A pair of great indie rock tracks from the netlabel jurassicpop. Artists broken light and Earthgrazer pair up to offer this short release of midwest indie rock. broken light’s track, Dawn of Nothing, is a rollicking four minutes of goodness reminiscent of The Cure. Earthgrazer gives a more dramatic performance that is almost a throwback to the 80’s. Definitely worth checking out.
A beautiful post rock record, Sora Shima offers five tracks of melodic and slightly severe music, cleanly produced – this doesn’t sound like bedroom studio quality stuff. Starting with a monster of a track, clocking in at over 9 minutes, the album goes in all sorts of directions, yet neatly ties everything together – even barely venturing into electronica itself with the breakbeat in track #4, Hello Big Sky. The last track is an almost minimal sounding drone of texture that reminds me of the surface of a cold. barren planet for some reason. Track #3, Calor Humano, is one of the best tracks I’ve heard so far this year. The chord progression does something for me, and the strings are an excellent choice of instrumentation for it. There is a little bit for everything here, and it’s a free download if you want, although I would recommend supporting the artist and offering at least a couple of dollars. Really, Sora Shima deserves it for the work and effort that was put into the production of this release.
A well thought out musical maneuver. Starting out with a light and airy trip through the clouds, the album moves on to darker territory with a somewhat ambient, yet jazzy feel. If you are reading this and you are familiar with an artist called Blipp, then you will enjoy this release.
The fairly incredible indie netlabel Deep Elm Records has a ton of samplers available for free download. There is something for everyone here – from postrock to punk, it all rocks hard. I started with the sampler Postrockology, and I’m working my way through the rest. It’s a mixed bag, and some of the tracks are better than others (there are a few that I just don’t care for at all, but only because if style and substance – everything I’ve heard so far is technically excellent). Definitely go here, check things out. I’m sure you’ll be kept busy for quite some time.
A facebook friend recently steered me in the direction of the album Dive by a band called Tycho. Tycho is an ambient electronica act that is really superb if you like Boards of Canada. Tycho releases albums on Ghostly.com – which is not exactly a record label, more like a storehouse of art-related items that happen to include music. So Ghostly.com has a handful of free releases, by their own collective of artists. So far I have listened to the 2012 release, and it is nice. Not quite post-rock, not quite ambient, it’s all mellow and chilled and relaxing and pretty much perfect. I am looking forward to checking out all of their artists, and in the meantime I have Ghostly 2012 on pretty much on constant repeat in the Jeep. It’s really perfect driving music. So go check them out asap. You will not regret it.
Bitbasic brings a strange album full of ambient sounds somehow transformed into a set of glitchy electro. It’s been a long time since I’ve jammed out to anything even remotely approaching glitch, and I think this album works nicely as a reintroduction.
Let’s see, how can I describe this? Post-Bluegrass? Hillbilly ambient? Plain old banjo weirdness? Whatever genre you want to try and pigeon-hole this in (ok ok, I’ll go with Experimental), it’s extremely awesome music. Haunting, pulsing rhythms. Bowed instruments. And a banjo. Far away, ethereal vocals. It’s hard to believe she is from the city of Cologne, Germany, and not some sort of Appalachian free spirit stepping out of the mountains, barefoot with banjo slung across her back, singing an eerie melody that echoes off the surround mountainside. This is a definite must listen.
The Orbit is not dead yet!!! I’ve been working for quite some time, but now I have the whole summer free. Music! So, for todays post, from the Test Tube netlabel comes TriangulaZona all the way from 2008. Extremely reminiscent of Revolution Void, the band produces light and echoing horn blasts over processed acoustic guitar vibes and a well defined, yet at times frenzied, drum beat. Each track has a live feel to it, giving you the sense that you are in a dark, smoky club somewhere on the back side of town listening to the band jam out on stage right in front of you.
Mellow guitars start this release out, but it doesn’t take long for the nicely mellow breakbeat to show up. Blue Balloons is reminiscent of Revolution Void and Boards of Canada, though not as all over the place – these tracks are more structured, and would be perfect background for some trip-hop vocals. I especially love the big fat square bass synth in my favorite track from the album and that is track 5 – Nightbeat. All in all, this is an excellent release, one of the best I’ve heard this year.
