On Repeat: Herbert, James, Pärt

On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I would later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all. ▰ Gorgeous dusky miasmas provide the two advance-listen tracks from Chris Herbert’s upcoming Grisaille, due out November 18 on Lawrence English’s Room 40 label. There are the full-on dark drones of “Uommibatto” (“Wombat” in Italian, I believe), and then there’s fantastic “Image Hunger,” which is like dub techno with the techno removed after the fact, leaving just the spaciousness, the echoes, the underlying throbs. The title appears to be a nod to the painting style of using just shades of gray, certainly an applicable comparison here. ▰ I believe the appearance of the new album It’s Nothing Personal. (yes, with the punctuation) by Loraine James on Friday, September 4, was something of a surprise. It’s seven tracks of James back in soulful IDM mode, and my current favorite…