"Save Me" 097 ALTER.NATION.MiX weekly favtraX 08-08-2020 (56')

ALTER.NATION #97

Kamaal Williams, Crack Cloud, Alex Izenberg, Flower, Land of Talk, Alain Johannes, Taylor Swift feat. Bon Iver, The Psychedelic Furs, Winter, Ellen Allien, Nicolas Bougaïeff, Romare

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"Save Me"

ALTER.NATION #97 on deezer

London-born keyboardist, DJ, and producer with a funky sound informed by '70s jazz fusion, acid jazz, and modern electronic traditions.
Kamaal Williams - Wu Hen / Save Me
...Wu Hen, Williams' proper second album is titled for the nickname provided by his Taiwanese grandmother. This ten-track set integrates the keyboardist's experiments in jazz, hip-hop, R&B, and electronic dance music under the banner of "Wu Funk." His accompanists on the date include strings and charts from Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, saxophones from Quinn Mason, Katalyst Collective's Greg Paul on drums, and bassist Rick Leon James. Alina Bzhezhinska's harp is employed in a guest capacity.

Vancouver-based multimedia collective Crack Cloud utilize the combined talents of various artists, filmmakers, musicians, and designers to deliver striking visuals and a core band that straddles art-rock and post-punk.
Crack Cloud - Pain Olympics / Tunnel Vision
If the aim of Pain Olympics was to leave the listener wanting more, then it's gold medals all around. Although the 29-minute runtime is bursting with brilliance, the breakneck speed of the record approaches escape velocity only to abruptly hit the brakes. It can be a little disorienting at times, as the tracks pinball from one another with minimal space to catch their breath, even managing to forge a newer cosmic side to their sound in the process. It feels like a truer opening statement from the band, as their debut was really just two EPs melded together, and fully demonstrates their capabilities, especially their updated version of "Bastard Basket," which eschews the scratchy nature of its initial iteration for a weightier sound. Despite its erratic nature, Pain Olympics does manage to find cohesion in chaos; the band may have Zach Choy's vocals and propulsive percussion front and center, but the cast of larger than life members -- including the irresistible magnetism of Mohammed Ali Sharar -- that surround him conjure something far greater, an odd unity of sound and visuals that would otherwise fall apart if too many egos were at play; no-one else in 2020 exemplifies art-punk as much as Crack Cloud...

The intimate chamber pop of singer/songwriter Alex Izenberg is colored by vintage Baroque and psychedelic pop as well as a flair for the romantic
Alex Izenberg - Caravan Château / Requiem
Arriving four years after his full-length debut, Caravan Château delves deeper into the trippy, intimate chamber pop that singer/songwriter Alex Izenberg established on Harlequin. Recorded at various locations over a span of three years, its off-mike collaborators include indie artists like Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor, Foxygen's Jonathan Rado, and Midnight Sister's Ari Balouzian. The album hits like the work of a solitary creator, however, its suffocating songs often warped by trippy arrangements, unpredictable turns, and out-of-tune components (including persistent double-tracking) all sound like the product of a singular, eccentric perspective...

A post-punk band from New York City, Flower would become better known after they broke up than they were during their 1986-1990 lifespan. The group's music was strong, guitar-based indie rock with a noisy attack balanced against melodic structures that showed a firm grasp of pop hooks. Flower's two original albums -- appearing in full on the 1994 collection Concrete Sky -- were well reviewed but went largely unnoticed until several former members went on to form the considerably more successful band Versus, leading fans to look back to the group's precursor. After reuniting in 2018, Flower returned with a third album, 2020's None Is (But Once Was).
Flower - None Is (But Once Was) / Blood

The project of Elizabeth Powell, Land of Talk is defined by their intense guitar playing and keening, vibrato-heavy vocals.
Land of Talk - Indistinct Conversations / Weight of That Weekend

A prolific guitarist, producer, songwriter, and engineer whose work encompasses hard rock, grunge pop, atmospheric folk, and soundtracks.
Alain Johannes - Hum / If Mornins Comes

