71 search results for "chillwave"

1. “Please Send To J.F.” – José Medeles w/ Marisa Anderson. J.F. is John Fahey; Medeles’ project here is a tribute album to the guitar legend by way of new compositions indebted to and honoring his sound. This is one of the highlights of the record, a bright, sprightly, spontaneous-sounding jam that just feels like a sunbeam and a half.

2. “Sunset” – Medicine Singers. Fuses Pow Wow singing with jazz, post-rock, and electronic flourishes to create an urgent, pounding, brilliant work. This is truly unique, and powerful. Highly recommended.

4. “Secret of the Megafauna” – Cool Maritime. Somewhere between chillwave and vaporwave, Cool Maritime is making idiosyncratically elegant pieces that turn kitsch into beauty.

5. “Walkin’” – Fresh Pepper. A low-key Ratatat tune morphs into a horns-and-bass funk tune partway through. It’s like driving across the boundary of radio stations in a car; one moment you’re chilling, the next you’re chilllllllllllinnnnnnnnnnnn.

6. “Super Lucrative” – Anna Butterss. Erratic without falling into chaos, glitchy without being abrasive, emotive without being on-the-nose; this little (1:39) electronic piece operates in a unique space and does its own thing.

7. “George the Revelator” – Revelators Sound System. Low-key jazz with tight kit work, smooth keys, and crushed-red-velvet-curtains horns. Vibes on vibes on vibes.

8. “Eight Below Zero” – Benny Bock. The keys and pedal steel here drive the piece to dance along the line between sad and happy (given that the key is only perceived by my ear as lightly minor; there are a lot of offramps toward the major partner). The liminal space offers a lot of openings for exploration, which Bock & co. take with aplomb. Could have gone on a lot longer than it did, but I’m happy for the three minutes we got!

9. “SHIVERS” – Kety Fusco. Refusing to let the harp be circumscribed, Fusco uses the harp and a pedal board to create all manner of sounds. The resulting soundscape has lead lines that will resonate with any lover of harp, placed into a sonic space that approximates electronic music. It’s an exciting, invigorating exploration of unique sonic concepts.

2. “To Catch Light I” – Mat Ball. Icy, subtle, and evocative, this piece for solo electric guitar calls to mind Low, slowcore singer/songwriters, Ryan Dugré, and other folks interested in mournful yet inviting pieces.

10. “Twin Lakes” – Blurstem and Elijah Bisbee. Tender, delicate, and friendly. This warm rumination is the sound of peaceful evenings in a hammock. Better yet: it sounds like this looks.

11. “Unmoored” – Fog Chaser. You can always get me with pizzicato strings, and Fog Chaser’s latest elegant composition pairs lithe piano with ghostly pad synths and those pizzicato plucks. It’s gorgeous.

12. “Thousands of pianos floating on the moon” – David Gómez. This is a delicate, beautiful piano-led piece that has a truly fantastic title. It sounds more like one piano floating on the moon, but that title wasn’t as evocative.

1. “Look See” – Ryan Dugre. A delicate, mysterious acoustic guitar rumination that (I swear this is a compliment) sounds like a six-string version of a Legend of Zelda jam. Highly recommended.

2. “White” – I Just Came From the Moon. This is a fluid, effortless mash-up of ambient, trip-hop and jazz that ends up sounding like a thoughtful post-rock piece. Lots of attention was paid to getting the tension and pensiveness just right.

3. “The Prophets in the City (Arrival, Balance, Discipline, Joy)” – The Bogie Band ft Joe Russo. A blood-pumping mix of jazz, hip-hop horns, funk, and groove. This is 8:46 of 100% work from this crew, a never-stops-going collaboration that gives and gives.

4. “Moving Further Than Before” – Talmont. Triumphant horns, hip-hop drums, funky bass, and more create a swirling, enthusiastic vibe. Martha Gibbons’ powerful voice is the cap on the excellent track, giving it an old school soul feel.

