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.

ARMAND HAMMER | “We Buy Diabetic Test Strips” LP

The steady rise of Armand Hammer over the past decade has been one of the defining moments of modern hip-hop, as ELUCID and billy woods have reshaped the sound of MCing, both as a duo and on their respective solo records. They started upon a hot streak with 2017’s Rome and they just keep getting better with each successive album, reaching new heights of avant-garde with their latest album, We Buy Diabetic Test Strips. It’s their first record away from Backwoodz Studioz, released via Fat Possum, and if anyone was concerned about the change, rest assured, Armand Hammer have never pushed the envelope quite like this. While the duo are no strangers to cinematic beats that stray pretty far from boom-bap blueprints, this record takes forward thinking production to the next level, with a tide of experimental soundscapes that would have most MCs stumbling. ELUCID and woods aren’t most MCs though, and they keep their pens focused as cosmic production swirls and warps around then, their verses hitting with a near constant array of lyrical gems. There’s some seriously memorable lines throughout, but for all the alien shapeshifting of the music, We Buy Diabetic Test Strips often feels uncharacteristically personal, there’s heart and family residing at it’s core.

CRUMB & MELODY’S ECHO CHAMBER | “Le Temple Volant”

A chance collaboration between Crumb and Melody’s Echo Chamber sounds great on paper, and it turns out that it sounds even better in actuality. Their orbits have crossed in recent years at some of the better curated festivals and it’s clear to see that the two modern psych projects share a lot of musical DNA in terms of making dream pop that’s built on jazzy, complex, nuanced rhythms and winding arrangements. They’ve come together for “Le Temple Volant,” a single that pairs Melody Prochet together with Crumb, her voice and keys woven together with Lila Ramani’s soft vocals, each gently floating over the deep in the pocket drums, swirling synths, fluid guitars, bass, and keys, that all sort of congeal into one mesmerizing groove, surreal and stunning. With that steady back beat that we could listen to all day, Prochet and Ramani take a kaleidoscopic approach to their melody, gliding beneath cosmic squiggles, backwards samples, and a general disorientation that lulls us into a place far more majestic than reality.

JUNE MCDOOM | “Emerald River Dance” (Judee Sill cover)

June McDoom introduced herself to the world last year with her debut single, “The City,” and her follow-up self-titled EP, both unique visions of folk music with slight touches of psych and AM gold reggae for texture, a key element in the interwoven sound. There’s a sense of patchwork from the songwriting to the production, everything made with influences that feel singular to June McDoom’s process. For all the dynamics though, its McDoom’s voice that constantly steals the show, the beautiful airy bliss and striking lullaby grace in her vocals as gorgeous as it gets. Set to follow up her debut, June McDoom returns With Strings, a new EP due out November 10th via Temporary Residence (Grails, Explosions In The Sky, Party Dozen), featuring two stunning covers and two of her own songs, all reimagined with a string quintet joining McDoom and her bandmate Evan Wright. Lead single “Emerald River Dance” is a Judee Sill cover and staple of McDoom’s live sets. Between the harp, acoustic guitars, and sweeping violins and viola, this one feels warmly tucked in, accessing an ease of mind rarely found, with McDoom’s timeless voice softly commanding your attention as she brins new meaning to the folk song’s vivid dualities.

NOLAN POTTER’S NIGHTMARE BAND | “Let It Stream” LP

Let It Stream was released at the start of Nolan Potter’s Nightmare Band’s recent tour supporting Osees with the intention of making some money for the road, yet the live-in-studio recording also feels like a proper introduction to the latest incarnation of the band. Following a line-up shift last summer, the Nightmare Band (which now includes former Once & Future Band guitarist Raze Regal) continues to progress forward, with an emphasis on the progression. While the band never shied away from acid fueled boogie and proggy psych, they’re now swimming in deeper waters, the compositions stretched with maximum elasticity throughout the hallucinatory live set, originally captured as a Bandcamp live stream. With cavernous grooves that feel pulled into cosmic abandon, the band dig through prolonged jams but never lose focus or direction. It’s a visionary trip through Nolan Potter and company’s wildest expanse, an odyssey driven by prog rock excess in the absolute best of ways. Let It Stream is tune in and drop out music, an opportunity to let your mind wander as the band envelope you in constant motion, a psychedelic and indulgent trip to world’s less traversed.

