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WHAT IS OUT

 

THIS WEEK


 

AESOP ROCK "Spirit World Field Guide"

OUT ON RHYMESAYERS ENTERTAINEMENT

Since his debut in the late nineties, Aesop Rock’s writing has been of the highest caliber, but one thing that has continually evolved is his near-flawless and diverse flow, now perfectly infused with his personality and a gift for visual imagery. On Spirit World Field Guide, characters, inanimate objects, and their surrounding environments vividly come to life as Aesop describes each passing moment throughout the album’s twenty-one chapters. Welcome to the Spirit World. Explore with intention.

 

CEREMONY "In The Spirit World Now (Synthetic Remixes)"

OUT ON RELAPSE RECORDS

CEREMONY’s In the Spirit World Now (Synthetic Remixes) see’s the band’s critically acclaimed 2019 album reimagined with a new emphasis on synth instrumentation. Limited edition one-time vinyl pressing.

CHILLY GONZALES "A Very Chilly Christmas"

OUT ON GENTLE THREAT

A Very Chilly Christmas arrives, evergreen, in November. Holiday Music: a peculiar genre offering everything from solemnity to exuberance; carols beloved, largely uncontested vessels for emotion, gratitude, generosity. Enter composer Chilly Gonzales; a showman in slippers & a bathrobe, with dedication to his entertainer craft. From oldies to newer holiday pop canon, the project surveys a broad scope. There’s grandeur, there’s merriment, there’s Mariah Carey! With Feist & Jarvis Cocker.

DAVID NANCE "Staunch Honey"

OUT ON TROUBLE IN MIND RECORDS

Nebraska songwriter David Nance returns to Trouble In Mind with his fifth (proper) studio album “Staunch Honey”, his follow-up to his acclaimed 2018 album “Peaced and Slightly Pulverized”. Returning to the home-recorded magic of his early albums, “Staunch Honey” was recorded entirely to tape by Nance himself at his Omaha home with the occasional assistance from his longtime live bandmates Jim Schroeder & Kevin Donohue.

“Staunch Honey” is the culmination of two years of hard work – Nance worked and reworked the album three times over, recording & rerecording songs until they sounded just so – a stunning batch of sonic manna that hums with feeling and mood; expertly crafted, but sounding simultaneously off-the-cuff.

GHOST FUNK ORCHESTRA "An Ode To Escapism"

OUT ON COLEMINE RECORDS

Where will you hide when the world around you is closing in? On their latest LP, GFO invites you to close your eyes and take a dive into your subconscious. Strings and horns float around from ear to ear while their three sirens explore themes of isolation, fear of the unknown, and the fabrication of self-image. It’s a soulful psychedelic journey that picks up sonically where “A Song For Paul” left off. The drums are heavier, the arrangements are more intricate, and the vocal harmonies soar over a bed of odd time signature grooves. This is an album that’s meant to be listened to in the dark. So won’t you join them? You’re not scared… are you?

HEATHERED PEARLS "Cast"

OUT ON GHOSTLY INTL.

Since his 2012 debut as Heathered Pearls, Jakub Alexander has constructed art — music, objects, installations, performances — as a way of re-imagining fragments of his past and mapping ideas for his future. The Polish-born, Michigan-raised, New York-based artist and producer sees imagery and narrative framework as fluid components to his craft.

Heathered Pearls full-length, Cast, returns to moodier loop formats joined by the distinctly new presence of the spoken word. The move mirrors the multitudes of its namesake: collaborators comprise a cast, healing in the bind of a cast, complex emotions and the shadows they cast.

LAMBCHOP "Trip"

OUT ON MERGE RECORDS.

In the fall of 2019, Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner had a unique idea: In lieu of going on what would become an economically disastrous tour, he would invite the band to Nashville to make a record as a way to provide them with similar financial support and realize something tangible in the process. Each band member was tasked with choosing one song for the band to cover, and leading the recording session to completion each day.

