It’s like Dead Can Dance with a spaced out psychedelic tone, ambient tempo, and occasional spoken word. Amazing for work and focus.
IE – Reverse Earth
Barker – Stochastic Drift
Soothing slow-tempo electronic music, sometimes IDM, sometimes with acoustic components. Great to focus and work by.
Erika de Casier – Lifetime
I heard about the trip hop revival a few weeks ago for the first time, otherwise I hadn’t paid attention to this being a trend in the past year. Well, this record is clearly nothing else than pure and original trip hop, so there’s that. I’ll need to keep an eye on how this evolves.
Djrum – Under Tangled Silence
From ambient through experimental electronics and IDM to modern classical. Quite a journey. Great listen with a focus and in the background as well.
Wu-Tang Clan & Mathematics – Black Samson, the Bastard Swordsman
This is such a gem of a rap record, it sounds like a real classic. It took me by surprise and I can see this running for my year-end toplists just because of how much I played this within a single week already. Who would have thought Wu-Tang would dominate my scrobbles in 2026.
Calibre – they want you
It’s good old classic drum and bass.
The Black Dog – Loud Ambient
Easy-to-listen IDM for focus and doing stuff.
Anna von Hausswolff – ICONOCLASTS
It’s like a contemporary album by Dead Can Dance (so not the medieval ones or Spiritchaser) with a hint of Björk (from the Homogenic era) and jazz. Symphonic, deep, ethereal.
I have no idea what genre tag to add to this post though. Alternative contemporary classical?
Weval – Chorophobia
Since I saw them in Paradiso in 2023 these guys have been on my continuous watchlist, both for new releases and live performances. Hard to catch them though, their shows are sold out in a minute. People in Amsterdam seem to be very well aware that Weval is a premium export article of this country and don’t hesitate to rush to see them whenever there’s the chance.
This is another great album, being super consistent with their sound but providing enough new material to listen to. Masterfully done, maybe even a bit too calculated. But hey, the end result is still good music, so far so good. It’s mid-tempo electronic music blending genres and just pleasing to listen to. I feel a kinship with Jamie XX, which also works for putting them on that non-genre-specific electronic music line of artists, which are kinda leftfield for pop but more mainstream than underground.
VH x RR – 101
Talking about my personal synthpop revival, this is another record I’ve listened to a lot in recent weeks. It steers towards futurepop but still maintains an easy tempo and calm sound, oriented to headphones rather than dancefloor.