Thursday, June 19, 2014

Mars Red Sky - Stranded in Arcadia



'Stranded in Arcadia' is my 2014 introduction to Black Sabbath meets Band of Skulls Mars Red Sky.  The trio from Bordeaux, France plays an awesome mix of heavy/psychedelic fuzz & buzz mixed with airy and unique gender-bending vocals that instantly catch and bounce track to track.  Definitely among my favorite discoveries/albums of the year.  If you're hooked on "Hovering Satellites" then you'll no doubt enjoy being stranded.  Absolute (Arcadian) gem.








Abtomat - Abtomat

Robot...talk

This is interesting.  I interpreted the first "song" to be a robotic-voice intro leading into some sort of electronic foray, but instead was treated to an entire album of bot-talk that serves as the rhythm with voices layered atop one another.  That's not to say it isn't musical -- warped keys accompany the robots the entire album, though they serve more as accents than actual drivers to the songs.  As an example, the track "Dangerous" has the robots speaking about doing a number of different activities, before another robot continually chimes in as a chorus of sorts to affirm that such pursuits are "too dangerous".

I have no idea how I got this -- I can only assume the robots transmitted me this.  The only information I could find out about them is that they're likely from France and that they played one show in an airport (lolverload).  This was released in 2010, sometime before the robots flew back in their spaceship.

Weird stuff but definitely worth a listen.








Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Reef & Emynd - The Fast Way


Latest album from Reef The Lost Cauze that I blinked on.  Fresh as usual, and a nice new frag with the production styles of Emynd.  Hurts me how underrated this dude still is outside some circle-shapes.  Whatever though. Album is available for streaming/pay your own price on Bandcamp.


 






Friday, June 13, 2014

Oknai - High Tide



Oknai is a Slovenian electronic artist (currently based in Berlin) who got his start chopping up live Ableton sets dubbed 'clip chop', allowing him to share the stage with venerable acts like Free The Robots & Venetian Snares. 'High Tide' is the follow up full-length to Oknai's debut EP 'Ain't a Dream' (rx:tx). The album was entirely produced on the coasts of Costa Rica where Oknai completely immersed himself in all its beauty and wilderness, surfing, diving, exploring, eating them exotic fruits and, well, making music. And the music is not about bananas, pineapples and coffee. It's also not necessarily a sunny record. It's a subtle and cohesive mix of lo-fi drums, synths and lots of bass. It's hiphop with hidden juke-ish rhythmics.

Great stuff, glad Oknai passed this along to me.  Grab a physical/digital copy on the 23rd if you dig.  Soaked in sweet so that shouldn't be difficult.