Jonathan Bree

New Zealand artist Jonathan Bree drops the dark and horny pop album of the year with his new "Don't Call it Love" LP.  I guess that album cover is the first indication of what's going on here, a sultry mix of trip-hop, R&B, and electro-pop.  Check out "Savour My Love" featuring vocals from Rachel Clarke below, and get the double LP here from Lil' Chief Records.

Theodor Bastard

Here's some dark and icy gothic electro-pop from Russian band Theodor Bastard.  Check out slightly trip-hop-tinged "Sverkay" below and pre-order the band's forthcoming "▽" LP here from Season of Mist.

buttechno & Triš

I wasn't expecting to writing about an artist called buttechno today, but here we are.  The German electronic artist and producer makes a very chill mix of trip-hop, ethereal electronica, and dub that feels like the whole world is just fading away.  New album "The Spirit" is a collaboration with Ukrainian artist Triš, and plays like some surreal dream.  Listen to "20 Flutes" below and get the album here.

The Bug + Friday Night Plans

Last month, UK electronic musician and producer The Bug started the "Ladybug" series via his PRESSURE record label, an ongoing string of collaborations with different artists.  The second in the series features trippy beats and broken, dreamy grooves with Japanese artist Friday Night Plans.  Check out "Miss U" below and download it, along with a number of different mixes, here.

The Bug + Dis Fig

UK producer and electronic musician The Bug just launched the "LADYBUG" singles series on his PRESSURE imprint label, and is starting the whole thing off with a trippy and transcendent collaborative track with Belgian electronic artist Dis Fig.  Check out "Vanishing" below and download it, along with four remixes, here.

SONS OF ZÖKU

Australian psych rock group SONS OF ZÖKU dropped a great new track a few days ago, with the trip-hop-tinged "In You."  It's awesome.  Take a listen below and download it here from the band.

Daily Jam - Billy Bones

Here's a trip-hoppy track from Peter Hook side project Monaco.  Listen to "Billy Bones" below, our Daily Jam.

Massive Attack & Tom Waits

I don't know about the rest of you, but i certainly wasn't expecting to hear a collaboration between Massive Attack and Tom Waits this morning.  But it's here, and it's really damn good.  "Boots on the Ground" simmers with equal parts anguish and anger, a visceral sneer and middle finger to the powers that be, and the first new work from either artist in quite a long while.  Check the track out below and get it here from Play It Again Sam.

Daily Jam - Angel

Good morning.  Here's some Massive Attack.  Listen to "Angel" below, our Daily Jam.

Moderator

Greek artist Moderator trades in the sounds of trip-hop, electronic, and more on upcoming new album "Silent Cinema."  True to the title, the LP carries a cinematic aesthetic that can be heard in all its noir-ish glory on album opener "Dark Art."  Check it out below and pre-order the album here from Melting Records.

Daily Jam - Re:Percussions

Here's some cool, under-the-radar, instrumental trip-hop from the early '00s to help you all find your groove this afternoon.  Dig on "Re:Percussions" by Hint below, our Daily Jam.

SPC ECO

Bandcamp Friday was yesterday.  Hopefully you all bought some music from your favorite artists.  Here's a couple of new tracks from SPC ECO that should make your list next time...or now, whatever.  Listen to "Watch Me Fall" below and get it along with "Lights Out" here from the band.

SCALER

Bristol band SCALER make a dark and cold mix of trip-hop, IDM, alt-rock, and experimental techno that feels akin to the kind of stuff that would have rocked my headphones in the late '90s.  Check out "Mirage" featuring an assist from Art School Girlfriend below and get the "Endlessly" LP here from Black Acre Records.

Life in Mono

Here's some dark, brooding, moody music from Bristol's Life in Mono.  The band takes elements of goth rock, trip-hop, alt-rock, and ambient and creates an atmospheric, cinematic, noirish vibe.  Check out "In the Cold Dusk" below and download the new "If I Could Wake" EP here from the band.

Georgia Knight

Australian artist Georgia Knight has a real '90s trip-hop/alt-rock/electronic pop thing going on new tune "Desire" that i just can't help but be into.  Check the track out below and download it here.

Daily Jam - Just Like You

Here's a little chilled out '90s trip-hop from Locust for what has turned out to be another rainy day here in Central Texas.  Listen to "Just Like You" below, our Daily Jam.