5. “The Bell Tolls for You” – J.D. Wesley. The raw soul of singer Wesley weaving his heart through “The Bell Tolls For You” generates a magnetic pull into the monochromatic universe that producer, engineer, and videographer Tyrone Corbett of Corbett Music Group creates. A multifaceted industry veteran, Corbett and fellow songwriters Clarence Penn and Joseph Guida collaborated on this track of haunting lyricism: both transcendent and hopeful. Like Sam Cooke’s “Change is Gonna Come,” Wesley’s spiritual vibe elevates the already outstanding imagery in this track. –Lisa Whealy

6. “Baby’s Breath” – Great Lakes. Warm, comforting alt-country that evokes the great early Dawes records. The vocals are earnest and easy. The guitar tones here are just absolutely perfect. The backline thrums excellently. It even has a magnificent guitar solo! What more can you ask for in an alt-country song?

7. “Radium Girls” – Charming Disaster. Elia Bisker and Jeff Morris return to grace the universe with their eclectic artistry: this one a danse macabre wrapped in stunning theatrics that elevate the poetic musicality.  The duo teases audiences with this delightful immersive experience from the upcoming album Our Lady of Radium. The Marie Curie-inspired, stop action-type animated feel the video portrays lends itself to a horror story feel. The clock’s incessant time-keeping partnered and juxtaposed against a simple bass line points out how each moment slips past us, despite our frantic efforts to show up. Look for all of Bisker and Morris’ projects here: Charming Disaster | Funkrust Brass Band | Sweet Soubrette. –Lisa Whealy

8. “Manatee” – Russ Kaplan+7. An elegant, complex piano composition that balances composerly attributes with the songwriter’s ear for melody.

9. “Ode to Joy – Recomposed” – Nick Box, Alicia Enstrom. A beautiful, unexpected composition that leads the listener on an orchestral three-minute journey before announcing the triumphant, iconic theme.

10. “Comfortable Loneliness” – Hello Meteor. I’m not sure if vaporwave has a positive or negative connotation anymore, but I love the stuff. The faux-classy synths indicative of vaporwave meet serious Teen Daze-esque chillwave vibes for a very good time. Very relaxing and lovely.

11. “Angel” – DJ Python. 10 minutes of subtle groove with flecks of tropical house, ’80s synth, vaporwave, and more. Carefully rides the line between dance and meditation. Or: why not both?

Teen Daze has done a lot in 12 years. Jamison Isaak’s project has been on the forefront of chillwave (All of Us, Together is a classic of the subgenre), done electro-acoustic fusions (The House on the Mountain), produced motorik techno cuts (A World Away), conducted a double-album concept record on climate change (Themes for Dying Earth and Themes for a New Earth), dropped copious singles, and generally been about as prolific as you can be while still retaining uniformly high quality. His latest record Bioluminescence was a career highlight that melded the electronic and the acoustic into warm, lithe pieces. Teen Daze makes serious music, at speed, in spades.

Interior is the latest full record from Teen Daze. (A collection of EPs called Reality Refreshes and some singles appeared between Bioluminescence and now, naturally.) It builds on previous Teen Daze successes by marshaling signature sounds toward a new goal. Instead of making big statements about the world, Interior makes dance music–even club music. “2 AM (Real Love) (feat. Cecile Believe)” is a fusion of Teen Daze’s favorite muted, warm sounds and Daft Punk vibes. The enthusiastic post-’80s vibes of “Nite Run” feel like some sort of mashup between Caribou and Maribou State. (That rhyming is completely unintentional.) If you’re in a certain type of hip club, the earthy/airy groove of “Nowhere” is going to be a major success. The insistently cheery “Swimming” is for all the people who wanted more of the bright-eyed techno of A World Away. If Death Cab once wrote You Can Play These Songs With Chords, Teen Daze has written You Can Dance These Songs With Feet. 

Even if this album is intended to be more forward than high-concept, it’s not brash, theatrical EDM. (I, uh, do love that type of music too, though.) Opener “Last Time In This Place (feat. Joseph Shabason)” tricks the listener into thinking the album is going to be something else entirely: it’s an almost post-rock terrain composed of what sound like modular synth patterns and a saxophone solo exploring the landscape. The title track includes a long, subtle build: it takes three minutes for the title track to kick in the dance beat. Until then, the slow-mo arpeggiator fits into the crevices of an arrangement of fizzy static, jazzy mellotron-esque keys, and stuttering percussion. A warped/chopped vocal sample and a kick/hi-hat make the back half a full-on dance party, though. All of the aforementioned dance tracks are soft-edged with Teen Daze’s signature feathery synths. This is not generic dance music, it’s Teen Daze’s highly specific vision on dance music.

