This one I'll play on a Sunday morning as the light streams through the kitchen window. listen
Your desire to hear the animals of the world is easily fulfilled by harkening critters (2024), four hours of field recordings from the likes of Artificial Memory Trace, Stéphane Marin, Cheryl Leonard, and Jonáš Gruska. From hammer-headed bats to pink river dolphins, these 33 tracks are perfect for creating your own sonic ecosystem. listen
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