30.04.2025-EMILY MOMENT The Party's Over (Not On Label,2021)

 

FOLK / AMERICANA

   Moment cut her teeth musically as a member of the New York anti-folk community, dividing her time between performing and her other career as a working actress.

The album’s title suggests arriving at rock bottom and facing up to the mental and day to day physical challenges that life deals. Much of the inspiration did emerge from Moment working as an administrator in a counselling centre. Standout tracks are the countryfied ballad Santa Maria, the raw and bluesy Josephine and the rootsy harmonica driven The Bottom, which tackles mental illness head on.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/m71k3p

29.04.2025-BNNY Everything (Fire Talk,2021)

 

INDIE ROCK

   A chronicle of love and loss, Chicago quintet Bnny’s debut triggers an abundance of heartfelt emotions over fourteen tracks. Lead by singer Jess Viscius, Everything takes you on a bona fide journey.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/z3c7y0

27.04.2025-GUARDS Modern Hymns (Black Bell,2019)

 

INDIE ROCK

   Sonically, the album is more synth and bass-heavy than the Guards have ever gone before. Lyrically, the group delves deeper into the spectrum of human emotion. Follin welcomed his first child while recording the album which contributes to a vast array of new themes. Recording the album over such a lengthy period of time gives the album a wide mix of moods.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/4ixcc2

25.04.2025-ANTJE DUVEKOT New Siberia (Not On Label,2012)

 

FOLK

   The songs are high in quality with literate, poetic lyrics, and pleasing musical compositions that go beyond the usual simple folk tunes. Ms. Duvekot is a very appealing vocalist with a style a bit reminiscent of Jonatha Brooke, and the arrangements and production by Richard Shindell are very tasteful, enhancing the songs and adding sonic interest without distracting or getting into the kind of cliches that can often be heard on contemporary singer-songwriter records. Ms. Duvekot writes about some more personal topics this time around, but does it in an indirect way so that it does not come across as being self-absorbed.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/irho3j

24.04.2025-LEIF VOLLEBEKK New Ways (Secret City,2019)

 

INDIE FOLK

   With New Ways, comes new company, delivering a tracklist that oozes ambience, soul and spirit. A cleverly crafted combination of the familiar and unfamiliar; tracks like Hot Tears, Transatlantic Flight and The Way That You Feel, are feverish; instrumentally and vocally low tempo, intricate and delicate. Yet, tracks like Never Be Back are highly experimental; grooves that are brassier and bolder, moments of high tempo that are refreshingly dramatic and fiery. More of such would have been welcomed!

https://www.sendspace.com/file/xo60qs

23.04.2025-LOSCIL Plume (Kranky,2006)

 

AMBIENT TECHNO

   Scott Morgan's fourth Loscil album, like his others, explores calm, textured, emotionally neutral space.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/25bigq

22.04.2025-TEARFUL MOON Evocation (InClub,2018)

 

DARKWAVE

    Although the album does stretch a bit too thin over the course of its twelve songs, the whole thing sounds extremely cohesive and just like Morning, it conjures up the right images of dry ice and candlelight. However synth-driven the sound of Tearful Moon might be, Evocation has much more to do with 90s bands like The Shroud than with anything even remotely Coldwave-y. A most welcome über-Goth extravaganza.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/1ejd0y

21.04.2025-PARADOX OBSCUR Morphogenesis (Metropolis,2022)

 

DARKWAVE

   Sixth album of Paradox obscur, Morphogenesis offers us a tasty electronic music which mixes with ability coldwave, darkwave, EBM and synthpop.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/1y8nf3

18.04.2025-SLEEP OVER Forever (Hippos In Tanks,2011)

 

EXPERIMENTAL POP

   Forever alternates between atmospheric moments ranging from guitar drones to ambient industrial and sweet, slow synth songs. These latter call to mind the best of the ethereal/heavenly voices style that the 90s had to offer, with just the slightest hint of a darker scrape and echoing space beneath. There is a sense in Franciotti’s vocals that, rather than being sung to, we as listeners are overhearing a private lullaby, giving rise to the marginal guilt of the unwitting voyeur. And since Sleep ∞ Over began as a trio, this sensibility of perverse and melancholy isolation may not be inappropriate.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/93o19r

17.04.2025-TENSNAKE L.A. (Armada,2020)

 

ELECTRO / HOUSE

   The 14 distinct track body of work fuses house, funk, disco, ‘80s boogie and Los Angeles pop. L.A. tells the story of Niemerski’s time spent living in the city of angels, ranging from euphoric days enjoying the city’s party scene to bittersweet emotions from ending a six-year relationship.  

https://www.sendspace.com/file/ngl8r7

16.04.2025-MORTAL VOID Not Everything Was Bad (Not On Label,2022)

 

EBM / INDUSTRIAL

   My personal favorites from all releases from the beginning, right through the end. 

https://www.sendspace.com/file/pfq4zl

14.04.2025-SALLY DIGE Holding On (DKA,2017)

 

