EKHO Sonic Chill #12

Massive Attack came out of Bristol's Wild Bunch sound-system scene in 1988 and defined trip-hop across Blue Lines (1991), Protection (1994) and Mezzanine (1998). 'Dissolved Girl' is a Mezzanine cut sung by Sarah Jay Hawley, one of the album's guest voices along with Horace Andy and the Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser. Mezzanine went to No. 1 in the UK, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand and had sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide by 2000. In April 2026 they put out 'Boots on the Ground' with Tom Waits, their first release in six years.

RJD2 is Ramble Jon Krohn, born in Eugene, Oregon and raised in Columbus, Ohio. He builds cinematic instrumental hip-hop out of crate-dug samples and live playing. 'Smoke & Mirrors' is track 3 on his 2002 debut Deadringer, on El-P's Definitive Jux label. Deadringer made Spin's 2002 year-end list at No. 31, and Fact later ranked it No. 28 among the 100 best indie hip-hop records of all time. Since 2010 he's put records out on his own RJ's Electrical Connections label, including 'According To...' with rapper Supastition in February 2026.

Ozean were a short-lived shoegaze band out of the Bay Area, California: Lisa Baer on vocals, Eric Shea and Mike Prosenko on guitars, Mark Baldwin on drums and bass. They formed in 1991 after Shea was handed a flyer at a Ride and Lush show. In 1992 they recorded a three-song demo with Michael Padilla on a Fostex reel-to-reel, put it out on private cassettes in 1993, played just one live show and broke up after about a year. 'Scenic', which Prosenko and Baer wrote in his bedroom studio, has the ethereal guitars of early-'90s British shoegaze. Moon Sounds Records put the demo out on 12-inch vinyl in 2017, and Numero Group reissued it in 2024, billing it as part of the 'First Wave of American Shoegaze'.

Underworld are Karl Hyde and Rick Smith. They formed the band in Cardiff in 1987 and moved to Romford, on London's eastern edge, in 1992. Best known for 'Born Slippy .NUXX', the Trainspotting anthem, and for records like dubnobasswithmyheadman (1994). 'Sola Sistim' comes from A Hundred Days Off (2002), their first album after Darren Emerson left in 2000, and it went to No. 2 on Billboard's Electronic Albums chart and No. 7 in Japan. Their album Strawberry Hotel came out in 2024.

You'll Never Get to Heaven. Alice Hansen, a classically trained pianist and violinist, and producer Chuck Blazevic, a dream-pop duo out of London, Ontario. Their records, a 2012 self-titled debut on Divorce Records, Adorn (2014) and Images (2017), blend hushed vocals, echo and reverb with ambient minimalism. 'Images' is the title track of their third album, released 24 March 2017 with Toronto's Yellow K Records. The band say the song came out of a fascination with '80s Japanese pop and minimalism, while staying indebted to the dreamy impressionism of Debussy. They've always been selective about playing live, and their fourth album, Wave Your Moonlight Hat for the Snowfall Train, followed in November 2021.

Flunk. Oslo, Norway. They started around New Year 2000/2001 as sessions between producer Ulf Nygaard and guitarist Jo Bakke, then singer Anja Øyen Vister joined and they signed to Oslo's Beatservice Records in 2001. They made their name with a hushed 2002 cover of New Order's 'Blue Monday' and the debut For Sleepyheads Only, then spent two decades on warm, folk-tinged trip-hop and downtempo. 'Petrified' is track 3 on Chemistry and Math (29 September 2017). Their songs were placed in The O.C., Big Love and Designated Survivor. Take Me Places (23 May 2025) was billed as their final album, with the band saying they'd dissolve after a run of shows in spring and summer 2025.

Lapalux is Essex producer Stuart Howard. The name's short for 'Lap of Luxury'. He makes glitchy, tape-textured, emotionally heavy beat music. 'Without You', sung by Kerry Leatham, was a 2013 single from his Brainfeeder debut Nostalchic (25 March 2013), which drew a 79 Metacritic score and reached No. 27 on the UK Dance Albums chart. Then came Lustmore (2015), Ruinism (2017) and Amnioverse, and then he moved to his own LPLX label for Total Reality, Total Chaos (2021) and On the Grid (2025). Beyond records he's scored film and performance pieces and written game music for Grand Theft Auto V and EA's F1 2024.

