There is an atmosphere of particularly chilly austerity on the debutalbum of Mi and L'au. It's not entirely unexpected from an albumproduced by Michael Gira, but it is somewhat unexpected afterlearning that Mi and L'au are friends of fellow Young God folkieDevendra Banhart, and that their album contains contributions fromAkron/Family and Julia Kent. Where Devendra's latest album Cripple Crowreveled in its own expensive, high-tech studio sheen, and containedsome of Banhart's most celebratory and rollicking group compositions, Mi and L'au sounds a lot closer to something that belongs on Young God records: quietly dramatic, somber chamber folk.
We made it to 700 episodes. While it's not a special episode per se—commemorating this milestone—you can pretty much assume that every episode is special. This one features Mark Spybey & Graham Lewis, Brian Gibson, Sote, Scanner and Neil Leonard, Susumu Yokota, Eleven Pond, Frédéric D. Oberland / Grégory Dargent / Tony Elieh / Wassim Halal, Yellow Swans, Dental waste in Saigon photo by Krisztian. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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Eric Random is a crucial piece of history for fans of Cabaret Voltaire,23 Skidoo, and A Certain Ratio, and this 2xCD collection issued by LTMearlier this year provides an overview that is not only a greatintroduction but a generous selection of difficult to find material.
Atbest, Noriko’s fifth album mixes pop and more experimental electronicsin a way that is sometimes interesting, mixing standard pop beats andinstruments with more unusual sounds. Unfortunately this form ofsongcraft is far from new and much of the time Noriko misses the markcompletely.
Despite the current shift to strangely accessible indie-pop that hasbeen prevalent in recent years, Animal Collective’s records have neversuffered from the feeling that they’re trying to pull a cheap one ontheir fans. Rather, like the best pop music, their songs are organicand never forced.
Following a promising 12", The Drift return with a sextet of hazy suites on their phenomenal full-length Noumena. It's unclear whether the bandisconjuring Kantian philosophy with the title; but the songs here are not simply things in themselves, never to be realized or experienced. Rather,the songs are much larger and enveloping, asking to be engaged and experienced.
Khanate do doom like no one else. While there isn’t a huge progression from what they were doing on their last album, Capture & Release pushes their existing formula (for lack of a better term) further than before.
Two Brians, one drum kit, one busted contact mic, one bass, and a wholelot of amplified wattage—with these five components Lightning Bolthave managed to carve out a sizeable niche for themselves in theAmerican noise rock scene. And while it would seem that the result ofthat equation would grow tiresome after awhile, just the opposite istrue.
The storied and obscure LPs recorded by the cult of Ya Ho Wha
throughout the 1970s are as legendary as it is possible for any
underground musical phenomenon to be. Always spoken about in hushed,
clandestine tones among the converted, these LPs have provided numerous
objects of obsession for collectors of rare psychedelia over the years,
their scarcity making them some of the most difficult and expensive
psych records to track down.
What’s most striking about Fires in Distant Buildingsis the interplay between the album’s themes and its sound on thesurface. The melodies are pretty and the vocals are light and airyand full of harmonies that would make a pop producer proud. The lyrics,on the other hand, cut any pleasant warm fuzzies with a sharp, serratedknife and then hide the body parts under the house. 