Pop and country phenom whose relationship-heavy songwriting and knack for a hook made her a superstar.
Taylor Swift feat. Bon Iver - folklore / exile 

New Wave icons whose regal sound grew out of Bowie-style art rock and gloomy post-punk to become unmistakably their own.
The Psychedelic Furs - Made of Rain / Turn Your Back on Me
After spending nearly two decades as a reliable concert draw playing the old hits to crowds happy to hear them, the Psychedelic Furs decided as the 2010s came to a close that the time was right to record some new music. After two quick sessions spent recording a few older, but mostly newly written, songs, the band's eighth album, Made of Rain, was ready to share with the outside world. It's a largely melancholy record that doesn't harken back to their nervy post-punk days, or their shimmering synth pop days, or even their dance-rock heyday. Instead, they go for a spit-shined modern sound that is sure to sound good in large halls and small arenas. The powerful rhythm section, subtle keyboard flourishes, and layers of guitars provide a suitably dramatic backdrop for Richard Butler's impressionistic lyrics and impressively unchanged vocals...

Los Angeles-based band Winter play a brand of dreamlike guitar pop that's lodged between the soft, caressing tones of dream pop and the effects-laden aural overload of shoegaze.
Winter - Endless Space (Between You & I) / Say
It's nothing new for a band to straddle the line between the soft, enveloping textures of dream pop and the noisier, pedal-abusing sounds of shoegaze, plenty of artists and bands have given it a try. Some of them do a pretty decent job blending the Cocteau Twins with My Bloody Valentine; some of them can't quite get the balance right. Over the course of a few albums, Winter showed that they were on the right track. Guided by the vision and voice of Samira Winter, they took a light and bouncy approach that felt like the brightest, happiest work of those two bands mashed together. On Endless Space (Between You & I), Samira Winter ditched her previous crew of collaborators and called in Ian Gibbs to help bring her vision to life. Gibbs plays a key role in crafting the intricate and moodily pretty music made by the band Vinyl Williams and it's perhaps no coincidence that Endless Space (Between You & I) marks a definitive change in the band's sound...

Highly respected, prolific experimental techno artist from Berlin who runs the label BPitch Control.
Ellen Allien - Auraa / I Can't See You
Ellen Allien's third album in as many years continues the interstellar motif of 2019's excellent Alientronic, delivering another focused set of club tracks that explore sci-fi themes. Allien's occasional vocals are processed, making her sound like an extraterrestrial, and the tracks give the impression that she's encountering Earth for the first time and learning to adapt to human culture through its music. "Hello Planet Earth (Breath Mix)" introduces the album with trance arpeggios and a half-tempo rhythm that booms outward from the center, creating a sensation of suspended motion...

Berlin-based French-Canadian producer and DJ Nicolas Bougaïeff combines a lifelong love of dance music with a background in electro-acoustic and contemporary classical music, creating intricately designed, sci-fi-influenced techno.
Nicolas Bougaïeff - The Upward Spiral / Listen Carefully To The Heart Beat
Nicolas Bougaïeff's first full-length for Mute is a startling set of complex audio constructions that challenge the conventional framework of techno. Instead of structuring standard 4/4 beat patterns and predictable builds and drops, he goes off the grid and assembles rhythms and sequences that seem to run counter to each other, drastically shifting perspectives when one element cuts out and another takes over. For an artist often known for such pristine, high-end sound design, from producing an intricately crafted EP with Max Cooper as well as developing audio performance gear with Richie Hawtin, the album sounds surprisingly rough, caked in grungy distortion and occasionally steeped in a high-pitched steam-kettle hiss that sounds like a hand-manipulated device rather than a plug-in. The record finds common ground with the lo-fi noise-techno of Container and the more purist Berghain sound...

