GENRE: Electronic

LABEL: Rvnd. Intl

REVIEWED: 1 October, 2025

RATING:

Experimental musician M. Sage (Matthew Sage) releases his newest album Tender / Wading on September 26, 2025, via RVNG Intl. The record, available across streaming services and Bandcamp, marks a deeply personal turn toward home, memory, and landscape. 

On Bandcamp, the album is offered in high-resolution digital formats (24-bit/48 kHz) and bundled with vinyl editions—there is a limited artist edition of 100 black vinyl with alternate artwork, plus standard LP/digital packages.  The LP includes nine core tracks, with bonus versions on the Japanese import CD edition. 

Critics have received Tender / Wading warmly. Pitchfork rates it 7.4, describing it as a “bewitching album of melodic ambient soundscapes” in which Sage integrates his clarinet, piano, and a trove of field recordings to blur the line between music and environment.  The review emphasizes that Sage left Chicago to return to Colorado, recording the album in a barn studio on land near his childhood environs. 

KLOF Magazine also praises the album’s emotional breadth, calling it “textural, varied, consistently interesting and frequently moving.”  They note the album leans more acoustic and intimate than his prior Paradise Crick, emphasizing natural soundscapes and melodic interplay. 

The album’s structure weaves concrete field recordings—croaks, wind, owl calls, ambient natural sounds into compositions like “The Garden Spot,” “Witch Grass,” “Open Space Properties,” and the closer “Tender of Land.”  A music video for “Wading the Plain” is already live, offering a visual counterpart to the album’s immersive sound world. 

With Tender / Wading, M. Sage presents more than an album: a sonic homecoming. It’s a work that frames the environment not as backdrop, but as integral collaborator, anchoring his most autobiographical release to date.