Perhaps best known as Vashti Bunyan’s guitarist, Glasgow’s Gareth Dickson offers a collection of live solo recordings that effectively uses environment as an accompanying instrument.
Playing without a bassist, this Seattle trio’s deliberately-paced, dark-tinted music skirts the boundaries of ‘90s alterna-rock, ‘80s new wave, and ‘70s funk/prog/disco.
The River is a challenging, rewarding album, leaning more toward prog’s less experimental, song-based 1980s phase, while De Angelis’s soul-searching, solemn words are pensive and ambiguous, and open to interpretation.
Join The Car Crash Set is a beautiful, loving glimpse of a band finally garnering the acknowledgement it deserves, handled with extreme care and detail.
Tenor saxophonist, Matt Nelson (tUnE-yArDs, Battle Trance), delivers a solo debut that explores sonic textures ranging from melodicism to outright noise.
Brooklyn-via-Atlanta-via-Pennsylvania married folk duo, Mark Rogers (The Loom, Myssouri) and Mary Byrne (Hot Young Priest), delivers an intimate debut that is deceptively dark beneath the acoustic lyricism.
Deepfieldview is the musical vision of Danny Lackey, the founder of the When the Sun Hits musical blog. Danny passed away of cancer in 2013, leaving his project unfinished. Producer Charlie Nieland and his wife Nancy Nieland (Her Vanished Grace), Danny’s wife Barbie Lackey, Eric Matthews (Cardinal), Anna Bouchard (Drowner), and Joey Levenson (SPC-ECO) all contributed to this project and brought it to completion.
On her tenth album, LA singer-songwriter, Mia Doi Todd, explores her love of nature with covers of her favorite Brazilian songs sung in their native Portuguese.
California’s Cold Blue Water is a blues rock band in the term’s truest essence. The band sound like Led Zeppelin stripped down to their purest blues element, or Jimi Hendrix in the blues-ier direction he was surely headed for.
After the hiatus announcement of Sonic Youth in 2011, the underwhelming Chelsea Light Moving LP in 2013, and a mild solo career, Thurston Moore reappears with the best solo record of his career entitled The Best Day.
On his new album, Descending, Federico Parra seems to approach music just as much from an intellectual standpoint as an emotional one.
Hailing from the bustling music scene in Brighton, UK, Slum of Legs finally deliver a debut single that shows a penchant for melodicism beside a sneering, aggressive taunt.
Returning to the duo of Timothy and Prydwyn that dominated 1998’s A Silver Thread to Weave the Seasons, Red Lion, PA’s Stone Breath continue their haunting minstrel folk journey of nineteen years.
There are a million, bazillion bands influenced by the discography of Nirvana, but few ever add something new and different to the mix, which is exactly what The Oxford Coma does; a band influenced by grunge that isn’t grunge at all.
“My Time (Taking)” is like reveling inside someone’s beautiful dream where Liz Fraser has a starring role
Shortly after an excellent 7”, The Luxembourg Signal, i.e., the UK/LA dreamgaze supergroup comprised of members of Aberdeen, Fonda and Trembling Blue Stars, deliver their debut masterpiece of fluid melodies, spacey drones and dark mystery.
Seattle’s RxGF have come a long way in a brief four years of existence. Since their beginnings in 2010, the band, driven by John Morgan Reilly, has evolved from their first guitar-heavy recordings to slowly sneaking in synths more and more until their present form on their third album.
True to form, Nick Oliveri’s debut album under the Uncontrollable moniker boasts squealing guitars, pounding rhythms and driving songs – staples of the musician’s long, vibrant career built on Kyuss, The Dwarves, Queens of the Stone Age and Mondo Generator.
Building on the strength of their 2011 eponymous debut, Three Minute Tease, the Pan-European trio of songwriter Anton Barbeau with Soft Boys/Egyptians alums Andy Metcalfe and Morris Windsor, deliver an even better sophomore effort that effectively blends psychedelic pop with glam rock and power pop.
As one of no wave’s original skronksters, Arto Lindsay pushed the guitar to its noisiest extremes with his improvisational trio, DNA, yet, as a solo artist, he recorded beautiful, soulful music informed by the sounds of his Brazilian heritage.
All in all, this is a hard-charging, up-tempo record with only small breaks in its mood (“Candidate” is an example). It’s also worth noting that Marr is gaining confidence as a vocalist.
Pretty Bitchin’ is not only confirmation of Markham’s arrival as a force to be reckoned with as a songwriter/performer but also suggests to be a crucial piece of the puzzle for Markham in the years to come.
