Oct 29, 2015

Lee Harvey Osmond – Beautiful Scars (2015)

Hamilton, ON blues-rock mainstay Tom Wilson has captivated Canadian music fans with his work in Junkhouse and Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, though at the moment, he’s switched his focus back to his Lee Harvey Osmond project.Produced by Michael Timmins (Cowboy Junkies) at his Toronto studio, the new record largely places emphasis on Wilson’s singing. A press release describes his voice as “a warm hand to the forehead, an arm on the arm of the stricken, a comforting growl at the heart of a screaming world.” Despite the prominence of Wilson’s baritone croons, there’s also noteworthy backing instrumentation that comes in the form of “swooning horns” and “guitars that bob and weave.” Wilson leads the listener on a sonic journey.

Oct 27, 2015

The Mondrians – Avalanche (2015)

Born in 2005 in the swiss alps, The Mondrians travelled in Europe playing a lot of shows until 2009 the time they released their first album “The Mondrians” produced by Gordon Raphael and recorded in Spain. The second LP “To The Happy Few” (2011) was recorded in a farm in the countryside. The band played at Paleo, Eurockennes, Eurosonic. New album “Avalanche” is released in october 2015. 

Oct 7, 2015

EL VY

EL VY is the musical collaboration between Matt Berninger, vocalist and lyricist of The National, and Brent Knopf, the Portland musician and producer best known for his work in Ramona Falls, and his previous band, Menomena.
From the debut album Return to the Moon by EL VY, released October 30th by 4AD. 


Oct 3, 2015

Julia Holter - Have You In My Wilderness (Domino,2015)


















Have You In My Wilderness is Julia Holter’s most intimate album yet, a collection of radiant ballads. Her follow-up to 2013’s widely celebrated Loud City Song explores love, trust, and power in human relationships. While love songs are familiar fodder in pop music, Holter manages to stay fascinatingly oblique and enigmatic on her new album.

John Grant - Grey Tickles, Black Pressure (Bella Union,2015)


















US musician John Grant has produced two of the most acclaimed albums of recent years in 2010’s Queen of Denmark and 2013’s Pale Green Ghosts. With his knack for pendulous, lush Seventies melodies and droll lyrical references to the mundane, it wasn’t hard to hear why.
His third album, Grey Tickles, Black Pressure is, at first, a harder sell: angrier, weirder, more experimental, the blousy ballads fight for elbow-room with spiky electro numbers. Grant delivers some songs in his resonant vibrato, others in an Iggy Pop growl that makes him sound like a shrubland sex pest.

Hior Chronik - Taking the Veil (Kitchen,2015)


















Hior ChronikLucky is the artist whose work appears on the Kitchen. imprint. The latest beneficiary of the label’s attention is Athens-born and current Berlin resident Hior Chronik, who began producing his expressive ambient-styled material a mere seven years ago. Taking the Veil is not, however, his first appearance on the label; instead, it’s the follow-up to 2012’s Vanishing Mirror, which he and classical pianist Zinovia Arvanitidi issued under the Pill-Oh name. The visual narrative is rooted in the idea of young women whose inner thoughts and imagination are concealed from view — veiled, as it were — which in turn makes the women grow enigmatic and mysterious to those around them.

Nils Frahm - Music for the Motion Picture Victoria (2015)


















Composer and pianist Nils Frahm will release a soundtrack on Erased Tapes next month.
Set in Berlin and shot in one take, Victoria follows a Spanish girl who gets involved in a heist when she meets four local guys outside a techno club. The film won the award for cinematography at the Berlinale Film Festival and picked up seven nominations, including one for best soundtrack, at the Deutscher Filmpreis.

Ólafur Arnalds & Nils Frahm - Loon (Erased Tapes,2015)


















Nils FrahmBoth Nils Frahm and Ólafur Arnalds create ambient environments with a large instrumental palette and give distinct nods to Brian Eno, but they do so from different vantage points. On Frahm’s albums, the individual tracks tend to inhabit different scenery, characters, and textures, yet are bound together with a shared focus and love of keyboards.
Arnalds’ impressionistic pieces work together cohesively within the framework of an album and usually employ a fuller orchestra. Even though Frahm is from Germany and Arnalds is native to Iceland, it almost seems like the two composers could be long lost brothers.

Matthew Halsall & The Gondwana Orchestra


















 Into Forever (2015)

Matthew HalsallWith last year’s Gondwana Orchestra album When the World Was One, northern trumpeter and composer Matthew Halsall eloquently blended the tranquil tone-poetry of Alice Coltrane and the jazz intensity of her husband, John, with sounds of a kindred spirit from Japan and the east.

Oct 1, 2015

Girl Band – Holding Hands with Jamie (2015)

A lot of bands blend drastically disparate influences, but few sound like the blender, too. Dublin four-piece Girl Band is one such act, slicing up parts of everything from no wave to techno, using guitar and drums like power tools as much as instruments. But that implies that they’re consciously taking influence from bands like Big Black, Throbbing Gristle, James Chance and the Contortions, Talking Heads, and The Chemical Brothers, while in interviews, they’ve denied influences (either things they don’t know or don’t like) as often or more than noting them. There’s an autodidactic mania to the band’s debut, Holding Hands with Jamie, the sound of four semi-feral young men who figured out their own way to make enough noise to alternately cover up and communicate the fact that they’re frustrated, self-deprecating, laughing at society, and having panic attacks — if not worse.