Industrious Amazement: a monthly column curated by Forlate

A new column exploring experimental and ambient releases through Forlate’s narrative lens.

Palpebræ opens a space for deep listening and reflection. Curated by Forlate, Industrious Amazement is dedicated to uncovering experimental and ambient works that expand the boundaries of electronic music. Each entry blends descriptive detail with personal perspective, offering readers a window into unexplored soundscapes.

Alexey Ivachkin is a musician and producer based in Madrid, where he develops his artistic vision under the alias forlate. Beyond his own productions, he curates Building Bridges, a show on Madrid’s Radio Relativa exploring ambient and experimental sounds from across Eastern and Central Europe. Through his Substack blog Música Esporádica, he documents and reflects on Madrid’s underground music scene, offering a personal and insightful perspective on the city’s ever-evolving landscape.

Forlate about brand new column on Palpebræ: “Industrious Amazement” is something new: a monthly column for Palpebræ featuring short reviews of records that catch my attention. Unlike my other projects, this one is free from any geographic boundaries, though my fascination with the scenes I’ve mentioned earlier will inevitably shape what I choose to cover.

The column’s name is a nod to the published notebooks of Polish poet Anna Kamieńska:
“A river slowly returning to its sources. Until it drinks from them, it can’t rest, it can’t entrust itself to the sea’s dark depths. I wrote a poem about that river, wondering how it suddenly turned up. ‘Industrious amazement’ – an apt definition of poetry for all kinds of reasons.”

The name has stuck with me, because I think it captures my approach to discovering new music. You have to dig deep to find something that truly amazes you, but you also need to stay curious and open to what you hear – keeping that childlike ability to be genuinely amazed by things, despite all the chaos swirling around us. I know it sounds a bit banal, but it’s an interpretation that feels right to me.

I’m always open to suggestions and recommendations, so feel free to reach out via email or Instagram (sorry), especially if you’re a label or an artist!

Now, a few standout releases from the past couple of months that are worth your attention:

☉ Lippard Arkbro Lindwall – How Do I Know If My Cat Likes Me [Blank Forms Editions]
[» listen and support here]

This is a tough one to write about, not because the music’s so difficult (although it kind of is, in a way), but because contextualizing this album requires hundreds of footnotes spanning everything from late-era capitalist death machine to minimalism to Sam Kidel’s trickster ambient works. Better to just describe what happens: Lippard’s deadpan voice floating over Arkbro and Lindwall’s ascetic organ work, creating a 40-minute meditation on automated emptiness. “The Long Goodbye” traps us in an endless loop of polite departures, while “Modern Spanking” free-associates from “online banking” to increasingly surreal variants. By the time the release ends, the irony feels almost unbearable.

☉ Ewer – Hiraeth [Puṣpāpaṇa]
[» listen and support here]

A wonderfully gooey release from the duo of Sophia Zhuravkova (whose NTS radio show I highly recommend) and Ivan Merkulov. Unfortunately, this marks the final release from this project before an eventual “untimely hibernation,” but contrary to T.S. Eliot, the world of Ewer ends neither with a bang nor a whimper, but rather with a wistful sigh. The album oscillates between beatless no-man’s-land, where the voice emerges from the depths of layered sound only to be hidden once again – like on the stunning “Uncertain Drift,” which could go on forever and I wouldn’t mind – and a more textural, darker approach on the couple of closing tracks. According to the blurb on the album’s Bandcamp page, “the album was delayed by a long season of depression and travel”. While it clearly sounds like a record you could put on while travelling, for me it’s a very hopeful, life-affirming record, the way most beautiful things are.

☉ xtclvr – blessed loops [sferic]
[» listen and support here]

A new record out on Sferic, purveyors of all things blurry and spectral, this time from Ukrainian producer xtclvr, based in Kyiv. Created amid the Russian invasion, this sounds like a record that offered true respite to its creator – playful, dreamy, and constantly surprising with its unpredictable nature and imaginative sound design, where something new is happening seemingly every few seconds. Drawing equally from ambient music, IDM, and trap, just listen to the sub-aquatic bass rumble on “THE WISE MYSTICAL TREE” or the mangled-beyond-recognition vocal samples on “STORM SHADOW.” This is trap music that could have been made in a “Blade Runner” universe – tracks like “ACID FLAVOUR” being a prime example of the gauzy, ambient hip-hop that I’m hoping we hear more of in the future.

☉ Raphael Rogiński & Ružičnjak Tajni – Bura [Instant Classic]
[» listen and support here]

Like all of Raphael Rogiński’s records, even when he’s playing John Coltrane and Langston Hughes, this one has an undeniable air of mysticism around it. Released via Krakow’s Instant Classic, the album finds Rogiński collaborating with the Serbian group Ružičnjak Tajni – Svetlana Spajić, Marina Džukljev, and Tijana Golubović. Together, they’ve created “Bura,” recorded in Serbia last November. The title references that fierce northern Balkan wind, and there’s something equally elemental about the music itself. What we get in the end is a fascinating collision: traditional Serbian songs, pieced together from oral histories and archival sources, meeting Rogiński’s own compositions, which draw heavily from Sufi poetry. As Rogiński noted in an interview with Stephan Kunze, “I’m not connected to the European form of education; I prefer much the Persian education, where you find a master, like a mystic or spiritual teacher. The regular type of education was boring to me, and I tried to stay out of it.” Perhaps that explains why this album, so deeply rooted in Balkan tradition, sounds incredibly foreign, otherworldly and, dare I say, psychedelic. I recently rewatched “Lawrence of Arabia,” and for some reason, I think portions of this music would fit perfectly into its soundtrack, not least because of Lawrence’s own mystical leanings.

