Every month, writer, musician, and DJ Ted Davis wanders through the dreamlike fringes of Bandcamp. Embracing a fluid, forward-thinking approach to ambient, anything deemed worthy of the genre tag is considered fair game for this column. Here are amorphous albums that repurpose krautrock, dub techno, and more for a strange summer.

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Brooklyn-based trio Purelink never meant to get this far. That Purelink presents itself as an affable band instead of a constellation of Ableton nerds only fuels the unlikely buzz. Childhood friends Tommy Paslaski (aka Concave Reflection) and Ben Paulson (aka kindtree) met Akeem Asani (aka Millia) at the record store where he worked while they were all living in Chicago. Born from laptop jams during Covid lockdowns, Purelink began releasing cottony dub techno and drum and bass on labels like Lillerne Tapes, UwU Dust Bath, and naff recordings. Their 2023 full-length for Peak Oil, Signs, found Purelink on a rapid ascent, gracing bills in support of everyone from Astrid Sonne to Spacetime Continuum to James Blake. The project’s new album, Faith, came to life amidst adjustments to fresh routines in New York City. It is once again on Peak Oil, and strips away the early ‘00s microhouse of Signs for more spiritual fare. Faith’s title is a plea for hope in the face of turbulence, and it incorporates acoustic timbres and vocal contributions from Loraine James and Angelina Nonaj. These six cuts thrum with affirming integrity.

Brian Leeds’ label West Mineral Ltd. has skewed moody from the jump. Leeds—who performs under a handful of aliases including Huerco S. and Loidis—has pushed his imprint further into abstraction on records from Shinetiac, NUG, and Serwed. West Mineral’s latest comes from the elusive figure sleepdial who runs the Denver DIY space GLOB. It is fitting that their second album, RV Lights, harkens to the heyday of glitch, as they recently opened for genre forebears Jan Jelinek and Andrew Pekler. Echoing chords on a thick backdrop make me envision jabbing a sheet of wool with shears.

Press play on Campana Sonans, Jake Muir’s latest for enmossed, and the first thing that comes to mind is probably the courtyard of an ancient church. The two-track, 40-minute album from the Berlin-by-way-of-Los-Angeles sound-design guru shifts from humid bathhouses to German bell-ringing practices. The A-side, “Erzklang,” is a scraping yet subtle collage of field recordings captured in cathedrals across Berlin. The back half, “Changes,” is more direct, constructed from behind-the-scenes aural snapshots of change ringing in small-town England. Campana Sonans is perfectly suited for strolling around a medieval town, mildly discombobulated.

Orbit the more eclectic corners of the New York City underground, and it won’t take long to encounter Dan Creahan. The deep-digging, Brooklyn-based Lot Radio resident’s Alien D project has become a fixture at cozy spaces and larger institutions alike. Creahan’s output typically centers on gritty breaks. His new EP for gauzy Australian label and mix series Theory Therapy, For the Early Hours of a World in Bloom, lingers in a similar space as his work in the duo DeKalb Works, albeit less groggy and disorienting. Ben Seretan’s guitar feature on the 13-minute “Breather” feels like watching an ‘80s cop show from inside a sauna. The elven chimes on “Sleepy’s Gambit” could be pulled from one of Aleksi Perälä’s colundi sequence sketches. Creahan’s music often summons aimless nights, glycerine smoke, and the rustle of the subway. For the Early Hours of a World in Bloom stands in contrast—serene, and a touch eerie.

Conna Haraway’s Glasgow-based label co:clear uplifts monochrome sounds. The imprint’s latest arrives via French producer and Second End Records founder Jonnnah. Their new EP, Me, With You, opens with an appearance from venerated electronica artist Pavel Milyakov on “Still Here, Playing Gtr.” The rest drifts between woozy atmospheres and blurry trip-hop—another vital addition to the blossoming downtempo revival.

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Neo Seven, Neo Gibson’s last full-length as 7038634357—the name is also their phone number—seemed to hover in ambiguity. The NYC-by-way-of-Virginia artist’s new record, Waterfall Horizon, serves up loneliness tailored to 5am airport terminals and glossy hotel lobbies. Waterfall Horizon is catered for live shows, which impacts the manicured shapes of these pieces. A few moments border on emo, with Gibson’s mumbly, AutoTuned voice cresting over sharp, hissy synth pads. Gibson is signed to the bookish Brooklyn non-profit Blank Forms Editions, but there’s a glum modernity to Waterfall Horizon that places it closer to the music on Year0001.

