EKHO Sonic Chill #10

Massive Attack. Formed in Bristol in 1988 out of the Wild Bunch sound-system collective: Robert '3D' Del Naja, Grant 'Daddy G' Marshall, Andrew 'Mushroom' Vowles and Adrian 'Tricky' Thaws. They effectively invented the moody, bass-heavy, sample-built sound the world came to call trip-hop, with Blue Lines (1991), Protection (1994) and Mezzanine (1998). 'Safe From Harm' opens Blue Lines. It's built on bass, guitar and drums sampled from Billy Cobham's 'Stratus', carried by singer Shara Nelson, who also sang lead on the same album's 'Unfinished Sympathy.' Massive Attack became the first band to commit their touring operation to the UN 'Race to Zero' emissions reduction schedule, and their 'Act 1.5' Bristol show on 24 August 2024 ran on 25 separate carbon-cutting measures, including venue power from renewable energy only and plant-based food only. They played their first shows in five years in June 2024, and in April 2026 put out 'Boots on the Ground,' featuring Tom Waits.

Tosca. Vienna duo, Richard Dorfmeister (also of Kruder & Dorfmeister) and Rupert Huber. First 12-inch, 'Chocolate Elvis,' in 1994, and since then a warm, dubby strand of downtempo across Opera (1997), Suzuki (2000), Dehli9 (2003), J.A.C. (2005), No Hassle (2009) and Odeon (2013). 'What If' features the Belgian singer Sarah Carlier. Huber said her vocal was treated 'as an instrument like any other instrument on the track, as we always like to do.' They won Austria's Amadeus Award for Best Pop/Rock Group in 2001 and have played Coachella. Osam came out in 2022, and J.A.C. was remastered and reissued as a 2xLP in September 2025 to mark both its 20th anniversary and !K7's 40th.

Chrome Sparks is Jeremy Malvin, a producer from Pittsburgh. He studied percussion at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and drummed for Stepdad, Rich Aucoin and Miniature Tigers before going solo with warm, arpeggiated, synth-driven electronic music. 'Marijuana' (2012) was the breakout, getting wide traction online. The Sparks EP was first self-released, then picked up by the Australian label Future Classic in 2013. He's credited his percussion training with teaching him discipline: 'learning how to perfect things,' and how to get 'from an idea, to a goal, to accomplishing that goal.' After years spent mostly producing for other artists, including Khalid, he released Ball of Light, his first full-length since his 2018 self-titled album, on 11 September 2026 via Chrome Sounds/AWAL, led by the Khalid- and Jónsi-featuring single 'Sleeper.'

Flako is Dario Rojo Guerra, a producer of Chilean heritage raised in Germany. He's worked out of London and Berlin, and also records as Natureboy Flako, and as Dirg Gerner when he wants to put his own voice up front. Warm, broken-beat downtempo. He's said he wants his music to be '100% me,' playing many of the instruments himself and using his voice more in the productions. The Mesektet (2011, Project: Mooncircle) is his flagship record, respected enough to earn both an extended reissue, Mesektet Extnd, and a 10th-anniversary 2LP edition in 2021 with three newly unearthed beats.

The Depreciation Guild. Brooklyn dream-pop/shoegaze band formed in 2005 by Kurt Feldman (vocals, guitar, programming) and guitarist Adrian Hashizume, later joined by twins Christoph and Anton Hochheim. Guitar pop influenced by Cocteau Twins and Talk Talk, fused with 8-bit NES-sourced textures Feldman had been messing with since 2003. Sometimes tagged 'nintendocore.' The catalogue runs from the Nautilus EP (2006) through In Her Gentle Jaws (self-released 2007, reissued by Kanine in 2009) to Spirit Youth (2010), with 'Dream About Me' out as a single in 2009 ahead of the second album. After splitting in January 2011, Feldman went on as Ice Choir, the Hochheims formed Ablebody (now Always You), and all three played in The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. They reunited for one-off shows in 2013 and 2023.

