Foxy Digitalis
Astral grooves creep into the frame and find a home in an exotic lounge swimming in late-night psychedelia. Monde UFO explores the spectral beauty hidden in plain sight on “Visions of Fatima” through swirling dub-inflected drum machine rhythms, haunted organscapes, and hypnotic vocal melodies. An ancient sheen of deep space hiss and hum gilds every […]
When my friend Allison turned 21, we stayed up all night. We hit a couple bars while it was still dark out, but by 1:00 AM, we were bored. Waiting for drinks and deciding which of the three other bars downtown Durham, North Carolina offered at the time wasn’t the exciting coming-of-age tale it was […]
Subterranean creep comes to life on the first slice of Morgan Garrett’s Extreme Fantasy, “Fall & Walk.” Dripping synthetic mercury decays in the resonant chasms beneath his desolate voice and skittering rhythmic chaos. He wails, “Figured: too much systems, thought it’d do right now,” before omnipresent guitar riffs burst through the wasted din, and everything goes […]
The things Cruel Diagonals’ Megan Mitchell can do with her voice are unreal, and it’s everywhere on her forthcoming album, Fractured Whole. Looping patterns take sharp turns in the opening moments of “Precipice,” building into a cascading arrangement that’s mimicked in the video. Harsh signal interference glitches in and out of existence, as though someone is […]
Mol Sullivan isn’t going to let us off the hook. “Bury the Hatchet” is an earworm built around unexpected structures and inventive pop-infused melodies. The Cincinnati-based songwriter’s new EP, A Little Hello, took a circuitous path through struggle and recovery to find its footing in a space where hard questions don’t get buried, and her voice […]
From the opening moments of “Till The Petals Fell,” Greta Ruth welcomes us into her sanctum. Rapid guitar plucks are a flickering cascade holding her enchanted vocals aloft, gliding across silk sheets and floral bounty as a timeless whisper in the ether. Glowing embers fill the quiet spaces of the song where Ruth gently needles […]
The journey through Stephen Ulrich’s (of big Lazy) “Earthly” is a fluid diamond, pushed through shadowlands by emotive guitar vignettes and a curious disposition. Throughout Marco North’s video, cryptic narratives unfold within Ulrich’s rich composition’s bouncy rhythms and mischievous framework. North, an American ex-pat who fled Moscow for Tbilisi, Georgia, where he shot most of […]
Midnight corridors become spacious, crystal excavations reflecting electric harp sonorities in every direction. Kety Fusco’s “2072” is a small vignette with eternal power. Sharp melodies drip with melancholic flashbacks, as though visions of what could have been transformed our memory of what was. “My melody will accompany me in my passing,” Fusco says, “reminding me […]
For their newest release, Portrait of an Atmosphere, the duo of Sandra Selig and Leighton Craig use spacious, shifting sonic vignettes to create an ephemeral narrative spread across five pieces. “Portrait IV” meanders through changing landscapes with a hypnotic piano arrangement, and scattered improvisational pieces are woven into the spaces in between. Rich, organic timbres echo […]