Martin Lloyd Howard has engineered a peculiar but entirely hypnotic time-slip on his new solo single, "Hidden Andalucia". Here is a piece of acoustic fingerstyle that defies basic gravity, built upon delicately plucked arpeggios that float above a soft, rhythmic bassline. https://open.spotify.com/album/5N48ROhSDPPCQiy8IOydGs?si=HAir8cZET7y9cg5r36PJQw As a classically trained English guitarist, Howard knows exactly how to manipulate the negative space between notes. He anchors the outer edges of this...

After the calls stop, the hardest part of a breakup is rarely being alone. It is the administrative problem of feeling: how does someone proceed after an old future disappears? Astian’s new single “How” holds that question there. It does not rush to fill it with a lesson, confession, or the sort of gleaming finality pop often prefers. Astian approaches the aftermath through a playful, stripped-back...