Cam Recommends

I don’t mean to just throw a bunch of genre tags at you but, like, hear me out with this one as I try to describe the sound of Zu: progressive jazzy-fusion instrumental stoner math rock. If that sounds like an eye rolling chore I promise it’s not! Start with “Kether” which starts out in face-melting mode with ferocious guitar riff and pummeling drums and then only goes harder from there as synths blast their way into the stratosphere and at the two minute mark of this seven minute piece they introduce a thundering saxophone/horn section before descending into what sounds like a hardccore breakdown except they just ride it out for another 60 seconds, never once coming up for air. At the halfway point it all drops out and they rebuild it again, this time letting the drummer go wild as the synths and guitar duke it out for the remainder. It’s an exhilarating listen and if you dig it, then you’re in luck as the incredible album it’s taken from is over an hour long! 

Julianna Barwick’s Nepenthe is one of my favorite records and it got me through a particularly rough time in my life. Readers of the blog will know how much I adore Mary Lattimore (if I’m not on record yet stating that I think “Wawa By the Ocean” is maybe the best song ever written then consider this that record). So the prospect of a full length record from them instantly made their recent album, Tragic Magic, my most anticipated of 2026. And, ironically, even though both artist’s works themselves ask for patience, I didn’t have to wait at all for this, a most miraculous of projects. I want to highlight “The Four Sleeping Princesses,” though of the course the entire album is worth your time. Starting with an insistent chord progression, provided by Lattimore and her harp, the song builds on itself, layering in washes of Barwick’s ghostly vocals until it becomes a near unstoppable force by the midpoint. But then something interesting happens as that intensity very gradually fades away as the voices take center stage, briefly submerging the fraying harp in a sonic bath before all finally coalescing around one final note and fading into the aether. 

There’s not much info out there about Georgia (the country, not the US state) based musicians Stonecult and their fiery brand of instrumental stoner rock: an instagram page, links to streaming sites, a jam on youtube…But I’m hoping it’s the sign of a brand new band who feel they don’t have anything to prove and not that they intend to never put more out there because, damn if this 15 minute single isn’t a fantastic calling card. The production is immaculate, for one, with the bass in particular sounding so heavy and twangy at the same time. And while it lacks vocals, the personalities of the players still come through via expressive solos and the overall sci-fi atmosphere of the thing. I really can’t wait to see more. 

Voices from the Lake is made up of producers Neel and Donato Dozzy. Sharp-eyed readers will remember I thought Dozzy’s Magda was one of the best albums of 2024 so it’s not surprising for me to recommend this new collaboration, but it’s also not a record I can let just pass by without comment because it’s that good! Neel perhaps brings a bit more “pop” sensibility (only in the loosest sense of that word) so most of the tracks are a digestible 5 minutes or less and the relentless repetition that was deployed on Magma here seems less intended for purposes of psychedelic meditation and instead as the propulsive engine for a percolating and ever-evolving soundscape. 

A tune so dusty, well-worn and nostalgic in its spaghetti western meets Calexico vibes that it’s kind of hard to believe it’s as recent as it is. Starting with strummed guitar before layering in the lap steel and wistful vocals, the song then shuffles into an easy lope as it vibes along, evoking images of vast orange sunsets against a harsh darkening landscape. 

You’d be forgiven for not making it to the bottom of my big list for highlights from 2025’s Q4 but I really don’t want the tunes from this fantastic hard-prog rock band from Finland to slip through the cracks. They actually put out two albums in 2025 and while I recommended their output from December for the previous post (obviously) I want to now recommend a track from the record they dropped in May. Not to repeat myself but I can’t conjure anything better than what I wrote two weeks back when I said their style of psychedelic post-rock “occasionally drifts into dreamy territory before compressing into little mini-novas of sound, exploding out in all directions with a grandiose, bright white heat."

Here’s where I usually drop a fairly long preamble in which I try to sum up my year in music to some degree or another, whether it’s trying to find disparate themes or some other common touchstone. But this year? 

Sometimes there’s a single element of a song that grabs me from the jump and makes me immediately pop it onto my shortlist for this very blog. In this case, I was 20 seconds into the first track off of the power-pop debut record from Addicus when I heard those glorious “chugga-chugga” distorted guitars that make up the underpinning of each verse. It’s a great song in total, of course, but man, those guitars…

 And here we are, finally in 2026. The last couple months of this year were even harder to keep track of than the first nine, but we were certainly rewarded with some incredible music in spite of all the chaos spinning in the world around us. I’ll be back in a week or two with my write-ups for favorite music overall from 2025, though, if you’ve been reading along, by this point you should have a pretty good idea of how my lists are going to shake out. Regardless, there’s always more music to discover! Here’s to 2026 and more art by humans, for humans, forever and ever, amen!

More than a decade ago, it seemed like pure synthwave was poised to take over the world. Tycho hit the mainstream, Kavinsky was everywhere in the wake of Drive and this thing called “vaporwave” was on the come-up. Fast forward and it feels like vaporwave coiled in on itself and splintered into 1000 micro-genres and “low-fi beats to relax and study to” metastasized into a thing. So I was just delighted to hit play on this great little album from Bali-based producer Ørbita and be transported into an alternate reality where synthwave continued to carry just a bit of an edge. The whole record zips by in less than 30 minutes but give “Space Runner” a shot for a sample of the excellent neon-streaked sonic world presented throughout.

The forward motion in this track by heavy hitting, jazz-inflected electronic producer Bruise Blood is a wonderous thing to get caught up in. Starting small and then building and building and building as it layers  different sounds, first drums, bassline, then little electronic melodies, then more drums, then more little electronic melodies, and so on until it finally hits a groove that carries it all home in a lightning fast five minutes.

This stunning musical journey from Belgium rockers Gros Couer starts like a folksy/funky psychedelic jam from Altin Gün before ramping up the distortion on the guitars and dropping into much more arena-ready riffs before blasting into the stratosphere with a heavy beat and muscular bassline. It chugs along until it meanders into yet another musical mode, with hand drumming, hypnotic drones, a head nodding heavy guitar loop and the occasional electronic synth blast as it fades into the setting red sun.