MicroD – Prime Part IV (self released)

 
I’ve sort of stopped paying attention to straight up 8 bit music lately. No fault of its own, I just have gotten a little disinterested. It needs an extra hook or something for me to give it a chance. Not a gimmick, just a theme or a variation on the sound. MicroD’s got that shit taken care of. His chiptunes are 100% Game Boy goodness but to spice things up he gave himself some constraints, working with prime numbers. Math + chiptunes = fuck yes I’m listening. He’s got “Prime” parts I-IV and he composed each one in a different prime time signature, starting with 3/4 and working up to 11/4 time. The artwork is based around primes (location of orange) and some of the tracks have prime beats per minute. Dude knows his primes. Plus there’s a song called “Fist.bmp.” Brilliant! Add all that fun up with the catchy as fuck super solid 8 bit housewarmers and you’ve struck gold. The real kicker is you can grab Prime in all it’s digital sexiness for free (if you want) or you can cop the limited analog for a mere $5. The power is yours!

Flossin – The Launch (Overlap)

 
There are three well known facts. 1: Zach Hill is awesome. 2: Christopher Willits is awesome. 3: Matmos is awesome. Flossin is those guys (along with Nate Boyce and Carson McWhirter (the bass player for The Advantage)). Sadly, it’s also known that super groups don’t always amount to the sum of their parts. Flossin is not that kind of super group. Originally, it was Willits, Hill, and the almighty Kid 606, but that was just for the first record, Lead Singer. It was pretty great. But then the Kid left and Matmos took his place (along with those two other dudes who everyone for some reason seems to ignore is part of Flossin?) for the second album, Serpents, from 2009. I haven’t heard that one. I’ve heard this one, though. White anaconda And The Rainbow Boa.

WOW. How has this not received any fanfare? You guys, it’s Christopher Willits, Zach Hill, and MATMOS. The blogs should be all over this. Not just because of who’s involved but that should at least be your entry point into this mess. And this is a mess. They spent two days improvising in the studio and the result was White Anaconda, a glitchy free jazz noise fest. Willits and Matmos (and those two other dudes) fuck around with their electronics & guitar processings, whining & clicking, droning & exploding, melting their sounds into one indistinguishable whole because honestly, who knows who’s doing what on this, while Hill destroys his drums in the way only he can. Yes, normally he’s a beast on the kit, but in Flossin he goes the spastic Eli Keszler route and takes his already inhuman skills to the next level.

Flossin is a furious monster of chaos, a reigning maelstrom of glitch, that is the least jazz-like jam session I’ve ever heard and somehow makes all of this flurrying actually soothing & relaxing. For all of it’s precise notes & isolated tones, it blurs into a smooth pink bliss, something that’s surprisingly transcendant, a soft wash of zen over your mind, ambient glitch pushed so far to the limits of glitch it collapses in on itself and becomes ambient again. 100% top notch. This is what should be expected of supergroups. White Anaconda is fucking it.

Good Weather For An Airstrike – Cast Aside (The Briefest Of Pauses) (Hibernate)

 
This dude, Tom Honey from the UK, has a vision. And it’s one I am fucking psyched about. He drones in ways that I want everyone to drone. His music is as serene as heaven itself. Overwhelmingly understated minimal drones, like Windy & Carl at their most subdued, or Eluvium on codeine, just steady innocuous loops that blow your mind with their subtleties. It’s the sound of air, sitting motionless above freshly greened treetops in the spring, almost completely unmoving, save for the warmth of the sun stirring the currents a bit. This is quiet purity, perfection on top of perfection. Don’t let the outside world ruin this for you. It’s meant for you, and you alone. Immerse yourself in it and you will be a better person.

Aidan Baker – Return To The Cave Of Time (Robotic Empire)

 
Aidan Baker, who is undeniably the most epically prolific dude of our generation, has somehow even outdone himself on this new one. 97 tracks, with something like 18 drummers from bands like Locrian, Swans, The Jesus Lizard, Slowdive, Jesu, Batillus, and Neptune, 2 CDs worth of music, all meant for random play, making each time you throw it on more or less a new experience. Baker solicited drum tracks from masters the world over and ended up with 6 hours of drums (which I think you have access to if you drop some cash on this?) and then boiled it down to about 2 hours of finely chopped tracks that he laid guitars & bass lines over.

Most songs are pretty damn short (less than a minute) but there’s some fully formed songs on here too, some spiking up to 7 minutes. The sound of Distraction is all over the fuckin place, there’s skittery free jazz, furious black metal, white hot psych grooves, gritty black ambient, lullaby drones, and, most importantly, massive Nadja-esque metalgaze. This is every side imaginable of Baker, and he shines at every moment.

The whole “distraction” thing is a valid theme, very topical, etc, but I think the best part of this is the complete opposite of everything else that Aidan Baker has created, aka chaotic as fuck. So much of his work requires your full attention, you need to put it on and do nothing but listen to it. This is something I’ll put on so that it won’t keep my attention. This is supremely awesome, it showcases all of his mad skillz from every direction making it a record for the background of everything. Fucking brilliant. Dude still remains the best ever.