Still Corners are singer Tessa Murray and producer/multi-instrumentalist Greg Hughes, an American raised in Arizona and Texas. He started the band in 2007 and met Murray by chance in 2009 when a London train got diverted to another station. Sub Pop put out their first two albums, Creatures of an Hour (2011) and Strange Pleasures (2013), before they set up their own Wrecking Light Records for Dead Blue, Slow Air, The Last Exit and Dream Talk (2024). 'The Trip' is the six-minute opener of Strange Pleasures, a synth-pop record that reached No. 28 on Billboard's Heatseekers chart. Hughes wrote its lyrics while driving 36 hours from Minneapolis to Vancouver and called it 'a song for travelling'. This is the 2023 remaster from the 10th Anniversary Edition. In 2025 they released the single 'Summer Nights' and a Halloween cover of 'The Crying Game'.

Ana Criado is an Anglo-Spanish singer-songwriter based in the Netherlands, with vocal-trance credits that include tracks with Armin van Buuren, Ronski Speed and Stoneface & Terminal. Adrian&Raz are the Dutch singer-songwriter-producer duo Adrian Broekhuyse and Raz Nitzan, who also ran the Haarlem-based Adrian & Raz label. 'Dragon Eyed' is on the label's 'Pure Bliss Vocals – Chill Out Edition' (catalogue ARPBV007, 25 March 2013), a 20-track various-artists chill-out compilation. Her Armin van Buuren collaborations include 'Down to Love' (2010) and 'I'll Listen' (2012).

Handsome Boy Modeling School is the tongue-in-cheek studio project of producers Dan the Automator (Dan Nakamura) and Prince Paul (Paul Huston), who played the personas Nathaniel Merriweather and Chest Rockwell. Their 1999 debut 'So... How's Your Girl?' on Tommy Boy stacked guest spots from DJ Shadow, Del, Mike D, Roisin Murphy and more. 'Sunshine' is its gentlest moment, a duet between Josh Haden (frontman of LA slowcore band Spain and son of jazz bassist Charlie Haden) and Sean Lennon, with Money Mark on keys, Paula Frazer on backing vocals and comedian Don Novello's Father Guido Sarducci wandering through. It came out as a UK single in 2000 and was remixed by Groove Armada and by Rollo (as Dusted). The duo followed with 'White People' (2004), reunited for a New York show in 2018 and put out 'Music to Drink Martinis To' in 2023.

Crumb. Brooklyn-based four-piece: Lila Ramani (vocals, guitar), Bri Aronow (keys, sax), Jesse Brotter (bass) and Jonathan Gilad (drums). They met at Tufts University and started recording as a band in 2016. Their hazy, jazz-tinged psych-pop spread through the internet. After the 2016 self-titled EP and 2017's 'Locket', they self-released the albums 'Jinx' (2019), 'Ice Melt' (2021) and 'AMAMA' (2024). 'Ice Melt' was made in Los Angeles with producer Jonathan Rado of Foxygen and came out on the band's own Crumb Records, and the title track is the album's short closer. In December 2025 they put out a live album, 'Live!'.

Telefon Tel Aviv started in 1999 as a duo of New Orleans high-school friends Joshua Eustis and Charles Cooper, mixing British IDM (Autechre, Aphex Twin) with house, techno and New Orleans bounce. Their debut 'Fahrenheit Fair Enough' (2001, Hefty) set out their glitchy, downtempo sound, then came 'Map of What Is Effortless' (2004) and the synth-heavy 'Immolate Yourself' (2009, BPitch Control), home of 'I Made A Tree On The Wold'. Eustis has also toured with Nine Inch Nails, co-produced Puscifer and co-founded The Black Queen. After Cooper's death in 2009 he kept Telefon Tel Aviv going as a solo project, putting out 'Dreams Are Not Enough' on Ghostly International in 2019. He's based in Los Angeles.

Mac DeMarco. Born in Duncan, British Columbia, raised in Edmonton, cut his teeth in Vancouver recording as Makeout Videotape before signing to Captured Tracks. His woozy, chorus-drenched guitar pop on '2' (2012) and 'Salad Days' (2014) made him an indie fixture, and 'This Old Dog' (2017) turned softer, leaning on acoustic guitar and vintage synths. 'On the Level' came out as its single on 11 April 2017. He played every instrument and engineered and mixed the album himself, recording it between Queens and his new home in Los Angeles. He's since run his own Mac's Record Label, put out 'Guitar' in August 2025, and in August 2026 put four 'secret albums', first hidden on CD-Rs for fans to find on tour, onto streaming services.

