It's almost unbearably hot outside right now. My kids won't nap. I need a beer. So here's a frenetic, psych-drenched garage banger to coast on for the rest of this fine Sunday. "Get Down" comes from Frankie and The Witch Fingers' sophomore effort, the new "Heavy Roller" LP, an album of throwback hooks and chugging riffs. Get it from Permanent Records and watch the video below.
Speaking of "Blade Runner"...Ever since i came across label/artist collective Retro Promenade's "Twin Peaks" synth tribute last year, and then their subsequent John Carpenter and "Tron" tributes, i've been waiting for them to release a "Blade Runner" inspired collection of music too. And someone beat them to the punch. Future City Records just released "Tears in Rain: A Tribute to Blade Runner" featuring a whole slew of electronic and retro synth acts creating music to accompany to a walk or drive through wet and neon-drenched streets of 2019 Los Angeles. Get it here and listen to Aquawave's "Synthetic Dream (Closing Credits)" below.
Playing like murky, hazy soundscapes and intricate layers of organic material enfolded within steel, tangled wires, and robotic moving pieces, the music of 2814 is the hushed and haunted soundtrack for some nightmarish dystopian dreamworld. New album "Rain Temple" came out a couple of days ago, and it's an ethereal mind-melt of record, like an alternate reality "Blade Runner." Listen to album opener "Before the Rain" below and grab the album here from Dream Catalogue. I am always aghast at how fast 2814's records sell out, so if you're looking for vinyl, you're already out of luck.
Former members of Smith Westerns and Unknown Mortal Orchestra make up the cast of the jazzy, AM radio flavored Whitney. Their debut album, "Light Upon the Lake," out on Secretly Canadian, feels like some obscure, private press record from the 70's that you somehow stumbled across at a garage sale or used book store. You can practically see the dust rising off of it. Listen to "Red Moon" below, a short and wonderful trumpet-led instrumental, and an album highlight.
Deepest Bison, the one-man-band project of Minneapolis' Kyle Imes, crafts reverby, low key folk rock jams that have a hazy quality about them, like the aural equivalent of staring at the sun for too long. Listen to the jangly "Buy the Lot" below and get the "Six Tiny Strokes" album here.
It feels like it's been a long time since we last heard from Dent May. It's also been a long while since my good friend stared him down at SXSW like he was going to kill him, an event that will never cease to make me giggle. Anyway, May is on Carpark Records now, and he just released a new and grooving single last week, the wonderfully titled "Face Down in the Gutter of Your Love." It's a toe-tapper for sure, an infectious little earworm, perfect for a summer day. Listen below and download here.
You can never go wrong with any of the weird and wonderful sonic artifacts Finders Keepers chooses to reissue and grace us with year after year. Psych, jazz, folk, funk, and more, Andy Votel digs on crate digging more than any mere mortal. He's like some kind of obscure music bloodhound, sniffing out scores of odd and interesting music from around the world. Earlier this year, the label released the soundtrack to Jess Franco's "Les Demons," composed by Jean-Bernard Raiteux, and it's an intoxicating foray into psych-tinged exotica, a surreal and freaky audio vision of B-movie mania. It's awesome. Listen to "The Weakness of Rosalinda" below and grab the record here. Nunsploitation rules!
Looks like we've got a new album from Denver's goth-doom-metal-Americana-post-punk band Wovenhand coming our way in September. That's a good thing. Listen to "Come Brave" below and grab the upcoming "Star Treatment" LP from Sargent House. Fans of Swans and certain eras of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds should definitely check it out.
First, to credit Shawn Baker's current infatuation with Felte Records, i find myself revisiting the label's array of artists to find that many of them have new music coming out. Detroit post punk band Ritual Howls are readying their latest LP, the forthcoming "Into the Water" due in August, and the tracks they've offered up thus far add strands of darkwave sheen and Gothic heaviness to their particular brand of post punk art. Album closer "Going Upstate" in particular carries an ominous vibe, a dark current of menace...bad things are going to happen. Listen below, pre-order the record here, and much thanks to Shawn.
I never really got into Cassius back in the day...which is kind of odd for me when i think about it. They're French, and they make dance music. I should have been all over that shit. Anyway, the duo have a new album coming out next month, and the first bit i've heard features Cat Power's Chan Marshall on vocals...and i cannot stop listening to it. Bloggers and music journalists like to write about the proverbial "song of the summer" every year, and it looks like i've got mine now, "Feel Like Me," a smooth and grooving, gospel flavored electronic pop jam for those long and slow hot days, watching the sun set as the skies turn pink, wiping beads of sweat from your brow. Listen below and look for the "Ibifornia" LP in August on Ed Banger Records.