This tension between inward gaze and outward dance is explored on a large scale in the nine-minute “Translation.” The track begins with 2:20 of a looping, loping, cloudy synth pattern–almost mid-century minimalist in its repetition. Isaak slowly layers in more elements: a rubbery bass pattern, a four-on-the-floor kick, a delicately chiming guitar (?) riff, and more. There’s a moment of respite at 5:00, before things really get hopping: ’80s trumpet synths, chopped up talk-box vocals, and snare come barreling in to make this a full-on party-down. THEN a roaring sax solo appears, going on for over two minutes. The song does slowly fade out to a close, but overall the effect is of major club vibes.

Just in case you weren’t convinced of the goal of this record, the album closes with four club-friendly edits that cut out / refashion the slower, more intimate bits of four different tracks to enable immediate dance success. Even that can’t turn this into an Avicii album, but look: this is as close as we’re going to get to that from Teen Daze.

After so many albums of careful, thoughtful, big-statement work, it’s pretty cool to hear Isaak just let it rip for a while. Interior is a fun, exciting record of good vibes. This album isn’t trying to duplicate the career highlight Bioluminescence, but it’s also not ignoring that Isaak did make that record. It ultimately is a great way to close out the year. Happy New Year to everyone, from Teen Daze.

Cosmogony 3000 – Oppenheimer’s Elevators. Cosmogony 3000 combines the repetition of mid-century modernism, the gently reverbed approach of dream-pop, and the guitar-centric ideas of post-rock into a deeply creative, wonderfully idiosyncratic collection. The band usually builds out one main melodic idea and repeat it with variations, counterpoints, tonal shifts, and layers; this results in tunes that are fully-realized and mature in their outlook while still being exciting. “The Verb” and “Le ciel et la terre” are evocative, engaging pieces without ever going for the big move like much post-rock does. The band is confident in its work, and therefore can easily make understated pieces shine. Highly recommended.

Havana Swim Club – Havana Swim Club. This is a whole album of old-school tropicalia samples layered with beats, bass, and synths. It comes off with hazy, triumphant glory as a pitch-perfect chillwave album from when Teen Daze was new. “Peaches,” “For Blake” and “Wonder” are absolutely brilliant slices of relaxation pop. (The strings of “Wonder” set it apart as a true highlight.) “Yeah,” “1 2 3 4,” and “Jubilee” are funky neo-disco cuts (why not?). “Nature” blurs the line between homage and parody of space-age bachelor pad sounds. “Energy” blends all three of those ideas together for a truly unique experience. This is a fascinating, relaxing, immersive album.

We’re OK. But We’re Lost Anyway. – Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp. You’d be forgiven if you thought that the serious orchestral composition of opener “Be Patient” and the frantic, guitar-driven, shout-along post-punk of “So Many Things (To Feel Guilty About)” came from different outfits, but nope: the Orchestre is the sort of unit that just does whatever it wants. If you’re up for adventurous music that explodes all categories with pretty much every track, apply within. Highly recommended.

1. “Escalator” by FLDPLN. Pronounced “field-plan” (although I was hoping for flood-plain, I miss the rain), this solo artist’s latest electro-pop cut hearkens back to the early days of chillwave: blown-out lead vocals, ping-ponging spoken samples, big washes of synth, heavily reverbed percussion. The screamin’ saxophone solo is new, though! Highly recommended.

2. “Everest” – JuffBass. JuffBass is back with another downtempo tune of intertwining basslines, bass effects, and kit drums. “Everest” is anchored by a notably excellent drum performance, as lines lope and play over the tight rhythms. There are some late-era Red Hot Chili Peppers vibes throughout, which is always a big plus.

3. “Start Sumpthin Up” – J3PO. Instrumental hip-hop with funk-inspired basslines, dreamy keyboards/synths, and jazzy piano runs. What’s not to like?

