Controversial Shanghai, China freakout art punks, Round Eye, finally deliver their long awaited full-length debut and, yes, it was worth the wait.
Osaka, Japan’s freeform improvisational ex-pats, Out of Dust, return with a sophomore release that shows them growing into an even more cohesive unit.
New York City’s Video Beast emerge with an explosive debut that nods heavily to ’90s grunge and alternative rock, but without nostalgia.
Du Blonde are coming at ya with a brass pair to remember.
My Love is Strong is an incredibly welcoming record, inviting the listener to immediately fall head over heels in love with the band and their music.
New York City’s Little Lesley & the Bloodshots boldly defy the rockabilly status quo with a new EP of original songs that properly deliver roots rock with a punk rock attitude.
Osaka, Japan’s premiere ex-pat free improvisation group, Out of Dust, debuts with an astonishing collection of wholly spontaneous music.
Folk singer, Tom Chapin, celebrates his 70th birthday on his 24th album, further cementing his well-deserved legendary status.
Austerlitz, NY’s Pigeons have undergone many changes, both in sound and lineup – a flexibility that has allowed them to deliver a masterpiece of genuine psychedelia on their eighth full-length.
While battling brain cancer that finally ended his life at the age of thirty in 1988, German punk, Thomas Eicke, aka Tom Diabo (Envelope, X-112 for Dancing, Western Force), recorded a series of extremely personal songs to 2-track that chronicled his thoughts on life, death and the short time he had to live.
On his sophomore album, baritone saxophonist Jonah Parzen-Johnson continues pushing the boundaries of jazz, folk and electronic music to create a unique, mesmerizing sound.
If you want straight up, raw-edged rock songs, Torres has got ‘em.
The band has a remarkable quality of being able to dance from sound to sound and genre to genre without ever coming across as fickle or schizophrenic.
Canadian folk music brings you a little faith in humanity.
Warning. You must wear big black shades while listening to this album.
Elephant 6 alumnus, Andy Gonzales (ex-of Montreal, The Music Tapes, Mind Brains, returns to his Marshmallow Coast moniker for the latest chapter in his prolific musical career.
Queens, NY-based soft rock duo, Frog, offer their sophomore release, a bona fide full-length that should garner the group more notice than their largely overlooked eponymous 2013 EP (Monkfish).
Friends for thirty-five years, Massachusetts songwriters David Greenberger (Men & Volts, The Duplex Planet) and Chandler Travis (The Incredible Casuals, The Chandler Travis Philharmonic, The Catbirds) deliver a compilation that documents their multifaceted collaborations over the past two decades.
The final album from Rhode Island’s Brown Bird send the group off with a bang.
Two years after their debut, Northampton, MA trio, Colorway, hone their sound with a solid, no-frills sophomore release.
“I snapped up the vinyl the week it came out and played the crap out of it going forward. And you know, that classic guitar, bass, drums sound never goes out of style when it’s played this well.”
The songs here reach into the darkest corners of psychedelic and classical music, combining, stretching, and distorting the two to the point where you wonder if this is really music at all.
“The band combines spacey elements with solid musicianship, and seems to bypass most of the stereotypical MBV studio trickery that plagues many shoegaze bands.”
Under the helm of seven-octave range vocalist, Claudio Milano, Italian multimedia art collective, NichelOdeon/InSonar, deliver yet another boundary-pushing statement, this time focusing on the aquatic world.
Influenced by the likes Bon Iver and Sufjan Stevens, Benjamins dutifully follows in their footsteps while quietly carving out his own path.
A Canadian folk singer with some serious chutzpah. We really just wanted to use the word ‘chutzpah’.
But influence aside, this is 28 minutes of the finest skronk you will ever hear and that is the real reason to track this down.
On their newest album, DigiBites, release April 1st, these EDM influences are brought to the forefront more than ever before. It’s easy to say this is the most straight up dance record, while previous offerings showed a more prog-side to the genre.
New York songwriter Ambrosia Parsley returns after a hiatus with a porridge that is just right.
“Graveface Records (home of The Casket Girls and other great bands) in Savannah just released this split 12” vinyl on Record Store Day 2015. Dott is a band from Ireland and Night School (members of Whirr) hails from Northern California.”
Phil’s bio states that he is “too folky for the rockers and too rocky for the folkers”, but since putting together the Affiliates he’s had both feet firmly planted in the rock camp.
New Yorkers go back to basics on this new collection.
On their self titled debut, Koes Barat, Alan Bishop looks to honor the music of a band made of up entirely of Indonesian brothers called Koes Plus.
Nic Nassuet*is a singer/songwriter from Hollywood, and has just released his new gothic folk album, Eleutherios. There’s a strong air of 80’s gothic bands like *Bauhaus and Sisters of Mercy throughout the album.
Shirley Inspired exposes the timelessness of Collins’ music and the traditions she served to test and sustain. The depth of each contribution speaks to her significance and signifies the room still left to explore within the realm of British traditional musics.
An American expat in Vienna turns out great modern punk music that owes to your parents’ record collection.
Denton, TX produces a quintet that is blending the lines between rock and pop on their fourth LP.
Instrumental South Central Pennsylvania quartet, Night, fully come into their own with a full-length that finally captures the textured atmospheres in their music.
The band is influenced by the likes of Matthew Sweet, The Posies, and other denizens of 90’s alternative/power pop, and a firm standing in Nashville country also augments the sound of Gretchen’s Wheel.
France’s bizarro garage rockers, The Slit Plasters, continue their campaign of psychosis with a new 7” that contains some of their best material to date.
Six years after the release of their third album, Paradise Square, Memphis-via-New York-based country/blues group, The Kropotkins, return with their fourth.
Los Angeles-based power trio, Lunar Electric, unleash their bombastic heavy rock with a four song EP that evokes classic rock without resorting to mere mimicry.
On their fifth studio album, Edmonton, Canada’s iVardensphere take their tribal industrial sound to new heights.
Another Scottish folk album? Really? Yup and this one is a doozy.
In 1985, The Apartments, from Brisbane, Australia, released an LP on Rough Trade that was heralded as an immediate classic. Remastered for the first time, this expanded reissue compiles that seminal LP with the group’s earliest singles and demo recordings for a comprehensive look at their origins.
Enigmatic songwriter, Connie Converse, composed a number of songs during the 1950s American folk revival in New York City that largely remained unheard before she became disenchanted and moved to Ann Arbor, MI in the early ’60s, where, in 1974, she wrote goodbye letters to friends and completely disappeared, whereabouts still unknown.
“This Swedish duo first captured my fancy with their “From Above” single, as sublime an example of dream pop as anything released in 2013. Imagine Air combined with Ennio Morricone, and you start to get an inkling of the musical vein these talented musicians are mining.”
