zake and Ossa : Syntheticopia

Maybe it’s just me and my own overactive imagination, but when I’m deep in it with some heady ambient and new age music I often imagine floating in space. The deep and healing tones of heavily-effected guitar, the warm buzz of analog synths, the wash of digital pads like static rain, and just the overwhelming […]

Alone 1980 : If Looks Could Kill

Sweden’s Alone 1980 makes sprawling, electro masterpieces of dread and melancholy. Low key synths and electronics lock into late 70s/early 80s DIY horror scores, but Alone 1980 adds their own touches of pop/sci fi/electronic music to give it all a dreamy atmosphere. More like genre synth scores than just horror synth scores, Alone 1980s Mikael […]

Silversun Pickups : Physical Thrills

LA’s Silversun Pickups have been bopping along for 20 years now, with their debut Carnavas dropping in 2006. What has followed in the ensuing years is a series of decent enough alternative rock albums that like to think they’re shoegaze, dream pop, and post-punk. But really, they’re merely reflections in a scuffed up mirror of […]

Kuma : Buy The Tools You Need With Time

Musician and producer Kuma has laid out quite the ethereal and expansive set of albums over the last couple of years. Between releases with Soundtracking The Void, Waxing Crescent Records, as well as self-released works his is a sound world of cavernous tomes and ambient swells that seem to emanate from some Jungian hole in […]

Brown Calvin : Dimensions // Perspectives

Portland, Oregon’s Andre Burgos, aka Brown Calvin, has dropped an ethereal and all-encompassing new album called dimensions // perspectives. It’s a spiritual, jazz-heavy album that walks the line between the heady world of late 60s and early 70s jazz/fusion of Miles and Herbie to the more esoteric sounds of Flying Lotus and Massive Attack. Experimental […]

Cory Kilduff : You Will Be Safe

Way back in 2019 musician Cory Kilduff dropped one of my favorite albums of that year in When It All Gets To Be Too Much, a sprawling, engaging, and emotionally connective record of dense and melodic synth. Pulling from 80s John Hughes films and those moments where things are as heart-heavy as they get, Kilduff […]

Arthur King : Mina Las Pintadas

Arthur King is an art collective led by multimedia artist Peter Walker. He runs AK Studio and assembles musicians, sculptors, designers, and filmmakers to collaborate on various projects. It’s the kind of collective any artist dreams to be able to work within; sharing their skills, knowledge, and imagination with other like-minded creative types. One of […]

Mnemonic Pulse : Warning Sense

The latest to drop from SFI Recordings is the cosmic and expansive Warning Sense by Mnemonic Pulse. Over the course of four slow-building heavy synth tracks you get tension and release; early 80s Tangerine Dream(think Exit) combines with ambient-heavy early 80s synth scores. Portland, Oregon’s Caitlin Love, aka Mnemonic Pulse, has been releasing heady and […]

Black Midi : Hellfire

Over the course of three albums in as many years the prog/math/avante rock band Black Midi have gone to great measures to make densely-layered and technically jaw-dropping albums that the simple passerby’s frontal lobe would melt from after listening. This isn’t the kind of rock music you put on for a chill session. The UK […]

Panda Bear & Sonic Boom : Reset

The working relationship between Noah Lennox aka Panda Bear and producer/former Spaceman 3 member Peter Kember aka Sonic Boom goes all the way back to 2011’s Tomboy. Sonic Boom stepped in to mix that record, which then led to co-production credits on the Mr Noah EP and full-length Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper. Sonic […]