Mother Soki is Annie Tammearu, a Minneapolis musician. Grew up in the city's western suburbs, found her footing making music in college in Chicago, and came home to build a dream-pop sound out of vintage-synth textures, heavy guitars and airy vocals. She cites The Sundays, Imogen Heap and Cocteau Twins as touchstones. 'Sulk' was self-released in September 2023, well before wider attention showed up. That landed in 2025: her single 'Rivet Gun' went viral on TikTok after Ellie Goulding shared it, passing six million Spotify streams and leading to her signing with Mom + Pop Music. A fast rise for someone who started out on GarageBand and later learned Ableton. She's said she has 'a little bit of a gift in finding unique melodies.' Her Fantasy EP followed on 5 December 2025, and the single 'Thicken' came out in September 2026.

Night Tapes. UK–Estonian trio based in London: Iiris Vesik from Estonia, with Max Doohan and Sam Richards. They started as housemates jamming together in South London in the late 2010s. Weightless, bass-heavy dream pop with a shoegaze smear, from the 2019 debut EP Dream Forever in Glorious Stereo through Download Spirit (2020) and Perfect Kindness (2023) to their debut album portals//polarities (26 September 2025, Nettwerk). They won a Music Moves Europe Award in January 2025, have had support from BBC Radio 1 and 6 Music, toured North America as headliners in autumn 2025, and passed 34 million streams on 'drifting.'

FC Kahuna. Leeds natives Jon Nowell and Daniel Ormondroyd, who ran the Big Kahuna Burger club night in the mid-90s before turning to production themselves. One album, Machine Says Yes (2002, City Rockers), and it sold over 50,000 copies. Their music turned up in Six Feet Under, CSI: Miami, the film Layer Cake and the game Need for Speed: Underground. Ormondroyd built 'Hayling' layer by layer in the studio: the bass loop that runs through the track, live drum samples, synths and organ. It's named after Hayling Island on the English south coast, where the duo spent a productive weekend with friends. Icelandic singer Hafdís Huld of GusGus showed up with her own melody and lyrics, and her opening line was kept from the first take. On the strength of that one album, they played Coachella, Reading & Leeds and Roskilde and toured the UK supporting Röyksopp, ending with a sold-out Brixton Academy show. The duo was active until 2003.

Flying Lotus is Steven Ellison, a Los Angeles producer whose great-aunt was jazz pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane, wife of John Coltrane. His records, 1983 (2006), Los Angeles (2008), Cosmogramma (2010), Until the Quiet Comes (2012), You're Dead! (2014), Flamagra (2019) and Yasuke (2021), fuse jazz, IDM, hip-hop and afrofuturist production into something genuinely singular. He founded the Brainfeeder label to give other artists the same freedom. 'Zodiac Shit' is one of Cosmogramma's dense instrumental cuts, off an album that drew wide critical acclaim for its live-instrumentation-heavy production. He's also rapped as Captain Murphy, directed the feature films Kuso (2017) and Ash (2025), and put out the EP Big Mama in March 2026.

Lusine is Jeff McIlwain, an electronic producer born in Dallas, Texas, in 1975 and based in Seattle since 2002. He studied electronic music and sound design at CalArts, debuted in 1999 under the alias L'usine, and joined Ghostly International in 2003. They've put out the bulk of his catalogue since: Serial Hodgepodge (2004), A Certain Distance (2009), The Waiting Room (2013), Sensorimotor (2017), Long Light (2023) and Melting Days (August 2026). Techno, IDM, ambient and electro-pop, with a strong melodic and textural sense. He also composes for film, including the score for Snow Angels (2007) with David Wingo, and co-wrote soundtracks for The Sitter (2011) and State Like Sleep (2018).

DJ Shadow is Josh Davis, born June 29, 1972, and he grew up in Davis, California. He got his start DJing at UC Davis's campus radio station KDVS, and co-founded the Solesides collective/label (later Quannum Projects) with Blackalicious and Lyrics Born in the early 1990s. His 1996 debut Endtroducing....., built almost entirely from sampled records, was recognized by Guinness World Records as the first album made completely from samples, and later named among Time magazine's 100 all-time best albums. The Private Press (2002) was his long-awaited MCA follow-up. His album Action Adventure came out in October 2023.

Handsome Boy Modeling School. Studio project of producers Dan the Automator (Dan Nakamura, also known for Dr. Octagon, Deltron 3030 and Gorillaz work) and Prince Paul (Paul Huston, of Stetsasonic and Gravediggaz and a longtime De La Soul producer). Conceived as a satirical concept act parodying vain, upper-crust modeling culture. They debuted with So... How's Your Girl? (1999), packed with guest turns from DJ Shadow, Del the Funky Homosapien, Sean Lennon and others, then White People (2004), which pulled in RZA, Cat Power, Pharrell and members of Linkin Park and Franz Ferdinand. Prince Paul left in 2006 over business disagreements, but the duo reunited for a one-off New York show in 2018 and released Music to Drink Martinis To in March 2023.

