The invocation of classic west coast psychedelia that permeates Morgan Delt’s Sub Pop debut LP feels like a continuous sunrise, never concealing its influences yet perfectly putting its songs through a gauzy lens that blurs and obscures. Is such a thing even possible after witnessing umpteen reverb-jockeys creating their own take on the genre? Can anything truly different be done in the realm of being both original and reverent, wearing favorite records and artists’ moves on one’s sleeve? Definitely the case with our man here. After releasing a 6-song cassette in 2013 followed by a full length for the Trouble In Mind label, the California native now fine-tunes his sound world outwardly rather than honing in on a specific trajectory, allowing all of said influences to coexist together in a unique yet undoubtedly Californian vision.
The resulting 10-song collection, performed entirely by Delt, recorded in his Topanga Canyon studio, and mastered by JJ Golden, is a home-fi construction with a more subtle, brain-tickling character than its predecessor, and somewhat reflects a realist take on the flower power fantasy of 1967. Doused in echo and haze, slow chords lap in like Pacific waves, flanked by gentle whispers of multi-tracked, cooing vox, phased guitars and fuzz that calmly surrounds the listener’s head less than it jabs at the cortex.
The great thing about Delt’s approach to such history is (and sorry to sound harsh) that unlike too many of his so-called L.A. psych-rock peers, there’s no costume involved, no application of a conjured identity to match a specific image. He’s no psychedelic Civil War re-enactor, so to speak. It’s subtle and tactful revisionism without using psychedelia as a crutch/easy marketing tool and letting the sounds come out and make their own case.
It takes a creative mind to make psychedelic rock music – tablas, drones, hallucinatory vocal effects, and all – without slipping into cliché, but Delt can transport what would normally be a dark-n-druggy blanket into a much more optimistic and friendly listening experience. Despite his voice being channelled through hallucinatory effects, it’s warm and inviting, projecting a sense of hope (particularly in “Some Sunsick Day,” which evokes the hopeful “We’ll Meet Again” as the world explodes at the end of Dr. Strangelove, later covered by the Byrds). It’s more or less just an invite to watch the sun rise too.
-Brian Turner, WFMU

A Californian two-piece band, Tashaki Miyaki are Lucy (vocals, drums) and Rocky (guitar), pals from Los Angeles and San Francisco. They named the band from Japanese director Takashi Miike.

On May 13, Swans will release their next album, To Be Kind, the followup to 2012's epic The Seer, via Young God/Mute. It features a number of guest contributors, including St. Vincent's Annie Clark, Little Annie, Cold Specks, and Bill Rieflin.

Light Upon the Lake is the debut studio album by American rock band Whitney, released on June 3, 2016 on Secretly Canadian.

On the heels of her "Conatus" world tour, Nika Roza Danilova was offered an opportunity to perform at one of the most prestigious modern art museums in the world, NY's Guggenheim. Rather than doing her standard Zola Jesus electronic set she decided she wanted to work with a classical composer who could arrange her songs for a quartet. She recruited legendary industrial pioneer JG Thirlwell (Foetus) to do the arrangements. Since his work as Foetus in the early 80's New York no-wave scene, JG has been scoring and composing symphonic arrangements for his own project Manoerxia, in addition to currently scoring Adult Swim's Venture Brothers series. If there is a common thread to Thirlwell's varied musical styles, it is dramatic intensity and evocative, cinematic quality. Thirlwell's oeuvre runs the gamut from orchestrations, big band, and cathartic noise-rock to abstract electronics, sound sculpture, and chamber music, thus making him the perfect collaborator to help realize Danilova's vision. Danilova explains her intentions with this album, 'Versions is about the bone of the music; taking approximations from past records and turning them inside out. With all framework exposed, the songs are given a new medium in which to evolve and bloom into their own tiny worlds.' The show went over amazingly well with the Village Voice proclaiming that Zola Jesus 'conquered the Guggenheim' and eMusic writing, 'Nika Roza Danilova's performance was not confined by the normal genres and subgenres we affix to music, it was truly art.' Removing the bulk of electronics from these songs gives them the space to breath, thusly opening them up to be received by a much wider audience who perhaps don't normally venture into the techno-pop/ industrial arena. Look for select Zola Jesus dates this fall with JG and quartet in Berlin, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Seattle, New York and Paris, including a stop at Asheville's Mountain Oasis Festival.

Written, produced and performed by Bell, TEMPO is her third LP-following 2014’s Krai and 2011’s Diamonite-and features contributions from vocalist Sara Lucas and longtime collaborators Jason Nazary and Gunnar Olsen. Born in Moscow and raised in Alaska, Bell is a composer, producer and performer based in Brooklyn. A prodigious classical pianist as a child and teenager, Bell graduated from Boston’s New England Conservatory before moving to New York City to pursue electronic composition and songwriting. In 2011 she received a Jerome Fund Grant from the American Composers Forum to aid in the completion of her first large-scale composition, Krai, which was released as an album in 2014. The New York Times described Krai as “at once a folkloric study of her homeland and a contemporary exercise in electronic production.” “Grand compositional ambitions and a dynamic voice…the arty, adventurous edge of pop” New York Times

Helms Alee is an American rock band that formed in 2007. Based in Seattle, Helms Alee features Ben Verellen, former member of Harkonen and Roy.

2009 release from the California-based Experimental artist. The songs on Silver Sea Surfer School were culled over months of playing in her home studio on 13th Avenue in Oakland and many began as odes to her neighbors who could hear her practices clearly. They were guided by ideas of Gospel and centered around emotional and spiritual themes but playfully boogie with goofy touches and punctures of highness. Infinite friendship, rebirth through love, dialing the muse, braving the rushing rapids of a lifetime - all themes cradled and polished on this disc, and stirred and mixed with a few more abstracted touches like an obsidian organ track and a couple of escapes into smeary selfness.