Alias of Archie Fairhurst, U.K.-based producer who creates collage-like tracks indebted to jazz, disco, and house, among other black music forms.
Romare - Home / Gone
Romare's third album was created after the producer moved from London out to the English countryside, where he started a family and built a home studio. Shifting away from the late-night odes to yearning and romantic desire of 2016's Love Songs: Part Two, Home is focused more on identity, belonging, and finding one's self. While key samples of blues, soul, and gospel vocals still make significant appearances, there's much more of Romare's own playing than on his past releases. Additionally, his tracks sound less wobbly and choppy than they used to, and they seem to progress a bit more. It relies much less on rare-groove crackly vinyl effects and sounds more like an expression of Romare's own personality...

Kamaal Williams, Crack Cloud, Alex Izenberg, Flower, Land of Talk, Alain Johannes, Taylor Swift feat. Bon Iver, The Psychedelic Furs, Winter, Ellen Allien, Nicolas Bougaïeff, Romare

063 ALTER.NATION weekly favtraX 10-11-2019

ALTER.NATION #63

Woolworm, Jehnny Beth, The Homesick, FKA Twigs, Jessie Ware, SebastiAn feat. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kate Davis, Josienne Clarke, Beck, Charles Rumback / Ryley Walker, Matt Valentine, Kamaal Williams

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"I’m The Man"

ALTER.NATION #63 on DEEZER

Leaders of their own self-created genre "Blanket Rock," Woolworm are a band from Vancouver, British Columbia whose music is a fusion of hardcore, indie rock, shoegaze, and ambitious pop. Led by singer and guitarist Giles Roy,
Woolworm - Soon from AWE
Vancouver's Woolworm don't hesitate to speak proudly of their roots in the Canadian hardcore scene, though an examination of their body of work reveals an uncommon virtue among modern hardcore bands: a willingness to evolve and explore. Their third full-length album, 2019's Awe, certainly boasts the intensity and conviction of hardcore, but they've learned how to incorporate pop melodies into their sound, add atmospheric touches drawn from indie rock, and make their guitars tower like shoegaze or jangle like vintage alt-rock.

Best known as the compelling vocalist for Savages, Jehnny Beth is the performing name of French musician Camille Berthomier.
Jehnny Beth - I’m The Man
Savages leader Jehnny Beth has a new song out today, “I’m The Man,” which appears on the soundtrack for the British television show Peaky Blinders... Here’s what Beth had to say about the track in a statement: "I’m The Man’ is an attempted study on humankind, what we define as evil and the inner conflict of morality. Because it is much easier to label the people who are clearly tormented by obsessions as monsters than to discern the universal human background which is visible behind them. However, this song has not even a remote connection with a sociological study, collective psychology, or present politics; It is a poetic work first and foremost. Its aim is to make you feel, not think."

Dutch pop trio signed by Sub Pop Records
The Homesick - I Celebrate My Fantasy
Dutch trio the Homesick have signed to Sub Pop for the release of their upcoming sophomore album The Big Exercise, named after a passage from the Scott Walker biography Deep Shade Of Blue. And today, they’re sharing first single “I Celebrate My Fantasy,” which imbues their brand of post-punk with a prog-pop whimsicality in the form of clarinet and piano flourishes.

FKA twigs is the project of English singer/songwriter/producer/choreographer Twigs, aka Tahliah Barnett. Evoking trip-hop as well as the xx's spare electronic pop, FKA twigs' songs are haunting and vulnerable.
FKA twigs - Thousand Eyes from MAGDALENE
On her early EPs and LP1, FKA twigs' Tahliah Barnett expressed the intersections of love, pain, fragility and strength with remarkable eloquence. While making Magdalene, she embodied them. Not only did she endure the end of a long-term relationship, she had surgery to remove six large uterine fibroids (colorfully described by her as a "fruit bowl of pain"). These events became the heart of her second album, which uses the duality of Mary Magdalene as a lens for its wounded yet resilient feminine energy...  The beautifully nightmarish "Thousand Eyes" is steeped in anxiety that churns in its spiralling pianos and when Barnett sings "It's gonna be cold out there with all those eyes" in an anguished soprano that could cut glass...

