Too vibrant to be termed ambient music, ‘Always Becoming’ fuses hints of folk-pop and dream-pop elements into imaginative sonic creations.
Singularly imaginative, 1st Base Runner’s (aka Tim Husmann) ‘Night Stalker’ hums with a sense of mounting unease on immersive synths, creating spectral, electro-organic soundscapes.
Imagine Leonard Cohen fronting The Bangles or The Cranberries with a scoop dollop of alt-country; the result is Seneko’s ‘The Girls from Cedarhurst.’
Framing drums, emphasized by suspended rhythmic pulses, and the ghostlike vocals of Andrea Ward make ‘Ribbon of Water’ sui generis.
Enigmatic and at times darkly poignant, Lamedd’s EP ‘Permit’ vibrates with complex, emerging sonic milieus, offering an alternative paradigm of reality.
Shot through with myriad suffusions of diaphanous surfaces capped by the cashmere voice of Scott Goldbaum, ‘Protector’ is grandly wrought.
Suffused with both soft and ardent vocals and hefty, rolling rhythms, ‘BEFORE THE ALBUM’ (604 Records) allows Mauvey to strut his talent.
Quebec deathcore veterans Despised Icon revisit their genre-bludgeoning back catalogue to rework five classics for new EP ‘DÉTERRÉ.’
‘325’ (Cursed Blessings Records) is the third EP from St. Catharine’s, Ontario outfit The Holdouts. It’s punk, it’s hair metal, it’s rock n’ roll, whatever: it’s good.
UK genre-smashers Sugar Horse team up with a collection of friends for the brilliant new EP, ‘Waterloo Teeth,’ out via Small Pond Records.
Pervaded by a subtle sadness, Matthew Squires & the Learning Disorders’ EP ‘The Electric River’ conveys the essential human condition of needing to find and the complementary need to be found.
Easy to listen to, The Higher’s ‘Elvis In Wonderland’ (Secret Friends Music) certainly marks a welcome return from hiatus for the three-piece.
For those who long for snotty punk coupled with dissonant guitars and driving rhythm, the MVLL CRIMES EP ‘YOU EMBRVASS ME’ (Cursed Blessings Records) is your first stop.