Ricardo Donoso – The Deck Of An Ancient Ship (Digitalis)

 

Fucking BRILLIANT. Donoso’s previous works have sounded nothing like this. This is new. And not just for Donoso. New for life. Like a freaky hybrid of Gas, Goblin, and OPN. It’s an IDM trance. Or an anti minimal techno. He’s taken his experience with raves in Brazil and stripped them down. No beats, no drums, just the in between moments. With minimal techno, you get mostly beats and a few skitterings of whatever. Progress Chance is just the skitterings. The motorik is gone. You’re left with a mostly foreboding/slightly uplifting beam of dusky arpeggiated synths, beautiful in their simplicity, blissful in their ambience. This is mind music. You can space the fuck out and let your brain imagine soaring through Jupiter’s red eye or you can dance to the naught-beats while you brain fills in the blanks. It might not sound all that original on paper, but this is some straight up one-of-a-kind shit. Donoso gets the trophy for coolest synth record of the year.

Lawrence English – Heavy Breath Of Silence (Experimedia)

 

As someone who counts Kiri No Oto as one of their favorite records of all time (btw humungo props to Digitalis for pressing that on vinyl earlier this year), it takes a lot for me to admit that I might already like The Peregrine more. Not sure yet. Needs some more time in the oven. It’s a step away from Kiri No Oto, something a bit brighter and with more cheer. Just a bit. Like a less dynamic Love Is A Stream. It’s filled with flourishing harmonies, soaring through gray glades, warm as golden hour in June. Like the finest grade cheap viagra cialis levitra sandpaper, with a tooth so smooth, the grit almost disappears and you’re left with drone as glorious as humanly possible. An impenetrably dense wall of a dull roar, working perfectly at low volumes, not insistent on being maxed out, but if it’s not resonating in your core, you’re doing it wrong. The most intensely pleasurable listening experience you should have all year.

A pertinent quote from Lawrence English about J.A. Baker’s book “The Peregrine,” of which this album is an homage to: “He expends as much attention on the shape of clouds or the murmur of a river as on the bird, which inspires him to write.”

Myrmyr – Fire Serpent’s Lull (Under The Spire)

 

Two lovely ladies (Agnes Szelag from Evon & Dokuro and Marielle Jakobsons from Darwinsbitch & Date Palms) making exquisite electro-acoustic tunes (heavy on the acoustic). Lots of delicate syrupy strings, like liquid lace being stretched to its thinnest. Looped into charming beats with handclaps, plucked strings, bells, accordions, like Animal Hospital teaming with Eluvium, except with more pep in its step. Sadness & somber darkness abound, weaving seamlessly with moments of cheering reprieve. The electronics are an understatement, not a crutch, slightly bending the acoustics or adding an element of static otherwise unavailable. Culminates in a long heaving drone, blissful, a perfect closer. Recorded on Shasta Mountain during a snowstorm, Fire Star is a very warm record, one of solitude. A triumph if I’ve ever heard one.

Kinit Her – Walled (Small Doses)

Fucked as hell and 100% original. Tortured Gnaw Their Tongues horror, blackened Niblock trombones, melodic pagan incantations, mourning Godspeed strings, power metal guitar wailings, furious neo-folk, pioneering levels of prog, inhuman demonic growls, black metal tricklings, all steeped for years in a vat of DOOM. Absolutely. Fucking. RIDICULOUS. This album is as brilliant as it gets, dudes. I haven’t heard anything this astoundingly unique in years. It’s bleak, dank, and goddamn creepy. I want to have it’s baby?

Dementia And Hope Trails – Dead (Dynamo Sound Collective)

Justin Marc Lloyd’s (Pregnant Spore, Sensible Nectar, Rainbow Bridge, etc) deep resonant hum of a tape. Slow moving swells of mourning bliss, a profound guitar drone that seeps far into your body. Sadness prevails on “Dead.” It moves slow, sweeps wide, and rises buy cialis auckland with honor, following the contemporary maximum-minimalism. “Go” stays the dense static course but soars through stormy clouds. Powerfully trance inducing and gorgeous as fuck. Absolutely massive in depth & volume, making itself aurally erogenous. Euphoric on every level. A++. A c20 is far too short for this kind of shit.