4. “Orlo” – Timo Lassy. Kickin’ kit drum, flashy jazz saxophone lines, and disco-evoking strings meld together into a clever, punchy cut that leaves me wanting more.

5. “12.14” – Among Leaves. This tender piano rumination with birdsong sounds like that moment in RPG video games when you step out of the long cave into the inexplicably light-dappled, cavernous, open space. It’s beautiful, mysterious, and even reverent regarding the natural world.

6. “Love Exists Everywhere” – Blue Reality Quartet. This spacious jam manages to sound totally comfortable and ominous at the same time. While the drums hold down a steady pace, the saxophone is mournful and eerie. The flute drops in and out. The melodic percussion lends (paradoxically) an air of dreamy miasma and earth-bound connection. The whole piece is enigmatic and yet comforting.

7. “I Am Multiple” – Farewell. A pensive, thoughtful composition that plays like ending credits to a good movie. The vocals here do an excellent job infusing emotion into the piece without going over the top.

8. “Jeu Sur La Symphonie Fantastique 2” – Ballaké Sissoko feat. Vincent Segal and Patrick Messina. Fantastic symphony, indeed. This exquisite kora, flute, and cello performance imagines a Hector Berlioz piece in a celebratory style. It’s smile-inducing and remarkable. Highly recommended.

9. “Tranquilo” – Tim Kobza. Some smooth, guitar-led jazz that goes down easy but still has expansive, adventurous keys performances. The sort of thing that is delivered so precisely and perfectly that it sounds like it’s easy but in reality it is extremely not.

10. “Simple Beauty” – Leo Motta. A rainy-day rumination that has nostalgic low-fi drumming, vintage-sounding keys, and overall good vibes. This one polishes the standard elements of lo-fi instrumental hip-hop to an even finer gleam than usual.

1. “8:46 (Breathing Song)” – FROOS. This synthesizer-and-voice rumination is a protest song that calls out the amount of time that George Floyd was held with a knee over his throat before he died. The voice and breath that gently accent the washes of synthesizer point the song even further toward its protest goal. The delicate synths are disrupted throughout by grumbling, dissonant bursts of competing synth, evocative of the injustice in the situation breaking in.

2. “Let’s Leap” – Mesadorm. Here’s a different type of protest song: this is a call to action for people (including the singer) to get engaged in the work of making the world better. It’s framed in an enthusiastic, bouncy early-’00s indie-pop jam that will make old-school Of Montreal and Architecture in Helsinki fans do backflips. It’s not quite an anthem, but the quirky hook is solid and the arrangement is absolutely stellar.

3. “All American Singer” – Zephaniah OHora. Some things just fit together, like New York guitar-slinging troubadours with hauntingly familiar voices. Zephaniah OHora’s “All American Singer” is the first single of Listening To The Music, from Last Roundup Records August 28th. Recording in Brooklyn, the record also was the final project for producer Neal Casal prior to his tragic death. Rich yet restrained classic chord structures, slide guitar breaks, and perfectly mixed instrumentation suggest this could be a taste of brilliance to come on the upcoming twelve-song album. The iconic country sound brings to mind Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. Lyricically relevant, each word speaks to music’s role in calling out truth and chaos in society. Music is a place to connect us despite our differences. Closing my eyes, I hear Glen Campbell’s phrasing and smooth vocal tone, with Fred Neil’s “EveryBody’s Talkin” from Midnight Cowboy “ thrown in. Genius, folks. —Lisa Whealy

4. “Cambridge, MA” – Holy ’57. Holy ’57 will finally complete the H-O-L-Y sequence of EPs when “Y” drops later this summer. (As a completist, I am thrilled to hear it.) The lead track goes deep into the Brit-rock archives, fusing Blur’s guitars and hectic vocal approach to Manic Street Preachers’ politics and a very funky bassline. The parody of a hardcore breakdown at the end of the song is funny and also serves the point of the lyrics brilliantly. It’s a lot more rock than dance this time, and fans of the downstream Vampire Weekend vibes might miss the approach, but it’s a compelling new direction nonetheless.