Marta Zlakowska is a Polish singer from Krakow. She joined Tricky's project after meeting him in November 2017 and spent the next six years touring and recording with the Bristol trip-hop pioneer. Her debut album 'When It's Going Wrong' (False Idols, 31 March 2023), produced by Tricky, is a spare nine-track, 19-minute record. On the title track her tender voice is backed by little more than a hand drum and low guitar notes, and she's called it the song that holds the biggest part of herself. The album also covers Jefferson Airplane's 'Today' with a drum'n'bass break and closes on a lullaby-like cover of the Polish song 'Czarno Czarny'. She sings on 'Out of Place', the closing track of Tricky's July 2026 album 'Different When It's Silent'.

wing! is the project of Adam Swan, a producer born and raised in Bexleyheath in southeast London. He blends sample-based beat-making with live instrumentation into instrumental, trip-hop-leaning hip-hop. 'Out From Outer' started as a sketch he made on his lunch break from working in a coffee shop, inspired by Brazilian funk and J Dilla, and it was meant to 'feel like a live DJ endlessly flipping samples over a drum loop'. Sending it to drummer Joe Killick led to a live trio with bassist Kai Charlton, which debuted at The Windmill in Brixton in April 2024. The track was the first single from his debut EP 'MISSED IT JUST THE ONCE' (Memorials of Distinction, 5 September 2025), and a second EP, '(WORTH SCANNING FOR)', followed in July 2026.

Now Always Fades is the project of Xavier Bacash, a Melbourne (Naarm) singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and mix engineer. He made four albums as Sonny Ism, then started NAF after coming back to Australia from seven years in Copenhagen and Stockholm. The debut album 'Into The Doldrums' (Northern Underground Records, 16 May 2025) mixes trip-hop, post-punk, ethereal pop and street soul with guest singers. 'A Pain That I Used To Feel', which the label calls the album's 'sundown strut', is sung by Lili Hall, formerly of the experimental group Squaring Circles. Bacash has said the project exists 'to investigate where my songwriting can go whilst collaborating with other vocalists'. The follow-up album 'Coalesce', with Lili Hall again alongside Alias Error and Olive Kimoto, came out on 18 September 2026 and was PBS FM's feature album for the week of 14 September.

Everything But The Girl are Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt, who met as students at the University of Hull in the early 1980s and later moved from jazzy acoustic pop into electronic music. 'Walking Wounded' (1996), the title track of their first album for Virgin, was built with drum'n'bass duo Spring Heel Jack (John Coxon and Ashley Wales). Spring Heel Jack wrote the music and produced it, with Watt's lyric and Thorn's vocal on top, and it became a UK top-ten single. After pausing in 2000 they came back with 'Fuse' (2023), which went to No. 3 in the UK, the highest-charting album of their career. Since 2025 they've been playing small London shows billed as Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn, and in 2026 they launched a deluxe CD reissue series.

DARGZ is David Dargahi, a producer and engineer who graduated from the Abbey Road Institute in 2019. Before that he played guitar in The Postelles (Capitol) and Wardell (Roc Nation), touring alongside acts including Kings Of Leon, Interpol, Vampire Weekend and Haim. Recording Poppy Ajudha's vocals for her feature on Moses Boyd's album Dark Matter led to 'Lou's Tune' (September 2021). A sub-two-minute lo-fi hip-hop sketch: laid-back swing, horns, a sped-up vocal sample and live drumming from Mercury Prize-nominated drummer Moses Boyd. It was his first single after signing to Papercup Records and later opened his debut album 'Happiness' (2023). The second album, 'Friends & Family' (May 2025), features Oscar Jerome, Blue Lab Beats and Moses Boyd again. His DARGZ music has passed 100 million streams.

True Widow. Trio out of Dallas, Texas: guitarist Dan Phillips, bassist Nicole Estill and drummer Tim 'Slim' Starks. They call their sound 'stonegaze': slow, heavy doom-rock riffs wrapped in shoegaze haze, with Phillips and Estill trading vocals. 'Jakyl' opens their second album, As High As the Highest Heavens and From the Center to the Circumference of the Earth (Kemado, 2011), which NPR premiered as a First Listen, calling the trio 'as hushed as it is ribcage-rattling.' Then came Circumambulation (2013) and Avvolgere (2016) on Relapse, and tours with Boris, Kurt Vile and ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. Before the band, Phillips had been living in Boston and attending furniture-making school. In June 2026 Phillips and Estill debuted a new five-piece, Bad Stuff, with a self-titled album on Relapse.

Slowdive formed in Reading, England in 1989 around childhood friends Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell, and became one of shoegaze's defining bands with Just for a Day (1991) and Souvlaki (1993), before splitting after 1995's Pygmalion. They reunited in 2014. 'Go Get It' comes from 2017's self-titled album, their first in 22 years, produced by Halstead, mixed by Chris Coady and recorded in studios from Exeter to Cornwall. Consequence of Sound called it 'the closest the band has ever wandered into post-rock': a soft two-minute build that bursts into Goswell and Halstead's dueling vocals. The album reached No. 16 in the UK and No. 50 on the Billboard 200, and Pitchfork gave it 8.6. Their next album, Everything Is Alive, followed in 2023.

