SPECTRAL HYPNOSIS is a recurring series, featuring mesmerizing songs for one to lose sense of time and space, mind and body. This post highlights the exciting new project from Tim Hecker & Daniel Lopatin and a track from Seattle’s relatively unknown Stenskogen.
Opening track “Instrumental Tourist” comes from Tim Hecker‘s collaboration with Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never for the ambient electronic collaboration of the year! It is the first project under SSTUDIOS (Software Studio Series), where Software Recording Co. will be inviting electronic musicians to collaborate with one another. In this case, most of the works were spontaneous creations with little forethought. Get ready to take a tour around, where analog and digital sounds are thrown into a confusing and inseparable mix.
More details on the release in the full post, along with full tracklisting.
Few bands have remained as relevant and impossible to duplicate as the Massachusetts based metalcore kings Converge. Ignoring the insane impact that each member of the band has had in all aspects of the music industry — from record label owning and producing to cover designing and playing in every band possible — it isn’t a very far stretch to call Converge one of the more important heavy bands to exist in the past 20 years. All We Love We Leave is the perfect example of Converge’s ability to develop something new while still maintaining the familiarity of the whole assault of sound.
“Pop music shouldn’t always get a bad rap,” says Top Pops!, a recurring selection of pop music highlights across a selection of styles. Today, what I consider two very exciting projects get the spotlight: Midnight Magic and Memory Tapes (Dayve Hawk of Hail Social! And Hail Social get some old-school love, too.
Midnight Magic are one of the few bands from 2012 that have been on regular rotation in my listening queue. Earlier this year, they released their What The Eyes Can’t See EP and Holy Ghost!’s fucking amazing remix of “Drop Me A Line” (which, next to the Gui Boratto remix of Battles’ “Wall Street”, remains one of my favorite remixes of 2012). “Diamonds” from their upcoming LP, Walking The Midnight Streets, both mellow things out way hard by keeping all of the nine-piece’s usual brass and electronic elements and removing the consistent house beat, and “Same Way I Feel” gets lethargically dubbed out, disco-style (see full post). They self-release their debut full-length on November 13th, and it’s ridiculous that the album will be their debut.
Midnight Magic tour dates coming soon, including a Halloween date with The Miracles Club at Mississippi Studios, with Litanic Mask…!
Belgium’s Kabul Golf Club sound like a less frenetic version of The Locust combined with a less sassy version of The Blood Brothers. This isn’t meant in a bad way on either account. The band pulls in some grimy sludge that The Locust can’t take the time to create and The Blood Brothers were too polished to want around. It is an oddly approachable jam that has a perfect low-cost music video to accompany their sound. They’ve recently released an EP called le bal du rat mort, and you can check them out further on Facebook and their website.
Remix City sifts through mountains of remix trash so you don’t have to, in an attempt to find those that contribute something original to their originals. Australian psych-rockers Tame Impala get some love from labelmate Canyons, and German producer Wankelmut creates the weirdest dance track out of a folk song by Asaf Avidan & The Mojos.
In the same way that Thee Oh Sees can work their mastery of garage rock over the unassuming masses and make it look ridiculously simple, Tame Impala can twork it out ’60s-style in the indie rock arena, like laid-back experts drowsily saying, “We’ve got this, dudes.” Canyons‘ Wooly Mammoth remix-interpretation of Tame Impala’s “Elephant” pays homage to the modern beast’s ancient ancestor and taps along like tesselated rows of the hairy beasts, propelling a rhythm forward with their marching bodies. Todd Rungren‘s remix spaces things out a bit by weaving sound experiments into important points of the track. See and hear more about Tame Impala’s upcoming release, Lonerism, on Modular Recordings. The music video for the original can be seen after the jump.
Tame Impala – “Elephant” (Canyons’ Wooly Mammoth Remix)
MADNESS! is a recurring series of audio WTFs and head-twitching, spine-tingling experimental or chaotic fun (k-k+st-s-t+l)icks.
Fontanelle
Ever-trustworthy metal tastemakers Southern Lord Records are releasing the latest from Portland rock experimentalists Fontanelle! Their last three releases were escapades in ambient jazz-rock weirdness released on Kranky Records in the early aughts. Vitamin F, to be released on October 23rd, is a record for music nerds who love to be lost in the sounds of horns, guitars, and drums interfacing with one another in unpredictable ways. The massive lineup includes musicians such as Rex Ritter, Andy Brown, Mat Morgan, Borg Norm, Brian Foote and Paul Dickow, as well as the following guests: Gentry Densley (Eagle Twin), Steve Moore (Earth, sunn 0))), Hans Teuber, Eric Walton (Skerik), Jef Brown (Jackie O Motherfucker) and Dave Carter.
This is a record for music nerds, no doubt. Spin Magazine calls the record “it may be the most metal record to feature no actual metal on it whatsoever”, and that may actually be the most accurate possible description. You can stream “When the Fire Hits the Forest” from Vitamin Fvia Spin.
Says the press relase:
For this brand new recording, FONTANELLE has been trying to transport themselves back in time to 1973 into Patrick Gleeson’s Different Fur Trading Company Studio. Through the studio expertise of Randall Dunn (sunn 0))), Black Mountain, Wolves in the Throne Room), it sounds like they made it!
Rex Ritter’s tour of duty with sunn 0))) during FONTANELLE’s hiatus seems to have irreparably changed his DNA, as well as the entire band’s. Adding an amazing array of horn players, many of whom were heard on the most recent sunn 0))) LP Monoliths & Dimensions, FONTANELLE have fortified their jazz vocabulary and have conjured a burly fusion approach that has been dubbed “White Magus” – a sound sure to appeal to fans of Miles Davis (circa 1969-74), Toritse and Mahavishnu Orchestra.
Ever-trustworthy metal tastemakers 