Lapalux is Stuart Howard, a producer from Essex, England. Glitchy, texturally dense downtempo and 'wonky' beat music. He debuted on Brainfeeder, Flying Lotus's label, with Nostalchic (2013), then Lustmore (2015), Ruinism (2017) and Amnioverse (2019). Alongside his own albums he's remixed artists including Young Thug, and his track 'Make Money' made it onto the expanded Grand Theft Auto V soundtrack. His EP On The Grid (October 2025) was made entirely on hardware synths.

Acopia. Trio out of Naarm/Melbourne, Australia: Kate Durman, Lachlan McGeehan and Morgan Wright. Somewhere between trip-hop, shoegaze, dream pop and downtempo, built on sultry vocals, pensive synths and smouldering basslines. They debuted with Chances (2022) on Melbourne label Companion, then put out the self-titled Acopia (2023) independently, moving toward more polished production while keeping their intimacy. They've played London's Wide Awake festival, and remixes of the album's songs by Daniel Avery and JD Twitch followed in 2024. Their album Blush Response came out in September 2025 on Scenic Route.

Flavor Crystals. Minneapolis psychedelic band, four of them on The Shiver of the Flavor Crystals: Josh Richardson, Vince Caro, Nat Stensland and Jon Menke. They mix 60s psychedelia, 70s krautrock, 80s Kiwi pop and 90s shoegaze into a hazy space-rock sound. Releases include On Plastic (2005), Ambergris, produced by Kramer (Galaxie 500, Low), Three (2012) and The Shiver of the Flavor Crystals (October 2015, MPLS Ltd), a double LP that includes 'Oscillot.' They toured the US supporting the Brian Jonestown Massacre in 2009, and put out the album Gone Six on MPLS Ltd in November 2024.

Pia Fraus. Dream pop/shoegaze band out of Tallinn, Estonia, formed in 1998. Ethereal, layered vocals and washes of guitar and synth. Current members include Kristel Eplik and Eve Komp (vocals), Kärt Ojavee (synth), Rein Fuks (guitar/synth), Reijo Tagapere (bass) and Joosep Volk (drums). Nature Heart Software (2006, Seksound) is one of their key records, along with After Summer (2008) and Empty Parks (2020). Evening Colours came out in 2023, and they put out the single 'Nothing Returns' in October 2025.

Ringo Deathstarr. American shoegaze band out of Austin, Texas, started in 2005 by singer/guitarist Elliott Frazier in his hometown of Beaumont before he moved to Austin. Drawing comparisons to My Bloody Valentine, Ride and The Jesus and Mary Chain. Their debut full-length Colour Trip came out in 2011, then Mauve (2012), Pure Mood (2015) and a self-titled album (2020). They toured with The Smashing Pumpkins over the winter of 2011–2012. The longtime line-up includes Frazier, bassist Alex Gehring and drummer Daniel Coborn, who joined around the time of Colour Trip. The 2020 self-titled record was reissued on vinyl in 2024.

MADEBYGODES and Sedogy Bedam. A pseudonymous production pairing built around a recurring format: putting out a track alongside 'slowed & reverb,' 'vaporwave,' 'nightcore' or 'ambient' versions of it, as on 'forgotten thoughts' (2022). 'dreams' came out as a single in September 2022, and this ambient reworking followed as an EP in October 2023. They've released steadily since 2021, with new singles in 2026. No biographical details, real names, location or background, are publicly available for either name.

Deerhunter. Formed in 2001 in Atlanta, Georgia, around guitarist-vocalist Bradford Cox and drummer Moses Archuleta, and became one of American indie rock's most restless art-punk bands. Noisy, melodic, always changing shape across Cryptograms (2007), Microcastle (2008), Halcyon Digest (2010) and Fading Frontier (2015). 'Helicopter' is one of Halcyon Digest's most striking tracks. It rides a hazy, propulsive groove. Pitchfork later ranked Halcyon Digest the 29th best album of the 2010s. Their most recent album is Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? (2019), and the band's been on hiatus since its late-2019 tour. Cox returned to the stage as Atlas Sound in September 2026.