SYNTHWAVE

   The bio that accompanies the release of Sally Dige’s Holding On proudly proclaims that despite being made with one synth, each song on the record has more than 100 tracks of audio, and in some cases that many just for the drums. That claim might give you the impression that the LP is focused on sound design and complex production, and indeed, the record is obviously the product of extensive layering and assembly. But for all its multiplicity, it’s the immediacy and knack for melody that sells the Danish-Canadian’s music.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/vj3eib

13.04.2025-PAULINA CASSIDY Sugar Wingshiver (Projekt,2014)

 

DARKWAVE / AMBIENT

   Slip through the veil and enter Paulina Cassidy’s dreamy, faerie-flecked world for a while. Fifteen atmospheric pieces that straddle the boundaries of ambient and dream pop wait for you here, with soft vocals chanting beneath heavy layers of echo and effect.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/6ei7sm

10.04.2025-SUSANNA HOFFS Bright Lights (Baroque Folk,2021)

 

POP ROCK

   Bright Lights is a cohesive set of emotionally dense material that pays homage to what she and her friend, the late David Roback (of Mazzy Star), listened to in their formative years. That angle is given further weight by the fact that so many of the original artists represented — like Nick Drake, Chris Bell, and Prince — died relatively young or, like the Velvet Underground and Emitt Rhodes, had very small but impactful catalogs. Hoffs is in fantastic voice throughout the album, capably managing the rangy melody of “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight,” putting her natural rasp to fantastic use on the harder-edged “Time Will Show the Wiser,” and conveying a youthful playfulness on “You May Just Be the One.” Producer Paul Bryan keeps a light hand at the mixing board: The relatively lo-fi arrangements of Bright Lights are a far cry from Different Light, but they’re well-matched to Hoffs’ unfussy performances.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/ur6fsn

09.04.2025-CHARM OF FINCHES Marlinchen In The Snow (Spunk,2024)

 

FOLK

   Marlinchen In The Snow is a record of continued evolution, which doesn’t sound sexy as a marketing tool, and the accretion of small moves, which doesn’t sound like insurgency. But it is lush when it needs to be, poetic when it should be, and compelling when it wants to be, and those are subtle victories that arrive at something quite grand really.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/w2zssm

08.04.2025-PORCELAIN RAFT Permanent Signal (Secretly Canadian,2013)

 

ALTERNATIVE ROCK

   Mauro Remiddi, the Italian producer behind Porcelain Raft, said that he wrote ‘The Way Out’ – the lead single from his second album Permanent Signal - during Hurricane Sandy, inspired by how nature was able to survive amid human artifice, how “life can find a way”. On the face of it, such a sublime reference could hint to a hidden greatness or uplifting power running through his album, but instead Permanent Signal explores ideas of loss and feelings disconnectedness that Remiddi felt whilst on tour removed from family and friends. The result is a lyrically and musically quiet little piece that has you wishing he was around a stronger mobile signal.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/vm2zlc

07.04.2025-KIRLIAN CAMERA Hologram Moon (Dependent,2018)

 

DARKWAVE / SYNTHPOP

   Hologram Moon reveals all the greatest qualities of this legendary Italian electro dark wave act; their songs are melodically rich with great synth arrangements, they are catchy, seductive, mystical and melancholic.

   The album shifts from the more quiet and introspective moments to more danceable tunes. Such diversity makes the album an unpredictable and intriguing listening experience.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/4i8fdb
https://www.sendspace.com/file/u5ri9g

06.04.2025-RICHARD BONE Involution Vol.1 (Quirkworks Laboratory,2015)

 

AMBIENT

   Involution is described as the process by which the Divine manifests the Cosmos. I humbly feel as though some small part of this process was occurring in the studio. I could not help but feel that I was experiencing inspiration from an energy beyond myself. I find these theories to no longer be the purview of the new age movement. Hopefully in the not too distant future it will be a widespread understanding.

     Many more than 30 songs were written in this manner over the course of less than a year. So many that I found it necessary to refer to this collection as “Vol.1” because, by the end of sessions, so much music had arrived that two volumes at least would clearly be needed! Without realizing it, I had slowly begun to be influenced by the books I was reading on Cosmic Consciousness, Quantum Theory and the non-physical realms. It seemed the deeper my meditations, the more effortless the recording sessions became. This time more than ever I felt as though I was not working alone. The melodies, choice of sounds and even the song titles and sequencing are presented just as they came to me. The experience was so far beyond ’new age’ but rather more like “old age”, a system that had been available to all since humankind first became self aware.
     I know that there are those who will completely understand what I’m trying to say, while others will think I’m nut case. You’re probably both right!!! 

https://www.sendspace.com/file/zadzco

05.04.2025-BREAKBOT By Your Side (Ed Banger,2012)

 

FRENCH HOUSE

   An unashamedly upbeat, hopeful and happy debut from the French DJ/producer.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/35q7nx

03.04.2025-SALLY ANNE MORGAN Thread (Thrill Jockey,2020)

 

FOLK

     On her debut solo album recorded across Virginia and Georgia, US multi-instrumentalist and visual artist Sally Anne Morgan (Black Twig Pickers, House and Land) brings together odd ends, overheard stories, personal and borrowed memories. Drawing from traditional Appalachian music and experimental folk, Thread decidedly belongs to a time before time.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/vxkh69