Lutenist and contemporary composer Jozef van Wissem made his debut appearance on Important Records when James Blackshaw included his sublime piece, "The Mirror of Eternal Light," on his personally curated The Garden of Forking Paths. Fast-forward three years, and van Wissem has released his third full-length for Important: a steady refinement of his craft, clocking in at five songs, 37 minutes (plus a CD-only bonus track).
Give us an hour, we'll give you music to remember. This week we bring you an episode with brand new music from Softcult, Jim Rafferty, karen vogt, Ex-Easter Island Head, Jon Collin, James Devane, Garth Erasmus, Gary Wilson, and K. Freund, plus some music from the archives from Goldblum, Rachel Goswell, Roy Montgomery. Rubber ducks and a live duck photo from Matthew in the UK. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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I was both surprised and amused when Natural Snow Buildings released an entire full-length album of all new material to celebrate Record Store Day, as nobody has such a voluminous backlog of material that they can afford to do something like that (well, almost nobody).  Even more unexpectedly, Chants of Niflheim feels like a thematically coherent and deliberately sequenced Natural Snow Buildings album rather than just some collection of curiosities and orphaned songs.  While I wouldn't characterize it as "uniformly brilliant" or "radically different," it is nevertheless a very solid effort that boasts sufficient flashes of greatness to make it unmissable for existing fans.
I was introduced to Bowery Electric's 1996 album when it spent considerable time in rotation at Florida State's student-run radio station, 
As a compilation, this is a somewhat odd proposition: the first half consists of singles dating back to before the release of 
This album marks the promising debut of Students of Decay's subscription series, which also features artists like Danny Paul Grody, Dani from Celer (Chubby Wolf), and Chihei Hatakeyama.  Aquarelle is not currently as well-known as some of the other artists in the series, but this album should go a long way towards remedying that.  Ryan Potts' work shares some common ground with grit-heavy ambient artists like Tim Hecker, but his unusual combination of sculpted hiss, melody, and organic instrumentation is very much his own.
Fans of underground hip-hop have been eagerly awaiting a release like this for a while, as Clams' distinctive productions have been the backdrop for several of the more beloved songs by the utterly inscrutable "BasedGod," Lil B. Although he self-released a "mixtape" a while back (just reissued on Type), this EP is his first ever batch of songs conceived solely as stand-alone pieces.  There are some clear similarities to his other work, like sultry and slowed-down R&B samples, but Rainforest also boasts an appealingly woozy shoegaze/hypnagogic pop sensibility.  I don't think this effort quite deserves the comparisons to Tim Hecker or the "hottest producer on the planet" hyperbole he's been receiving recently, but it's still pretty damn good.
This album documents a fascinating yet flawed live collaboration that occurred at a church in Toulouse, France in 2007 where Palestine's eerie and unpredictable pipe organ playing was processed in real-time by Montessuis and his laptop.  The result is a memorably bizarre piece that lies somewhere between complex, oscillating drone and a mad scientist blasting out cacophonous chords in his remote lair on a storm-ravaged precipice. At least, it does until Charlemagne makes the unfortunate decision to start singing.
Irish steel-string guitarist Cian Nugent's fantastic full-length for VHF is his first widely available recording. It recalls a timeless vinyl record with its two side-length pieces—cohesive and complementary, deftly played, rooted in tradition with a modern experimental bent.