Formication – Nightly Instructions From The Cracked Telephone (Small Doses)

 

The opening track is a ballad of disgust that cyborgs spew at their enslaved humans. The rest of the album is the celebratory minimal techno dance party for a job well done. Gritty bass & glitchy beats smothered by a blackened ambient, with urgent, haunted drones and a swarm of clicks & trills. This isn’t music that you or I dance to, it’s strictly for the hardcore neo-machines who cut off their oil supply so they can get that potent, more natural high. Absolutely killer fucking jams on here. These dudes are brilliantly mixing sub-genres resulting in a wholly realized vision that is The Eyes OF Erodern Reviema. If any part of your inner self digs beats at ALL, you owe it to yourself to check out this cold hearted beast. Plus, the limited CD version comes with an extra insert & disc of remixes, including one from Locrian. Doesn’t get much better than that.

Szymon Kaliski – When Facing North (Hibernate)

 

A magnificent follow up to his debut, Out Of Forgetting. Cold, sparse, and hidden textures opening up a world of revered memories and rainy days. Pianos whimper in the corner while unrecognizable field recordings scratch up against old wallpaper. Stuck in gray fields with a sliver of gold lighting up the horizon. Lonely, exhausted sounds sprawled out on beautifully minimal canvases. Tiny processed clicks shack up next to complementary keys, not bogged down with excessive bullshit. A crystal clear hi-fi production matching a vision just as clear. Wonderful on every level. Part of Hibernate’s limited Postcard Series but, sadly, sold out. Luckily, you can name your price for it over at Bandcamp.

Rambutan – Engaged In The Ritual (Tape Drift)

 
Rambutan’s version of bedroom pop. His fuzzed out guitars mixed with electronics & drum machines make a looped out beat dream sounding like he took the same drugs Eric Copeland is on. Space caves dripping with old school avant-garde, stuttered glitch jams, hidden tribes worshipping motorik jungle sounds, crystals refracting psych solos, squiggly snake charms dancing in opium dens, slowed down NES tunes set to unsettling lurching, beautiful drones, intense nightmares, songs new & old that come together in a shockingly cohesive album. Totally fucking cool, a record with endless replay value and perfect for every occasion between sleeping and partying.

Richard Kamerman – I Stayed In The Apartment For Thirty-Two Days Without Leaving (excerpt) (Copy For Your Records)

 
A swift kick in the junk. Less than 20 minutes on a mini CD-R of abrasive as fuck electronic glitch. Like a hundred cats scratching at your microphone while it’s hailing outside. Scratch pop scar city with what sounds like a completely distorted and incomprehensible growling. It could actually be vocals or it might just be an homage to power violence. And it’s fucking relentless. It kicks in immediately and it’s in the red the whole goddamn time. The especially difficult part is the millisecond (and multi-second) pauses dispersed throughout that act like reset buttons. You can’t just zone out to this and ignore the caustic static. He’s a tabula rasa master.

The title of this makes me like to imagine Kamerman going all sorts of insane in his 32 day homebound stint. It’s fuckin raw as hell and beautifully destructive. Plus, it’s only 20 minutes so even those with the most delicate of eardrums don’t have an excuse not to cop this.

Apparently these 20 minutes are an excerpt from a 2+ hour long piece Kamerman made that will be released in differing formats on varying labels. A very strange approach but I kinda dig it.

