The trio - Gemma Fleet (The Wharves), Robert Sotelo, and Chris Taylor began making music in the unexpected landscape of a Glasgow flat and they have a combined sound entirely of their own concoction. A hazy mixture of medieval folk, baroque pop, and 60s psychedelia, it’s an utterly bamboozling palette but it works.
The album was initially conceived as a concept record about Australia’s first and largest air raid, the 1942 Bombing of Darwin, until Robertson realized the repetitive nature of history would be better-suited to what he wanted to say. In this way, it’s his most focused release yet, both lyrically and sonically.
Miranda Winters, a veteran of Chicago DIY, best known for her work with Melkbelly, makes surprising, knotty music. All-Purpose’s twin tracks celebrate awe. Awe in daily life, awe in the act of writing. Awe in the strange pleasure of free-association. Winters wanders from one thought to the next, refusing clear-cut beginnings and ends.
Cartalk, the project of Los Angeles songwriter and musician Chuck Moore, have been teasing out their debut album, the immaculate Pass Like Pollen, for the better part of a year. The nine tracks that form Pollen are each vulnerable, exuberant, and gripping in a way that makes their power known mere seconds after pressing play.
The trio make what they describe as “guitarless guitar music,” and their sophomore album, Clot, is full of strength and menace. Built on angular progressions, swelling noise, and a never ending avalanche of eery tension. Out now via Captured Tracks, Wax Chattels were kind enough to share some of the influences that lead to Clot with us.
Haunted Painting sees a return to accessible hooks and abundant instrumentation but with much more focus, and refinement. Written and recorded during 2019, the record finds Dupuis chewing on some bitter pills of that year, both political and personal, and it unknowingly resonates very strongly amidst 2020’s glum backdrop.
The ever prolific musician, producer, all around swell fella is set to release his latest Options gem, Window’s Open, due out October 23rd. It’s another brilliantly somber record that blends intricate songwriting with a lo-fi warble that washes over Engel’s technicality like a blanket of accessibility.
Sam Wenc has been going by Post Moves since 2012, and the project has got a new record coming out on Noumenal Loom at the end of the month. Today we’re premiering the Sandy Ewan-directed video for “Karen’s Ride With Grace,” a phantasmagorical sequence capturing Wenc’s union of digital and natural realities.
Partners inside and outside of music, Sorrell and A.G.’s chemistry is apparent from the start of the album. Sonically, the album meanders from the ethereal to the severe all while synthesizing a wide range of influences derived from jazzy samples, electronic textures, soulful vocal melodies, and glitchy percussion.
Strangelight have their own lineage worth noting, featuring members of sludge stalwarts Kowloon Walled City and Transistor Transistor. They’ve come together and are ready to knock down doors with their enormous sound, built on Hot Snakes fueled punk and adrenaline, stomping and thrashing one moment, dense and thudding the next.
Heir Traffic’s double single “The Roman Road / The Bellows” continues the Melbourne band’s dip into discordant post-punk. Recorded in Frankston by keyboardist Joe Nurrish, the singles strive to encapsulate their live performances - Mitchell spitting his poetic rambles, ever complimented by a barrage of drums and guitar.
