Good Experimental Music: August 2026
Welcome to the our monthly roundup of Good Experimental Music! This time around we have radio collages, spoken-word aural essays, a journey through Robert Johnson's haunts, and an abstract musical history of the Power Mac G5. Plus a ton more! We present them to you in alphabetical order by artist. (And scroll down for a bonus list of 10 more August releases we dig!)
This post is free for anyone to read, so please pass it around if you dig it!
Bromp Treb
Screened
(Carbus Tapes)
The latest tape from Bromp Treb, aka Neil Young Cloaca, feels like it was made with rubber bands. Everything stretches and bounces around the stereo space, as likely to expand into infinity as it is to snap back into place. There's a weird sense of minimalism too; lot of tracks feel almost pointillist in their use of short, sharp sounds, repeated and massaged. But what's often cool about Cloaca's playful, absurdist approach to music-making is that minimalism can become maximalism at the drop of a noise, or so gradually that you don't realize you're being drowned until the tracks are cascading around you. Song titles reflect the sense of humor involved - "A Mime is a Silent Ham," "At Home with a Hammer," "I'm Bweeding," "Big Gulp" - but as with the work of the Residents and Black Dice (which Screened often reminds me of), Bromp Treb music is serious even when it's hilarious.(Screened is also available on Subvert, but not embeddable here - go check it out there!)
Dsic
A History of Microprocessing Vol. 75: PowerPC 970 (PowerPC G5)
(self-released)
On dsic's bandcamp page, the bio is only two words: "computer music." And the 75 releases so far are all volumes in an apparently endless series called A History of Microprocessing. This time around dsic takes on the PowerPC 970, an early 2000's computer more commonly known as the PowerMac G5. That's about all I understand about it (despite a detailed description in dsic's release notes), and I think I actually might've owned one back then, but it certainly didn't sound as good as this. Chopping up whirrs, screeches, and other electronic stabs, dsic journeys to the center of the chip, returning with a motherboard-lode of busy sounds and jarring juxtapositions. Some of this reminds me of 90s glitch stuff like Oval, other parts recall prime 00s noise, but the album mostly falls in between those cracks and many others. It primarily sounds like a computer's history smashed into bits, as if the machine itself resides, like many probably do, in a trodden landfill.
Enneads
Enneads
(self-released)
New York trio Enneads use piano, drums, and bass, which led me to assume their vocal-less music would veer toward improvised jazz. But their self-titled debut feels genre-less, or at least overlaps with lots of other forms besides jazz. For the most part, this is ambient sound that's also like abstracted rock, as if the moments in between melodies were stretched out into entire pieces. It often even sounds like someone is playing guitar, which I assume must be Zach Layton's bass, equipped with whopping 17 strings. Unlike in rock, that element isn't the star of the show, but rather an equal partner with Phyllis Chen's patient piano and Hamir Atwal's propulsive drumming. Each of the three weave in and out in ways such that sometimes one comes forward and another moves back, but they're always merging into a single sonic entity. I'd love to see how Enneads concoct their sound clouds in performance, but for now Enneads is enough of an aural spectacle to keep me well-occupied.
Etelin
The Chair and the Faucet
(Pentiments)
The body of work generated by Alex Cobb – both in music made and labels run – is impressive. Not just in the quality of sound he creates, but also the fact that he keeps pursuing it without a lot of fanfare or hype. That kind of low-key dedication is clear on his latest record under the name Etelin, The Chair and the Faucet, which was inspired by a poem he wrote during a Buddhist meditation retreat. Recording on a Serge Modular synth without much processing or editing, Cobb creates a mesmerizing set of pulsing drones that push forward while simultaneously exuding the reflection of someone sitting still with their eyes closed. The Chair and the Faucet has the effect common to many great drone works wherein it can be a different experience at different volumes. When I listened at low level, it felt soothing; turned up loud, it suddenly took on the quality of a massive ritual, or something thunderous like the implosion of an old building, slowed way down. Discover your own moods inside of Cobb's never-ending sound.
Farewell Phoenix
the language of landscapes / muses
(enmossed)
I've been a pretty unabashed fan of North Carolinian Lynn Fister's work ever since I interviewed her back in 2013 about a compilation tape on her label Watery Starve. I think almost everything she's put out since then I've managed to write about in some capacity, but if that seems biased, blame her, not me - she's the one that keeps making excellent music. Her latest as Farewell Phoenix, the language of landscapes / muses, is in part a product of her moving after her home in Asheville was affected by Hurricane Helene. On these 10 tracks, she mixes field recordings from her new surroundings with harp, synths, and vocals, sometimes taking each source from different places and times, but always melting them into something whole. There's a bit of a hymnal feel to these songs, as if Fister creates her own spiritual rituals, but that makes the album sound more strictly-arranged than it is. This is open, wooly music, with Fister letting sounds grow into each other like vines climbing up walls. A particular favorite is "the dendrite language of muses," in which her harp cascades into field recordings like rain pelting petals.
