Freddy Rup­pert, for­merly known as This Song Is A Mess But So Am I and lead song­writer of For­mer Ghosts (with Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stew­art, Zola Jesus’ Nika Roza and Tearist’s Yas­mine Kit­tles), is about to release per­haps his most idio­syn­cratic project yet. The EP, titled Wait, is being released on cas­sette via NNA Tapes under his real name, which he’s been using since last year on two EPs (Sick­ling, Home From The Wars) and a full-length (Dove Hounds).

While the name change marks an ide­o­log­i­cal break from This Song Is A Mess But So Am I (a project orig­i­nally intended to serve as cathar­sis for deal­ing with the loss of a fam­ily mem­ber), the instru­men­tal EP also serves as an aes­thetic depar­ture from the Radioshack indus­trial hell of that project. Explor­ing the rever­ber­ated low-end fre­quen­cies of bell tones, field record­ings, and piano, Rup­pert takes on the themes of “expec­ta­tion with­out an emo­tional res­o­lu­tion or cli­max,” a tran­si­tory, non-teleological exer­cise in dark ambi­ent whose require­ment of atten­tive, in-the-moment lis­ten­ing becomes its own reward. Or maybe there is no “reward” in the tra­di­tional sense with this sort of music. Rather than rely­ing on the usual aes­thetic tricks to keep the lis­tener inter­ested, “1,” the tense, enig­matic track below, shows how the flu­id­ity of its sound and the tex­tures them­selves are enough to incite and main­tain inter­est. Here, Rup­pert is more ambi­ent than indus­trial noise-pop, more Badala­menti than Xiu Xiu, and I’m lik­ing it.

Check out “1” here and a trailer for the EP right below it: