What We’re Listening to This Week (7.3.26)

Archive:

What We’re Listening to This Week (3.1.26) · What We’re Listening to This Week (3.11.26) · What We’re Listening to This Week (4.2.26) · What We’re Listening to This Week (4.15.26) · What We’re Listening to This Week (4.23.26) · What We’re Listening to This Week (5.4.26) · What We’re Listening to This Week (5.12.26) · What We’re Listening to This Week (5.22.26) · What We’re Listening to This Week (6.13.26) | What We’re Listening to This Week (6.25.26)

Healer by D’Leesa

Be still my beating heart. If you haven’t heard D’Lessa‘s work then thank you for letting me be your ambassador to this absolute joyous human being. For me, D’Leesa sounds like the natural progression of 90s RnB pop – this is where it should have always been here. I’ve had this song on repeat multiple times this week. I think what’s amazing about her voice is that it’s raw and absolutely healing. I could feel my cortisol levels dropping second by second through this three-minute-and-thirty-second single. “No fight or flight. No place for fear. You’ll be safe with me right here. I will ease the pain and make it disappear.” Thank you for healing me, D’Lessa.

New Blue Sun by André 3000

So much has been said about André 3000‘s journey to New Blue Sun. Whatever anyone thinks of the record, the instrument choices, the genre, or the long road that brought him here, the work comes from an evolving and transcendent artist. The most irritating part of the hype around New Blue Sun is the idea that André owed anyone a familiar shape. I don’t know how anyone who truly absorbed The Love Below could be shocked by this record. As a huge Laraaji fan (more on that later), I hear that influence immediately, and it gives the album a real spiritual center. I’d go so far as to say it’s one of the best ambient albums of 2023. Brilliant record.

Daddy Died – earthsignchels

“Daddy Died” by earthsignchels upended my fucking week. There are two versions of this track I’m listening to or that you might find on your journey: one is the studio version and the other is the COLORS show performance. I’m currently obsessed with the COLORS performance and cannot stop listening to it. As someone who lost my father early in my life, the work here speaks across all barriers of social construct. You won’t understand this song fully until you’ve had that loss in your life – Sometimes I catch myself waiting for certain people to get old enough for their own parents to die, just so they will understand this feeling. I feel guilty admitting that. Besides the song itself, which is really fucking good, the vocal performance is out of this world. I caught myself getting teary eyed a number of times this week. So glad when something like this goes viral.

Moon Piano by Laraaji

As I was saying about Laraaji: what a legend. After listening to this album, it’s crystal clear to me how much of an influence he had on Brian Eno, and to a lesser extent, Harold Budd. Whether we call it influence, kinship, or some shared celestial machinery, Laraaji’s presence sits near the spiritual center of that world. One of the old gods of experimental and ambient music, Laraaji’s mind, body, and spirit continue to churn out elemental mystical waves of sound, matter and motion. Moon Piano is a companion volume to the equally amazing Sun Piano album. His music is the closest you’re going to get to the sound of the expansion of the universe. No horseshit. Melancholy, joy, peace, mania, all in one piece of a very large cosmic pie.