PILE | “The Birds Attacked My Hot Air Balloon”

Last month Pile shared “Scaling Walls,” an amazing new single recorded during the same sessions as the brilliant All Fiction LP. The past decade has proven time and time again that Pile know how to select a b-side, often holding back some of their most beloved songs (see “Pigeon Song” and “Big Web”), opting to showcase efforts that stand best on their own rather than “scraps”. Thankfully, there were a handful of exceptional tunes recorded during the album sessions but left off the final product, now due out in the form of the Hot Air Balloon EP at the dawn of the new year. With the announcement comes dazzling new single “The Birds Attacked My Hot Air Balloon,” a song that encapsulates so much of what makes Pile great over a momentous structure that truly evolves from start to finish. This one opens disoriented from the start, like a fever dream of warbling synths and a fantastically meandering drum beat courtesy of Kris Kuss. As the song trips lazily along the path, the band skid and slide through the mesmerizing atmosphere, intensity popping up in vocal melodies bolstered by sparse keys. Rick Maguire’s lyrics are wonderful, detached yet biting as he sings “I could see your house from here if I bothered to look, but without light all I can do is think of those birds,” and then the flood gates open. Hot damn, our favorite “hot air balloon” song since Grass Is Green gave us “Tasty Hot Air Balloon Ride”.

PUPPY PROBLEMS | “Winter In Fruitland” LP

Five years after the release of Sunday Feeling, a record that stands as one of our favorite bedroom pop records of all time, Puppy Problems return with their second album. Winter In Fruitland, released via Anything Bagel (Panther Car, Corey Gulkin, Generifus), feels immediately resonant, the fragility and personal nature of Sami Martasian’s songs hit in a rare way. There’s a simplicity to the songs but the further you dig, the magic of the lyrics becomes apparent. Martasian’s songwriting moves in tangents, memories sparked by everyday objects, struggles that can be felt in items around the room as they serve as placeholders for feelings remembered in lurid detail. She’s able to flip between thoughts sad and warm, but her clever reminiscence never feels overwrought with emotion. The time has passed, she’s still alive, and reflections are just that, reflections. Songs like “No News” juxtapose despondence with comfort, sounding radiant as Martasian sings “it’s all or nothing, so I’ve got nothing.” Recorded at Big Nice Studio with Bradford Krieger, this is Puppy Problems in high fidelity, yet it feels as though Sami Martasian is broadcasting from within the room.

ROPER WILLIAMS | “Infinite Victory Loop” LP

Infinite Victory Loop, the latest record from New Jersey based production duo Roper Williams has all the makings of a left-field hip-hop classic, an album that feels unassuming upon first listen, but serves as a non-stop highlight reel. With Roper Williams on the boards, the record brings together Fatboi Sharif, AKAI SOLO, YL, and Pootie, a collection of MCs with unique deliveries, all seemingly working together to bring these evocative loops to life like a rag-tag team of the underground’s scrappiest new heroes. There’s plenty of gospel and soul influence in the beats, and the glory seemingly transfers over to the rhymes. The four MC’s lyrical onslaught is as colorful as the production, their voices popping like sparks in the night, each verse constructed as though it’s trying to outdo what came before it. Void of any real hooks, Infinite Victory Loop relies on the repetition of the beats and the unfiltered focus of each verse… slinking between Fatboi Sharif, one of hip-hop’s great outsiders, who shines in a different sort of light, AKAI SOLO’s complex wordplay, and YL’s laid back flow. The record feels like a group effort (as opposed to a producer’s album with a bunch of unrelated features), every piece a compliment to the overall vision, delivered in dazzling harmony.