If an artist’s moniker is going to reference The Crying Of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, they had better be mysterious. The evasive Japanese producer simply known as DJ Trystero rises to the occasion, rolling out cloudy techno on imprints like Incienso and The Trilogy Tapes. DJ Trystero’s new album, Cantor’s Paradise, is on Fergus Jones’ label FELT, and it settles in seamlessly alongside releases from Firnis DC and Civilistjävel!. The previous DJ Trystero full-length, 2023’s Castillo, was immediate, underlining sonic mist with hypnotic, clicky grooves. Cantor’s Paradise strikes me as being fully disintegrated, like the gray sludge left after a glacier melts.

Luca Mucci’s Piezo is a rising staple of the global bass circuit. His tracks have landed on labels like Dekmantel and Wisdom Teeth, leading to the attention of selectors ranging from Jamie xx to Foodman. But the Milan-based DJ has hinted at his gentler side on records such as 2023’s Soothe. In the trio Cortex of Light, Mucci teams up with fellow Italian producers Davide Belingheri (aka Aitch) and Francesco Pappagallo (aka primordial OOze and xàr num) to pearly results. ILLUMINOTECNICA, their new album for Special Guest DJ’s imprint 3XL, matches the label’s fried, cybernetic tone. Seeped in defective jitteriness, ILLUMINOTECNICA is dedicated to locating the poetry in a grueling comedown.

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As an employee of kranky, the co-founder of Peak Oil. and a member of projects ranging from Nudge to Smoke Point, Brian Foote (aka Leech) is one of the busiest people in electronic music. But late last year, the 50-something, Los Angeles-based family man found the bandwidth to launch another label called False Aralia. This imprint is dedicated to prolific producer Izaak Schlossman, who has releases under more monikers than one should be asked to keep track of. In an interview last year with Andrew Ryce’s Substack Future Proofing, Foote described False Aralia as a series of “abstract DJ tools.” The pulse in Schlossman’s work is often snaky and opalescent; Externalism’s False 03 makes me imagine 2-step heard from the bottom of a swimming pool. Soulful singing from Anya Prisk, Schlossman’s collaborator in loveshadow, imbues the fog with bleary catchiness. False 03 arrives in tandem with the minimalism-indebted Iri.gram EP False 04, which bears traces of Luomo.

James Holden’s hippyish techno has always been earthy and cosmic, but it wasn’t until The Universe Will Take Care Of You—the British modular wiz and Border Community label founder’s new collaboration with classically trained Polish clarinetist Wacław Zimpel—that I finally clocked the krautrock haze that has permeated so many of Holden’s records. On six sprawling tracks with bohemian names like “Sunbeam Path” and “Incredible Bliss,” Holden and Zimpel convey the essence of Nag Champa burning in a dewy forest clearing. The path towards The Universe Will Take Care Of You was gradual, with the pair convening for improvisation sessions at Holden’s studio whenever they were each in London. They custom-built a plugin that cultivates the illusion of multiple clarinets blown at once. In its grasp, influences from Indian raga and Moroccan Gnawa trance are refracted as kaleidoscopic splashes of melody.

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Regular readers of this column might have a preconceived notion of what a Stephen Vitiello record on Balmat will sound like. The Virginia-based guitarist’s academic drones have made him a fixture of the universe orbiting Lawrence English’s Room40 label. Meanwhile, Philip Sherburne and Albert Salinas’ imprint Balmat has emerged as a titan of contemporary ambient. Yet Second—on which Vitiello teams up with Hugo Largo member Hahn Rowe and Fugazi, Rites of Spring, and Messthetics drummer Brandon Canty—has more in common with Cluster than Olivia Block. The trio hinted at this psychedelic formula on their 2023 debut piece for Longform Editions, which packed myriad ideas into 17 minutes. This new round of tracks sparked with Vitiello’s warbling guitar and electric piano doodles through his modular rig. He then fleshed out rhythms with Canty and eventually tapped Rowe to contribute bowed strings and fretwork. Animal Collective’s Geologist also appears on hurdy gurdy, the result of a random encounter at the Maryland studio where Second was laid to tape. Bridging jazz, post-punk, and kosmische, Second conjures an exciting topography.

In a recent interview about his latest record for Mexican Summer, I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away, Hayden Pedigo told NPR that he sees each fingerpicked Americana piece as a “little narrative movie.” Written during a residency in rural Wyoming and finished in Ojai, California with Hiss Golden Messenger co-founder Scott Hirsch, the album borrows its title from an episode of Little House on the Prairie. I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away is the final chapter of Amarillo, Texas native Pedigo’s automotive, escapist Motor Trilogy, and its seven folky cuts dial back the expansiveness of the highway in favor of soily introversion. Pedigo’s career up until this point had been marked with comparisons to the greats of American Primitivism. I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away cements that he has quietly transcended traditionalist status, paving a distinct lane of his own.