Parashi – The Baron (Ghetto Naturalist Series)

 

The solo project from Mike Griffin, the dude who runs Skell, that’s a meth fueled synth abduction nightmare. Boiling acid cauldrons and ringing dog whistles swirling in a constant state of paranoia. An incessant insanity on the outer layer that blurs your ears to all the abrasive minutiae crawling around underneath. Crashing & banging, clicking & squeaking, urgent but not chaotic, living in the moments before the beast buried under Terror Mountain breaks loose. Droning walls of vertigo inducing synth with static wind carrying air raid sirens across the globe. It hurts, it’s unsettling, it is by no means pleasurable, and it is totally fucking rad.

Sway – Summer Donna (self released)

 
Totally fucking incredible. I’m a sucker for banjos, mandolins, ukuleles, handclaps, and boy/girl harmonies so I’d already be hooked on Sway, but it’s Catie Rae’s voice that pushes them over the edge. It’s beautifully unique and she’s able to let it loose & go wild without ever losing control. Some of the best tracks are when it’s just Catie & her guitar goin to town like on “Sprout.” So the easiest route is to tag Sway with the country & folk labels but there’s so much more to them than that (just like those giant alien robots). They infuse their sound with some carefree & unruly punk aesthetics. They’re just too fucking cool.

A lot of the songs are unlike anything they’ve done before, adding some melodrama making me think of Devotchka or Victory At Sea, but then they include a few remakes of songs they already recorded to balance it out. A strange move for your third record but some of the makeovers are way better than the originals. It’s saying a lot when one of my previous favorites was “Summer Donna” and I love the new version of it even more. Everything on here though is so goddamn catchy and charming. Perhaps due to my critique of their last record, Rock Bottom, which was missing the laughing and chatter bookending some songs on the first album, they added that back in. I think that means I now can control the future or something?

The best part of Songs For Your Sweetheart? IT’S FUCKING FREE. You can still buy a sexy letterpressed disc (drawn by Swayer Lillie and printed up by Lillie & my wife Elise). But if you’re looking for some free fun, download this hot piece right here and you’ll never listen to anything else. If you need ANY more convincing, just let it be known that I’ve listened to Songs like a hundred bazillion times and I still want more.

Disclaimer: all 6 people in Sway are my pals IRL

Boy Without God – Of Cowboys & Other Beautiful Men (self released)

 
The sort of sound that’s not usually my bag (saxophones, song-oriented, God-y) but when it’s powerful & memorable enough that one or two years later I’m able to recognize a song I only heard once, I would be a jackass if I didn’t pay attention. A brilliantly smooth blend of new Americana, old blues, soul, new wave clean garage rock, doo-wop, jazz, and anything else he’s inspired by. Poetic lyrics sung in the most passionate deep baritone that sounds maybe a little like the dude from Crash Test Dummies, except not annoying and totally sincere. I’d say his voice is what hooks you in the beginning but it’s probably just the most noticeably unique aspect. Songs break in cathartic crescendos with angry guitar destruction & dissonant horn skronking or blissful howling & lush dreams. Lonely acoustic guitars, deft electric Neil Young sounds, flushed out strings & brass, mourning heartbreak, uplifting youthful love, straight up the catchiest fucking tunes. Endlessly listenable and hands down one of the greatest records this year.

Easily Gabriel’s most well thought out and complete sounding record I’ve heard. It’s obvious this is what he’s wanted to sound like. More people are involved on this record, both in terms of instruments & vocals (including the addition of some fantastic boy/girl harmonies) and in terms of production & mastering. The physical disc is printed by Repeat Press, the same dude who did that slick as hell High Aura’d album.

Arabian Horses – Guardians Of The Flame (excerpt) (Full Of Nothing)

 
Lone bro meandering through post-Irene wasteland, worshipper of the Six String Samurai. Echoes waving in the heat, ghouls floating over empty shells, vengeful riffs churn, slam out a crunchy dirge, escalating to banger of the month. Toms & kick http://www.honeytraveler.com/buy-xenical/ pounding hard. Relentless rhythm for the weary restless. Chaos unfolds in blistering hot sheets, a pulsing psych fury in its wake. It stutters, crumbles in on itself, left to decay in the howling post-apocalypse.