South London native with a powerful soul-steeped voice who has collaborated with SBTRKT, Joker, and Disclosure.
Jessie Ware - Mirage (Don’t Stop)
Jessie Ware knows how to make you move. She’s been doing it for years. “Don’t stop moving together,” she intones on her latest single. “Keep on dancing.” “Mirage (Don’t Stop)” is grounded by a sticky bass line that’s impossible not to move along to, fulfilling Ware’s command to do just that. Ware understands the dance floor’s capacity for self-preservation and reinvention, and she builds songs that facilitate moments of sweaty transcendence.
“Last night we danced and I thought you were saving my life,” she sings. The British singer took a bit of a detour into smoldering, loungey music over the last few years, but her most recent singles have her back in the club where she belongs, and we couldn’t be luckier. “Mirage (Don’t Stop)” isn’t flashy or showy, and it doesn’t have to be — it’s an undeniable groove. Ware knows what she wants and she knows how to get it: constant motion, ecstasy among the strobing lights.

French electronic artist noted for his remixes as well as his glitchy, electro-house original material.
SebastiAn feat. Charlotte Gainsbourg - Pleasant from Thirst
The cover art for SebastiAn’s first solo album, Total, is a photo taken by Jean-Baptiste Mondino. It shows the French producer – best-known for his association with revered house label Ed Banger, and for his work on Frank Ocean’s Blonde – kissing himself. On Thirst, a follow-up that has taken eight years to materialise, he straddles his doppelganger and raises his fist, as though about to punch himself in the face... Charlotte Gainsbourg, whose superb 2017 album Rest was produced by SebastiAn, channels another of her regular collaborators – director Lars Von Trier – on the haunting “Pleasant”, which in turn recalls the Nineties trip-hop of Bristol artist Tricky...

Musical polymath who released jazz albums as a teen and wrote "Seventeen" with Sharon Van Etten before emerging with indie rock of her own.
Kate Davis - Dirty Teenager from Trophy
The third solo album by Portland native Kate Davis but her indie rock and singer/songwriter debut, Trophy was several years the making. A one-time jazz prodigy, the vocalist/bassist recorded a pair of cover albums as a teen between performances with youth orchestras, as a guest of the likes of Herbie Hancock and Ben Folds, and as a Presidential Scholar of the Arts at Kennedy Center... Recalling contemporary debuts by names like Anna Burch and Madison Cunningham in terms of its polished sophistication, consistency, and fault-finding lyrics, Trophy introduces a songwriter fully formed.

British folk singer/songwriter Josienne Clarke uses understated guitar arrangements to convey a sense of longing, managing to pursue melancholy atmosphere whether backed by a chamber orchestra -- as seen in her time working alongside Ben Walker -- or as a solo artist.
Josienne Clarke - Dark Cloud from In All Weather
UK singer/songwriter Josienne Clarke worked for years as half of a folksy duo with Ben Walker before completing In All Weather, her first set of hushed, sparely arranged solo songs. Clarke's bright vocal style was at the center of her songs with Walker, as they are with her solo debut, but here they’re allowed to rise even higher in the mixes, ornamented only slightly with light accompaniment. Clarke's songwriting is gentle and bittersweet...

One of the most inventive, eclectic figures of the alternative era, the epitome of post-modern chic in an era obsessed with junk culture.
Beck - Dark Places
20 years ago, the combination of Beck and Pharrell Williams would’ve seemed like the coolest thing that could ever possibly happen. Today, it’s still pretty cool... Beck co-wrote “Dark Places” with Pharrell. It’s a slow, ambling song, built from both an acoustic-guitar strum and a rich, hazy synth sound. Beck, singing as high as his voice will let him go, reflects on a breakup: “Time moves on, and on and love, it goes / Now she’s gone, and all I see are shadows.” It’s closer to Sea Change than it is to Midnite Vultures, which is not something I would’ve ever expected to say about a Beck/Pharrell collab.