SPLLIT | “Gemini Moods (Return)”

During SXSW I had the chance to see SPLLIT live for my first and second time, and if time permitted, I would have continued to follow them around Austin. The Baton Rouge based band put on a pair of incredible shows, their sets unraveling like a carnival of analog wonder, the music somewhere between prog-tinged psych, egg punk, and wiggly art rock. There’s a lot going on in every SPLLIT song, textures that ripple and sputter for one shimmering moment, and the band never missed a beat, nailing each idiosyncrasy that defines their sound. Which is all to say that we’re very much looking forward to their new album Infinite Hatch, due out October 27th via Feel It Records (CLASS, Choncy, Citric Dummies). The record, recorded by the band’s core duo of Marance and Urq, is full of strange brilliance and alien construction, maximalist but never without attention to detail in relation to the songs themselves. Lead single “Gemini Moods” is a vibrant introduction, a song that somehow manages to balance its dissonant strokes and spidery rhythms with unusual pop charm. It’s beyond layered, yet each and every moment counts.

STRESS POSITIONS “How To Get Ahead”

Following the dissolution of the much beloved C.H.E.W., Jonathan Giralt, Benyamin Rudolph, and Russell Harrison started anew with Stephanie Brooks, forming Stress Positions at a time when everything was seemingly collapsing. They play hardcore with unabashed tenacity and a furious contempt for inequality of all forms, but there’s a sense of dynamics to their playing, the band taking an artistic approach to the genre’s brutalism. Over stampeding rhythms and megalithic riffs, Brooks is able to shout ruthless truths with a raw disdain… equal parts unhinged and brilliant. Stress Positions are set to release Harsh Reality, their full length debut on December 8th via Three One G Records, recorded once again with Seth Engel. There’s a primal sense of tension and carnage that lurks throughout the record, with songs that are unnervingly direct but not without their sense of psychedelic textures. Stress Positions contort in all directions, the structures generally pummeling but rarely molded into a singular shape, vividly sprawling into tightly wound knots. “How To Get Ahead” erupts with a tidal wave of feedback and neck snapping fills. It’s pure acid soaked propulsions, snarling and raw, as Stress Positions barrel through the noise, chopping heads with a commanding performance, built on blistering solos and a violent approach to Brooks’ vocals.

TUNDRASTOMPER | “What’s The Difference?”

We’ve been living life under the impression that we’d heard the last of Hadley’s Tundrastomper, and we’re so damn pleased to be wrong. The quartet’s brand of basement punk tinged prog is as much math rock as it is art pop, finding a place both dizzyingly technical but oddly sweet. There’s not a lot of bands that do it quite like Tundrastomper, their chaos gripped in a sense of dreamy good vibes. While together they transcend beyond the sum of their parts, the past five years have found the members releasing exceptional solo music (Maxshh, Lrrr, Candy Andy, Crimson Blue) as well as forming new bands (EIEIEIO, Fred Cracklin, etc), but Tundrastomper come together again for Less More, a new record due out October 13th via Sad Cactus (Gorgeous, Mothpuppy, Fitness), and they’ve never sounded better. The album is complex but engaging, jarring but accessible. Tundrastomper have found a way to go berserk while keeping the edges relatively smooth. “What’s The Difference” is a great introduction, opening with rattling unpredictability, from the electronic bounce and sense of dread that quickly fades with the arpeggiated guitars and Skyler Lloyd’s heavenly vocals. In a matter of seconds Tundrastomper prove that anything is possible and shape is a construct.

Further Listening:

SEPTEMBER 18 - SEPTEMBER 24:

SEPTEMBER 25 - OCTOBER 01:

Fuzzy Meadows: The Week's Best New Music (September 18th - October 1st)