The Music Lobby - Music Recommendations for Enlightened Ears

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Image Mr. Projectile, To The West [Semisexual, 2010]

After a five year silence, Matthew Arnold returns and thrusts it right in our $%@#ing faces. The last time I marveled at Arnold was with his 2004 album Sinking. After Merck shut down, I mourned the loss of artists left stranded amidst the disintegrating landscape of dying labels. Now, out of nowhere, Arnold drops another bomb for us. The album plays like a trip through a slinky, wobbling down the psychedelic stairs. Using some familiar sounds from Sinking, Arnold teases us with a few intelligent progressions and then slams a dark electro beat, full of 303-esque acid bass and dazzling arpeggios. Experts will pick up on the analog sounds of Nord Modular and the unmistakable flavor of x0xb0x. The percussion is solid, tight, and very satisfying, ranging from electro patterns to the unrestricted domains of IDM and beatless ambient. "Leaving Burning Man" uses an accented bass line to set the progressing melody beneath the swirling ambient sweeps. And the mind bending twists of glitching and stuttering rhythms of "Information Doubling" nod to the sound of Autechre. Even my nostalgic love for all the scents of 303 gets satisfied with an occasional prairie dogging of sound hiding just beneath the surface. And while the beat carries the movement forward, hazy melodies break through electrified cobwebs of sound to leave their unforgettable imprint.

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Indie Rock
Image Beach House, Teen Dream [Sub Pop, 2010] Beach House return with their third album, and it's their best yet. Beach House received a lot of hype with their self-titled debut, and it didn't quite deliver on the promise I felt. 2008's Devotion certainly had some highs, but failed to hold me as an album. With Teen Dream, there are none of these problems. The album is consistently high quality, never drowning or boring, and finds ways to be interesting at just about every second. Onc...
 
Ambient
Image Oneohtrix Point Never, Rifts [No Fun, 2009] I hadn't really heard of Oneohtrix Point Never before Wire magazine named 'Rifts' the #1 album of 2009, so I gave him a shot - it turns out that I'm at least familiar with the subgenre (he's loosely a part of the whole Keith Fullerton Whitman / Room40 ambient/musique concrete crowd), but certainly hadn't ever encountered anything quite like this material. The best way to describe 'Rifts' (a massive compilation of choice tracks drawn from ...
 
Electronic Pop
Image Washed Out, Life of Leisure [Mexican Summer, 2009] There's a new genre in town! And as is always the case, online music journalists and bloggers immediately came up with an assortment of completely ridiculous names for it (chill-wave, glo-fi); roughly, detuned-'80s-cassette-esque music created by solitary bedroom producers, which is invariably warm, relaxed, playful, electronically manipulated, and contains some combination of beats, vocals, and guitar. Most of these guys (Neon Indian, Me...
 
Modern Classical
Image Clem Leek, Snow Tales [Experimedia, 2010] Consisting of four numbered Snow Tales and a remix, this collection of modern classical and ambient pieces is a sublime journey into the mind of this up-and-coming musician. Each piece has been composed in just two days, while Leek was observing the snow falling outside of his house. The release is accompanied by six beautiful photos, that Leek took with his Polaroid camera as soon as it started snowing. I close my eyes and listen to the ...
 

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