Music Library

Tonto’s Exploding Head Band – Zero Time

A psychedelic synth odyssey created with only an expanded Series III Moog by Robert Margouleff and synth-guru Malcolm Cecil (who programmer synths on legendary albums by Stevie Wonder and Gil-Scott Heron in addition to his ambient solo work). The intricately layered results here feel like a synthetic wilderness, with a wide variety of colors and textures that sound warm, organic, and natural despite their electronic origins.

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Poliça – United Crushers

The brooding, atmospheric synth-pop of Poliça’s third LP finds Channy Leaneagh’s passionate vocals once again supported by prominent bass grooves, driving dual drummers, and occasional string and horn arrangements, all mapped into intricate, quantized webs of programmed beats and synthesizers by co-leader/producer Ryan Olsen. Lyrically, the album centers around themes of isolation, fading love, and as well as more political topics such as police violence.

For fans of Portishead, The Knife

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Joan Baez – Come From the Shadows

“What I’m asking you to do is take some risks. Stop paying war taxes, refuse the armed forces, organize against the air war, support the strikes and boycotts of farmers, workers and poor people, analyze the flag salute, give up the nation state, share your money, refuse to hate, be willing to work…in short, sisters and brothers, arm up with love and come from the shadows”

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Sandy Bull – Fantasias for Guitar and Banjo

On his debut album, the guitar and banjo virtuoso starts off with a 22-minute droning epic fusing American and Arabic Folk music with Indian Raga on his acoustic guitar (often trying to imitate the feeling of the oud). Here, he is accompanied by the fluid, driving drums of Billy Higgins. Side 2 is made up of 4 shorter solo pieces, mostly for the banjo, including an impressive rendition of “Carmina Burana” by German composer Carl Orff and a folky mountain song.

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John Martyn – Solid Air

British singer-songwriter John Martyn fuses folk, jazz, and psychedelic experimentation to create an album that is both eclectic and cohesive, tied together by his flowing voice and virtuosic acoustic guitar fingerpicking.
FFO Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Ryley Walker

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Tangerine Dream – Zeit

This is what I imagine a black hole might sound like. “Zeit” translates to “Time”, yet time feels completely suspended here, filled instead with vast negative space in which burbling VCS 3 synthesizers, suspenseful organs, and a droning quartet of cellos float in and out. These four sidelong pieces erase all traces of rock or any kind of beat from Tangerine Dream’s sound, leaving ominous space-ambient music in its purest form.

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Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly

Kendrick travels through the history of African-American music and into the future, taking inspiration from P-Funk, G-Funk, jazz, trap and everything in between. His lyrics display an acute awareness of someone battling with the weight of fame, institutional racism, and his own depression. This album is simultaneously personal and universal, and nothing short of revolutionary.

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Julie Byrne – Not Even Happiness

Julie Byrne’s gentle new-age folk is so light and airy it’s easy to miss its depth, but repeated listening shows that it’s strength lies in its weightlessness. Her soothing voice and delicate fingerpicking are enveloped in warm string arrangements, all tied together by soft reverb and pristine production that makes for an inviting, peaceful listen every time.?

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Jerusalem in My Heart – If He Dies, If If If If If If

At the core of these electrouacoustic Arabic folk songs lies expressive vocals and the buzuk, a fretted lute which Radwan Ghazi Moumneh plays with a near religious determination. While these instruments are played nakedly and organically, it is the production and recording that really exhibits the experimental and atmospheric nature of the music. Acoustic instruments are re-sampled and processed to create granular and rhythmic accompaniment, while waves of white noise, synths and field recordings are used to adorn and enhance the emotional twists and turns of the raw acoustic performances.

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Bill Callahan – Dream River

LP, Drag City, 2013 Overview In an interview around the release of Dream River, Bill Callahan said he wanted it to be “the last record you could listen to at the end of the day, before you go to bed, around midnight.” So for my first listen of the album I crawled into bed with my

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Jim O’Rourke – Insignificance

After a prolific career as a noise/improvisational/experimental guitarist and a few forays into folk and chamber pop, Jim O’Rourke surprised his audience with an album closer to straightforward rock than his audience could have ever expected of him. Yet underneath it’s catchy, cheery, and polished exterior, his lyrics are full of humorously bitter resentment. Like his debut singer/songwriter album Eureka, Insignificance is full of the meticulous and lush arrangements that Jim would become known for.

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Sleep – Dopesmoker

Album Information: Originally released in 1999 as Jerusalem on London Records, and then in 2003 as Dopesmoker on Tee-Pee Records. This is the 2012 pressing on Southern Lord Format: LPx2, Blue vinyl, limited to 1000 copies

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Kamasi Washington – The Epic

Kamasi Washington and his band The Next Step, pick up where their forefathers and mothers left off by making spiritual jazz that respects the jazz canon without getting stuck in the past. This album ranges from free to groovy to melodic without losing sight of its mission. The inclusion of such a large band, an orchestra, a choir, and even a turntablist allows an infinite, colorful array of tonal and dynamic possibilities. 