Slowdive. Formed in Reading, England in 1989 around childhood friends Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell, and became one of the defining shoegaze bands with Just for a Day (1991) and Souvlaki (1993, with Brian Eno as a co-writer on 'Sing'). They split after 1995's Pygmalion and reunited in 2014. 'Star Roving' (January 2017) was the thunderous, driving lead single announcing their first new music in 22 years. The comeback paid off critically and commercially. 2023's Everything Is Alive became Slowdive's first top-ten album, in the UK and several other countries.

Airiel. Chicago shoegaze/dream-pop band led by guitarist-vocalist Jeremy Wrenn since the late 1990s. He started the project, then called Airiel Project One, in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1997 after his earlier band Black Olive broke up. Loud, layered guitars with danceable rhythm and melody, across records like The Battle of Sealand (2007) and Molten Young Lovers (2017). 'Firefly' is from the 2003–2004 Winks & Kisses EP series, with guest vocalist Stella Tran. Feeltrip Records reissued the series as a 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition in November 2023. The single 'Hide & Seek' came out in October 2024.

No Joy. Started in late 2009 in Montreal as a shoegaze/noise-pop band around Jasamine White-Gluz. Their first show was with Hüsker Dü's Grant Hart, and they got an early co-sign from Best Coast's Bethany Cosentino. 'Uhy Yuoi Yoi' is on Wait to Pleasure (2013), the noisy, critically loved album that followed their debut Ghost Blonde (2010). With Motherhood (2020), No Joy became a solo White-Gluz project. Her 2025 album Bugland, co-produced with Fire-Toolz's Angel Marcloid, earned Pitchfork's 'Best New Music' tag and a spot on the 2026 Polaris Music Prize longlist. The pair followed it with the three-song EP Big Life, Big Leaf in August 2026.

Baths is the recording name of Will Wiesenfeld, a classically trained electronic producer from the Los Angeles area. He also records as Geotic, and before that as [Post-foetus]. Cerulean (2010), recorded in his bedroom, set up his warm, glitchy, melodically dense sound, and The A.V. Club named it one of 2010's best albums. Then came Obsidian (2013) and Romaplasm (2017). After a gap of more than seven years he came back in February 2025 with Gut, which Pitchfork's Eric Torres called 'one of the most fully realized and exhilarating Baths albums to date.'

Radiohead. Five schoolfriends out of Abingdon, Oxfordshire, who formed in 1985 as On a Friday and became one of the defining art-rock bands of their era. Guitar music bent through electronics, orchestration and Thom Yorke's falsetto. The run from The Bends through OK Computer, Kid A and In Rainbows reshaped what a rock band was allowed to sound like, and In Rainbows (2007) was famously sold as a pay-what-you-want download direct to fans. They came back to the stage with a European tour in late 2025. Then in May 2026 guitarist Ed O'Brien told NME the band had 'not even talked about another record,' while planning roughly twenty shows a year on different continents from 2027. In September 2026 they announced 2027 dates in Australia and Japan.

CLOVES is the stage name of Kaitlyn 'Kaity' Dunstan, a singer-songwriter out of Melbourne, Australia. She first got noticed on The Voice Australia in 2013. 'Don't Forget About Me,' a stripped-back ballad from her debut EP XIII (2015), was on the soundtrack of the film Me Before You (2016). More releases followed, including One Big Nothing (2018), Nightmare on Elmfield Road (2021) and HER (2023). Her 2025 feature on John Summit's dance track 'Focus' hit No. 5 on the US Dance chart and earned a 2026 APRA Award nomination for Most Performed Dance/Electronic Work.

Atlas Sound is the solo recording project of Bradford Cox, frontman of Deerhunter. The first album under the name was Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel (2008). Logos (2009) is its collaborative peak, with Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) and, on the sprawling 'Quick Canal,' Lætitia Sadier of Stereolab. Her cool, layered vocal answers Cox's hazy loops across the track's full 8:38. After Parallax (2011), Atlas Sound went quiet as a live act for years. And get this: in September 2026 Cox played his first show in seven years at Philadelphia's Making Time festival, did eight new songs and handed out set lists and lyric sheets to the audience. No new Atlas Sound album has been announced.