Foxy Digitalis
The first three albums from the Elijah McLaughlin Ensemble feel like a growing tree, emerging each season with massive new branches and forming elegant skyward pathways. Melodies from another time mesh with inventive song structures and engaging timbres to create a still-unfolding narrative. Their latest, III, expands the ensemble’s aural worlds with new sonic elements and […]
I am smitten with Carmen Jaci’s debut, Happy Child. It’s an album filled with joy and wonder, all communicated through compelling compositions and intricate sonic patterns. There are so many elements whirring and singing at any given moment, and it can be dizzying but in an engaging, whimsical way. Everything in the world of Happy Child sounds pristine, […]
Jack Prest’s The Risk of Hyperbole is such an engaging, expansive interdisciplinary work that it feels like scaling a sonic mountain to get a full view. What always comes through, though, is the clarity of his vision and the freedom with which he shares it with his collaborators. While this is Prest’s work, it has the fingerprints […]
Katie Lou McCabe’s music transmits something well beyond the sonic shapes and sound forms. Her new album, Innersense, is a diaristic reflection that can almost feel like too much. All of McCabe is buried within the aural atmospheres and hypnotic vocal wanderings. Still, it is less a looking glass than an invitation to find our own […]
Sam Wenc’s Post Moves project creates moments of stillness while never actually sitting still. His engaging approach to composition and, especially, his use of pedal steel builds unseen connections between expression and reflection. If this music imagines sonic spaces for us to look inward, the result is a bridge to some unknown place. Recall the Dream […]
So much of John Atksinson’s solo work is tactile, which is doubly true on his newest, Energy Fields. Using field recordings made during a 2019 residency at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming – the largest coal-producing state in America – he turns them into a revenant, engaging reflection. Meditative sinew ties the sonic spaces together, but […]
Every week, I spend time poking around random Bandcamp tags in search of new, interesting recordings from outside the usual North America + UK + Western Europe sphere that most promos come from. I’m almost sure that’s how I ended up on the Bali Gamelan Sound Bandcamp page. Agustín is an Argentinian student who fell in love […]
I’m stealing a bit of my own question from this interview for the intro, but Cory O’Brien’s music, especially his latest album, SR01-22, has an uncanny ability to make me feel lost. I mean this in a good way as this album, in particular, always pulls me into new directions, new sonic spaces, where I lose […]
Tucked within every crevice of Asher Tuil’s Automatism are stories waiting to be discovered. He sculpts so many ideas from different textures and sonic wanderings that each listen to one of his albums produces a different experience each time. Familiar sounds drift through filters and radio waves to morph into something new and unexpected, all carrying the […]