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Ryley Walker – Deafman Glance

Acoustic-shredder/singer-songwriter ventures out of the jazz-inflected folk-rock territory explored by his last few albums to create something that feels fully himself. Deafman Glance is full of angular left turns, complex structures, airy flutes, jazz detours, and psychedelic atmospheres. A balance of great songwriting, jazz musicianship, and experimental/art-rock tendencies. Recommended to fans of Tortoise’s Standards, Tim Buckley’s Starsailor, and King Crimson’s Red. (Click for full review).

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Joanna Newsom – Have One On Me

Album Information: Released in 2010 on Drag City Records Produced by Joanna Newsom Arranged & Conducted by Ryan Francesconi Recorded by TJ Doherty, Noah Georgeson, Ryan Francesconi, Dana Gumbiner Mixed by Noah Georgeson & Jim O’Rourke Mastered by Steve Rooke at Abbey Road Studios Format: 3xLP Box Set, includes 12″x12″ lyric booklet with full musician

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Grails – Chalice Hymnal

While each Grails album uses instrumental rock as a means to explore a vast record collection’s worth of influences, none have done so with the subtlety and focus put into each track of this latest offering, allowing us to see the intangible essence of their sound more clearly than ever.

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Six Organs of Admittance – Ascent

Taking a detour from his usual loner-droner psych folk style, Ben Chasney enlists former Comets on Fire bandmates to jam some heavy rock burners with a a cosmic amount of electric guitar shredding, evoking Neil Young & Crazy Horse blasting off on a rocket. The new electric energy brought to this album is balanced out by an equal amount of the fingerpicking prog-folk and meditative acoustic ballads that have been developing in his music since the 90’s. While I will always love his more melancholy, nocturnal records that sound like he’s lost in a forest somewhere, I welcome the fiery energy of Ascent.

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David Grubbs – Creep Mission

Album Information: Released in 2017 on Blue Chopsticks Records (Imprint of Drag City Records) Eli Keszler – Drums, Percussion (Tracks 1,2,4) Jan St. Werner – Electronics (1,4) Nate Woolley – Trumpet (1,2,4,6,7) Recorded by Mitch Rackin at the Seaside Lounge, Brooklyn, Jan-Mar 2017 Mastered by Douglas Henderson Cover Art: Albert Oehlen Back Photo: Tom Van

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Eno, Roedelius, Moebius – After the Heat

Brian Eno and German kosmiche duo Cluster collaborate on a spacey synthesizer album with diverse moods, including peaceful ambient swells, sinister sequencers, industrial drum machine grooves, and suspenseful piano motifs. The release is mostly instrumental but Eno songs sparingly on a couple tracks. The last track features Can’s Holger Czukay playing some pulsing, harmonic bass grooves

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Holy Sons – Survivalist Tales

Album Information: Released in 2011 on Partisan Records Produced by Emil Amos Jeff Stuart Saltzman recorded tracks B1, B3, B5 and mixed track A2. Ash Black Buffalo – Synths on A1, B1, B4 and B5 All other instruments by Emil Amos A3 written by The Troggs Recommended Tracks: Slow Days, Look of Pain!, Reckless Liberation

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Miroslav Vitous – Magical Shepherd

Czech bassist Miroslav crafts some flashy jazz funk with Herbie Hancock, percussionist Airto Moreira, vocalists Cheryl Grainger & Onike, and rotating drummers James Gadson and Jack DeJohnette (Gadson for the funkier/disco oriented tracks and DeJohnette on the fewer more psychedelic cuts). Thanks to generous synth overdubbing by Miroslav and Herbie, each track is incredibly spacey and great for a headphone listen.

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Death Grips – The Powers that B

This double album set is recommended to anyone looking for extremely primal, complex punk rap with a wide range of influences, including industrial hip-hop, IDM, math rock, noise, and psychedelic rock. Fans of experimental, aggressive hip-hop like Dälek or Public Enemy will probably really dig this, as will fans of math rock for the extremely innovative musicianship and intricate interplay of Death Grips’/Hella’s Zack Hill and Tera Melos’ Nick Reinhart (who plays on 5 of the tracks).

Click further for full review

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Dälek – Endangered Philosophies

After two decades of challenging the system, expanding, and breaking through musical boundaries, New Jersey’s Dälek have distilled their experimental approaches to hip-hop into their most streamlined release yet. Endangered Philosophies exhibits distorted washes of sound, old-school turntablism, and MC Dälek’s insightful political diatribes over pounding boom-bap beats. Influenced by My Bloody Valentine, industrial music, Sunn O)), and the Bomb Squad

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