Mux Mool’s music practically screams “open source.” There’s something in its scrappy, kitchen-sink construction and schizophrenic, grab-anything-that’s-around spirit that begs reinterpretation, recombining, remixing. Enter the Wax Rose Saturday EP, the follow-up to Skulltaste, Brian Lindgren’s full-length debut as Mux Mool. Seven remixes, one new track, and endless insight into the fearless producer’s multi-faceted work.
As the first single released in advance of Jesu: Pale Sketches DeMixed (coming August 24th), Justin K. Broadrick’s Ghostly debut as Pale Sketcher, “Can I Go Now (Gone Version)” is more than a fine introduction. The track contains everything Pale Sketcher does best: trash-compactor beats, gently swelling synth pads, and an air of beautiful, post-apocalyptic decay. Broadrick’s vocals float above it all, vocoded and reverbed, lending a touch of humanity to the song’s mechanized melancholy.
Donnacha Costello’s take on "Can I Go Now" tosses Broadrick’s vocal into a pool of sky-blue synthesizers, recalling Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works while adding a romantic tilt to the song’s downcast melody.
On Tiger Flower Circle Sun, Christopher Willits ’ second full-length for Ghostly, the Bay Area producer takes his attention to craft further than ever before, using the language of ambient, dream-pop, experimental electronic, and Afro-Latin music to explore themes of love, connectivity, and universal vibrations. With Tiger Flower Circle Sun, Willits has created a diverse, effortlessly complex album of sublime beauty.
Matthew Dear may live in New York City, but the Matthew Dear of Black City inhabits a sound-world unlike any other: a monument to the shadowy side of urban life that bumps and creaks, shudders and wakes up screaming in the middle of the night. Black City is Matthew Dear’s third album on Ghostly International, and it’s his darkest and most engrossing work to date.
Black City officially arrives on August 17th, 2010. However, pre-ordering Black City now on iTunes or The Ghostly Store (CD/LP/Digital formats) gets you the manic disco odyssey "Little People (Black City)" at purchase, as well as exclusive non-album track "Innh Dahh" upon the record's official release date.
For more Black City, check out the video trailer above and download free track "Soil to Seed" below.
In the months after the early-2009 release of his space-rock opus Moondagger, Deastro’s Randolph Chabot descended into a writing frenzy, recording new song after new song and releasing the tracks for free on his blog. Even then, his style was beginning to metamorphose—growing layers of murky atmospherics, sprouting fizzy textures and plumes of reverb’d distortion. The Deastro on the new Mind Altar EP shouts up from a deep well of echo, achieving a level of sonic mystery and menace that’s quite new for the mercurial artist.
In Simeon Tennant’s video for Solvent’s new single “Loss for Words” (from the recent new full-length Subject to Shift), a pair of romantically entwined shapes watch helplessly as their relationship dissolves. Tennant’s lo-fi computer animation fits perfectly with Solvent’s analog-synth pop melancholy, striking a touching balance between technology and emotion.
6.17 Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club
6.18 Minneapolis, MN @ Karnak Gallery
6.20 Denver, CO @ Hi Dive
6.23 Salt Lake City, UT @ Woodshed
6.24 Boise, ID @ Visual Arts Collective
6.25 Seattle, WA @ Electric Tea Garden
6.26 Portland , OR @ Branx
7.09 San Francisco, CA @ Ghostly Live A/V Showcase [Tickets]
Gold Panda’s debut Ghostly release, the You EP, is the stuff dreams are made of. Walking on the sunny side of the instrumental hip-hop street, the UK producer drapes the title track’s deep, crunching beat in slyly sliced-up vocal samples, a hint of nostalgia, and just a touch of shoegaze ambience. The track’s anthemic chord changes, meanwhile, sound positively world-changing. And if not world-changing, then certainly summer-defining.
School of Seven Bells take their magic seriously. Symbols, myths, mantras—in the hands of sisters/vocalistsAlejandra and Claudia Deheza and guitarist/producer Benjamin Curtis (formerly of On!Air and Secret Machines, respectively), these mystical practices become achingly human, methods of making sense of an emotionally complex world. School of Seven Bells’ sophomore album Disconnect from Desire—the follow-up to the Brooklyn trio’s breakthrough Ghostly debut Alpinisms—takes its title from one of Brian Eno’s oblique stratagems; its’ cryptic album image is a “sigil,” a mystical figure containing the energy and intent of the album entire. The real magic of Disconnect from Desire, though, lives in its music: ten tracks of soaring, visionary dream-pop from a band working at the height of its powers. Disconnect from Desire arrives July 13th on Vagrant / Ghostly International.
Here's a preview of Disconnect from Desire, a song called “Babelonia”, which lays the protagonist’s wounded psyche atop a deep, baggy beat and overlapping, Stereolab-esque vocal tricks.