Dog Hallucination – Untitled 2 (Intangible Cat)

A tightly compacted 3″ where Dog Hallucination (Doggy P. Lips & D. Petri) is joined by Bob from Headless Ballerinas Underwater. Weirdness abound on this one, the guitars getting fucked up & beatified by Bob with some added field recordings thrown into the mix. Gentle looping guitars, droning into the ether alongside ruptured electronics gurgling everywhere, phasers set to “caress,” celestial warmth feeding the fire, all infused with a solid rhythm, a noisy techno-drone that does more to invoke lucid dreams than it does the urge to party. But this is still totally partyable (at least a couple of the tracks are). And totally awesome. Here’s hoping Bob joins in the Hallucinations more often.

Twink – Tumble Bunny (Twink Tones)

 
It might be hard to break the barrier on this one. A band named Twink with a record called Itsy Bits & Bubbles and album art like that? Everything about this screams that it’s for kids. And here’s the kicker, it’s primarily made with toy instruments. Now, before you get all Judge Judgmental on me, let me remind you that Self’s Gizmodgery was made with toys (“Trunk Fulla Amps” anyone?) and then there’s the fact that Twink really knows what the fuck he’s doing. This is high quality toy pop with quirks, charm, and hooks galore. It’s like if Amiina and The Books had a kid who grew up to worship Dan Deacon and was best friends with a sedated Foxdye. Toy instruments are just the beginning, Twink will open up any toy that has a fuck-withable circuit and make it do his bidding, 8 bit rainbows looping in danceable harmony, and wobbly dubstep leaking into the strangest places. Plus, there’s an “Axel F” cover and he’s from Lowell! If this shit doesn’t put a little joy in your heart, maybe it’s time to give up because you’re just too far gone.

Grashopper – With Diamonds (House Of Alchemy)

 
House Of Alchemy has been super kind to us here, they reissued this super limited tour-only tape from 2009 and the world is a better place for it. Grashopper is a trumpets/electronics duo making some crazy fucked noise drones on the free jazz spectrum. There’s two side long pieces last a little over 10 minutes each, the first leaning heavy on the drone, with searing static and shrill tones that sounds like their trumpets are in flames. Surface of the sun type stuff, or rather, Icarus style, too cose, definitely, but only close enough to melt your face instead of total incineration. The B side is a bit more frantic, it starts out with an old sample of a guy grashopper telling a little girl what his music sounds like in various moods, “And when I’m sad, it’s like this…” and then Grashopper comes in with some pulsing high end grit, heading into some spacey shit, waves & rays shaking their fist, trumpets dancing in the cosmos. Totally fucking cool, and although The House has graced us with another round, it shan’t last long. Only 100 copies of this bad boy and it’s been out since sometime last year. You do the math.

Rivulets – Sheep Among Wolves (Important)

 
I’m writing about We’re Fucked because it’s not normally the kind of thing I write about AND it’s not the usual Important fare. Rivulets is usually Nathan Amundson’s solo project but on this one he’s expanded to a three piece (drums and another guitar, maybe?). This is some somber stuff, with songs about how Amundson is angry, or in love, or both, or something else, I’m not entirely sure as lyrics have never been my forté. That’s the feeling I get from this, though. Way dark and almost definitely not happy. Mostly a quiet, intimate sound, just Amundson singing in his earthy falsetto with his guitar, acoustic or electric depending on his mood, both sparse and rich, occasionally building to loud foot stomping, chest thumping moments of emotional fury. It’s truly amazing stuff that seemed to be ignored by the circles I find myself in, perhaps just because it’s got more traditional sounding song structures and stuff? Fuck that. We’re Fucked deserves your attention, regardless of where you think your musical interests lie.

Radere – …So I Left (Futuresequence)

 
The debut single artist release on Futuresequence’s new label, who’s already showed the world it’s exceptionally capable with the two massive SEQUENCE compilations. And I couldn’t think of a better way to start things off than with a Radere (Carl Ritger / False Reactions) full length, who hasn’t put out anything longer than an EP since 2010, which is basically like forever. I’ll Make You Quiet is literally Riger at the fucking top of his game. Breaking away from single track albums, this is 5 shorter but still pretty damn long tracks of intense drones, cold and icy but blissful as hell, venturing into harmonic choir territories that conjure some of Xela’s more heavenly moments. The clouded snowy mountains in the artwork are a perfect image for this, Ritger’s newish Rocky Mountain home has taken his foggy mist drones of the shore and given them a craggy and more intimidating sound. Long stretches of pouring static, bone chilled with a touch of winter sun warmth, buried field recordings, bitter sadness & majestic heartache, shimmering ice & swelling euphoria, and incredibly lush. This is fucking it. If you ever needed a reason to check out Radere, now’s the goddamn time. He’s already peaked and he’s got a ways to go. This sexy slice just dropped TODAY and you need to make it your number one priority to grab it.