Chicago's Charles Rumback is a forward-thinking drummer with a bent toward avant-garde jazz and experimental music. In addition to playing in various jazz configurations, he collaborated with virtuosic folk guitarist Ryley Walker...
Ryley Walker is an accomplished fingerstyle guitarist, singer, and songwriter from Chicago whose music and evolution as an artist have proven mercurial. He moved from noisy avant-garde work in his nascent stages into virtuosic guitar playing and floating spiritual pop that traced lines between Bert Jansch, Van Morrison, and somehow even the Dave Matthews Band...
Charles Rumback / Ryley Walker - Idiot Parade from Little Common Twist
Drummer Charles Rumback and guitarist Ryley Walker came together as a duo in 2016 to create the outstretching improv sprawl of their five-song album Cannots. Sometimes abstract and harsh, other times introspective and subdued, Cannots pitted Walker's virtuosic folk-informed guitar playing against Rumback's flowing jazz percussion.. While the results weren't always seamless or pretty, the players locked into a riled-up unison. Recorded over various sessions between 2017 and 2018, Little Common Twist represents a follow-up to the wild noise and rolling exploration of Cannots...  "Idiot Parade" is more groove-oriented, finding the duo joined by bassist Nick Macri for swells of feedback and drone that ride Rumback's fluid, reverb-effected drumming. Elsewhere they dabble in ambient tones and spirited odd-timed rhythms...

Psychedelic folk singer/guitarist who prolifically released solo work as well as co-founding MV & EE... As the years burned on, Valentine focused on a deep-fried miasma of sounds and styles with solo albums like 2019's Preserves.
Matt Valentine - Light Speed from Preserves
Matt Valentine is no stranger to psychedelic sounds... Assembled from eight years of back-filed recordings, Preserves goes off the deep end into a pool of demented funk, wild-eyed guitar freak-outs, and layered, druggy walls of confusion and bliss. "Light Speed" opens the album with its closest thing to a pop song. Funky bass, buried vocals, and scratchy, zigzagging wah-wah guitar lines all rise and fall in the mix, sometimes making space for what sounds like a violin or random electronics. It's the sonic equivalent of a bad trip in a '70s blaxploitation movie...

London-born keyboardist, DJ, and producer with a funky sound informed by '70s jazz fusion, acid jazz, and modern electronic traditions.
Kamaal Williams - Snitches Brew (Live in Atlanta) (Mixed) from DJ-Kicks
...As a listening experience, the mix is filled with abrupt switches, change-ups, dissolves, and vibe-out moments, seemingly approximating a night spent trying to visit every club in South London for a few minutes each. It also highlights the artist's skill as both a musician and cratedigger, dropping in several of his own creations (as both Williams and Wu) among dozens of records dating back to the early 1980s. Early on, he includes a live recording of his track "Snitches Brew," released as the B-side of a 2018 single, which flips from a meditative groove to an up-tempo breakbeat wig-out filled with loads of fiery soloing...

Woolworm, Jehnny Beth, The Homesick, FKA Twigs, Jessie Ware, SebastiAn feat. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kate Davis, Josienne Clarke, Beck, Charles Rumback / Ryley Walker, Matt Valentine, Kamaal Williams

018 ALTER.NATiON: weekly favtraX 27-01-2019

ALTER.NATiON

Marina Tadic / Eerie Wanda

Eerie Wanda, TOY, Royal Canoe, Mike Krol, FIDLAR, Rival Sons, William Tyler, Kamaal Williams, Julia Kent, Mono, Swallow the Sun, The Writhing Squares

weekly favtraX

27-01-2019

Eerie Wanda - Sleepy Eyes from Pet Town
Eerie Wanda is the brainchild of audio and visual artist Marina Tadic. Born to Croatian parents in the former Yugoslavia, Marina became a political refugee when she was just 6 years old. Forced to leave their home due to the Bosnian war, Marina’s parents sought asylum in the Netherlands- which is where Marina grew into an adult, became an accomplished artist, and where she still resides.