One of my favorite bands to come across this year was Maryland's fuzzy, lo-fi Teen Suicide, a group i was regrettably late to the party on as i originally believed them to be breaking up. Turns out they were just in the midst of a name change, and heretofore will be known as The World's Greatest. I'm kind of partial to the original name, but i can be a bit of a dour sourpuss, and i fear change. Anyway, the group just released a couple of new jams, "Greatest Trick" and "Sycamore." Both are great, and you can stream them below and download them here.
The latest music from Adult Swim's Singles comes from one of my favorites, one half of Fuck Buttons, the pulsing, throbbing, cinematic electronic music of Blanck Mass. "D7-D5" moves with a chaotic energy, a swooning mess of sound akin to moving at supersonic speed, your vision blurring ahead of you. Listen below and download it here.
Of all the things i expected to come across today, new music from Julee Cruise certainly wasn't on that list. Best known for her haunting vocal contributions to the soundtrack for David Lynch's "Twin Peaks," Cruise carries a smoky mystique about her that has been highly influential to artists of a similar ilk for the last 25 years. On the new 7" split with dark folk and rockabilly troubadour King Dude, aptly titled "Julee Cruise and King Dude Sing Each Other's Songs For You," Cruise sings the King Dude penned "Animal" on the A-side, while he takes on "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart" from Cruise's 1989 album "Floating into the Night" on the reverse. The duo feel perfectly and heavenly aligned to make music together, and i hope this is just the beginning of a Julee Cruise resurgence. I'd also be down with King Dude supplying some music for any future David Lynch project. Pre-order the record (in one of four colors) from Not Just Religious Music, and listen to both tracks below.
If it seems like there is a veritable endless amount of musical styles, genres, and influences to mine for modern inspiration, that's because there is. Drugdealer, the latest side project from Run DMT main man Mike Collins channels the easy soft rock grandeur of folks like Carole King and that ilk to sublime effect on the single "Suddenly" featuring a vocal assist from Weyes Blood's Natalie Mering, and Ariel Pink on the boards. It's lovely. Listen below, and pre-order the upcoming "The End of Comedy" LP on Weird World Records.
One of the winners of SXSW earlier this year was easily the queer punk and power pop rock assault of New York duo PWR BTTM. They were one of the few acts i made a point to see more than once, as they were just so damn much fun. Anyway, they've got a new single out, "Projection," a teenage outsider and nerdy lament of sorts, that you can listen to below and download from Father/Daughter Records.
It's been a long time since i've written about FRKWYS collaboration, a series or records put out by RVNG Intl. that pair electronic and experimental artists together to make something sprawling and ambitious. The thirteenth installment, "Sunergy," comes from rising electronic composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and legendary synth/new age artist Suzanne Ciani. The two craft a beeping and moving soundscape akin to an ocean within a computer, waves of current washing over chips and silicon. Listen to "Closed Circuit" below and grab the record in September.
With all of the attention that half of the Austin synth band S U R V I V E have been given in the last few days, and rightfully so, for their amazing score to the Netflix series "Stranger Things," it seems only fitting the synth wizards have a new record coming out in September as well. Now signed to Relapse Records, the band's "RR7349" LP is their first since 2012, and the Carpenter dreamscapes remain intact. Listen to the dark and otherworldly "A.H.B." below.
Looks like we've got a new album on the way from Swedish psych rock weirdos Goat. "Listen to the tribal, Afrobeat inspired "Try My Robe" below and look for the "Requiem" LP from Sub Pop in October.
It's usually interesting when bands decide to shift gears, risk alienating their audience, and put out something unexpected. UK metal band Necro Deathmort have done just that, abandoning their guitars for their latest album "The Capsule," and using icy, destitute synths instead. And the effect is something haunting and sinister, an impending and inescapable doom. We are in an age when heavy metal is becoming increasingly hard to define...and i like that. Listen to "Capsule Sickness" below and grab the record here.
I've only had time to watch three episodes so far, but Netflix's "Stranger Things" series is looking to be an all-timer. A perfect blend of 80's Spielberg and 80's Stephen King, but presented in a manner that feels fresh and engaging. It's nostalgia done right, not simply for nostalgia's sake or the warm and gooey feelings it can bring about, but to tell a story and subvert expectations within said nostalgia. Once i finish the series, i'll try to write more about it, but in the meantime, in keeping with the period, let's talk about the show's throwback score. Created by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, members of the Austin synth group S U R V I V E, the soundtrack takes plenty of inspiration from John Carpenter and Tangerine Dream, and crafts the mood for the show perfectly. Hopefully we'll get a vinyl release out of the deal. Anyway, watch and listen to the opening title sequence for the show below.