The record builds upon the fusion and free of category feel of Sky Bleached, though this time with steeper hills and deeper valleys to tour.
Not unlike the classic New Zealand label, Flying Nun, Bedroom Suck is building its own roads to listeners and creating an incredible catalog in the process.
Electronic R&B artist Joshua Worden is back with his new album Into Fog. Providing 12 new tracks, the Atlanta musician is at the top of his game and better than ever.
The Big Sleep is a musical milieu where pop melodies are ephemeral and last in your grasp for a very short time before escaping forever.
It is all so unexpected, listening to this record. It is neither run of the mill psychedelia or easy listening, and will take a dedicated set of ears to truly appreciate its finer nuances.
Boasting twelve songs in nine minutes, LA’s Girl Tears do punk right with quick blasts of energetic fury.
Comprised of members of Mac DeMarco’s backing band, Montreal-via-Vancouver-based Walter TV finally see a proper release of their oddball first album posted on Bandcamp in 2012.
Having not collaborated on vinyl since 2009’s Concordia Dischord 7”, two stalwarts of the Southern California noise scene, +DOG+ and Actuary, come together once again with a dark noise attack perfect for the burgeoning fall.
Rising from the primordial ooze of prehistory, Bastard Noise return with another textured onslaught of powerful caveman electronics.
The band sounds like an alternate world where Led Zeppelin had long ago reunited, Amy Winehouse was still alive, and both artists were supporting each other in what could only be described as a dream combination
Continuing on their path of sonic destruction, +DOG+ unleash a sneering twenty-seven minute sendoff to all the people that are no longer needed in the ubiquitous collective’s lives.
If this existed when the band’s heroes were at their peaks, it’s possible the EP may not have sounded as magical or unique, but here and now, Cease and Desist is a fresh dose of something we’ve needed for a long time.
After many years immersed in the underground noise scenes in Los Angeles and New York, sound artist and curator of Brooklyn’s Ende Tymes Festival of Noise and Experimental Liberation, Bob Bellerue (Half Normal, Kilt), finally joins the LEM roster with a major slab of high fidelity vinyl comprised of two sides recorded live at Goodbye Blue Monday in Bushwick within the past five years.
Now gaining momentum after the success of their debut album, Cardiff, Wales-based Joanna Gruesome return with three new songs backed by some friends from Brighton, Trust Fund.
Despite being spread throughout three cities across the US (Boston & Leverett, MA and Chicago, IL), Siamese Twins offer an astonishingly excellent dark dream pop debut that nods heavily to the early ’80s while remaining fluidly current.
Delivering her first solo album after years away from music, former Band of Susans and Rhys Chatham guitarist, Karen Haglof, rediscovers her electric guitar with twelve songs heavily rooted in the blues.
Three years after the release of their critically acclaimed third studio album and now based in Maine, alt-country band, O’Death, reconvene with a sparser, brooding live sound to contradict the massive production of their previous effort.
Brooklyn based songwriter/guitarist Steve Gunn releases his second full blown singer-songwriter record entitled Way Out Weather. Released by North Carolina uprisers, Paradise of Bachelors, Way Out Weather delivers on the lone wolf promise made on Gunn’s 2013 release Time Off.
Gratifying and disorienting, like any challenging music should be, the musicality on display giving fucked up wings to the mutant children of punk and no-wave. Sacral Nerves could be the soundtrack to a stabbing… or the best night of your life.
Released in August by Austin, TX label Marmara, All Worries At Once finds Aycock assembling tinges of patterned synths, drone and gamelan into his singular guitar etchings.
The music is memorable and its impact has lasted decades, and that is a testament to the power of this band’s songwriting and playing. Like all such bands, they deserve a much higher profile.
This self-proclaimed “pot punk” band’s debut Home. Run. is a solid slab of indie fuzz pop that is unsophisticated in the best possible way, and eminently listenable to boot.
Forth Worth troubadour Collin Herring steps firmly out of the shadows with his newest LP entitled Some Knives. His first record since 2009’s Ocho finds Matt Pence of Centro-Matic again behind the production wheel for an upbeat albeit melancholy filled affair where stately drums and synths take a front seat.
On his new album, Naked Tunes, Gonzalez sounds a lot like John Cale’s on his newer releases, effortlessly embracing modern sounds and culture adeptly enough while remaining tied to his past.
QVALIA’s debut album, This Is The Color Of My Dreams, ambitiously explores the electronic soundscapes of the 80’s and merges it succinctly with a modern twist.
