Eye On New Releases: April 17th, 2012

Need something to help you celebrate being done with taxes? Look no further!

Label: Futra
Album: Lone Lifter EP
Artist: EEZIR
Genre: Bass, Electronic

Lone Lifter is by Los Angeles bass producer EEZIR.  Originally from Milwaukee, Eric Hanson (aka EEZIR) cut his teeth in the legendary 90’s Midwest electronic music scene.  Moving to Los Angeles in 1999, EEZIR has performed for Friendly Integration, SMOG, and Droid Behavior. His productions on the Lone Lifter EP greatly contrast in mood and style; you will find classic acid sounds, heavy bass lines, and dreamy and gritty melodies. The title track "Lone Lifter" has a positive vibe with an added dose of intensity and pace. It is funky, catchy, and commanding, and has all the right elements in becoming a warehouse classic.  The EP’s powerful acid track, "Blacktop Lane," makes you feel as if you're driving down a curvy, mountain road. The way you rise and fall, twist and turn, the unknown factor of what lies ahead.  The contrasting moods from mellow and ethereal to snarling and aggressive in "Shifted View" bring an intensity and IDM flavor to the release. Just as your view can be shifted by an unexpected event in life, this track represents that moment that leads to a new view.  The release ends with a remix by XI of the title track. Funky, slowed down, and deep is where he takes the original, and his rendition has funkier house and garage swinging beats with dreamy and playful tones.

Label: K Records
Album: Pith
Artist: Ruby Fray
Genre: Alternative

Anyone who has seen Emily Beanblossom perform has surely left entirely taken with her. As the lead singer of Christmas, a band whose unique style of psych rock made them a cult marvel, Emily sold out both shows and records, due in no small part to her captivating, cultivated persona and the rare power of her voice. A vagabond for our ilk, she has lived life on the road and in collaborations, drifting down the line until she was called back to her family farm outside Chicago, Ill. Here she paused to lay down the hollowed noise that would become Ruby Fray. Her premier album Pith is a string of musical gems that range from harmonic americana and folk to shadowy psychedelia, united in their spectral chamber arrangements. Each of the twelve tracks on Pith come from demos Emily has been keeping close, and showcase her varieties of influence. “And the Moon,” with its steady drum machine loop, eerie harmonies and mandolin strings stands apart from its follower, “Mint Ice Cream,” a playful Americana-style duet with Calvin Johnson. “Closed Eye” is the same, a drifting melody punctuated by tinny drums and fuzzy guitar strumming. But this is the beauty of Pith—like the single, “Let’s Grow Older,” it gambols, and then falls to despair and questioning, is both the blossom and the thorny edge. Ruby Fray is a dark star risen, and the power and soul of Emily’s voice changes all that it shines upon.

Label: n5MD
Album: Love In Times of Repetition
Artist: Asonat
Genre: Electronic

Love In Times Of Repetition is the debut album from Icelandic duo Asonat. While a new project, its members are already veterans in post millennial electronic music. Fannar Ásgrímsson (one half of Plastik Joy) and Jónas Thór Guðmundsson (Ruxpin) with a little help from co-patriot Kjartan Ólafsson (Ampop & Kjarr), Japanese singer Chihiro and the French singer Olèna Simon have made an album that sounds less like a paint-by-numbers Plastik Joy / Ruxpin team up but a fresh take on vocal-centric experimental downtempo. As one might expect Ruxpin's soothing IDM electronics are present as is Ásgrímsson's metered, programming and guitar but both artists elements are now shrouded in a new warmer blanket of timbre, style and emotion.

