Even in the wake of his tumultuous move from Seattle to New York, Rafael Anton Irisarri has stayed astoundingly busy. Last year, Irisarri and his wife lost all of their possessions in a break-in during their cross-country move. And even as Irisarri’s run a successful Indiegogo campaign to recover…
On August 19th, Australia’s magnificent Lullabies for Insomniacs radio-show shared a new mix courtesy of Not Not Fun’s Britt Brown — bit out of our range, but since it’s still absent from their website and not too well circulated, I thought I’d appropriate it to open this…
The Funs traded Chicago’s crowded garage/punk lairs for greener pastures, and their physical space manifests on the forthcoming Manic Static DOUBLE LP My Survival. “Glow Sunset Glow” suitably premieres the bright, wide open, big idea power pop prevalent throughout My Survival. Some…
Warm Gospel is an Iowa imprint haunting the mellow coast of lo-fi, a stretch watered by ambient washes, deconstructed samples, and tape reduction. The label’s description of a recent tape from DJ DJ Tanner, who reportedly helps orchestrate some of the label’s behind-the-scenes-action, could…
“I know I say this probably far too often, but I was really excited to share this bunch of mostly new sounds with you on this installment of the FFFoxy Podcast. I guess when that excitement starts to wane, I know it’ll be my time to walk away from all of this, but I don’t see that happening…
Last year, Calgary’s Shaking Box Music released an EP by Clarke Macleod’s Ashley Soft project; Macleod has since expanded the lineup to include drummer Andrew Hume (Pale Lobo) and guitarist Devin Friesen (Bitter Fictions). The newly-formed trio recorded Leave directly to tape last winter…
Moscow-based Alexey Devyanin has released music as Gultskra Artikler since 2003, previously as a duo with Dmitry Garin — who helped found and operates the Hyperboloid label with Sergey Saburov and Devyanin in 2007 — significantly predating his popular, more performance-oriented Pixelord…
When Troy Schafer unleashed the first volume of his Untitled series, I was immediately enamored with the music’s frenetic pacing and enigmatic palette. Untitled #3 was a shift in direction, yet remained appealing to me: there was a conceptual bridge to the first outing that belied the series’…
For goodness sake Marriage bring it every last minute on their second Monofonus Press effort, Pool Blunt. The proof you need is the closing track, “I don’t listen to anything that doesn’t start with DJ,” perhaps the catchiest entry point to this rapid fire approach. Nevermind…
I nearly jumped out of my chair when I found out Thomas Meluch announced another new album this year as Benoit Pîoulard. As soon as I hit the play button on “X,” though, my excitement evolved into a delicious strain of heightened serenity. With his slew of drone-leaning releases from 2015 —…
I’ve been in a Hausu head-space since this summer’s Voice of the Valley, where a slew of related projects appeared throughout the fest, so I’m psyched to share the latest from Maxwell Allison’s solo Mukqs project — which follow distantly on a 2013 debut alongside Hausu…
It looks like we’re exactly a month late with this tidbit, but I can’t help but start this week’s review with the Public Domain Review’s incredible exploration of imagined instruments: “Cat Pianos, Sound-Houses, and Other Imaginary Musical Instruments,” penned by…
Last time Decoder ran into veritable supergroup Helen and their debut LP on Kranky, I focused on their lead cut’s hazy, undefined, or “dulled” production qualities. If those qualities were a blunt edge on “Motorcycle,” the power trio’s latest track positively slices…
How to Live Forever is the third ever tape from Boston three-piece Alosi Den, who come to us by way of Will McCall, otherwise known as Goat Lightning. Not surprisingly, Alosi Den is an oddball… or at least two curveballs. One part meditative ’60s psych shot through with slouched aughts-rock,…
Split releases sometimes provide opportunities for strange juxtapositions. This brief cassette EP starts out with some acid-tinged electro from Cignol. It kind of reminds me of the Skanfrom/Solvent school of electro, with minimal, unpretentious beats and expressive melodies. “Juno Suns”…
In his coverage of Florida-based Ben Varian’s recent Part of the Y’all tape for MJ MJ, Ad Hoc contributor Patryk Mrozek writes that he “is creating a very personal world . . . so intimate and earnest that listening in feels like eavesdropping.” That’s very certainly a…
“It’s that time of year again where my old pal Chris Berry of the Soft Abuse and Fruits & Flowers labels makes his annual trek down to Mankato to join me on the podcast show. This is something we’ve been doing since the start of the podcast, for five consecutive years now (maybe more even),…
For the second episode of the Decoder podcast — now firmly off schedule moving forward — we have an oddball mid-summer episode we’ve dedicated to our friend and collaborator Mike Griffin, while he recovers (smoothly) from a vehicular kerfuffle. This installment opens with an anonymous…