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5. “Ode to Youth” – Liam Mour. It’s not chillwave anymore, I suppose, but this is certainly whatever we’re calling “major key, trebly, burbly, low-percussion electro jams with a lot of reverb.” It does have a lot more forward motion than the relaxed pace of chillwave. It grows to a giant, room-filling, spaced-out finale, too–evocative of Ulrich Schnauss, Tycho, and similar. Whatever it is, it’s excellently done, a lot of fun, and overall really appealing.

6. “ity bity” – Otis Sandsjö. This tenor sax, synth, bass, and drums combo creates music that draws equally on electronic music and jazz for its themes and moods; the track opens up in a low-key electro groove with occasional bits of sax before opening into a sax feature. Then it morphs into a lounge-y track with cooing vocals and lay-all-the-way-back vibes. Very cool.

7. “Part VI – Into Eternity” – Carlos Niño & Miguel Atwood-Ferguson. This composition is the very definition of delicate, as it wafts along elegantly and carefully, without so much as a brittle tone anywhere. The gentle percussion is perfectly done, the violin sounds gorgeous, and the soundscapes that fill out the composition are just excellent. It’s the best of modern composition, new age, and ambient rolled into one. Highly recommended.

8. “Palms Up” – Ezra Feinberg. Manages to be meditative and tropical at the same time, which is no easy feat. The synth, guitar, bass, and percussion arrangement is light and lithe without losing its groundedness; it feels real and weighty, despite also feeling warm and light. That’s an impressive arranging job.

9. “Leave It Loading” – Dan Drohan. I’m a big fan of foreground-grabbing bass riffs, especially if they have a punk/metal aesthetic of fury and/or heft. Drohan’s experimental work here has a lot of foreground-grabbing bass amid frantic drums and staccato keys. It’s like those bass/drums punk duos from the early 2000s (Death From Above 1979, represent!) but with (slightly) more expansive ambiance.

10. “Tightrope Tricks” – Redvers and Melissa. The duo branches out from twee-influenced acoustic-pop with new flourishes: autotune/vocoder, synthesizers, big ‘ol bass rumble, and percussion pushing the song along. There’s still an acoustic guitar in there, and the duo’s vocals are still sweet and lovely. But pretty much everything else is bigger and more technicolor. It’s a lot of fun!

11. “Eternal Turtle” – Joshua Van Tassel. A slow-moving ambient / classical piece featuring the rare but legendary ondes martenot. The lush yet dark textures make me think of a Christopher Nolan soundtrack (minus the bwaaaaa sound), as the piece has a dense, ominous, yet still inviting quality.

1. “Saw You Through the Trees” – Eerie Gaits. This combines folk, ambient, and indie-pop in a way that just thrills my soul. It shouldn’t be surprising to me that John Ross, who has fronted a synth-pop band, a punk rock band, and an ambient band, could somehow make a song that ties all of my interests together perfectly. Highly recommended.

2. “Leap of Faith” – Darius. This is instrumental post-hardcore; it falls somewhere between Russian Circles’ post-metal and GY!BE’s expansive post-rock. It’s got a ton of charge at the beginning, but the early aggression gives way to more atmospheric approaches as the song progresses (although the drummer gets increasingly ballistic as the song goes on–I’m fully here for it) until the big conclusion. This creates a nuanced, layered song that is aggressive but also delicate in its approach. (And, there’s even a mid-song breakdown!) It is impressive. Highly recommended.

3. “El Caracol” – Whale Fall. You’re telling me that this 18-minute piece was a mostly-improvised single take that’s part of a larger 38-minute piece? For real? This is an astonishing achievement. It’s great, sweeping, dense, textured music; the sort of piece that people who have been playing together for a long time can make by knowing not just what the other person is likely to do musically, but the sorts of music that is possible when working together. It’s post-rock, but beyond that describing it does it a disservice. Whale Fall do an amazing job here. Highly recommended.

4. “Farther Along (Instrumental Version)” – Josh Garrels. Garrels’ instrumental arrangements have always been underappreciated (and when you have a voice as smooth and mellifluous as Garrels’, that’s for good reason). Now they can be fully appreciated, as Garrels has released instrumental versions of five albums. He just literally took out all the vocals. The songs are still so good. My personal fave, “Farther Along,” is transformed from a vocal-centric pop song into a slow-burning folk jam anchored by organ drone. I’m gonna be spending a lot of time with these records.