Phantom Handshakes. Lo-fi dream-pop/shoegaze duo, Matt Sklar and Federica Tassano, formed in spring 2020 as a pandemic home-recording project between New York and, after Sklar moved, New Orleans. They write, record and mix everything themselves in separate home studios. Sklar sends an instrumental idea and Tassano builds vocals and more parts on top. 'Good Intentions' opens their third album, Sirens at Golden Hour (21 August 2024), which Slovak label Start Track also put out as a 30-copy cassette, mastered by Carl Saff. Live, they expand to a five-piece band. In 2026 they announced a new album, Standing By, due 22 October 2026 and opening with 'From the Side'.

The Radio Dept. Dream pop out of Lund, Sweden, built around Johan Duncanson and Martin Carlberg, known for hazy, lo-fi guitar pop on Lesser Matters (2003), Pet Grief (2006), Clinging to a Scheme (2010) and Running Out of Love (2016). 'Pulling Our Weight' was the title track of a 2003 EP, and it found a wider audience when Sofia Coppola put it, along with 'I Don't Like It Like This' and 'Keen on Boys', on the soundtrack of her 2006 film Marie Antoinette. After a long legal dispute with their old label Labrador, a settlement gave the band back control of their catalogue. Their own Just So! label then put out I Don't Need Love, I've Got My Band (2019), which collects the Pulling Our Weight and This Past Week EPs. In 2026 they announced a headline show at London's KOKO on 3 November, their first live performance since 2018, along with a 20th-anniversary vinyl reissue of Pet Grief and word that new music was coming 'in a bit'.

Natalia Clavier. Singer out of Buenos Aires, best known as a longtime lead vocalist with Washington, D.C. electronic/world-music outfit Thievery Corporation. Her solo catalogue runs from Nectar (2008) and Lumen (2013) through TRANS (2018) and Corazon Kintsugi (2023), a record made with Eric Hilton. Hilton, Thievery Corporation's co-founder, turns her 2022 single 'Underwater' into a slow trip-hop groove led by a strong bass line. The remix came out on the two-track Underwater Remixed EP on 6 May 2022, alongside a version by Thievery drummer Jeff Franca's project ETHNO. Clavier also leads the duo VOXMANA with violinist Andrei Matorin and runs sound-healing sessions.

Com Truise is producer and designer Seth Haley, born in 1985 and from Oneida in upstate New York. He calls his sound 'mid-fi synthwave slow-motion funk': warped analog synths, heavy bass and slow-rolling grooves. 'Brokendate' comes from Galactic Melt (Ghostly International, June 2011), his debut album, which came after he decided to leave his job as an art director. He followed it with In Decay (2012), Iteration (2017) and Persuasion System (2019), and composed the score for the 2022 film Private Property. His releases from the Cyanide Sisters EP through Iteration tell a running story about a 'synthetic astronaut' escaping an oppressive society.

MS MR, said 'Miz Mister', were the New York duo of singer Lizzy Plapinger, co-founder of the Neon Gold label, and producer Max Hershenow. They met at Vassar and started the project in 2010 without telling anyone. They called their dark, moody pop 'candy-colored worlds with a gothic, macabre underbelly.' 'Hurricane' was their debut single (video April 2012, released July 2012) and was also on the Candy Bar Creep Show EP. Then it opened their Columbia debut album Secondhand Rapture (2013), recorded partly at Electric Lady Studios and mixed by Tom Elmhirst. The song reached No. 38 in Germany, Tom Ford used it in a 2012 runway presentation, and it later turned up in the 2018 film Extinction. The duo went on hiatus in 2017 and signed off with a final single, 'Saturn Return', in September 2023.

The Deadbeats are a British downbeat/trip-hop outfit built around Damian Stanley and Ged Day. They started their own label, Space Hopper, as a side project alongside their day jobs at the deep-house label S4G, and describe themselves as innovators of the 'dope beat' genre. 'Funky For You' first showed up in 1998 on a 12-inch on the UK label 20:20 D-Vision (VISD001), led by its Spacehopper Mix. Rae & Christian picked that mix for their 1999 DJ-mix album Blazing the Crop. The track opens the Deadbeats' 2000 album Lounging, and their music has also appeared on the Mushroom Jazz and Café del Mar series. In 2021 Space Hopper put out a Funky For You Remixes package with mixes by Kruder & Dorfmeister, Rae & Christian and Ralph Lawson.