TRIP sounds like a culmination of the band’s older work and current work. There’s a looseness and freedom that recalls their older sound mixed with a group sophistication and innovation derived through the process of playing together for so long. The title TRIP refers to the circumstances surrounding its creation and the endeavor of “touring” itself. “It also seems to describe a life in music and the situations we created in our life as a band over the years,” Wagner adds. “It’s been a trip…”

LUKE TITUS "Plasma"

OUT ON SOOPER RECORDS

The debut LP from Chicago producer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter Luke Titus.

“Sooper Records has quietly released a series of innovative albums over the past few years… all garnering critical acclaim. Their latest signee, Luke Titus, looks certain to do the same on his debut, PLASMA…” – FADER

 

MOLCHAT DOMA "MONUMENT"

OUT ON SACRED BONESS

Monument is a fitting title for the third album by Belarusian trio Molchat Doma. Indeed, it stands as a monument to everything they’ve achieved in their short time as a band, from whispered-about unknowns, to enigmatic underground icons, to legitimate viral sensations with hundreds of thousands of TikTok videos using their music. Monument sees them return as conquering heroes, expanding on the minimalist greatness of S Krysh Nashikh Domov and Etazhi to fully realize a more maximalist vision of their crystalline post-punk sound.

THE BATS "Foothills"

OUT ON FLYING NUNS RECORDS

Spanning the last 38 years, The Bats have clocked nine incredible albums; each one seeing the band evolve with new material from the prolific songwriting hand of Robert Scott. Add to that tally the extra singles, b-sides, EPs, compilations and tribute songs they’ve recorded, creating a succinct setlist is a nearly impossible task.

Their 10th full-length, Foothills, was recorded in Spring 2018 at a country retreat pop-up studio. At that time, 15 songs were captured and immortalised in the Canterbury foothills of the Southern Alps, Aotearoa (New Zealand). Only too well, The Bats know the possibilities, potentialities and sonic vistas that arise when one takes the reins for the recording process in a beautiful place that’s on home turf.

Robert Scott, on the making of Foothills has said “Time marches on… finally, we found a gap in our busy lives and chose a week to convene. We found a house that is usually inhabited by ski field workers — Kowai Bush, near Springfield about an hour west of Christchurch and of course nestled in the foothills of the mighty Southern Alps. The songs had been written, demo’d and arranged for some time, but still with a little room for trying things out in the studio. Many carloads arrived at the house, full of amps guitars and recording gear, we set up camp and soon made it feel like home; coloured lights, a log fire, and home cooked meals in the kitchen. We worked fast, and within a few days had all the basic backing tracks done, live together in one room, the way we like to do it – it’s all about ‘the feel’ for songs like ours.”

WILLIAM BASINSKI "Lamentations"

OUT ON TEMPORARY RESIDENCE LIMITED

William Basinski’s reputation as the foremost producer of profound meditations on death and decay has long been established, but on his new album, Lamentations, he transforms operatic tragedy into abyssal beauty. More than any other work since The Disintegration Loops, there is an ominous grief throughout the album, and that sense of loss lingers like an emotional vapor.

Captured and constructed from tape loops and studies from Basinski’s archives – dating back to 1979 – Lamentations is over forty years of mournful sighs meticulously crafted into songs. They are shaped by the inevitable passage of time and the indisputable collapsing of space – and their collective resonance is infinite and eternal.

DIRTY PROJECTORS "5 EPS"

OUT ON DOMINO RECORDS

It’s easy to regret that question now. Dirty Projectors have felt somewhat inescapable since Longstreth reformed the band as a brooding solo project for 2017’s Dirty Projectors, followed that effort with 2018’s Bitte-lite LP Lamp Lit Prose and released the 2019 live album Sing the Melody. At some point in 2018, Longstreth expanded Dirty Projectors back into a band with, like its prior incarnation, three virtuoso female instrumentalist-vocalists, and that’s been the crux of the project’s 2020 presence.

