Affection, issued in 2024, trailed the first proper Bullion LP by eight years, making the 2026 follow-up Nearly rather unexpected. Its arrival was likely closer to a shock for those who track Nathan Jenkins’ behind-the-scenes activities. During the two-year interim, Katy J Pearson, Meg Mac, and Avalon Emerson released albums co-written and/or produced by Jenkins, who concurrently had a hand in songs by Oliver Sim and “Rare” duet partner Carly Rae Jepsen, and also mixed an album by Orlando Weeks. All of this outside work perhaps inspired Jenkins’ more openly collaborative approach – akin to that of a production job – yet Nearly comes out sounding just like a Bullion project. While bearing some strong resemblances to Jenkins’ most commercially successful productions…
Tag Archive: Ghostly International
On Melting Days, the tenth album by Lusine, Seattle’s Jeff McIlwain brings two decades of production experience to bear.
His particular brand of ambient electronica has a wonderfully tactile quality, juxtaposing warm surges of thickly textured synth against crisp rhythmic and melodic details. Counterbalancing the macro with the micro, there’s a sense of both suspension and subtle movement, simplicity on one level and complexity on another, which keeps these ten tracks immersive.
“Bird’s Eye” has a rapidly whirring clockwork intricacy to its bright arpeggiation, while its slow chord changes muster a feeling of humbling grandeur. “Apparition” conjures the radiant luster of Michigan trio Kiln, while the glitchy…
Los Angeles-based duo Green-House first surfaced in 2020 with Six Songs for Invisible Gardens, an EP of calm, delicate, flora-inspired synth instrumentals accompanied by bird song and other natural sounds. Appearing soon after the much-heralded reissue of Mother Earth’s Plantasia by Mort Garson, it slotted nicely into plant-themed playlists of ambient and new age music, and became a streaming favorite during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Green-House’s music continued to celebrate nature and domestic environments on subsequent releases like Music for Living Spaces and A Host for All Kinds of Life. After releasing most of their work on Leaving Records, Hinterlands is Green-House’s first effort for Ghostly International. It maintains the same soothing feel…
HTRK have been making their gloomy, sensual brand of music, at the intersection of electronic pop and noise rock, for 22 years.
To mark the milestone comes String of Hearts, a collection of covers and remixes featuring an all-star cast of friends and collaborators, from next-gen underground favourites like Coby Sey to fellow old-school experimentalists Liars. This brilliant, genre-agnostic record allows you to trace the breadth of the Melbourne band’s shapeshifting sound, echoes of which can now be found all over underground and commercial music, without leaning too hard on nostalgia.
The record spans HTRK’s early hits right up to their most recent album Rhinestones, a period in which they’ve shifted from a darker,…
Leading up to the release of her debut album, singer/songwriter Kate Bollinger issued no less than four EPs, signing with Ghostly International for the fourth, after her gentle, jazz-inflected pop attracted the attention of Kanye West, resulting in a songwriting credit on his Donda LP.
For her full-length coming-out (also on Ghostly), she not only remains loyal to a crafted, sophisticated, and soft-footed presentation but maunders even further into soft, pillowy textures, including a vocal delivery sometimes so gossamer as to barely uphold the melodies. She also takes her EPs’ 1960s and ’70s singer/songwriter inspirations to the next level with help from contributors including Matthew E. White, Sam Evian, Adam Brisbin (Katie von Schleicher,…
“Recording out of various homes, not fixed to any single location (Morell from Texas, now based in Los Angeles, and Durkan in Portland, Oregon), they write the songs they want to hear, tuning from shared taste (for trip-hop, Britpop, electronica, and the canon of ‘90s alt radio), a desire for emotionality, and an instinct for when it sounds right and honest; when it means something real to them. Their full-length debut embodies their trust in one another and in their craft.
A no scope kill in the video game lexicon is achieved by shooting a sniper rifle at close range without scoping in on your target, an apt metaphor for two artists following their pop impulses, shooting from the hip with precision. “It might also mean like having no future,” jokes Morell…