Milkweed

Here's some very cool and strange new music from UK band Milkweed.  "Exile of the Sons of Uisliu" sounds like something from another planet, a warbly mix of UK folk, trip-hop, and general otherworldliness.  I'm not sure if there's anything else out there that sounds quite like it.  Dig on the track below and pre-order the upcoming "Remscéla" LP here.

Daily Jam - The Number Song

It seems insane to me that DJ Shadow's game changing album "Endtroducing...." is quickly approaching its 30th anniversary.  Just wild stuff.  Here's a cut from it.  Listen to "The Number Song" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Hunter

So far this year, we've gotten two amazing albums from Portishead alumni Beth Gibbons and Geoff Barrow (with his band Beak>).  It would really be a cherry on top of all that if we could somehow get the elusive fourth album from Portishead.  It's been 16 years, and i think we all need something like that.  Anyway, here they are from 16 years ago with "Hunter," our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Life in Mono

Time and time again, I seem to find myself trading in nostalgia on this website, caught up and forever wading in all of my personal memories, stories, and emotional detritus like so many pop culture writers before me. And that’s okay I guess. Write what you know, or whatever.

But lately I’ve been dwelling on why nostalgia is what it is. Why it’s so dear to us, its drug-like and euphoric mental-caressing providing temporary comfort and soothing us like a proverbial teat. Memory narcotics. I think that a part of it has to be some kind of subconscious desire to return to the way things were, when everything was exciting and new, a whole world of possibility ahead of you. Youth. Innocence. A time before the future became the present…or even worse, the past. That would certainly explain the often contemplative or even existential melancholy that accompanies it. But there may also be a part of nostalgia that goes even deeper than our childhoods and hopes and dreams. In some ways, it’s a longing for what we used to be, a kind of subtle mourning for an us…a you…a me that simply does not exist anymore. On a mental level. On a biological level. On a cellular level. I am not who I used to be, and neither are you. As our bodies grow, and age, and change, we are not what we were, just a collection of old thoughts, moods, and memories within an ever-evolving flesh sack. So maybe we’re not just missing our pasts, yearning for what might have been, maybe we’re also missing our old selves who molted away or were sloughed by the wayside. And nostalgia provides us a time machine of sorts to revisit or remember it all again, be it the movies, books, and music we grew up with, or old family pictures gathering dust in shoeboxes and photo albums. They provide a return, or an escape, or a chance for introspection. And that’s important, even if this whole memory train can be a little annoying sometimes, that rehashing of old tales, old loves, and old obsessions thwarting our personal growth and future selves. You just gotta ride that time machine conservatively. Don’t get stuck on it. To paraphrase Sick Boy in T2 Trainspotting, don’t be “a tourist in your own youth.” Take the time to live something new. Keep evolving.

Now, of all the songs that have that hypothetical time travel ability to transport me back to whatever era my heart, mind, and soul associate it with, wetting that nostalgia whistle like so much methadone, none do so with quite the all encompassing zeal as “Life in Mono,” the quasi-hit from British trip-hop duo Mono. But it’s all so random.

Appearing on the band’s 1997 (’98 in the States) album Formica Blues, as well as the soundtrack to the 1998 version of Great Expectations, the song makes me recall nothing of any significance whatsoever. There are no long, lost loves or life turning points. No memories of fun times or great friends. No overlaying personal story arc to at least inspire within me some kind of diary-level gab fest. Instead, it’s all inconsequential bullshit. It’s me walking down 21st Street in Austin in front of the fountain at the bottom of the south mall at UT in late 1997, clouds greying, an old, green Toyota Corolla driving by me, contemplating going to see a midnight revival ‘70s porno screening* at the now defunct Dobie Theater. It’s me driving home to Midland one weekend during spring semester of my freshman year, the sun setting near San Angelo, the hunger in my stomach making me pull over to eat at a Subway. It’s me watching Much Music (Canada’s answer to MTV) in my dorm room, willing myself to nap between classes on a warm Friday afternoon, my focus zeroing in and out on the gaping holes in the knees of my blue jeans. It’s me rifling through CDs at the also now defunct Sound Exchange by campus. It’s me studying for a government exam that I failed. It’s me with insomnia as my roommate breathes slow and heavy on the other side of the room. It’s me at 18. Just being bored. Just existing.

For whatever reason, all of that comes flooding back in a tsunami like surge whenever I hear “Life in Mono.” And it will stay with me forever.

*The porno in question was 1978’s The Disco Dolls in Hot Skin.**

**We totally went to see it.