5. “Displacement A” – JZ Replacement. Wow, this covers a lot of territory in 8:39. You’ve got some freakout jazz, some groove-heavy slow jazz, experimental flows, spacey stuff, and more. If you like experimental music and/or jazz, please inquire within.

6. “210” – Matt Karmil. This house track splits the difference between tough-as-nails, four-on-the-floor techno and atmospheric chillwave with admirable aplomb. This is moody and atmospheric without losing any of the drive or groove of club bangers. An excellent track.

7. “Testament” – Luo. I’ve never been much for prog, but up until recently I’d never been much for jazz either, so maybe we’re just turning over all those rocks. To be fair, this is a lot more than prog, as it’s got electronic bits, space-rock bits, jazz-inflected percussion drive, and lots more. A very, very cool piece.

8. “The Pheasant” – Realizer and A.B. Chediski. Acoustic guitar collaborations can be a nuanced journey, dancing through imagination. Following their debut EP Rose Door, Matt C. White (through his moniker Realizer) and Charles Ellsworth (introducing his instrumental alias  A. B. Chediski) capture resplendent beauty for listeners when their two guitars meet in composition. Diverse starting points from the two artists create an intricate conversation of folk-rock in “The Pheasant,” rising and falling like undulating explorations into another time and place. Subtle and restrained, each moment of every note has room to breathe. Stunning!  Check out all of the socials for these two artists and their various projects. –Lisa Whealy

9. “Little Bit Sweet” – The Wood Brothers. The Wood Brothers’ recent album Kingdom in My Mind feels like a retro throwback that wanders through their sonic imagination. Stylistically enchanting animation artwork from Texas-based Gary Dorsey glimmers with brilliance in this video for “Little Bit Sweet.” A dreamscape storyboard of cutout art, whose style mirrors Belgian surrealist René Magritte, is vividly alive. It’s also reminiscent of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, with expressive muted colors bringing to mind simple times. Aligned with the lyrical contradictions, a longing for simpler times is realized visually with Chris Wood’s vocals as the perfect soundtrack. Fingerpicking is not the star here, just the ideal accompaniment to imagination’s wandering.  Mirroring the essence of the album and its title track, this video creates an animation playground that is never fixed in reality, allowing an ever-changing relationship to evolve with each person’s interpretation. As a thread connecting us all, “Little Bit Sweet” has a video that is truly a work of art. —Lisa Whealy

10. “Special Berry” – Standards. This math-rock tune takes all of the sophisticated guitar patterning and complex percussion syncopation of traditional math-rock and infuses a pop-inspired sense of joie de vivre. The melodies are beautiful and technical and magical. It’s just a joy to listen to.

11. “New Rock Thingy” – Joshua Crumbly. There’s a whole burgeoning school of artists with jazz backgrounds who seem to have developed into a space where they’ve completely obliterated normal genres: Kamasi Washington, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Mark Guiliana, loads more. Add Joshua Crumbly to that list. This starts off as a bass guitar reverie, transforms into a space-funk jam, goes ambient, and then dissolves in enthusiastic rock-drumming theatrics with a frantic saxophone run over the top. In 2:28. It’s a head-spinner in the best of ways.

1. “Rollercoaster Pts. 1 & 2” – Chassol. Starts off as a fidgety, Pogo-esque ambient track and then morphs into a hectic instrumental ELO track that just gets more and more enthusiastic as it goes. I am very here for both things. Highly recommended.

2. “Activate” – Theon Cross. If I had to write my music memoir right now, it would be called Free Jazz is Just Hardcore Music for Saxophone Players, or, How I Went from The Number 12 Looks Like You to Tuba Soloists. This isn’t actually free jazz in the truest sense; it’s more like a tuba-led version of the jazz/dance stuff that Moon Hooch or Too Many Zooz make. Cross is a boss tuba player, and he really gets after it in this piece. His drummer is also legit. This is just rad all around. 

3. “Eluvium – Dusk Tempi” – Field Works. First, take bat echolocations. Then take low-key Devotchka instrumental work. Add in glitchy bits. Top with orchestra. Enjoy in a large open field looking out at the night sky and imagining the infinite.

