euth's weekly download - early june 2026

for the second edition we have the femcels, jean-luc eldenwood, boards of canada, tiga, helllhound, a goa comp and the solo debut from total blue synthesist anthony calonico. mostly chill with a couple blasts of wildness. feel free to skip the boc blurb, i had more to process than i thought. also it's tuesday, which is what i’m gonna try to stick with. i'm still figuring out some formatting stuff so here's a link to the web version that might work a little nicer. thanks for reading, hope you find something to love.

femcels - i have to get hotter (2026)

what a blast of fresh air. spirit of 2006 in full effect, making me feel things i haven’t felt since the heyday of dan deacon, the go team, late of the pier. 'earnest' is approaching meaninglessness, but it's hard to avoid the descriptor here. there is a specific flavor of earnestness in this record that i hear also in charli's new music (maybe i’ll save that for next week). an unvarnished view into their thoughts and feelings in real time, no matter how inane, irrelevant, vain, silly, self absorbed. sharing these thoughts and feelings unfiltered achieves a vulnerability and a closeness usually reserved only for best friends at 3am, and validates the garbage we have running through our heads all the time. its easier to talk about the lyrics and the spoken word, but the music communicates the same thing. high energy, bursting with emotion, excited, novel, upbeat and angsty, fun, rough around the edges, a little punky, blown out, diy. one of a very few albums that hits the delirious highs of peak dan deacon. it loses a bit of steam as it goes on, but as a whole is one of the strongest debuts in recent memory, from the most exciting band i’ve come across in ages. i’ve had it on repeat for months. can't recommend enough for whenever and wherever you need to freak out. 

jean-luc eldenwood - the beach (2026)

a breathtaking debut from l.a. singer songwriter jean-luc eldenwood. this lp, produced by the inimitable jonathan rado, is the latest album to evoke the magic of the singer songwriters of another era, a once blockbuster artform that has been mostly relegated to retro revivalism. this is something slightly different, picking up where the genre left off rather than rehashing its precise contours. jean-luc's voice is incredible; expressive, and impressive at once. a crystal clear channel for the sensations he wants to communicate. the songs are crafted with care, their structures accenting their contents, evoking scenes, times, and spaces with ease. the songs explore sense memory, relationship, specific moments. in total, the album presents a life lived in los angeles, careening through his thirty some years with a tossed off ease. it captures the experience of the particular charms of life in this city in a way i have rarely heard elsewhere. his capacity for storytelling and evoking place is rare, and deployed to great effect. the music also sounds incredible, the arrangements lush and gentle, airy, fragrant. favorites include 'summer call', breezy and dripping with the potential of early summer, and 'tilted' whose showstopping chorus has the instant familiarity of a lost standard. highly recommended for any kind of soiree, cocktail hour, or contemplative evening. 

boards of canada - inferno (2026)

lets get into it. first new boc in 13 years. its good, you should listen. 

from their very first releases circa 95, working in a fairly recent genre, their music already felt half remembered, long forgotten, dug up from another time. that capacity to conjure nostalgia out of thin air is double edged, at once creating an unearned emotional resonance, and burdening the music with a total disconnection from its own reality. 

as time has gone on, i have found it difficult to revisit my favorite boc records: music has the right to children, campfire headphase, twoism. what once read as psychedelic and boundary pushing now reads as safe, campy. spotify playlist fodder, or a relic of another era of psychedelic chill out if i’m feeling generous. tomorrow's harvest, their previous record from 2013, is something else entirely. maybe their best work, it inhabits its own space. free from sonic references, music scenes, vocal snippets, and the baggage that comes with them.

now, 13 years later, boc have returned. heralded by a mysterious VHS mailed to fans, already the release was dripping in the trademark retro pastiche that was notably absent from the previous album cycle. the video, album art, & poster campaign all featured retro textures, distorted faces. a perfect blend of the visual worlds of MHTRTC, geogaddi, and the campfire headphase. it was a loud, clear signal that they were revisiting the themes of their earlier work. 

the album is out now and i’ve listened to it a few times. its hard for me to avoid the conclusion that boc share my struggles with their older material. as the music landscape has shifted, the meaning of chill breakbeats has changed with it, coming to signify an almost nonmusic: totally transparent, backgrounded, potentially ai gen. nevertheless, across the 67 mins of Inferno they bear down on the habits of their younger selves, painstakingly recreating the palette of snappy breaks, woozy synths, and evocative melodies they explored for the ten years from 1995-2005. the exercise calls to mind something like synechdoche new york, gus van sant’s psycho, or nathan fielder's the rehearsal. at a moment totally flooded with surface level nostalgia, cheap recreations, moodboards of moodboards of rehashes, this deeply layered reckoning with the past is especially profound. 

picturing these two recluses taking the time to dig into their own history, investigating what animated them, salvaging what still feels vital, and representing it to a world that has changed under their feet, is deeply moving, and the core of what i get from inferno. they successfully repair what was broken in their old music. i will now turn to inferno whenever i want this flavor of boc. tracks like 'the word becomes flesh' and 'blood in the labyrinth' are among their very best, and are rinsed of the goofy moments i now bump on with their older LPs. 

