by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)

Welcome to FUZZY MEADOWS, our weekly recap of this week's new music. We're sharing our favorite releases of the week in the form of albums, singles, and music videos along with the "further listening" section of new and notable releases from around the web. It's generally written in the early hours of the morning and semi-unedited... but full of love and heart. The list is in alphabetical order and we sincerely recommend checking out all the music we've included. There's a lot of great new music being released. Support the bands you love. Spread the word and buy some new music.

*Disclaimer: We are making a conscious effort not to include any artist in our countdown on back-to-back weeks in order to diversify the feature, so be sure to check the "further listening" as well because it's often of top-notch quality too.

GANSER | “Projector”

Chicago’s Ganser released their sophomore album Just Look At That Sky this past week, a bright spot on an otherwise pretty dark summer. Building off the strengths of their last record and the EP that followed, the band are digging deeper into their shadowy inclinations, doubling down on noise rock and atonal tendencies. The record is abrasive at all the best moments with piercing guitar squalls and bass that covers everything like a dense fog in the dark of the night. The band has already shared a few great videos and they’ve got a new one for “Projector,” a song that nearly feels like an anti-single, with little to no repetition and an en ending that never resolves the tension, but just sort of fades. It’s a perfect track within the context of their record (which we do recommend you listen to in full, as intended) and the lyric video captures of faux Ted Talk like presentation with it’s fair share of half hearted philosophies that people tend to grasp onto. Dip into the climate of catastrophes.

JYOTI | “Mama, You Can Bet!”

Jyoti is the jazz influenced side project of Georgia Anne Muldrow, one of the underground’s most gifted soul musicians. Over the years Muldrow has released a massive catalog of music that runs the gamut between hip-hop, funk, R&B, and beyond, shifting seamlessly between projects to create music that is full of feeling and groove, always alive, always radiant. While the first couple Jyoti releases were entirely instrumental, her latest, Mama, You Can Bet! (due out August 28th via SomeOthaShip Connect) has Muldrow singing over her dazzling jazz tunes. The album’s latest single and title track, takes a disjointed jazz beat and a minimal bass saunter and takes it all for a ride. There’s a great amount of freedom to it, as everything pops and breaks, Muldrow’s voice sound restorative and triumphant.

KNOT | “The World”

On Knot’s second single “The World,” the band sound well… knotted, with a ringing guitar riff that starts off clear and buzzing and works itself into a tangled web. It’s not overly complicated or inaccessible, instead it has quite the opposite effect, locking you in and bringing you ever deeper into their deceptively pop-friendly songs… that could also pass as post-hardcore. Which is very much the joy of it. Lyrically, “The World” is a song that wants things to be better, but not “in the next life” but to better what we have and where we are at. It’s a song that doesn’t except our circumstances and knows that things can change, but not without effort on all sides. As the progressions grows ever more tangled, crashing together with a momentous rhythm, you kind of just want to start over again, and again.

SUMAC | “The Iron Chair”

Following the band’s recent live album from St. Vitus (an essential record in its own right), SUMAC announced their upcoming record, May You Be Held, an album that Aaron Turner describes with beautiful statement of intent that’s well worth reading. It’s musical catharsis in a time of upheaval, and that fact is not a coincidence. Around these parts we consider the trio to be one of the all time greats, a metal band that is so forward thinking they’ve forged their own path between earth shattering sludge, avant-garde pummeling, and artful chaos. They do it with positivity at its heart, creating music that is uncompromisingly heavy and void of any machismo posturing. SUMAC ascend toward meditative without sacrificing intensity. With “The Iron Chair,” the new album’s first single, the trio improvised the song in the studio, recording without any plan or framework. After three records and a pair of experimental collaborative albums, the band are more than capable of spontaneity, as they collide together in perfectly colossal unison and drift apart just as soon. It’s all pretty damn breathtaking, a stunning display of reflection amid dissonance.

WHELPWISHER | “Okay Sick ” LP

For the past five years Chicago’s Ben Grigg (Ordinary Reaper, FCKR JR, Geronimo!, etc) has been posting solo recordings under the name Whelpwisher. While the project originally seemed to stem as a songwriting activity between bands, there has been a consistent flow of demos and sketches, ranging from partly realized to lo-fi developed. With Okay Sick, it feels somewhat like Whelpwisher’s “proper” debut, an album that builds upon everything Grigg has been doing over the years, and much like last year’s FCKR JR record, it cements him as an impeccably sharp songwriting, working with a simplicity that shimmers song after song. From acoustic ballads to big fuzzy power-pop songs, Grigg really excells at creating with a knack for memorable melodies and songs that blister with ease.

Further Listening:

Fuzzy Meadows: The Week's Best New Music (July 27th - August 2nd)