SIX MONTHS DEEP. And not a child in the house washed. This week we've got ambient noodling, hushed folk, skittery grime and garage and ethereal soul reworks, not to mention the very first Bandcloud readers' competition. Excited? 

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Cloudface - Untitled
I feel like I've included the opening track, 'Coffee', before, but I can't be sure. So here it is again. Aphex-like glistening synths and snarling percussion hits. 'Bobok' is on a kind of unresolved tension tip, and 'Reduction' is full-on underwater exploration.

Brigid Power-Ryce - I Told You The Truth
Hushed, folksy numbers strummed and sung in a quiet church in Galway, Ireland. Perfect for listening to when it's raining and you don't want to get out of bed.

Piotr Cisak - Essentia
There is literally one left cassette available for purchase. Long, meandering drone, "ruminations on memory & essence". I can dig that.

April Larson - Bear Thee Away To The Houses Of Lamentation
"April Larson is the representative of a tribe of nāga located along the coast of Louisiana. She listens to music throughcustomized headphones with speakers placed along the jaw and translates music into sense-data through a collection of three interlaced brains. She continues her research in oneironautic listening and regularly delivers lectures on relevant tone-clusters to beehives and ghosts." Okay then. Larson's music is gorgeous, seemingly inspired by folk tales and Norse/Tolkien-esque myths and legends, at least in their titles. Swooning drone and ambient pastures float and caress, and there's a rake of it to go through on her Bandcamp.

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Finn - Keep Calling
If you're prone to listening to mixes from the grime spectrum, or ever go to Boxed, you've probably heard this a bunch of times over the past six months. Finn takes a few choice lines from Aaliyah and Ginuwine and slathers them together with chopped-up Timbo beats for singalong perfection. 

Kakarot - Port Harcourt (Shriekin' Orchestral Remix)
Another one from Local Action, Shriekin''s sublime rework of Kakarot's 'Port Harcourt'. As the man himself asks: "Who else is giving you a call and response section with timpanis and double bass vs arpedgiated sine waves huh?" This is divine.

Boxed Mix 002 - Shriekin'
Moar Shriekin' here, a mix of all his own stuff ahead of mini-UK tour of sorts. Tonight he plays Boxed (for whom this mix was put together) in Bristol alongside Slackk, Logos, Gage, Mr. Mitch and Oil Gang. Then tomorrow he's at our friends' Loose Synths night in Dalston, London. Generally a residents-only affair, this one will be in collaboration with Crazylegs and the aforementioned Local Action - so there's Gage, Shriekin' (duh), Finn, ISLAND, Tom Lea and Shandy. So not a bad weekend for the yung lad from Carlow.

Shoes - Inner City Blues (Extended Slow Flow Edit)
I shared a version of this on my Tumblr yesterday, the version that's on record, but this is a different beast. Of course, the opening of Marvin's original song is perfection as is, this is tasteful rework. This version includes the full track, with subtle edits, and also fades out gorgeously, where the original died more suddenly. The whole shtick is gorgeous, in my humble opinion, so check out the set out of which I've plucked this one. Totally worth it.

Kate Carr - Overheard In Doi Saket
This also featured on the Tumblr, mainly for its wonderfully inventive presentation (SD card, micro artwork). It's class though, found sound, Thai chants, wistful rainfall. 

antenna_research - Tea (for Eliane) [disquiet0131-thekeyoftea]
More sonic experimentation from Karin and Bruce. This starts off as just the whine of a kettle boiling, but then modulated synths distort and transform that sound beyond its everyday appearance. A simple idea, yes, but they pull it off. The mechanics behind it are explained on the page.

E.M.M.A. Boiler Room London DJ Set
Keysound's purveyor of Victorian grime goes in for half an hour of sinister sonics, moving from hip-hop and dubstep-inflected grime sounds to properly danceable stuff. It's short but sweet.

Isabelle Gunn - Esteticateria
This led me down a bit of a rabbit hole. Reposted on Soundcloud by Experimedia, this is, seemingly, a piece of 1980s electronica from Isabelle Gunn. Okay. It comes from a sold-out cassette release called Discographia 82-87, which came out on Grovl's No Catalogimprint. Isabelle (or Isobel) Gunn is famous for being a pioneering feminist, having passed as a man in order to gain employment with the Hudson Bay Company in the 19th Century. Is this a reverse of the issue? The only vocals I can hear here are male, so it seems perhaps they're aligning themselves with a feminist mode of expression and nomenclature in order to stand out and attract attention? Since I can't find any information about the artist I can't say - I could be way off the mark. ALL OF THAT SAID, the music is quite good. Gurgling acid electronics and crisp drum machine hits, it's not particularly inventive or outstanding, but it's solid. 

Dalhous - Farewell, Forever
I'm not really sure what Farewell, Forever is - it seems to be a community slash mix series - but they've kicked off with a live set from Dalhous, so I'm already a fan. They just released their album Will To Be Well on BEB last week. Sadly I haven't had the opportunity to listen yet, but if it's in the same vein as the Visibility Is A Trap single I'll be very happy. This set is a swooning piece of hazy, heartrending electronics, and comes with appropriately morose artwork featuring an aged Marlon Brando.

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COMPETITION ALERT

OKAY. You might have seen me tweet that I was going to do a competition. This is a first (every week is a first, it's kind of a huge learning curve). All I want is for you to identifythis UK DJ and producer whose face I've mushed up. 

I'll pick some people at random and they'll each win one of the following:

• A random CD from my personal collection, sent by post
• A £5 Boomkat voucher
• €6.50 by way of PayPal to be spent at Bandcamp (not that I can tell you to spend your money once you have it, but you know)

If none of those fill you with excitement and wonder, well, I guess if I ever do this again I should offer better prizes.

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Here's to (at least) another six months then!

All the best,

Aidan