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Grouper

Ruins
Kranky (2014)

Though I’ve been familiar with the name Grouper for some time, perhaps it’s not entirely coincidental that the solo project from Portland, Oregon-based artist and musician Liz Harris has never quite made an impression on me. While many of today’s groups strive to work their way into a listeners head, Grouper almost seems to be trying to achieve the opposite, … Read more

Alexeï Kawolski

My DC Offset Fields
Kalmar A Label (2014)

Recording under the guise of Alexeï Kawolski, Montreal-based composer and producer Alexis Langevin-Tétrault walks the line between making harsh and abstract material and more noticeably melodic compositions. Kawolski has built up quite a library of releases since the late 2000s and was nominated in 2013 for a Quebec Indy Award for best experimental album. That fact alone should provide some … Read more

The Smith Street Band

Throw Me in the River
Side One Dummy (2014)

Summarizing The Smith Street Band is a bit difficult. While I want to lump them in with folk-punk, that’s only true in song structure. There’s far too much electric guitar to drop that name on them—and maybe too much to just label it “punk.” Think Against Me! without the shouting. The roots are in a louder version of folk-punk, but … Read more

Explosions in the Sky with David Wingo

Prince Avalanche Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Temporary Residence (2013)

The soundtrack for the 2013 film Prince Avalanche, created by instrumental rock group Explosions in the Sky in collaboration with David Wingo, has to be considered one of the most strange and potentially divisive albums in the band’s repertoire. Though the group gained notoriety when they were featured extensively on the soundtrack to 2004’s Friday Night Lights, the music used … Read more

Ambarchi, O'Malley, Dunn

Shade Themes from Kairos
Drag City (2014)

The idea for Shade Themes From Kairos started when Belgian filmmaker Alexis Destoop asked Ambarchi and O’Malley to provide the score for his short film Kairos. The two musicians travelled to Belgium and started working on the score for the film, and after they finished with the soundtrack they returned to Randall Dunn’s Aleph Studios in Seattle to further explore … Read more

Aphex Twin

Syro
Warp (2014)

Sometime around the mid-2000’s, I began to realize just how much I missed having new music by Richard D. James, who typically records under the name of Aphex Twin. I’d been spoiled in the 1990’s: starting off the decade with a pair of outstanding and other-wordly ambient releases (the positively sublime Selected Ambient Works discs), James continued to regularly produce … Read more

Pan & Me

Ocean Noise
Denovali (2014)

Christopher Mevel, one of the founding members of the Dale Cooper Quartet & The Dictaphones, set up his solo project, Pan & Me, in order to step outside of the jazz based sound of the main band and to explore other sonic domains. Ambient music and drone are the key aspects of Pan & Me and their main focus of … Read more

Pharmakon

Bestial Burden
Sacred Bones (2014)

Just last year Pharmakon was putting out Abandon, tearing our brains apart. Margaret Chardiet (the artist behind Pharmakon) was collecting aspects of industrial, noise and power electronics, filtering all that through her mind and producing one of the most intense listens of (at least) 2013. Now how can you top something like that? Inspiration usually comes from personal experience and … Read more

Mannequin Pussy

Gypsy Pervert
Tiny Engines (2014)

It’s kind of remarkable how vaguely similar the debut album by Philadelphia’s Mannequin Pussy is to that of another of 2014’s breakout artists, Perfect Pussy. Both these similarly-named, female-fronted bands utilize rough sound production to create a listening experience that’s raw, ragged, and jarring, but while Perfect Pussy’s churning Say Yes to Love almost borders on being unlistenable (at least … Read more

Perturbator

DANGEROUS DAYS
Independent (2014)

If Daft Punk were commissioned to score a cyberpunk horror film of the likes of Hardware, the resulting work may sound something like what Paris musician James “Perturbator” Kent has come up with on 2014’s Dangerous Days, the latest of his four albums. Utilizing vintage synthesizer sound straight out of the Miami Vice era, Perturbator lets loose with aggressive arpeggios … Read more

Blut Aus Nord

Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry
Debemur Morti Productions (2014)

Starting back in the early ‘90s, Blut Aus Nord exists in two intersecting realities. Their earlier releases, which includes the first part of the Memoria Vetusta trilogy (a trilogy so far, I guess it might be extended), showcased an atmospheric black metal band, in the vein of acts such as Norwegian black metal legends Emperor. But soon enough, Blut Aus … Read more

Mamiffer

Statu Nascendi
Sige (2014)

Even though Mamiffer started off as a studio project of Faith Coloccia, throughout the years it has blossomed into something much more. The atmospheric experimental band of the former mastermind behind Everlovely Lightningheart, and Aaron Turner (also of Old Man Gloom and previously of ISIS) released a couple of full-lengths and a number of splits and collaborations with other amazing … Read more

Sunn O))) and Scott Walker

Soused
4AD (2014)

The moment I heard Scott Walker would be collaborating for a full album with Sunn O))), I assumed I was dreaming. That was just too good to be actually true. In the past Sunn O))) have had great collaborations with bands such as, Boris, Nurse With Wound and Ulver, all of which really fitted their style. But this goes beyond … Read more

FKA Twigs

LP1
Young Turks (2014)

Tahliah Barnett, who looks something of an art-school alien, first descended into the tellurian realm as a Grimes incarnate: girl with space-cadet aesthetics turned one-woman powerhouse. twig’s status as Robert Pattinson’s new beau, her paint-smeared, caricatured album cover, and inclination for the grotesque have a way of garnering the important questions. Who is she? Is the breadth of her facial … Read more

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