Rambling Fox

September 2026 Music Round-Up

Art by Sancoon

Hello autumn! Let's celebrate the new season with a new monthly round-up of quick first impression opinions, collection updates, etc!

New Music Immediate Impressions

Beck - Ride Lonesome

Sea Change was wonderful - it found Beck subverting all the expectations that came with his musical trickster persona by creating an album that was earnestly vulnerable and emotional, while also having a sense of class to its lush production. But a part of Beck's charm is that he's an entirely different artist on each album, and his attempts at recreating Sea Change just aren't working for me: first with Morning Phase, now with Ride Lonesome. All the right aesthetic choices are there - the acoustic arrangements, the orchestral decorations, the warm production - but it sounds like Beck playing cosplay of himself as he tries to tap into already-tread territory without anything to say in that realm. Ride Lonesome is a very pretty album and pleasant to listen to, you can't fault it for that, but it's all so surface-level because the actual songwriting runs around in circles and rarely puts any effort in, letting the general production sensibilities do all the work. The worst thing Beck can do is be unmemorable, and that's exactly the trap he falls in here.

M83 - I Wrote You a Letter

But speaking of artists reconnecting with former glories, here's M83 doing exactly that but successfully. I've thought Gonzalez has been drifting for the past couple of albums (since 2016's criminally underrated Junk, really) - the combined success of Saturdays = Youth and Hurry Up, We're Dreaming turned him into The 80s Sound Guy and both DSVII and Fantasy sounded like he was trapped by that oversimplification, creating music that suited the concept but was also constrained by it as it went through the motions for the sake of hitting the right nostalgic sound. I Wrote You a Letter harks further back into M83's past, all the way to the early 2000s (there's even a reprise of "Birds" from Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts there to jumpscare an old school fan), but the trick here is that Gonzalez hasn't simply copied what he used to do but rather he's used his earliest music as a bounceboard to reconnect with himself, and then express it with the experience learned across the last couple of decades. I Wrote You a Letter ditches the widescreen choruses and almost completely does away with vocals altogether, and it brings back the cinematic textures and grand crescendos that straddle somewhere between post-rock, shoegaze and electronic. The result is a gorgeous journey of breathtaking soundscapes, emotional bursts and headphone-hugging atmosphere. It's the best M83 in years and a real return.

Perennial - Modernism

I learned about Perennial through enthusiastic social media posts by someone I follow and was intrigued further when I learned that the band's current drummer is Ceej Wolf, who pulverised the stage with their incredible energy during the I've Made Too Much Pasta set at Anthrocon 2026 (later on I realised that Stereogum has been hyping up this album as well but it just hadn't clicked with me they were the same band). Super short garage-y blasts of raw power rarely are my jam but when they hit right, they hit right. Perennial get it. Putting raw punk, the whim and vocalist interplay of The B-52s and the giddiness of Junior Senior in a blender, Modernism is such a rush of joyous volume - the hooks come in with brutal efficiency as they're pounded through the speakers, the energy is infectious and the ride is intense. I'm not even bothered by the fact that the whole album is only 20 minutes long because this would have absolutely begun to be too much with a proper length. Instead it's a run-and-gun burst of inspired muscle. Love it.

Various Artists - Circle Arts Compilation Vol. 1

Something a little different to end the September quick date round. The excellent blog Coolest Sound of Tokyo has been a great way to find out what's happening in Japan's music scenes, and through their post I found out about this little label compilation that has hit the exact right spot at the right time. The blog post goes into better detail on the background of the compilation and the label itself, so what's left for me to do is talk a little bit more about the music itself - and if you're into late 90s shibuya-kei vibed lounge/chill-out, you're in for a treat. Across the ten songs (12 on the CD version which is on its way to me) you get a whole mix of cosy, low-to-mid tempo moodpieces, gentle singer/songwriter pluckings, lush lounge ballads and a few songs with a more contemporary/electronic twang, all building up to a really comfortable downtempo selection. There's something inherently lush and lovely to this kind of sound and vibe that I, as a millennial, react to with great positivity, and this has been a really nice companion to my mornings over the past couple of weeks. Well recommended.

Hoard Updates

CD

Digital

September was - finally - a slightly calmer month. On the CD front, I was mainly preoccupied with collecting more RHCP CD singles. I also tested out Record City UK, an online store specialising in Japanese imports, and thus got a handful of Japanese releases this month (very happy with the service - will order again!). A special shoutout also goes to Uncle Tupelo who I've fallen madly in love with since buying that compilation a month ago, and whose albums I'm now slowly accruing (intentionally - pacing myself), starting with the debut of course.

The digital releases mainly focused on mopping up a few recent discoveries for Bandcamp Friday. Two indie game soundtracks, and two atmospheric journeys by the same musician under different pen names.

Music reviews

The RHCP discography run continued in September, and I started on my mini-series run-through of the Sonic Riders soundtracks. Again, only three reviews this month but it was a bit of an 'off' month - would love to pick up the pace.

Most played song of the month according to Last.FM

Last month my most played song was an excerpt from Hyenablood's soundtrack for Northern Lights. This month, I've been so addicted to Hyenablood's alternative musician handle Forestbather's quasi-but-not-really-companion album for Northern Lights, Witness Marks, that it's taken over my entire top chart. My favourite song from it is the gorgeously building, emotional title track.

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