Ruth Mascelli & Mary Hanson Scott – Esoteric Lounge Music Now (2025) Review: For their third collaborative album, Ruth Mascelli & Mary Hanson Scott have come up with an intriguing title – Esoteric Lounge Music Now, presenting a sort of dilemma for the listeners – what should esoteric lounge music sound like now? Well, what Mascelli and Scott seem to have in mind is their take on all things noir in music – from a vision of jazz noir soundtracks of fifties and sixties combined with the dark touches that could be found on the prime trip-hop of second part of the nineties, neatly combined and meshed into dark late night tone sculptures that combine Mascelli’s deep, darkened vocals with Scott’s, often FX-blasted reeds and other electronic embellishments. The duo draws both on their previous musical experiences (Mascelli as a part of no wave/glam / industrial group Special Interest and Scott as part of Minneapolis musical underground), as well as on ideas the duo already presented on their two previous joint outings. Yet, none of it would really work if the duo didn’t have some solid, well-constructed song structures, turning the 12 songs here into elegantly dark songs into dreamy (nightmarish?) late night listening. — echoesanddust.com Track List: 01 - Overture 02 - A Lover's Theory of Value 03 - Hedonist Arc 04 - Conversation Pit 05 - Vaseline Lens 06 - Blue of Noon 07 - Could a Wound Be a Window 08 - Haunted Hearts 09 - Self Control 10 - The Fool 11 - Encore Media Report: Genre: ambient, dream-pop, electronic, jazz Origin: USA Format: FLAC Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec Bit rate mode: Variable Channel(s): 2 channels Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz Bit depth: 16 bits Compression mode: Lossless Writing library: libFLAC 1.3.0 (UTC 2013-05-26) Note: If you like the music, support the artist