4. “Amelia” – Message to Bears & Will Samson. Acoustic guitars, harmonium, chill arpeggiator, and low-key beats result in beautiful work somewhere between ambient, slow-core, and chillwave. Fans of The Album Leaf will be absolutely thrilled.

5. “The Return” – Deep Energy Orchestra. DEO throws jazz, funk, Indian music, and more into a blender; the results are satisfying. If you’re into bass guitar, it’s especially satisfying.

6. “Dee Dee” – Leah Kardos. This is electronic composition that is elegant, confident, and bold. It moves with grace and power. The melodies are unfolded carefully, while the beats that accompany them are punchy and present. It’s smooth yet strong. A very cool piece for driving.

7. “PB” – Mark Karmil. Driving and punchy techno that doesn’t sacrifice mood or go for the big synth. Instead, there’s some dense layering, patience, and vibes on vibes on vibes.

8. “Melodies” – Cubicolor. An upbeat, perky, bouncy electro track with a steady beat, lovely weird arpeggiator stuff, and just enough movement/variation to keep the head bobbing and the ears interested. A very good track.

9. “What’s Eating You” – Eerie Gaits. John Ross has been prolific over the last few years as the synth-pop outfit Challenger, the punk-indie band Wild Pink, and the ambient project Eerie Gaits. This latest EG track splits the difference between indie-rock and ambient and falls a little near Challenger, creating a loping sort of pseudo-pop that doesn’t ever produce vocals but does produce lots of good feelings. It’s ambient for people who can’t stand drone.

1. “Monolith 1” – The Kompressor Experiment. Here’s 15 minutes and 43 seconds of gloriously thunderous post-rock/post-metal that draws its inspiration from Kubrick’s 2001. Need I say more?

2. “Ocean in a Drop” – GoGo Penguin. This churning, dense piece resists classification. Is it a post-rock piece being played by a jazz trio? Is it experimental jazz? Is it something entirely different? Whatever it is, it is wildly engrossing and deeply interesting. The bass gets a lot to do, which I very much enjoy.

3. “White” – Liam Pitcher. This is the first track of the first album of an eleven-album synchronous release. Ambition much? The solo piano work is delicate and lovely; it’s very sweet but with notes of dissonance throughout. It is evocative of the Japanese video game soundtracks (FFVIII in particular) that Pitcher grew up on. (Full Disclosure: IC writer Lisa Whealy is doing the PR for this.)

4. “Blackberry Wine” – Jon Bennett. If you think that they don’t make folk singers like they used to, then you’ll love the early ’60s finger-pickin’ folk of Jon Bennett. It’s evocative of a singer whose name rhymes with Rob Millen. 

5. “His Name Was the Color That I Loved” – the Good Graces. A sentimental, touching ode to a male family figure (grandfather? father?) in the tried-and-true alt-country vein: train-track drums, crunchy lead guitar, and acoustic guitar. The Good Graces are always a safe bet, and this one pays off in spades.

6. “Rush to Spark” – Foxes in Fiction. The former chillwaver has settled neatly into a dream-pop vein, taking some (some) of the big synth washes away in lieu of more intricate, delicate arrangements here. The feathery vocals are a great touch over the keys and gently insistent percussion beat.

7. “Bruises on Your Shoulders” – Thirsty Curses. A piano-driven folk-pop jam that’s a cross between the Lumineers’s pop chops and The (old-school) Avett Brothers’ vocal enthusiasms. The tune is about suddenly realizing you’ve become an adult out of nowhere, which I certainly have experienced more than once.

8. “Holding On” – Tracy Shedd. Shedd is moving in the opposite direction from Foxes in Fiction, going from an introspective singer-songwriter space into a dancy, electro-pop-inspired vein. It’s not quite the big dance-pop of her other project The Band and the Beat, but it’s got stacked big synths and a lot of forward motion accompanying Shedd’s intimate vocals and lyrics. It’s a head-bobber.

9. “At Night They Race Through the Stars” – Clara Engel. If you’re down for some vocal-centric slowcore acoustic work, Clara Engel has you covered. The slow-paced, slow-motion-fingerpicking tune has atmosphere to spare from solid supporting cello work.