the album reminds me of returning to places i have gone to for years. an old burger stand i visited at 8, 18, 28, soon 38, the full moon gathering i go to a half dozen times per year, the record store that's been selling me bargain singles since i was 12. places that are static enough that i can use a visit to feel how i have changed, how i am changing. on inferno, boc revisit an old sound, but as new people in a new world. that they managed to restore it, to make it resonate again is a triumph. thanks boc. highly recommended for all purposes. 

helllhound - here in the valley (2026)

wedded lovers and recent parents nailah hunter and cadmar fitzhugh have released their collaborative debut as helllhound; a short album of lush, gentle, beguiling music that couldn't be better suited to your morning coffee — ideally outdoors on a misty morning as the world wakes up, and the critters in the idyllic valley begin to stir. if you are stuck in a dim apartment, fear not. the music will transport you, enveloping with a mystical warmth. over the course of the album’s nine tracks, a surreal fantasy dissolves into a terrestrial reality. this sonic grounding ritual pairs beautifully with waking up, calling the spirit back into the body from its nightly adventures. there’s a heartbreaking tenderness throughout, laced with melancholy, connection, and understanding. a beautiful, timeless record. highly recommended for all gentle purposes. 

tiga - hotlife (2026)

tiga is back in a major way. his new LP HOTLIFE, produced mostly with priori and patrick holland (jump source), featuring boys noize, maara & fcukers, puts the goa bred canadian rave avatar back on top with an LP of 80s inflected talky pop club workouts. leading off is HOTWIFE, a boys noize featuring yello referencing opener which sets the tone for tiga’s straight faced ridiculousness, with surprising dancefloor heft. the track hints at the roots of goa trance, the world in which tiga was raised by his hippie parents, and which i'm going to get into more in the next blurb. highlights include MRD featuring IAMWHATIAM, fcukers featuring SILK SCARF, recalling the sartorial preoccupation of previous smash hit Shoes, I AM YOUR DETROIT SUNRISE, which is well suited to its namesake setting, club monster CHERRY, and unearthed 80s cult classic ECSTASY SURROUNDS ME, which has timeless anthem potential. more broadly, tiga is one of the most important DJs of the 21st century, connecting 80s pop, 90s rave, 00s electroclash, 10s tech house, and now 20s pangenre rave revivalism. his Last Night on Earth podcast was one of the best documents of the modern era of clublife (if you listen to two episodes make them Erol Alkan and Four Tet). this LP stands among his best, and is playable for just about any dancefloor loving audience. recommended for all your dance music needs. 

kicking dust: the goa way - a full circle compilation (2024)

finally, there's a comp i can point people to when i want to blather about the true roots of goa and psy trance. the now crystalized sound characterised by squelchy 16th note basslines and cheesy fx started in the indian seaside tropical hippie mecca known for its nonstop beach parties and lsd infused lifestyle. in the 80s, as mdma started to work its way into the previously acid fueled culture, the local DJs were digging deep for dance music to satisfy the throngs of seasoned psychonauts with a new appetite for repetitive beats, searching through ebm, industrial, disco, new wave and beyond for a certain palette: squelchy synths, psychoacoustic effects, delays, echoes, twinkly arps, lush pads; all the building blocks of what would come to be known as trance music. in time the djs started producing their own tracks, and the 'goa sound' became its own thing, which is worthy of its own investigation but this comp gathers some of the gems from that source material. skipping some of the obvious pop hits that were in heavy rotation (yello - oh yeah and frankie goes to hollywood - relax, notably), this comp drops you on anjuna beach at sunrise circa 1988 and lets you feel the roots for yourself. if you want more, check out celestial object on youtube. for your time traveling needs, essential. 

anthony calonico - spacious heart 

the debut LP from anthony calonico finds the total blue synthesist exploring the kind of gentle jazz for which label music from memory has become renowned. lovely, rich, and enveloping, the record serves its primary role as DLC for Total Blue enthusiasts whose copy of the eponymous debut has started to wear thin, and scratches the itch for more from the same well of vaporwave informed smooth jazz (complimentary). unlike total blue however, are the vocal tracks which find a raw and vulnerable calonico recontextualising the instrumentation, pushing into a space that recalls the cds at starbucks in the early 00s. the adult contemporary stylings force a partially irony poisoned fanbase to confront the source of a sound that can sometimes be mistaken for tongue in cheek pastiche, cementing the group and calonico in particular as bona fide practicioners of the marginalized artform. as an aside, at a theo parrish open to close dj set i mistook calonico for john tejada, and said hello only for him to reveal himself as the total blue guy. i must have crossed wires from staring at him on stage with total blue at the lodge room, and assuming tejada, the la based tech house icon, was more likely to attend theo parrish. they do have a similar aspect. embarrassment aside, calonico's presence confirmed him to be a real one, and now hearing his debut, he and theo share a love of earnest virtuosic musicianship that isn't afraid to border on sap. recommended for your mornings, evenings, solitary walks, & contemplation.

really enjoying doing this. it’s so much better than posting. send to a friend <3