Her second LP, Pet Town is an exercise in isolated creativity. Using minimal recording techniques, Tadic shapes these ten songs from sheer intuition, while drawing inspiration from solitude. Although her two bandmates Jasper Verhulst and Jeroen de Heuvel are each relatively close geographically (residing in Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Nijmegen), the band decided to record each of their parts alone, in their own homes. And weave the songs together remotely, like pen-pals making a quilt. "I've written the songs in a period of my life in which I was feeling quite alone. I wanted the recording process to feel like that too", says Marina.

TOY - Energy from Happy in the Hollow
Happy In The Hollow is entirely uncompromising: an atmospheric capturing of a state of mind that touches on Post Punk, electronic dissonance, acid folk and Krautrock. Familiar qualities like metronomic rhythms, warping guitars, undulating synths and Tom’s gentle, reedy vocals are all in there, but so is a greater emphasis on melody, a wider scope, and a combining of the reassuring and the sinister that is as unnerving as it is captivating.'
The sound has without doubt expanded — and grown more confident — in part because this is the first album for which Toy has become a self-sufficient five-person unit doing everything for themselves.

Royal Canoe - Black Sea from Waver
Waver, the fourth proper LP from Canadian art-pop sextet Royal Canoe, finds the band trying to whittle away a few layers from their quirky, genre-inclusive approach. Largely self-produced with some help from engineer John Paul Peters, the ten-song set follows the Winnipeg band's breakout sophomore album, 2013's Juno-nominated Today We're Believers, and its overly busy follow-up, Something Got Lost Between Here and the Orbit, which came out in 2016 and was helmed by Animal Collective producer Ben Allen. Royal Canoe's ambitious mashup of pop, hip-hop, soul, and math-inclined rock rides the fine line between wishing to entertain and challenge listeners, veering frequently to one side or the other and occasionally failing to achieve either task.

Mike Krol - Arrow In My Heart from Power Chords
Most of the garage-punk acts that have emerged in the wake of Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees in the 2010s have been bands with no small amount of studied cool lurking behind their sweaty energy. Mike Krol is a vital exception to this rule; Krol is far too concerned with pumping out his fuzzy, no-frills, hook-infused rock and laying his heart out for all to see to have much truck with being cool. And that's a large part of what makes his music work so well. Krol clearly has a sense of humor and isn't trying to reinvent the wheel, but it's clear that rock & roll means a lot to him.

FIDLAR - Alcohol from Almost Free
Taking the acronym that forms their name ("F*ck it dog, life's a risk") as a literal credo, L.A. garage punks FIDLAR try their best to evolve past the dumb but somewhat endearing slackery of their early days with Almost Free, their difficult third full-length. For a band whose primary themes involved getting baked, getting wasted, skating, and partying, the growing pains that come with trying to be taken more seriously are going to be tough. Their spotty sophomore release, 2016's Too, wrestled with frontman Zac Carper's newfound sobriety in the face of the group's chosen lifestyle and typical subject matter; on Almost Free, they further complicate things by introducing some politics and social commentary into the mix. To their credit, FIDLAR have made legitimate attempts to get out of their creative comfort zone and go somewhere new.

Rival Sons - Feral Roots from Feral Roots
Fuzzed-out classic rock revivalists from Los Angeles whose sound evokes the bluesy sound of legendary bands like Led Zeppelin.  Evoking the bluesy rock of bands like Led Zeppelin and the Black Crowes, California's Rival Sons emerged in 2012 as hard rock classicists with a modern edge thanks to their breakout second album Pressure & Time. Establishing a strong collaborative bond with Nashville producer Dave Cobb to helm each of their albums... Since debuting in 2009 with the self-released Before the Fire, Long Beach, California's Rival Sons have been on a tear, delivering a refreshingly unfussy blast of blues-blasted hard rock on an almost yearly basis...

