Discover Top Posts Tagged with #lady bug

#ladynoir #lady bug #miraculous ladybug #chat noir #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng #ai generated

Reviews 412: Sulah Jordan

One of the records I have spent the most time with recently is Lady Bug, a warming and wonder-filled 12” from the Oakland based artist Sulah Jordan. Jordan is a musician and gardener who works in and around the San Francisco Bay Area, and she originally self-released Lady Bug as a very limited vinyl pressing via Bandcamp in 2025, copies of which sold out quickly and now are quite hard to come by. The music here finds Jordan joined by several Oakland area musicians who expand and actualize her musical ideals with hippie percussion, lysergic and lulling acoustic guitar layers, ambient keyboard flights, soft shrouded vocals, and interwoven threads of natural mystery…the sounds of waves, campfires, bugs, birds, and croaking frogs. Fortunately, the crew at Test Pressing came across this collection of cozy cottage psych, rustic coastal jazz folk, naturalistic balearica, and field recording collage, and decided to give the music a wider release via their Test Pressing Arts sublabel…a newly formed venture intended for “more esoteric music—downtempo and mellow vibes.”

Sulah Jordan - Lady Bug (Test Pressing Arts, 2026) In A-side opener “Jasmine,” expressive hand drums set a mindful groove amidst forest sounds and birdsong, while summertime folk guitars and rustic basslines sit beneath swooning flute flights and gentle fx. Plucked melodies and progressive poetics support breathy spells of vocal magic that sparsely accent the lilting dreampsych sway…the singing carrying a touch of smoked out blues that reminds me of several things…Dukes of Hazel, Open Water, the more fairy folk moments of Bardo Pond, and also airs of Nick & Samantha at their most gentle and enchanted. There is also something that leans towards Flamenco and Iberian exotica in the acoustic guitar progressions, which are occasionally tracked in tandem by the floating flute. And elsewhere, the various elements journey together in moments of freeform island groove fantasy. “Large Leaves From Old Trees” comes next with watery and washed out electric guitar chords backgrounding cinematic and spellbound acoustic guitar explorations. Rustling, rattling textures sound like seashells rolling over themselves, and the whole track has a similarity to the work of Pablo Color, with a vibe that is altogether moody, mystical, and evocative of an escapist paradise shaded in melancholy. A masculine voice repeats mantric phrases over the flow as ethereal smears of chiming vibraphone add a silvery sonic glow, and it all eventually devolves into snake tail rattles and crashing waves before a dramatic cut to silence.

On the B-side, “Musée Mélancolique” features lofi beats and gemstone liquids panning across the spectrum, while downlow folk guitars are accented by minimal keyboard melodies. Hushed and humid vocals bring to mind things like early Vanishing Twin, Death and Vanilla, and The Soundcarriers…and the whole thing is taken to another level by haunted saxophone lines calling out into the void…the wailing tones soaked in reverb and bringing touches of midnight noir. Everything eventually heads into a sensual sundowner lounge zone—the feel vaguely Lynchian—as the e-piano alights on colorful adventures of blues-soaked fantasy up and down the keyboard, anchored by guitar and drums that lock to a muted pulse of pastoral jazz. The flow from here is more or less seamless into closing track “Goodnight Buggy,” with a scene set by crashing ocean samples, whooshing wavefronts, and the crackle of a beachside fire. Radio ghosts are shrouded in static far away in the distance, and a sonic panorama forms from cricket chirps, bug wing rustles, and myriad insectoid mating calls. This all overwhelms these barely there tones of astral keyboard ambience, and strange buzzing and humming tones that remind me of the atmospheric textures found on the second Wilson Tanner album. And near the end, there is a moment where the stereo field seems to further immerse itself in the sounds of water…as if a rainstorm washes through, carrying with it frog songs and these whispering whisps of world music melody that evoke some Far East temple ritual.