Ibukun Sunday
Olùsìn [Worshippers]
(Phantom Limb)
I like that Ibukun Sunday, the Nigerian musician/producer, is a trained viola player studied in a variety of trad-leaning classical forms. Not because I really care much about those forms, but I love how his own music has broken free from those structures while also being informed by them. The eight tracks on Olúsín [Worshippers] are all abstract to some degree, with a few even feeling like pure sound, aural vapors rather than notes or chords. As I've listened more, though, I've detected structures lurking beneath these pieces, slowly shifting and guiding the atmospheres above. In some places this results in pure drama, maybe even melodrama, as in the soaring "Amen" (apparently the album is inspired by some African faith practices). But more often, the work Sunday has put together here is an uncanny combination of floating, impressionist sonics and organically-growing patterns, two things that seem like they were born together in his hands.
Asha Sheshadri
Will you try to stand by me and look at something beautiful
(Regional Bears)
I'm not sure if it's Asha Sheshadri's voice we hear speaking throughout her new release Will You Try to Stand by Me and Look at Something Beautiful; I'm not even sure it's the same voice on each of the four tracks. Regardless, the speech consistently manages a tricky balance between attention-commanding and ASMR-ish entrancement. The tape starts with the relatively-straightforward "SAN Terminal 1," a fascinating meditation on airports that's also a guide on how to write compelling stories. From there, things get less clear: "In Future Memory of the Mushroom House" doubles speech into echoes of itself, while "Manzanita Piece" consists of haunting instructions that evoke Diane Wiest's commands in the ear of Philip Seymour Hoffman at the end of Synecdoche, NY. The closing title track, which at 11 minutes is the tape's longest, is the most hypnotic. A voice spinning tales about Cloris Leachman and Vincent Price loops in on itself, repeating yet morphing as the track moves further, getting progressively edited and distorted. I don't really know how to classify what Sheshadri accomplishes here, but I know I'll be listening to it a lot either way.
Maia Urstad
Selected Stereo Works
(Bloxham Tapes)
Radio is at the center of Maia Urstad's work, and much of this solo release (her first, despite working in sound and visual art since the 1980s) draws upon her interest in the airwaves. Opening track "Ethersongs" was constructed from amateur transmissions in Bergen, Norway; "Meanwhile, in Shanghai" collects clips from stations around the globe, including reports of what time it is in places like Madrid and Nova Scotia; and "Radio Taxi Buenos Aires" is exactly what its title suggests. Were these just raw radio feeds, that would be interesting enough, but Urstad combines her sources into collages that feel natural, as if the world is sending them forth, and reflective on what these aural emissions say about that world (in that sense, they remind me of the radio mixes Alan Bishop, Mark Gergis and others have made for Sublime Frequencies) . Many of these pieces started as installations, and must have been fascinating to step inside of, but as audio alone they're still pretty immersive. And the album ends with something different: "Trainwaves," a melange of sounds from train stations that, as Urstad notes, re-creates the half-asleep feeling of a train ride, with speech and noise penetrating consciousness at random.
Andrew Weathers
Slow Drag the Devil
(self-released)
Field recordings are often mood music, not just in the sense that they tend to transport me to certain modes of feeling, but also because whatever state of mind I bring to them usually has a lot to do with how they affect me. Sometimes I'm tempted not to write about them at all because of this unpredictable aspect: who knows how a release will strike now versus later? So I was hesitant to review the newest by the great Andrew Weathers, especially because it's pure field recording, an hour long track of nothing but the sounds of the outdoors. Somehow, though, I'm confident in my reaction to this one, as it has transported me every time I've listened, to meaningful if sometimes different places. This is aided by an accompanying book, filled with Weathers' photos, drawings, and diary entries of a trip along the Mississippi Delta in 2024 in which he meditated on the journeys of Robert Johnson. The audio of Slow Drag the Devil is engrossing on its own, but paging through Weathers' tome adds a dimension that gives it the kind of resonance I'll be contemplating for a while.
Sandy Winiferová
Knitwear
(Molt Fluid)
I know approximately zero about Sandy Winiferová, who according to Discogs has made just a few releases, most from the past two years. Her first tape for Molt Fluid, Knitwear, is similarly mysterious, filled with distant, receding sounds that sometimes fade away just as you're getting them into focus. I can make out bits of piano and what I think might be guitar here and there, but it's like trying to see what's in the room around you within seconds of waking up. Despite the dark-corner nature of the music here, and the subtlety of the ways it is organized and progresses, Knitwear is not passive or noncommittal. Each track doles out its aural events with patience and purpose; after a few listens you might start to discern small narratives and little plot points inside each piece. Song titles are similarly evocative - "Trying to Forget," "Afterthought," "Sunspots" - suggesting that Winiferová's sonic project aims to build a world of isolated, still moments that reverberate beyond their initial impact.
10 MORE GOOD EXPERIMENTAL RELEASES FROM AUGUST
Christer Bothén / Oren Ambarchi / Johan Berthling / Andreas Werliin
Serpentine
(Black Truffle)
Bon Odori
Kimyo
(Temporal Drift)
Christiane Bopp
Rêver, murmurer, dire
(Relative Pitch)
Sarah Davachi
The Will of Tongues
(Late Music)
Jah Cuzzi
Smog Machine
(Beach Buddies)
Gretchen Korsmo & Cody Yantis
Moon Ladder
(The Jewel Garden)
Felisha Ledesma + Snakeskin
Palm of Hand
(Paralaxe Editions)
Julio Lopez
Cloud Unknowing
(Lobby Art)
Šimanský Vaľko Podracký
K-drone
(Mappa)
White Gourd
(To Walk in) Justice (Calls for) Strength
(Feeding Tube)