I have had to write way, way too many of these this year. RIP Alan Vega, half of the legendary duo Suicide. Even if you're unfamiliar with his work, someone that you listen to and love was absolutely inspired by him. Listen to Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream" below.
Hailing from the Bay Area, The Saxophones are a husband/wife duo who craft dreamy ballads that feel like slow dancing with the love of your life as the rest of the world just fades away into nothing. Listen to "If You're on the Water" below, the title track from the band's debut EP, which you can get here.
This is definitely one of the stranger recordings i've heard in a long time, but it took years and years to finally make it to our earholes, and it's wonderful. The story goes as so: a couple of decades ago, writer and icon William S. Burroughs was asked to record audio readings of his favorite sections of "Naked Lunch." Those recordings were then handed off to Bill Frisell and Wayne Horvitz of Naked City fame to add musical accompaniment. Classical and experimental composer Eyvind Kang also contributed. For some reason, the project was eventually abandoned and sat on a shelf for years...until Hal Willner, one of the original producers on the project, unearthed it and got the garage-psych-soul-punk rock wunderkind King Khan involved to add his own sounds and love to the recordings. And now we have "Let Me Hang You," a collaborative experimental, psychedelic, spoken word record to melt your fucking minds. Listen to the title track below and get the record here.
The beautiful and mysterious new release from Blackest Ever Black is the curiously monikered Tomorrow The Rain Will Fall Upwards, with an album entitled "Wreck His Days" due next month from the label. While no one is being forthcoming with any information regarding artist involvement or anything like that, the gorgeous and glacial "...And I Tried So Hard" is enough to pique my interest. The song slinks and molds, like watching a flower open and close and ultimately decay, or a snake slowly shedding his skin. Listen below.
Today, we get an airy and funky new song from French electronic duo Justice. "Safe and Sound" floats and thumps along, a kind of slick and silky neo-disco jam to dance into the early morning hours to. A new album should be imminent. Listen below and download for free here.
A couple weeks ago, i discovered a wonderfully dark and lo-fi black metal EP from a band called MOONKIGHT. The "Zhora" EP is quickly becoming one of my favorite releases of the year, so naturally i wanted to find more music from the group. It appears that MOONKNIGHT is actually a one-man show, courtesy of someone named Horus, and, aside from other MOONKNIGHT releases, i also came across some other music that's even noisier and bleaker, a black metal project called Vorpal Sword. Listen to the utterly epic "Pain" below, a fuzzy mess of crunched and crackling distortion and shredding, shrieked vocals, that somehow improbably still managed to sound ultimately uplifting. Go figure. Check out even more from the man here, courtesy of Rising Beast.
Sexores is a duo from Barcelona who make sexy mix of cold darkwave and spacey dreampop, which sounds exactly like something i should dig on a fairly regular basis. The band's "Red Rooms" album comes out digitally this month and on cassette in August via Coypu Records. Listen to "U.S.S.R. Girls" below.
J&L Defer is the side project of Disco Doom members Anita Rufer and Gabriele De Mario, and finds the duo crafting music that's a little more formless and wandering than what they do with their other band. Think sonic exploration over pop. Listen to "Hard Fiction Road" below and pre-order the "No Map" LP right here from Exploding in Sound.
All kinds of good stuff is coming out today. PJ Harvey just released the song "Guilty," a track recorded during the sessions for "The Hope Six Demolition Project" that didn't make it onto the record. I hope there are more of these in the future. Listen below.
Here's another new jam from the upcoming self-titled album from Preoccupations (fka Viet Cong). "Degraded" is a pulsing mix of post punk beats and moodiness and deteriorating waves of synth. Listen below and grab the record in September on Jagjaguwar.
Cloud Cover is the project of Brooklyn artist Jenny Tuite, and her "Mirror Me" LP is due in September from Disposable America. First track "Cannibalism" is a stark and minimalist mix of droning tones, pleading vocals, and dark and chilly atmosphere. Fans of Cindy Lee will approve. Listen below.
It's been less than a year since the last album from psych rock duo Ultimate Painting was released, and the guys are already prepping up a new record for release in September on Trouble In Mind. I like that kind of prolific output fellas. Anyway, listen to the grooving "Bills" below from the upcoming "Dusk" LP.
