First Floor

So… I wrote this article about Betty Hammerschlag—which, in case you didn’t read it, is a project where a German middle-aged man named Tilman Hornig has spent years cosplaying as a young and arguably queer-coded woman, actively deceiving all sorts of people along the way. Some of those people were his own collaborators, while others were actual young women and queer people he’d engaged online.

Betty Hammerschlag is having a bit of a moment. Just last week, The Quietus included “Hot Snow”—a track from the artist’s forthcoming Psycho Summer album—in its round-up of August’s best music.

The music of Erik M. carries a profound sense of patience and clarity, and considering that he makes his home in Oslo, the context of life in Norway feels especially pertinent to his aesthetic. Aside from being home to a wide array of breathtaking landscapes and natural wonders, the country is also known to have some of the highest standards of living on the planet, ranking near the very top of the World Happiness Report (yes, that’s a real thing).

Split releases occupy a curious space on the spectrum of musical formats. Logically speaking, they probably made more sense back when physical releases were the only option, serving a functional purpose by bundling together loose tracks that might not have made sense elsewhere. In the digital era, however, tracks can now easily be released in any number of configurations; for a split release to stand out, it has to be curated with a real sense of intention.

“Canto Duo,” the second song on composer Sarah Davachi’s latest album, is a case study in minimalism. For over nine minutes, Davachi plays chords on a slightly detuned organ that gradually changes in texture and timbre—and the effect is heartbreaking. The slow undulation of the organ becomes more and more melancholic as the song progresses, playing out like the imaginary soundtrack of a montage scene from a profoundly sad movie.

Is everyone enjoying the music industry’s anti-AI pantomime? And does anyone actually believe it? Last week, it was reported that Apple Music apparently sent an email to its industry partners announcing that it would soon be adding a new “Made with AI” tag to AI-generated songs on its platform. The company is actually late to the game on this, as this year has already seen similar announcements from Bandcamp, Deezer, Tidal and Spotify.

Zunfo was born and raised in Ecuador, and is now based in Denver. In a strange way, that’s all you need to know about his debut album, El Poder Brutal. While the capital of Colorado has never really been known as a hotbed of Latin rhythms, it has for decades been the unofficial epicenter of heavy bass worship in the US.

Guitars are so back. That shouldn’t be news to anyone at this point. We’re living in a moment when even Charli xcx is describing her latest album as a rock record, and the shoegaze “revival” that’s been happening in recent years is increasingly feeling less like a fad and more like a permanent fixture of the music landscape.

First Floor is in many ways a one-person operation, but on most Wednesdays, the newsletter fully cedes the spotlight to an artist, writer or other figure from the music world, inviting them to recommend a piece of music. Today’s recommendation comes from Yara Asmar, a Lebanese musician, composer, video artist and (not kidding) puppeteer whose body of work defies easy categorization.

Memory is a tricky thing. On the most basic level, it’s something that we rely upon, both individually and collectively, to have some idea of who we are and where we come from. And yet memories are notoriously unreliable. They’re not objective facts. They’re subjective recollections, which not only fade over time, but from the very beginning are profoundly shaped by the individual perspectives and biases of whoever happens to be doing the remembering.