William Tyler - Our Lady of the Desert from Goes West
William Tyler’s new record, Goes West, is the best music that he’s ever made. I’m sure of this because I know and love all of his music intimately, and this album moves me the most, and the most consistently. The first time I heard it was in the late spring in the Texas Hill Country, rolling between limestone and scrub. I was on a cleanse then—no alcohol, no drugs, no evil thoughts—and was astonished at the emotional clarity that the album held. It offered up a model for what I wanted my head to feel like. Goes West marks a sort of narrowing of focus for William’s music; it sounds as though he found a way to point himself directly towards the rich and bittersweet emotional center of his music without being distracted by side trips...

Kamaal Williams - Snitches Brew 2019
Kamaal Williams (aka Henry Wu) follows his universally acclaimed 2018 full-length The Return with this two-track 12" single that, because of its compositional and improvisational acumen, plays more like an EP despite its relatively brief playing time... The flipside, "Snitches Brew," with its left-field nod to Miles Davis in the title, is a trio affair produced by Wu and recorded and mixed by Syed Adam Jaffrey. It hosts the producer on synth bass, Mansur Brown on electric guitar, and the wonderful Dexter Hercules on drum kit. It's introduced by a jagged synth bass bubbling in an angular, insistent riff with double-timed snare, kick drum, and cymbals by Hercules, who is clearly seeking the tune's bleeding edge. When Brown enters with his wah-wah pedal, things get wonky. While it doesn't sound much like Davis, it does recall the more cosmic funk traverses of early Weather Report à la Sweetnighter and Mysterious Traveler. Halfway through, the tempo increases and Wu's bassline is merely the anchor as Brown uses his instruments as exploratory tools and Hercules breaks the beat, adding weight and balance to the atmospheric textures..

Julia Kent - Floatingg City from Temporal
Cellist/composer Julia Kent's fifth solo album primarily consists of pieces written for dance and theatre productions. As with her previous releases, she uses looping devices and electronics to frame her intense, rhythmic cello playing, sometimes building up to turbulent, choppy waves. The majority of these pieces clearly sound conceived with choreography in mind, evenly progressing and introducing more dramatic sections at a logical pace...

Mono - Sorrow from Nowhere Now Here
With Nowhere Now Here, their tenth album, Japan's Mono celebrates their 20th anniversary. They've expanded their sonic palette and continued to keep a close ear on their roots even as they've woven ambient sounds, cinematic power metal, and dissonance into a unique melodic sensibility at once fragile and beautful. Often using chamber and symphony orchestras, they've built on their dynamic contrasts -- dark and light, violence and stillness, chaos and tranquility -- with a remarkable, emotionally potent consistency.
Nowhere Now Here recombines most of the elemental musical traits apparent throughout the band's history, while adding electronics to their arsenal. The quartet has undergone its first personnel change with drummer Dahm Majuri Cipolla replacing Yasunori Takada...

Swallow the Sun - Never Left from When a Shadow Is Forced into the Light
...When a Shadow Is Forced Into the Light's title is drawn from a Stanbridge lyric. Its songs are more melodic than anything in STS's catalog. Instead of bone-crushing doom-death metal, they deliver atmospheric post-metal undergirded by gothic rock with shards of black metal and doom. The title-track opener eases the listener into the darkness with the sound of roaring wind, ritualistic drums, and a processional modal melody. Its swirl is elucidated by strummed acoustic guitars, languid keyboards, and vocalist Mikko Kotamäki at his most soothing...

The Writhing Squares - A Whole New Jupiter from Out of the Ether
Even though Philly-based band the Writhing Squares is made up of just two people, they conjure enough layers of sonic sludge to sound not just like a large band on full power, but a wall of beautifully gnarled noise calling out from the depths of a black hole. Building on the clatter of decidedly primitive drum-machine rhythms, Daniel Provenzano's overdriven bass lines wobble and churn as his bandmate Kevin Nickles fills in any space with tentacular waves of saxophone, delay-drenched vocals and deep-fried electronics. Their numbers are small but the sound is far from minimal...

Eerie Wanda, TOY, Royal Canoe, Mike Krol, FIDLAR, Rival Sons, William Tyler, Kamaal Williams, Julia Kent, Mono, Swallow the Sun, The Writhing Squares