Prestige Format Picks 11 July 2025

two 90s classics, two ambient legends, and twelve minutes of fire

Author

Ryan Ruppe
July 11, 2025 • Read this in about: 5 minutes

what even was this week?

in some circles, this is a huge flex

Starflyer 59 - Americana

I didn’t know what shoegaze or dream pop were when I first heard this album as a young teen. I just knew it was kinda slow and kinda heavy and kinda sad but felt really good to listen to.

Twenty-some years later, it still feels really good to listen to. And I finally have the understanding of the music that was happening outside of the insular Contemporary Christian Music industry to know how special Starflyer 59 is and how great this album is. It is slow and sad and heavy and gorgeous. It’s no wonder there are no copies of this on vinyl for sale on Discogs, because it’s such a fantastic slab that takes your heart once you listen and never lets go.

here’s the back of the LP

It’s a good thing that I listened to other music this week before I found out about this album, because I’ve been listening almost non-stop since I first found out about it (shout out to Letters from a Tapehead). The story behind the album is the cover art and the music itself were inspired by a solo lake voyage during a forest fire, and the blurring of that duality comes across in the music.

This is mostly-sampled ambient music, and while it has a pastoral heart, it feels on edge. Not in a claustrophobic, anxious way, but in a risky and maybe just a smidge catastrophic way. This album captures the “here I am, relatively but not entirely safe, while the world seems to be burning around me” sense of modern life in the United States in 2025. It’s never pummeling noise or perfectly lush dreamscapes, but always a quiet balance between the two. It’s an album of textures that feel human and tactile as they wrap around you, warm and maybe slightly uncomfortable. Genuinely album of the year territory for me.

I’ve started a dive through Autechre’s back catalog and I’m really digging the early stuff. The way they handle the drum/rhythm in their songs is top notch and really different than what Aphex Twin—the other big electronic music weirdo—at the time. I love how much is just blasted with atmospheric reverb to the point that it gives off a bit of those music playing in an empty mall vibes.

brütal

Twelve minutes of righteous anger coming from a legendary emcee who sounds like the rap Tom Waits, with fuzz rock beats from producer Height Keech that could’ve come from Odd Nosdam’s Flippies. If we disagree on some things, this might hurt your feelings.

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