Eye On New Releases: April 3rd

No week is complete without new releases!

Label: kranky
Album: Spooky Action at a Distance
Artist: Lotus Plaza
Genre: Pop

This is the second album from Lotus Plaza, the solo nom de plume of Lockett Pundt, better known as the guitarist in Deerhunter. Pundt has penned a number of the best songs on the last two Deerhunter albums; and his first album, The Floodlight Collective, was a tour-de-force of guitar pop smarts.  He has the uncanny ability to build soaring, melodic gems from simple musical phrases; a möbius strip of a guitar line and repeating clipped drum roll in “Strangers”; a tribal drum beat holding down the foundation on “Out of Touch”; two acoustic guitar chords and a slight bit of snare as the basis for “Dusty Rhodes”; and a series of slowly descending piano chord scales on “Jet Out of the Tundra”.  There is a wide variety of songs and moods here, from unabashed rockers such as “White Galactic One” and “Monoliths”, acoustic laced introspection on “Dusty Rhodes” and “Black Buzz”, to the lysergic electronics of “Remember Our Days.”  Spooky Action at a Distance is a wide angle view of what should be the zeitgeist of contemporary guitar pop.

Label: daly city records
Album: Mochipet is Evil
Artist: Mochipet & MC Zulu
Genre: Industrial

Mochipet is Evil, titled by Chicago's MC Zulu (aka Dominique Rowland), could almost be classified as a brand new genre in Bass Music Culuture.  Combining dancehall and reggae MC Vocals stripped of any of the stereotypical content used in the genre, with the uncategorizable beat explorations of Bay Area producer extraordinaire Mochipet (aka David Wang), this album is really like nothing else you have ever heard. Add in remixes by some of the best beat producers out today: Hellfire Mechina, Skulltrane, Jay Wikid, U9lift, Yan Zombie, BD1982, Polish Ambassidor, and Freddy Todd, and you have yourself a recipe for goodness. And if that is not enough, Mochipet has thrown in a added Ska Remix bonus track for your enjoyment. Mochipet maybe evil, but you're damn lucky if you listen to this release!

Label: n5MD
Album: Embrace
Artist: Ex Confusion
Genre: Ambient

Embrace is the second album from Atsuhito Omori's Ex Confusion project. His first since taking part in Keith Kenniff's (Helios, Goldmund) For Nihon compilation, this new album consist of ten tracks of emotionally-themed soloist ambient composed for guitar and piano. Much like his debut album something to remember, Embrace, at it's core, conjures a very strong thread of nostalgia. Wonderfully warm, hazy, sun-lit memories that actually somehow seem tangible. We all have something to remember, but Ex Confusion would now like the listener to use his compositions to embrace personal memories that are so very dear.

Label: Zum
Album: Trojandropper
Artist: Neil Campbell & Robert Horton
Genre: Electronic

Two individuals with long histories in improvised and experimental music come together through, and despite, modern technology.  Neil Campbell is an experimental musician known for his Astral Social Club solo project and for being a member of Vibracathedral Orchestra and a long time player in the UK noise underground. Robert Horton got his start in the San Francisco punk-noise act The Appliances and the eclectic Plateau Ensemble.  Although Campbell and Horton have never met in person, they met virtually on the Jeweled Antler mailing list. Both musicians are ridiculously prolific and prone to collaboration. They got to talking disco, probably as an antidote to all the folk and 'how to record' bug chatter. Campbell says, "Robert TOLD me in an email 'one day we'll make a disco record together'... who was I to argue?" As far as the end result being disco, Horton notes "we failed at that." Guest musicians on the album include Dan Plonsey and Hal Hughes (Horton's Plateau Ensemble bandmate). The title references the infamous Trojandropper virus that infected Horton's computer, eliminating many hours of work and files.  The resulting album that had to be pieced back together is something that mixes organic, almost crystalline drones with off kilter beat patterns and lopsided techno. Trojandropper is beatific, odd, and an anomaly to even its creators, like all projects that take on a life of their own.

Eye On New Releases: February 28th, 2012

It's a leap year, and an extra day in February means more time for more new music.

Label: imbalance computer music
Album: Ghosts
Artist: Monolake
Genre: Industrial, Ambient

Two years after Monolake’s Silence release, Robert Henke is back with a new Monolake album entitled Ghosts. Dark and colorful, with haunting and deep excursions into magic worlds of sound and grooves, held together by a fragmentary story as part of the artwork that indicates a continuation of themes present on Silence: Precisely crafted earthshaking beats, rough dirty noises, wide lush soundscapes and little sonic creatures inhabiting a fascinating planet in which a lot of things go badly wrong and nothing is taken for granted.  Music that augments reality when listening to whilst commuting, music to get lost in when experienced loud in a club. There is nothing minimal in that music, it is bass heavy and full of detail.

Label: Chemikal Underground
Album: Thirteen Lost & Found
Artist: RM Hubbert
Genre: Alternative

RM Hubbert is a guitarist from Glasgow in Scotland. He writes music about love, death, friendship, mental illness and occasionally a dog called D Bone. It’s not as depressing as the previous sentence suggests.  His second full-length album, Thirteen Lost & Found was produced by long-time friend Alex Kapranos (Franz Ferdinand) and features collaborations with some very special artists including Hanna Tuulikki (Nalle), Emma Pollock (The Delgados), Luke Sutherland (Long Fin Killie, Mogwai), Aidan Moffat (Arab Strap), Alex Kapranos and Alasdair Roberts amongst others.  Having found that it was easier to connect with people through music, Thirteen Lost & Found was conceived by Hubbert as a way of reacquainting himself with old friends while making some new ones. Each piece was written collaboratively with the respective artists; with the emphasis placed on spontaneity and experimentation. The resulting collection is eclectic and beautiful: voice, percussion, violin, piano, banjo, accordion, vibraphone and gu zheng all joining Hubbert’s idiosyncratic guitar over the eleven songs.

Label: Galapagos4
Album: Volume 3
Artist: Maxilla Blue
Genre: Hip Hop

Solidifying in 2006 and releasing its debut album less than 2 years later, Maxilla Blue remains as a well preserved tribute to the classic raw hip hop combo of one producer, one DJ, and one emcee. Bolstered by each component's instrumentals and intricate cut work with power poetics, the Maxilla crew is perhaps most known for its affinity for captivating live audiences.  Led by the cue of DJ TouchNice, powered by the production of Aeon Grey and anchored by the vocal illustration of Asphate Woodhavet, the Des Moines based trio provides listeners with a dense, immovable, and often somber or "blue" bite of this reality as well as the next. Hailing from an often overlooked and undernourished locale, Maxilla's creative approach has found it unnecessary to bend to the common trends and popular evolution of rap culture. As a result, the crew's intepretation of music remains intact amidst failed fads, and followers of the work understand the natural encouragement to bend the enigmatic sound illustration to their own interpretations, adding to the timeless quality of each piece.