Grimes - Visions (2012)

Late last year, Simon Reynolds described electronic music's response to our digitized world as a new kind of maximalism: "a hell of a lot of inputs... in terms of influences and sources, and a hell of a lot of outputs." That's an apt description for the music that Grimes was making before, but Visions showcases a streamlined aesthetic, resulting in a statement that feels focused, cohesive, and assured. It's simple enough to leave room for Grimes to grow, but this thing is so compulsively listenable it's hard to come away from it wanting much more. Anchored to the digital imagination but unbridled from its skittish anxiety and concerns, Visions gestures skyward and beyond.

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Frankie Rose: Interstellar (2012)

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Frankie Rose spent a few years kicking around the Brooklyn jangle-pop scene before striking out on her own: As the most charismatic member of Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts, and Dum Dum Girls, she was a reliable bolt of onstage electricity enlivening the often noncommittal presences around her. It was pretty clear, even then, that she was eventually destined for bigger things, but her first solo record, recorded under the name Frankie Rose and the Outs, still felt constrained by a reflexive sort of cool-kid slouch. Between that record and Interstellar, she has dropped the pretense of a backing band entirely, and is recording simply as "Frankie Rose." The implicit point is clear: This time around, she's going for it.

The first moments of "Interstellar" make this point immediately. The song opens on a cool-blue vista of synthesizers, a transportingly vast sound of the sort Frankie's never made before. When her voice enters the mix, cooing about interstellar highways and moon dust, it's piped from above, passed through a series of filters so until she slightly resembles the Laurie Anderson of "O Superman". A minute in, a massive, Valhalla-pound drum hit resounds, the synths explode sideways, and Frankie hurls us down a flume ride of descending vocal harmonies. It's the most colorful, thrilling music of her career, and as grand a pronouncement as one can make that we're not doing things the same way anymore.

Interstellar is a big, second-album leap of faith into deeper waters, a sparkling synth-pop record that wants very badly to mean something to dreamy, hyper-emotional twentysomethings. For her model, she's taken the impression of some of the dreamiest, most hyper-emotional records of her youth. The production on Interstellar is gorgeous, and clearly modeled on the Cure's big, panoramic pop records, like Disintegration: booming-canyon drums, acres of spannable horizon. The drum beat that opens up "Know Me" is virtually identical to that of "Close to Me", and the silvery guitar leads on "Gospel/Grace" are pretty much mimeographed from "Plainsong". But although Rose indulges pretty heavily in the Cure's primary colors, she paints something distinctly her own with them. The world of Interstellar is a vision of paradise as lifted from the front of a Trapper Keeper: air-brushed, pastel-hued, and gloriously vivid.

Interstellar is not a thematically rich experience-- it basically has one single invitation, and that is to swim with Frankie in the glorious bath of echoes she's drawn for herself. "All that I want is a pair of wings to fly/ Into the blue, a wide open sky/ Show me your scars, I'll show you mine/ Perched out of the city on a pair of power lines," she sings over and over on "Pair of Wings", and you can hear this yearning for escape echoed in the record's every upward-spiralling note. Her singing has always been breathy and modest, but on Interstellar, her voice seems to mist on contact, even when she's swirling herself into a prismatic mini-choir of Frankies. On her record, she's just another celestial body orbiting larger ones.

The resulting album isn't one you actively explore so much as bask in gratefully. The longer I spend immersed in it, the more I appreciate its details: the haunting, truncated piano chords that the melody of "Apples for the Sun" clumps around, or the way Frankie's voice melts into and becomes one with the bloom of synthesized strings in the last minute of "Gospel/Grace". Rose is tapping the same slightly shameless clear eyes/full hearts well of teen melodrama that sourced M83's Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, and she demonstrates the same kind of focus and vision in carrying it off. On Interstellar, she transports us further and takes us higher than she ever could have as the drummer of an indie pop revivalist band. Amen to breaking free of sonic restrictions when they outlive their usefulness.

A Place To Bury Strangers: Onwards To the Wall (2012)

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Third release from one of my favorite bands. So good, so loud....visit them on tour near you soon.

Cut Copy - Zonoscope (2011)

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Daft Punk - Tron: Legacy (2010)

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Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles II (2010)

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Salem - Yes I Smoke Crack (2008)

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Black Dice - Repo (2009)

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Moderat - Moderat (2009)

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Dan Deacon - Bromst (2009)

NOTE: This is a transcode, best I can do for now.

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Josh Wink - When A Banana Was Just A Banana (2009)

"In a nutshell, it speaks really of the loss of innocence of music. Music was just music when I was growing up. Nobody was ridiculed or had views of 'I only listen to this one kind of music' - I grew up listening to everything! Today, so many people tend only listen to one style of music with a strong opinion of why... I miss the innocence of how it was... Like when you were younger, 'A Banana Was Just A Banana'." - Josh Wink

Just posting a new release from Josh fills my head with so many memories, of my youth, innocence, not a care in the world. Hanging out in abandoned warehouses in neighborhoods I wouldn't be caught dead in now, friends who I've lost touch with, friends who left the world too early...it was a time when a banana was simply....a banana.

12" Promo Vinyl

Tracklist:
1. Airplane Electronique
2. Hypnoslave
3. Jus Right
4. What Used To Be Called Used To Be

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Retail

Tracklist:
1. Airplane Electronique (9:46)
2. Counter Clock 319 (10:56)
3. What Used To Be Called Used To Be (10:06)
4. Jus Right (10:41)
5. Dolphin Smack (12:12)
6. Minimum 23 (8:52)
7. Everybody To The Sun (9:11)
8. Hypnoslave (11:47)
9. Stay Out All Night (10:02)

Black Moth Super Rainbow - Dandelion Gum (2007)

"Deep in the woods of western Pennsylvania vocoders hum amongst the flowers and synths bubble under the leaf-strewn ground while flutes whistle in the wind and beats bounce to the soft drizzle of a warm acid rain. As the sun peeks out from between the clouds, the organic aural concoction of Black Moth Super Rainbow starts to glisten above the trees."

1. "Forever Heavy" – 4:16
2. "Jump into My Mouth and Breathe the Stardust" – 2:33
3. "Melt Me" – 2:22
4. "Lollipopsichord" – 1:32
5. "They Live in the Meadow" – 2:33
6. "Sun Lips" – 3:16
7. "Rollerdisco" – 2:34
8. "Neon Syrup for the Cemetery Sisters" – 2:52
9. "The Afternoon Turns Pink" – 2:37
10. "When the Sun Grows on Your Tongue" – 2:40
11. "Spinning Cotton Candy in a Shack Made of Shingles" – 3:11
12. "Drippy Eye" – 3:13
13. "Lost, Picking Flowers in the Woods" – 3:22
14. "Caterpillar House" – 1:58
15. "Wall of Gum" – 0:59
16. "Untitled Roadside Demo" – 3:34
17. "(Hidden Song)" – 3:10

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Black Moth Super Rainbow - Do You Want To Be In A Cult? (2009)

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Telepathe - Dance Mother (2009)

MediaFire

The Mae Shi - HILLYH (2008)

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Das Pop - Das Pop (2009)

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