Bite is a sweeping sci-fi concept album about a virtual reality that promises blissful perfection that it can’t deliver on. The record uses those trappings to grapple with big topics – the perils of choosing your own reality, the inherent value of messy humanity in an artificially intelligent world, gender dysphoria – using equally big sounds.
Veteran rapper-producers Oh No and The Alchemist frequently use their work to peer at highbrow city life from its lowbrow, morally-gray margins — especially when they team up as Gangrene. Heads I Win, Tails You Lose comfortably expands on their keen eye for world-building. It’s tailor-made for peering into a back alley.
As an EP, Slab brings a lot to the table stylistically, weaving ethereal vocals with thunderous bass to create a sound that truly sets them apart from others within the genre. Wombo have an inate ability to create and maintain a creepy, ghost-like ambiance and energy that makes the EP stand out compared to some of their previous work.
Sofia Bolt returns with her second full length, the gorgeous Vendredi Minuit. Out today via Born Losers Records, the Parisian born, Los Angeles based songwriter adds a multitude of depth to her oeuvre, blending together dreamy pop, orchestral psych, and soft lit yé-yé grooves. Bolt wrote in to give us the inside scoop on each of the songs.
Way To Be carries more confidence while maintaining an atmosphere of creative pop melodies and rhythmic exploration. Nick Llobet's guitar work is fluid and breathtaking yet capable of veering into angry eruptions of distortion and fury, adding tension and a sense of chaos that plays well with the bursting intensity of the songwriting.
Brooklyn band Climax Landers is back after six years with Zenith No Effects. The beloved group surveys each of their sensibilities to create an irreverent but invigorating record, a hot air balloon of an album, for its memorable cast of characters, big picture lyrics, windy gusts of riffs to get swept up in, and overall zaniness.
Going into her third studio album, Hannah Frances sought to create something that could be healing both to herself and to the listener. The result is Keeper of the Shepherd, a record overflowing with generosity and ambition, with Frances delving into the darkest parts of her psyche and past to try and learn to reclaim herself.
Joyer’s third studio album, Night Songs, out with Hit the North Records / Julia's War Records, has found a new skyline–the street lamps whipping by from car windows. Written primarily while on tour, the album is a sound palette of cold air clarity, infused with the big feelings of brief connections and star gazing aliveness.
Daisy Rickman is a newer voice on the British folk scene, respectfully toying with all the methods and traditions that came before her, but she’s using that foundation to explore in a unique and wholly captivating manner. Howl is the second full length, pushing her further into cultural traditions of the Cornish people and the occult.
There’s a major glow emanating from Obsession, and Tea Eater is keeping that light abuzz with a series of videos, the latest for album centerpiece, “The Taste”. Directed by Carissa Johnson, the animated lyric video captures Tea Eater’s creative and psychedelic energy, bringing Tarra Thiessen’s words to life and moving further out into the surreal.
Here in the Pitch is a natural continuation of Pratt's previous three LPs, intimate folk songs through the grandeur of a studio. If you know these previous albums then you likely can immediately sense where you will fall with these cuts. She saunters closer evermore to popular music standards, creating new refractions that welcome deep listening.
Alexander Fatato’s fourth studio record teleports you to the times when you’ve felt most vulnerable, the times you can’t help but think back to when you’re at your highest high or your lowest low. His painfully relatable and nostalgic wordplay has you bumping into your memories and past-selves with each line of his honest lyrics.