Aside from the stellar and beautiful soundtrack albums released by Mondo/Death Waltz throughout the year, the label also releases killer original works by artists inspired by all of these wonderful film scores. The label's latest comes from Pentagram Home Video, whose "Who's Out There?" LP feels like it could have perfectly scored any number of 80's direct-to-video-nasty releases, all spooky atmospherics and pulsing synths. Listen to icy album opener "Vision 1 The Coast" below and get the record here.
I will always have an affinity for shoegaze music. I don't know why. The echoed, reverbed vocals, the layers of guitar textures and feedback, the cacophonous drumming, the whole thing just sounds like the auditory equivalent of ascending into heaven to me. And it has for years and years and years, starting with my introduction to My Bloody Valentine and then Slowdive and so on. Anyway, here's some Mexican shoegaze from a band called Telephone Exchange. "Proton Salad" comes from a compilation album of Latin American shoegaze bands called "Frecuencias en Expansion" put together by Latino America Shoegaze. It's a pretty stellar mix of bands hailing from Mexico and South America, and you can download the whole thing on a pay-what-you-want model right here. So, let's all float down south.
Long Beach jazz collective Psychic Temple covered Brian Eno's "Music for Airports 1/1" and turned it into this swirling, spacey dream. It's amazing and as great a cover of Eno's work as you're ever likely to hear. Oh, and Mike fucking Watt plays bass on the thing. Listen below and get it here (vinyl is sold out though).
Bay area garage rock band Thee Oh Sees are easily one of the best live touring bands in the country. I've probably seen them a dozen times in the last five or six years, and i am blown away by their energy every single time. So, it's pretty damn awesome that main man John Dwyer's Castle Face Records just released a live album of the band on the label's increasingly awesome "Live in San Francisco" series. It does not disappoint. Listen to "Web" below and get the record here.
Schoolboy Q's new album "Blank Face" is out today, and, as with everything else he puts out, it's definitely worth a listen. Also released today is the Black Hippy Remix of the album jam and Kanye West collaboration "THat Part" featuring Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock, and Ab-Soul. It's awesome. And political. And angry. And probably cathartic in its own little way. Listen below.
Just the other day, i was wondering whatever happened to Gonjasufi, the artist behind one of my favorite albums of 2010, and lo and behold, we've got a new album announcement today. The "Callus" LP comes out next month via Warp, and the first single "Maniac Depressant" is streaming below. Give it a listen. It's dark, gothy, and weird.
Wow. Where to even start with Boston metal band Astronoid? Their blistering blast beats and shredding, wailing guitar licks coming at you so energetically and frenetically as to knock your head off of your body. It's like this massive, swelling, and triumphant take on the genre's current forays into post-metal exploration, a cool mix of post-rock atmosphere, shoegazey caresses, and the aforementioned blast beats to the face. And then the vocals come in, and not the screaming, growling howls you might have been expecting, but rather a gorgeous and clean layer of voices singing in harmonious glory. I can't help but feel that this is what Bill and Ted were striving for. Listen to the excellently titled "Up and Atom" below and grab the "Air" album here, courtesy of Blood Music.
Since last year's excellent "Zenith" LP, lo-fi synthpop artist Molly Nilsson has been filling that John Maus sized hole in my heart. She has a new, as of yet untitled album out later this year, but just released a video for new single "Think Pink." Watch below and bask in all its bedroom dreampoppiness.
Here's a fun Com Truise remix of the Deftones because America! Listen to "Prayers/Triangles" remix below, and maybe check out the original track from the band's new "Gore" LP as well.
Boy oh boy do i love me some French pop. And not just the old stuff either. "Sur La Piste de Danse" is the new LP from Laure Briard, and it's a beautiful, wistful, and sometimes dancey foray into the past, present, and future of French pop. Take a listen to the Francoise Hardy indebted "Je vole" below and get the record here from Midnight Special.
NYC pop group Negative Gemini are set to release their "Body Work" LP next month via 100% Electronica, but are sating us for the time being with the wonderfully floaty, toe-tapping, and bobbing "Don't Worry Bout the Fuck I'm Doing." It feels ready made to close out an evening. Listen below.
Here's another new jam from the upcoming new album from Angel Olsen. "Shut Up Kiss Me" somehow feels like a throwback to the 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's without ever sounding like an homage to anything but the singer/songwriter's own inner moods. Watch the video below, and pre-order "My Woman" from Jagjaguwar. It's going to be a beast of record when it comes out in September.
Former UK synth pop group Still Corners, who now reside in my neck of the woods here in Austin, have a new record on the horizon this September called "Dead Blue." The first single, "Lost Boys," is a smoking, haunted little number, a dark an moody dance jam for a hot summer night. Watch the video below and get the record from Wrecking Light.