10. “Johnny Went Off to War” – The Long Farewells. Here’s a historically-inspired (although it could be about any war at any time, the mark of a true folk song) folk song with a tragic ending. The arrangement is spartan but effective, and the female vocals are strong.

11. “Something in the Background” – Samuel. Funky, soulful, downtempo instrumental work with a sax as the lead voice. I’m sure someone somewhere is claiming this as some variant of jazz, too. Whatever you call it, it’s chill and would work great in the chill-out section of your next party playlist.

12. “O World! I Remain No Longer Here” – Glacier.  I’m far from the first person to note this, but the fact that crushing post-rock band Glacier named their latest release No Light Ever is basically all you need to know about this release. There’s so much heavy guitar distortion here on this track that you’d be forgiven for thinking Glacier is a metal or doom band. This stuff is sludged-out to the max–until it goes almost silent. This is quiet/loud/quiet taken to its utter extreme. Oh, and it’s 14 minutes long.

Chelidon Frame‘s NowHere Nowhere NoWhere is one of the most interesting albums I’ve ever heard. It’s a brilliant instrumental piece of art that sonically depicts (not evokes, or suggests, but straight-up maps out) various landscapes, people, events, and stories. It’s no good as working music or ambient music because it demands to be listened to. It is a fully conceived piece of art in the way that films are fully conceived pieces of art. It’s hard for me to explain it, and I don’t really want to explain it, because trying to describe it would not do it justice. This album is a totally unique experience to everything I’ve ever heard before, and it’s massively impressive. Do yourself a sonic favor and check it out.

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Olof Cornéer‘s Waves, Breaths & Dead Cities is a fascinating and difficult-to-explain work. Part of this is that I’m new at contemporary classical reviewing, but another part is that this is that I’ve rarely ever heard anything like this. The three parts of Waves, Breaths & Dead Cities are (de-)constructed so as to have only one note of one instrument of the wind quintet enter at a time, rarely relying on layering so much as leaning on the impact of each note entering.

It’s not experimental tonally (there are melodies! the scale seems like a regular scale!), but it’s highly experimental structurally. The structure, insofar as it exists, is highly obscured: on first listen this sounds like a large collection of notes one after another. With no through-played accompaniment or background elements, this can feel somewhat like points of light hitting a screen. But with repeated listens the whole of it comes together and starts to build a mood. It’s hopeful, of sorts–not gleeful or even happy (per se), but there’s a persistent underlying uplift that carries through.

The second set of three tracks are the “Night Gestalt” reworks that build in a little more of the backdrop of the notes with some electronic hum/hush/roar. It’s a nice companion piece to the stark versions that proceed it. This collection is fascinating and unlike any I’ve ever heard before; it’s worth a try if you’re into experimental, evocative work. The record drops July 4th.

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Monomotion‘s Fujisan is a cross between the dignified chillwave of Teen Daze and the maximalist post-dub of Odesza. The 7-song record is essentially one 24-minute song split into parts; the pace shifts, the ideas change, but the overall mood remains the same throughout. Because Monomotion spends so much time carefully developing the mood, it’s a pleasant experience instead of a monotonous one.

Opener “North Cascades” introduces the friendly, relaxed mood through piano, airy synths and staccato beats; “Mango (with FEYNMAN)” cranks up the secluded-glen vibes in the synths and throws a four-on-the-floor bass thump into the mix for a more club-ready downtempo track. “Seed” is the chillout moment, largely eschewing percussion and bass for a 158-second ambient float. There’s some minimal rhythmic work thrown in, but this is a lovely ambient track at its core.

Lead single “Ecocline Patterns” is the core of the record, the place where high drama and chill tendencies come together in a unique way. Monomotion has minimalist tendencies and maximalist urges; despite these contrasting concerns (or maybe because of them), the song and the record feel perfectly balanced between both–the maximalist highs are satisfying, while the minimalist lows aren’t just throwaway moments to provide a lead-up to the payoff. Monomotion has attended to both with equal care, and this provides a satisfying experience in Fujisan. Highly recommended for fans of Teen Daze, Com Truise, and Odesza. Fujisan comes out 7/26, but you can pre-order it now.