Pompeii

Austin shoegazey post-rock quartet Pompeii have a new album of soaring, reverb-drenched rock anthems for the masses.  "Loom" feels massive...and it is, a sprawling and building beautiful cacophony of sweeping synths, pounding drums, echoed vocals, and layers of guitar and feedback, while the Tosca String Quartet provide a stirring, cinematic touch with their classical string work.  It's a beautiful record.  Get it from Red Eye Transit Records, or from the band and listen to the title track below.

Keep Shelly in Athens

Greece's Keep Shelly in Athens have a new song and a new singer.  "Fractals" is a breezy and wistful synth pop dream, a song that floats you along over the horizon.  It's pretty.  Listen below.

Animal Bodies

Man, it got cold in Austin.  We're in the 30's, which is such a rarity, so let's listen to some cold and minimal darkwave synth music with some industrial trim shall we?  Vancouver's Animal Bodies sound like the club jams you would listen to in an abandoned warehouse, partying with a bunch of weirdos before they turn into werewolves.  Get the band's "The Killing Scene" LP here and listen to "Two Moons" below.

Chromatics - Blue Moon

Glass Candy/Chromatics/Symmetry mastermind Johnny Jewel has been unleashing a whole slew of rare and unreleased tracks from his various projects on his Soundcloud page over the last week or so.  Go and check everything out, but in the meantime, listen to and download Chromatics' haunting take on "Blue Moon" below.  It's ghostly and gorgeous.

Fun Fun Fun Fest 2014 pics

Oh Fun Fun Fun Fest...what started as an exercise in patience, rage control, and endurance, a result of poor planning and staffing on the festival runners that ended up with a two and a half hour wait to get into the park (much, much longer for some), i eventually shed my anger, and my disappointment in missing Pallbearer, Mineral, and most of Run the Jewels, and came to love the loopy atmosphere that Fun Fun Fun Fest is known for.  Or maybe i just got drunk.  Either way, it was a good time, and maybe next year the festival planners can act like they've been doing this for the better part of a decade.  Oh wait, they have.

Check out a few pics below.  Unfortunately, none of my Nas or Yo La Tengo pics came out well.

Run the Jewels

Sun Kil Moon

Juliana Barwick

Death from Above 1979

Dinosaur Jr

Judas Priest

King Tuff

METZ

Gary Numan (doing his best Trent Reznor impersonation)

Iceage

The World is a Beautiful Place and I am no Longer Afraid to Die

Black Lips

Sick of it All

King Diamond

Iron Reagan

Angel Olsen

Deafheaven

Dum Dum Girls

Freddie Gibbs and Madlib

Chelsea Wolfe

Failure

Neutral Milk Hotel

Let's do it again next year...but let's not piss me off next time.

HAERTS

Hey, HAERTS' self-titled, debut full-length LP came out last week.  Who knew?  Apparently not me, nor did i realize the band had signed to major label Columbia.  Anyway, the band continue to wade through the waters of synthy 80's nostalgia, soaring and dreamy jams to watch the tide go out to as the sun sets brilliantly in the background.  Somewhere Tom Cruise is flying a fighter jet.  Take a listen to "Hope" below.

Chelsea Wolfe

As i'll be spending the next three days listening to live music, drinking too much beer, and walking around a park at this year's Fun Fun Fun Fest, i feel it proper to highlight one of the acts i'm most excited to see...dark folk fatale Chelsea Wolfe.  Earlier this year, Ms. Wolfe recorded a session for Folkadelphia, which you can listen to and download here (name your price).  In the meantime, listen to her stripped down and haunting version of "The Warden" from last year's "Pain Is Beauty" album below.

I'lls

It's a chilly, gray, and rainy day here in Austin, so here's some appropriately gloomy music from Australia's I'lls.  Soft and creeping analog synthesizer hums and beeps play out over warped, unintelligible vocal samples and a jazzy electro-beat.  It only seems right.  Listen to "Fifty-Phiphti" below and grab the 12" single here from Solitaire.

Blue Ruin

Jeremy Saulnier's "Blue Ruin" is a wonderfully shot, beautiful, and tense movie about the nature of revenge, and the dark spirals it leads to.  The film's score, by brothers Brooke and Will Blair, streamlines that dreariness and the dread of the movie's tone into a droney and ambient soundscape.  Said score will be out in December (in limited vinyl) on Blackest Rainbow Records.  Listen to "Confrontation" below.

New music from Nothing and Whirr

San Francisco shoegaze acts Nothing and Whirr share a member in Nick Bassett, and the two groups now have a split 12" coming out later this month on Run For Cover.  I'm stoked.  Take a listen to Nothing contribution "July the Fourth" below.