#3824 Sheep, Dog and Wolf - Egospect

3/5 SD&W's got a novel sound, all those lilting affected melodies over hyperbusy clattering rhythms. But it's the same basic trick for 45 minutes, and it's impossible to be delighted by it for more than a few songs

#3772 Folke Rabe - What??

3.5/5 what if not music? Very nearly pure math, waves changing so slowly you can practically see them, a slowmotion timelapse of a city sunrise, notes turning into LFOs and back, the real song hiding in the harmonics between the choices, like switched on Strumming Music (humming music?). A three-half-hour chinscratcher, but not without real, if subtle, moments of beauty

#3615 Saint Rich - Beyond the Drone

4/5 Delicate Steve spinoff that's at least as lush and hooksome and packed with juicy guitar tones as the best in the Steve-proper discography. The band-proper sound and rock-proper setups make the extended instrumental outros all the sweeter (Officer! You Ain't Worth the Night!). Thoroughly, simply enjoyable, a mirror image of the latest (electronic, disappointing) DS album

#3498 Kuniyuki Takahashi - Feather World

4/5 an album united by patience, repetition, groove, and otherwise unbeholden. Interflows of space disco, jazz, ambient electronic, polyrhythmic getdown, accoustic folk

#3490 Montero - The Loving Gaze

3/5 god, when it hits it hits, sweeping and overwhelmingly beautiful. but messy, uneven in general, crutchsomely experimental. And save yourself, because once you associate this with Ben Montero's beautiful/cloying/cute/nightmarish comics it all has a twee stink on it that undercuts any attempts at connection, an insidious one-third blindered irony that's hard to get past. And maybe that's on me, but this kind of weird pillowed awe just doesn't meet me halfway

#3477 Folllakzoid - II

3.5/5 the kind of superdense krauty jams I'm always a sucker for

#3460 Said the Whale - Hawaii

3.5/5 an undeniable knack for a hook in that unabashed 00's spirit, flecked with the Beach Boys, Radiohead, the Decemberists and a rogue's gallery of one hit wonders. All rather nice, a couple of weird forays into raps and drops notwithstanding

#3370 Death Pesos - Moon Violence

4/5
How many other bands could make songs about Las Vegas, Saturday night and slow drivers in 2019, and make em pretty fuckin fiery? Death Pesos believe in rock, and bang it out loose and trashy with wit to spare. Fun shit.

#3359 Wimps - Repeat

3.5/5
Feisty, dumb-smart punk//post-punk - arty and poppy and packed with delightful surprises

#3311 Mike Krol - Trust Fund

4/5
Doesn't live up to I Hate Jazz's ripcord energy, but man this dude has a fucking gift for writing great lines laced with deadly feedback. A fuzzy, effortlessly headbobbing 18 minutes (an epic!)

#3272 King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Eyes Like the Sky

Listen / buy here!

Holy shit. This is how you wed narrative and music. As thunderously powerful as a twangy riff's ever been. Every song's tone works in lockstep with its dusty storytelling, a plot that swerves and elides just as needed. Evocative, riveting, adventurous, must-hear for any fan of interesting music 4.5/5

#3260 Kelley Stoltz - Double Exposure

Completely enjoyable pop-rock, effortlessly rattled off like an ex-Beatle or prolific producer-type might do. There's that solo-artist overcrispness, and a general unwillingness to go for the throat, but its all solid as shit. Unassailably good. Killer cover art's a bonus 4/5

#3209 Junior Senior - Say Hello Wave Goodbye

A limp shadow of the Danish duo's brilliant career. Repetitive songs that nick details and skip all the live playfulness that made their best stuff work. Cheek, puck, surprise, gall: all gone. Just a bunch of too-late dancepunk grasps 2.5/5

#3030 PrototypeRaptor - 3-1

Mostly: dubstep sucks and chiptune sucks but somewhere in that venn diagram some roundthehorn switch flips and I rather like this pile of buzzy nonsense. They find some Basement Jaxx indulgent throughline that excuses the crass means to the maximalist ends. Somewhere in the middle I picture this making the nerdier-than-I bob clumsier-than-I at PAX. They have a song called Mode 7, for fuck's sake. Also, PrototypeRaptor. woof. what a name 3.5/5

#2997 Salvia Plath - The Bardo Story

Psychedelic layers and layers, each so thin, each barely there. There's so much space, in the mix, in the structure, between the beats. A spring day in bed under seven silk sheets, each hovering millimeters apart on an invisible breeze. Out of Baltimore, but somehow very Los Angeles, those endless numbered days smoothed out to infinity 3.5/5

#2988 No Age - An Object

I've got a knifeedge relationship with No Age, never sharper than now. They're so flinty, so distant, and sometimes that reads as thrilling frisson // boring twaddle. My accidental double-review of Everything In Between says it all.

This is as stripped down as they get, falling backwards into some postpunk negative space, shedding skin, still inventing sounds, but sulking them into the backdrop. Man that production's wafer crisp. So much noise in so little space, just giving up entire ranges, hemmed in by sonic gentrification. Probably their worst album, but right, hell I'm into it 3.5/5

#2935 Nicolas - Las Lomas 2

Insistent, mysterious, menacing. Patient as a ghost. Tides of synths, Spanish muttered from the bottom of the well, building midnight desert atmosphere 3.5/5

#2917 Hookworms - Pearl Mystic

(_ 2 _ _)

Where hookworms take all that noise and turn it into songs, condensing the instrumental asides into numbered interludes, letting the endless rhythm section draw out exaltations and exhaustions, stretching a canvas for all that feedback. Gorgeousness emerges 4/5

#2911 Traams - Grin

God bless post-motorik, god bless Traams. That locked in bass, that sizzling texture, it's the cure for what ails, tension in the process of release. A remarkably confident debut, locked in and pushing forward forever 4/5

#2896 Wata Igarashi - Counter Pulse Series, Vol. 8

Ominous, alien precision drives an unstoppable cube of analog vibration. The tech's basic, but the atmosphere nails the details, hissing noise backing mathy pulses. Relentless pacing lends a Terminator / slow zombie Carpenter menace. Insidiously creepy shit 3/5