☉ Zoh Amba – Sun [Smalltown Supersound]
[» listen and support here]

This might be my favourite jazz record of the year – a no-holds-barred, electrifying performance from a quartet led by baritone saxophonist Zoh Amba. The record is partly based on improvisation between Amba and her band (though I gather some sheet music was involved), with Caroline Morton (bass), Lex Korton (piano), and Miguel Marcel Russel (percussion). The late German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, who was both a spiritual mentor to Amba, clearly influenced her approach, and his legacy shows in the album’s best moments. The result is a rapturous, spiritual record that, despite its tendency to go completely off the rails at times, reaching incredibly hectic highs through the insane band interplay on tracks like “Interbeing” and “Forevermore”, can still sound personal and even elegiac. Listen to the opener “Fruit Gathering,” the pastoral, guitar-based “Champa Flower,” or the almost ambient jazz of “At Noon.” This is no easy feat for a record of this sort. I certainly don’t come across jazz records this captivating very often.

☉ Anto Molina – Paisajes en coma [Non-transparent]
[» listen and support here]

New release from Madrid’s Non-transparent, a young and already reliable label in terms of quality, this time from sound designer and producer Anto Molina. In his own words, the record is “conceived as a kind of dreamlike journey, a collection of ideas from dreams and trips I’ve had.” It does sound a lot like a dreamlike state, but it also sounds incredibly cinematic with its sparse piano notes and clear emphasis on atmospherics. This is a very minimal, elemental record where all the parts seem to be suspended in air – like on the forlorn “Flores de octubre” or the trudging “Secretos del equilibrio.” Perfect for autumn listening, I imagine.

☉ Olli Aarni – Dimension Scrolling [Mondoj]
[» listen and support here]

A new one from ever-consistent Mondoj, this time from Finnish producer Olli Aarni with vocals courtesy of Mia Tarkela. The music here is spectral and shimmering – if you’ve ever seen @landobe’s (Marco Heinle) Instagram page where he tests plugins from indie developers like Fors and dillonBastan, the sound palette might seem familiar. The lyrics read like fever dreams about “cauliflower-colored snowstorms” and “fairies dressed in kiwifruit fur cloaks,” delivered as surreal narratives rather than traditional song structures. I’m weirdly reminded of “The Midnight Gospel” when listening to this – both create these candy-colored metaphysical landscapes where everything feels both profound and absurd. Tarkela’s voice drifts through these digital dreamscapes like she’s narrating a nature documentary filmed in a parallel dimension. Trippy.

☉ Plume Girl – Unnameable Glory [Mappa]
[» listen and support here]

The Slovakian label Mappa has built quite a reputation in my book – I try to keep up with their tight release schedule, and the quality continues to be off the charts. “Unnameable Glory” is the second album from Texan singer-songwriter Sowmya Somanath, where she’s walking in mystics’ footsteps, trying to reveal what’s beyond language or tradition. The music matches this quest – kaleidoscopic and ever-changing, almost collage-like in its shape-shifting tendencies. “Art”, for example, begins almost Coil-like (see “Are You Shivering?”), then morphs into sweet guitar arpeggios and field recordings before seamlessly transitioning into “Trees People Words,” still acoustic guitar-led but now propelled by a gentle kick-drum. The best moments here are where Somanath bends folky sounds into unexpected shapes, like the surprisingly driving “Cipher,” or “Friend,” with its beautiful sax part and autotuned vocals creating something that feels both rooted in tradition and futuristic.

☉ Stone – Dream Curtain Eternally Gentle [3XL]
[» listen and support here]

This one is such a treat! Imagine finding a long-lost CD from the 90s in your older sibling’s collection – someone who spent too many nights in chill-out rooms – and putting it on. This is what that hypothetical CD would sound like. It wears its influences prominently and sounds samey at times, but the vibes are undeniable, making it impossible not to have a good time with it. Don’t mistake this for pure glassy-eyed nostalgia, though – tracks like the aptly titled “Feely” and “Achey” carry genuine wistfulness and longing. The whole thing benefits from what’s probably one of the best bass sounds I’ve heard this year. Keep it on loop and see what happens.

☉ Meitei / 冥丁 – Sen’nyū / 泉涌 (KITCHEN. LABEL)
[» listen and support here]

If you’re familiar with Kankyō Ongaku, Japanese environmental music born from place and shaped by it, you’ll know what to expect from this record. Meitei’s latest continues this tradition, but unlike his earlier “Lost Japan” works that created impressions of a fading country, Sen’nyū is more direct and immediate. Created during a 2024 residency in Beppu, a hot spring city dense with geothermal activity, the album captures the sounds of steam vents, bubbling mud, wind through bamboo, and the quiet conversations of daily bathers. These field recordings become the foundation for an hour-long meditation that flows naturally from one section to the next. There’s a respectful attention here to both the ancient traditions and the broader practice of deep listening that connects this work to pioneers of Kankyō Ongaku. It’s meditative work done with care, and it shows.