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music: june 26

a hot, slow june of ambient, dub techno and house – gigi masin, shed, coatshek, lord of the isles; discovery vs research

05 Jul 2026 / 5 min read

There are two kinds of discovery that I love.

The first is when you stumble upon something by accident. For example, discovering a strange song in a playlist or an artist in a line-up that you hadn't seen before.

The second is almost the opposite. You search for something for a long time – a song you heard somewhere but could not find on Shazam – and then one day it appears.

Both of these have in common that you get surprised at the moment of discovery.

The flipside of being surprised is knowing exactly what to expect. Before many experiences, you can either research them or not. Research protects you somewhat: it reduces the chance of wasting your attention, time or money. But it also trades real-life discovery for an imaginary preview.

"I love going into another world, and I love mysteries. So I don’t really like to know very much ahead of time. I like the feeling of discovery." – David Lynch

Take music, for example: reading too much about a new album can numb the first listen. You form an opinion (or adopt someone else's?) before hearing the first note. The same thing happens everywhere. People watch films because of the reviews, order a dish they have seen on social media photos, travel to places they have studied from every angle. There is no surprise and discovery in "experiencing" before the experience itself!

I understand that time is valuable, and I also hate being disappointed. But if you want discovery and surprise, you need to have an exploratory mindset, and part of that is discovering unimpressive things from time to time.

However, there are ways to derisk without sacrificing experience: curation. Let someone else absorb part of the risk, while you keep the element of surprise. Let a friend send you music they know you will like. Let someone invite you to a film, a performance, a concert. And if you trust their taste, do not ask for every detail. Just go!

Here is my listening journal for June, all tracks on Spotify. Don't read too much before listening!

Quiet shade

Album: Coatshek – Sound Bath (ambient techno, nocturnal sexy & dubby downtempo set with a wild backstory, very warm and melodic; fav tracks: Labyrinth, Eternal Lovers)
Track: John Beltran – Sunrise and the Life We Live (balearic ambient techno, very glassy, warm, chill; it's the title track of a new album that's coming out in September and is apparently a return to his Ten Days of Blue aesthetic (!!!), this is absolutely my sound right now, can't wait)
Compilation: Apollo: Past, Present, Future (ambient techno, trip hop, downtempo – a 2009 retrospective for Apollo, the R&S sublabel focused on ambient, ambient techno and chillout home to Aphex Twin, Biosphere and Locust; the middle stretch is really strong, good selection)
Album: Tornado Wallace – Lonely Planet (last month I dug into trip hop and discovered a.s.o. – one half of that duo is Tornado Wallace, who also made this super cool ambient house album; balearic, warm, tropical; maybe even a little too tropical on some tracks, but it fits the 40 degree June weather)
Album: Dettinger – Intershop (cold and minimalistic ambient techno from 1999; mysterious and nocturnal, balances the other balearic ambient techno tracks above; one of the highest ranked ambient techno records on RYM)
Album: Gigi Masin – Movement (Gigi Masin is an early Italian ambient legend; instead of his usual floaty ambient, this album is "ambient music for movement": some tracks lean into ambient house, others even into acid, but my fav tracks stay on the slower side: UMI, Bed on Mars)
- Track: Gaussian Curve – Winter Sun (Gaussian Curve is a collaboration between Gigi Masin, Young Marco and Jonny Nash, and I absolutely love this track; it's ambient pop, balearic, leaning a bit into downtempo; listened to it 10x in June)
Album: Bot1500 – The Black Sea (very spacious ambient IDM, meditative; fav tracks: Abstract Springs, XB 2, Caves)
EP: Peach – Soak Vol. 1 (ambient downtempo, sounds soapy! fav tracks: Bathtime Bliss, Batangas Beat)
Album: Konono Nº1 – Congotronics (I don't listen to much African music day to day, but this is a very fun, lively release from Congo; the outlier in an otherwise very ambient/techno month)

Peak sun

EP: Lord of the Isles – Venus Flux (very very cool EP that takes you on a journey, opens on an ambient intro, then two clean, driving dub techno tracks, and closes on a slower, melancholic broken-beat electro highlight)
Album: Shed – Rave Echoes (diverse techno and breakbeat album, ranging from breaky synths on Double Scoop, to a melancholic sound on Taking You Home, to groovy techno on Loot 25)
- "It’s kind of a rave record, but it’s from the perspective of a 50-year-old raver. It’s easy to listen to. There are no hard breaks, no frustrating vocals and no cheesy things. It’s about just having a good feeling and letting go. It’s like a rave from the couch." – Shed
- "It’s melancholic, but it’s not nostalgic. I don’t want to have these times back. That time of my life was cool, but it’s done. I still like the romantic feelings I have about those days, and I still love the music, but I don’t want to be young anymore." – Shed
Track: Inland Knights – Amber Gambler (funky groovy deep house track full of chopped-up Michael Jackson vocal samples from "Rock With You")
Track: Midland – Without Pause (a 7-minute rolling house track; Midland wrote and debuted it at his final Corsica Studios set)
Track: François X – Bound State (lean minimal techno, my fav off his Bound States EP, leans a bit into the groovier side)
EP: Purple Plejade & Acid Junkies – Djax-Up-Beats: The Acid Trip EP 2 (two long, hypnotic acid techno tracks from the 90s, reissued this year – 14min each, building up a sci-fi rave situation)