Add to playlist: James K’s downtempo dream pop and the week’s best new tracks | Music

From New YorkRecommended for those who like Caroline Polachek, Voice Actor, VegynUp subsequent New album Good friend launched by way of AD 93 on 5 SeptemberPull up your beanbag, gentle a lava lamp and crack open the Vicks VapoRub: downtempo is again. New compilation Telepathic Fish paperwork the 90s south London ambient evening; Logic1000’s newest DJ-Kicks combine would barely register on an ECG; there’s none extra languid than even the summer time’s flagship pop album, Addison by Addison Rae. New York producer and musician James Okay has been dabbling in trip-hop – and varied shades of experimental pop and membership music – for greater than a decade, however nonetheless, her new album, Good friend, arrives proper on time for summer time’s wind down. (What’s autumn if not the chilliness out room to flee the yr’s most hectic season?)James Okay: Play – videoWhile the accompanying textual content across the file speaks impenetrably of “oneiric fogs” and a “gaseous halo”, its many pleasures are in actual fact instant and enveloping. These songs bob alongside on sleepy breakbeats wreathed in liquid, shoegaze guitar and angelic atmospherics; Okay’s melancholy falsetto is self-possessed, tracing its personal hypnotic path via the blissed-out clouds she spins like candyfloss. (Followers of the extra evanescent finish of Caroline Polachek’s catalogue will discover tons to get misplaced in.) Over repeat listens, this dreamy file leaves stronger impressions, of soppy Balearic ecstasy on Peel; a bit dank post-punk on pop gem On God; liturgical awe on Rider. Seductively sluggish it could be, Good friend however appears primed to speed up this cult hero’s emergence from the underground. Laura SnapesThis week’s greatest new tracksSymphonic trip-hop … Zuli. {Photograph}: Malak El SawiZuli – CareFollowing up his acclaimed 2024 album Lambda, the title monitor of the Egyptian producer’s new EP is skittering, splintered, symphonic trip-hop, with bells and whispers reaching throughout the uncanny valley. BBTTitanic – GoteraMabe Fratti’s duo with Héctor Tosta returns, channelling the astonishing steel power of their current reside units into an epic the place Fratti’s ragged voice pierces ceaseless rounds of artillery-fire drums. LSSophie – OohA deep reduce from the tenth anniversary reissue of Product: “I’m your Play-Doh child / Push me to my knees,” a feminine voice pleads, starkly melancholy towards the rubbery bass and ecstatic synth blurts. LSCass McCombs – PeaceA riff that’s like daylight on the damaged floor of a pond powers the most recent stunner from an artist who, coming as much as 12 solo albums, has amassed one of many nice our bodies of American track. BBTMark William Lewis – Nonetheless AboveAfter Could’s superbly brooding Tomorrow Is Excellent, the enigmatic London songwriter lets the sunshine in, splicing surprisingly candy, jazzy harmonica into his deep-voiced lyrics on off-kilter relationships, whether or not narcotic or romantic. LSSombr – We By no means DatedThe lad with the sharpest cheekbones in pop made the heartbreak anthem of the yr with Again to Buddies. His new one goes from damage to outright bitter, however the sturdy refrain scans simply as satisfyingly. BBTI Jordan – An Angel (ft Tom Rasmussen)You’ll be able to virtually really feel the throbbing partitions and speeding pores and skin on this grounded but celestial rave hymn to rebirth and transition, with greater than a bit Pet Store Boys in its DNA. LSSubscribe to the Guardian’s rolling Add to Playlist choices on Spotify.Add to playlist – the week’s greatest new tracks Spotify