Think of Longstreth’s 2020 as Dirty Projectors but decentralized. Even amidst this year’s ceaseless media roar of concerning election and pandemic news, Dirty Projectors gradually released four EPs—one with each band member on lead vocals and Longstreth co-writing each song—and are now releasing a fifth with a “dynamic, full-band sound.” Collected as an anthology of these releases, 5EPs is the first time this seemingly interminable project has felt completely approachable, rather than yet another informational overload in this swirling year. And though it highlights each performer’s unique strengths, it sometimes obscures the new members’ talents under tried-and-true Dirty Projectors sounds.

FALCON JANE "Faith"

OUT ON DARLING

Faith saw Sara May going back to the beginning: her home, her beliefs, and herself. This intention gave her the ability to take another look, to reassess, to breathe. Writing under the Falcon Jane moniker, May explores the intimate experience in getting to know yourself again, highlighting the banal but beautiful ebb and flow of our every day. The new album is an investigation into what it means to be alive and the often painful experience of the ordinary. As someone who describes herself as “emotionally guarded,” Falcon Jane is May outstretched, breaking through the introspective wall and inviting us in on the experiment.

HACHIKU "I'll Probably Be Asleep"

REISSUED ON MARATHON ARTISTS

After returning to London to finish a degree she was no longer that interested in finishing —both out of her own stubbornness and at the behest of Milk! boss Jen Cloher— Ostendorf returned to Melbourne. Back in town, she assembled a crack local combo (Georgia Smith, Jessie L. Warren, Simon Reynolds), released the first Hachiku EP, and played countless shows around town; becoming a staple of the music scene she once looked at, longingly, from afar. Hachiku played with Barnett, Cloher, Stella Donnelly, Aldous Harding; supported The Breeders and José González on national tours; and opened for Cloher and Snail Mail on European tours.

I’ll Probably Be Asleep betrays much of that background, that sense of travel and wandering. It was recorded, Ostendorf says, in countless locations, here and there: from houses in Australia and Germany to backyard sheds, rehearsal rooms, and the Milk! warehouse. “It’s like a big puzzle, piecing together these randomly-recorded sounds,” Ostendorf says; offering that she thinks of herself “more as a producer than a songwriter”.

Yet, Ostendorf’s songs are full of memorable melodies, are smartly written and sweetly sung. I’ll Probably Be Asleep is an album of dreamy atmospheres and relatable sentiments, a grand first-up LP for one of Melbourne’s most promise young bands. And, if you listen closely, it’s, in its own way, an angry record.

 

LIRAZ "ZAN"

OUT ON GLITTERBEAT.

Liraz, the highly touted Israeli-Persian singer, returns with a buoyant and border-busting new album. Shimmering electro-pop meets pulsing dance rhythms and retro Persian sonics. Includes clandestine collaborations with Iran-based musicians and composers.

Liraz has taken her shimmering electro-pop underground. She’s turned it into something dangerous and even more beautiful than before. For her second album, Zan (“Women” in Farsi), the Israeli-Persian singer collaborated online with composers and musicians from Iran. Everything had to be secretive to avoid the gaze of Tehran’s mullahs and secret police. The result is her private revolution, songs with a true message, music to make people dance and smile – and above all, think.

PEEL DREAM MAGAZINE "Moral Panics"

OUT ON TOUGH LOVE RECORDS.

NYC’s Peel Dream Magazine dazzled listeners with their recent release “Agitprop Alterna,” a smart album that draws from a wide set of post-punk, shoegaze and indiepop influences but still has an assured, unique sound. Now they’re following up with “Moral Panics,” a companion EP that features unreleased songs from the “Agitprop Alterna” sessions. Far from being outtakes, these are all songs that stand strong on their own, and gathered together function as a useful corollary to the album.

The EP’s title comes from Stanley Cohen’s “Folk Devils and Moral Panics,” a pivotal study of the media treatment of the mod movement and the poltical, societal and cultural faultlines that the media panic embodied — it’s a reference that’s quite revealing about some of the ideas behind Peel Dream. Songs like “New Culture,” “Verfremdungseffekt” and “Life At The Movies” continue PDM’s investigations into those frought areas where art, culture and commerce meet, and the EP as a whole comprises a crucial piece of the Peel Dream discography.