August 2025 (Part 3)

Fresh from the blurb mines, I've unearthed eight writeups about eight cool songs, old and new. This is the last chunk of tracks featured on the Horse Combinations August 2025 playlist, August part one and part two are also available to you at the links that say "part one" and "part two" earlier in this sentence. 

Paira - “Ao Mar”
Loving the new EP from Horse Combinations favorites Paira! They maintain the essentials of their sound (twinkle guitars and breakbeats) while incorporating more dynamics and surprising production tricks across these five new songs. What a good band.

 

Winter - “In My Basement Room”
In my head I’m a guy who is into shoegaze bands but I think I really just actually mostly like dream pop and then Loveless. I was listening to this new Winter album and was pleasantly surprised that one of the one million gen z shoegaze adjacent bands remembered to write actual songs, but in a lot of cases, this one included, that just means they’re a dream pop band. This is an uninteresting and ultimately meaningless distinction that few people think or care about. Anyways "In My Basement Room" is the product of a songwriting class Samira Winter took with Phil Elverum and I think that's neat.  

  

Pile - “Bouncing in Blue”
Everyone is saying the new Pile record is good and everyone is right! I haven’t really been into much of their work post-A Hairshirt of Purpose but Sunshine and Balance Beams has got the juice! The slow burning “Bouncing in Blue” builds to a really thrilling peak, absolutely vintage Pile.



Susumu Yokota - “Tobiume”
Reading about this massive Susumu Yokota box set that dropped recently reminded me that I generally like his stuff, specifically his 2000 LP Sakura. Really nice ambient textures throughout, on this most recent listen I was really rocking with the Harold Budd inspired second track “Tobiume"!

 

Nourished by Time - “Max Potential”
There’s always (at least) a few tracks on every Nourished by Time release that absolutely blow me away and on his new LP, The Passionate Ones, “Max Potential” is one of them. That vocal sample is so insanely cool.

 

Earl Sweatshirt - “TOURMALINE”
I’ve been listening to Live Laugh Love nonstop these last few weeks and the open hearted love song “TOURMALINE” catches me off guard every time. Really special stuff from one of the most interesting artists going!



Chat Pile & Hayden Pedigo - “Radioactive Dreams”
“Radioactive Dreams” is not at all what I was expecting from this unexpected cross-genre collab between indie’s scariest noise rockers Chat Pile and bucolic instrumental guitar guy Hayden Pedigo, but man do I really like it a lot. 

ear - “Fetish”
I know basically nothing about this band but I’m loving that a new generation of IDM likers have arrived and are making poppy musique concrète. I did make the mistake of Googling “ear fetish” to learn more about this song and it did not get me where I wanted to be.

 

That's all for August! We'll see each other again soon to talk about some more songs I like, I'm sure. For now, embedded below is August's full playlist, streaming exclusively on Tidal: