everyone I love is sleeping..
New material from Yara Asmar, Joshua Idehen, Warmth, Isabel Pine, mixes by Ogazon, and Danilo Plessow, Miceli Festival and more.
Hi all, I hope you like the frequency of the newsletters, I’m trying to be more consistent this year. I have a few calm ambient electronic albums combined with some danceable mixes and some more music industry articles on this edition. Without further ado.
♩YARA ASMAR: (Experimental, Ambient, Tape Music) Beirut-based musician, puppeteer and visual artist Yara Asmar recorded this between New York and Beirut, built from metallophones, deconstructed toy pianos, homemade music boxes, and a personal archive of family recordings. The title “everyone I love is sleeping and I love them so so much” unfortunately isn't a metaphor: she's been recording everyone she loves out of fear of losing them.
“There is no future to yearn for,” Asmar writes. “There is a big, sprawling, horrifying present that eats everything in its path.” a closer listen
This is one of the last recordings I have of my grandfather, telling me about how he accidentally recorded hours and hours of birdsong onto his reel-to-reel recorder. On my recorder, you’ll find hours and hours of conversations: My grandmother proudly telling me about how she scared off a man who was threatening her with a gun during the war, my grandfather telling me I could come by any time and pick any herbs from his garden, our first lunch after my grandfather’s funeral, the first time that house that had grown quiet was suddenly animated with laughter and song. They are files all labelled by date. January 1, 2025, midnight. An explosion of sound: Fireworks, screams, gunshots, laughter, sirens. Yara Asmar
Yara says "There is a betrayal to being alive because it means to have outlived." This feels much more urgent these days with a wild war in the Middle East, where lives of ordinary people in Palestine, Iran and Lebanon are being destroyed. Listen in one go. (Spotify)
♩JOSHUA IDEHEN: (Spoken Word, Experimental, Jazz) British-Nigerian spoken word artist Joshua Idehen has contributed poems to Mercury-nominated albums by The Comet Is Coming and Sons of Kemet, and we’ve already spoken here about his breakthrough “Mum Does The Washing”, which opened the doors for him to play at Glastonbury and Later with Jools. “I know you’re hurting, everyone is hurting” is similarly fantastic, and it features Shabaka on flute and saxophonist Pete Fraser. Rough Trade album of the month for March 2026. RIYL: Kae Tempest, British Spoken Word, Dubstep & Grime, Bass etc.
♩WARMTH: (Ambient, Dub, Drone) Before starting research I’d have guessed Warmth came from somewhere colder (like Ukraine) banking on former releases like 2025’s Revenant or the previous Retrospective material. Surprisingly Agustín Mena’s from a warm place, Valencia! Latitudes is ten deep dubby atmospheric tracks with warm bass and spacious echoes, without rhythm. Mastered by 12K’s Taylor Deupree. He also runs the Archives label (founded 2015, ambient/downtempo/dub techno) and records as SVLBRD.
♩ISABEL PINE: (Ambient, Modern Classical) Canadian violist and composer arrives with her debut for Chicago ambient legends Kranky. Recorded in and around a remote cabin in British Columbia, using viola, cello, violin, double bass, and field recordings, it evokes a similar calm and meditative mindset. Her first release after leaving orchestral work for solo composition. Foxy Digitalis has an interview.
♩MAI MAI MAI: (Experimental, Noise, Drone) Rome-based musician Toni Cutrone has been making experimental/drone work since 2012. Karakoz was recorded during a six-week residency in Ramallah and Bethlehem in early 2024, drawing on Palestinian traditional music and the Palestinian Sound Archive. Collaborators include Alabaster DePlume, Maya Al Khaldi and Ussama Abu Ali. Out on Maple Death (Bologna/London). He also runs the Boring Machines label.
💭 Readers of the newsletter would know about Liz Pelly, of course by now, but I didn’t know the other ones. The No Tags book is a transcription of the podcast, which is great because I have a hard time listening to podcasts, and the people and the topics they are covering are what I’ve always wanted to do as a zine! So I’m a bit jealous! Check their substack
💭 I’m thinking of attending the MICELI Festival in Barcelona in May, but can’t quite decide if I should go for the Hekla (whom I’ve written about) & Cole Pulice evening or the Megabasse & Holy Tongue evening :) I’d also like to catch Tristwch Y Fenywod (whom I’ve also written about), Abul Mogard and FujIIIIIta but I’m not sure if I can do them all. You shouldn’t miss it if you like avant-garde, ambient & electronic music and you are in Barcelona.
📖 California Mystic: Jeff Buckley and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
Grammy-winning singer and composer Arooj Aftab explores the unexpected link between Jeff Buckley and Pakistani icon Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and how the Californian songwriter became a devoted student of Sufi Qawwali music. Unfortunately behind a paywall but it’s only $1 for digital.
📖 Günseli Yalçinkaya Thinks The Internet Has Gone Dark Mode
Obviously not part of our regular curriculum but I think Günseli is one of the finest thinkers of her generation, and this was a good read on the internet.
Günseli: I spend a lot of time writing, which is quite a solitary act. If you just sit alone writing forever, you’re going to have no ideas. The moments I feel the most inspired are when you go see a musician perform live, or you go to an art show. You see other people’s inner worlds manifested through the embodied experience of experiencing their inner worlds as they are trying to present them.
That opens you up to community and communality, which goes back to this idea of ritual. True inspiration can only come from these ritual forms. Social media has zapped us of that ritual.
🎶 Two more mixes I’ve enjoyed lately, especially Ogazón’s, wow she’s on top of her game, isn’t she!
Formerly known as Motor City Drum Ensemble, Danilo Plessow delivers his own special selection of disco and house.
Music and Capitalism
📖 Compare and contrast: Finland is another country offering artists the chance to slow down with no strings attached. Similar to how we covered Ireland last month.
Compare that to the Corporate Capitalism of the USA: Dada Drummer was there to protest for UMAW. 📖 The Dream of the 90s is dead at SXSW
📖 Music for Empty Rooms’ disappearing tracks of YouTube.
Connoisseurs of vintage oddities will know Music for Empty Rooms, the influential video channel on YouTube. A post last month explains why some songs disappeared, and it’s of course vulture capitalists (this time Virgin Music) trying to profit off his work. Dang, these people are really vampires, aren’t they?.
That’s all folks! Talk soon, and please share with your likeminded friends.
The Yara Asmar and Mai Mai Mai are both stellar