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: October 25th

Halloween is right around the corner, which begs the question, what is the most legendary costume of all time?  Hint, it's not the unfunky drummer, or an eleventhfloorrecord.  Those are clearly two of this week's releases!
                                           

Label: Nordic Trax

Release: Unfunky Drummer EP

Artist: Charles Scott

Genre: Deep House                                                   

Seasoned Los Angeles Producer Charles Scott, aka Scott Findley, is finally back on the scene after a ten-year hiatus, releasing the Unfunky Drummer EP on house music imprint Nordic Trax.  The album has seen upfront support from a variety of international selectors, including Slam, Abyss, Nick Holder, Robert Owens, Nacho Marco, Alland Byallo, Mark Bell / Blakkat and Murray Richardson.  If we establish a working definition of funky to mean “offbeat”, then this writer is convinced of this production’s “unfunkyness.”  Charles Scott’s rhythmic deliberateness on this album transports clubbers to a vivacious dance floor utopia, one filled with purifying textures of dreamy synth melodies layered into propulsive and winning house anthems.  On the title track, the production is loaded with a mantra of deep thumping bass that’s sure to get the masses moving.  If you’re one who’s keen on having their music act as a spaceship that leads you through the galaxy that is the dance floor, let the Unfunky Drummer EP be your soundtrack.  

Label: n5MD 

Release: Self Titled 

Artist: eleventhfloorrecords

Genre: Electronic, Indie Rock

Oakland’s electronic label, n5MD, is ready to share with the world the self-titled debut from Sweden’s modern shoegaze duo, eleventhfloorrecords.  The Eleventhfloorrecords title symbolizes the location of the apartment where best friends Niso and Henke birthed these recordings, and additionally, as the duo describes, “the endless formless collection of sounds and events.”  The album’s expansive textures successfully build a sonic bridge between the influences of chillwave and modern electronic music, while cleverly weaving guitars, drum machines, synth lines, and angelic vocals into one cohesive and tranquil whole.  For listeners, the juxtaposition of these two styles creates a uniquely cinematic and whimsical environment, one that feeds into the album’s emotional comforts.  For fans of M83, Maps, or Jatun, eleventhfloorrecord’s debut album is an extension of n5MD’s manifesto, a release that symbolizes an “emotional experiment in music.”

Eye on New Releases: September 27th

Fall has arrived, and the music is getting hauntingly chilly---just in time for our favorite holiday of the year.

Label: n5MD

Album: Delirium Portraits

Artist: Tobias Lilja

Genre: Electronic

Delirium Portraits is Tobias Lilja’s third official release, and second offering on Oakland, CA’s electronic DIY label, n5MD.  Tobias Lilja, whose hometown is Malmö, Sweden, started a livelihood of music production during his teenage years, a fact that is represented within the richly cultured orchestrations on Delirium Portraits.  The album flows evenly between dreamy magnetic techno numbers, and interludes of emotive experimental piano balladry.  Comparative to his 2007 release Time Is On My Side, Lilja has expanded his ambient musical palette to incorporate more orchestrated beats and vocal textures; a twist that gives the album more cinematic appeal.  The atmospheric treatment of the vocals adds a haunting serenity to the mysterious electronic landscapes traversed on Delirium Portraits. For house and techno enthusiasts alike, infectious dance numbers like “North,” “Our Noise,” and “No Death Star” will have your body bouncing to the groovy consciousness of Delirium Portraits.  

Label: Jackpot Records

Album: Grok

Artist: Crock

Genre: Rock

If you’ve ever wondered what the genre "spaced-out doom rock" embodies, look no further than the debut album collaboration between Quasi’s Sam Coomes and Hella’s Spencer Seim, Grok.  This duo settled on the moniker “Crock,” which aptly represents the sonic cauldron in which they pummel listeners with their mechanical and frenetic art rock.  The swaggering and manic doom rock infrastructure found on tracks like “No More Dumb Fun,” “Eat Your Hat Out,” and “Kasneezerblatz” will appeal to fans of Lightning Bolt, King Crimson, and Black Sabbath alike.  Grok, in all its’ groove-sputtering and funky-spasm glory, embody what the soundtrack is like inside a haunted pinball machine.