Liz Cooper & The Stampede are a three-piece American rock band from Nashville, Tennessee

haley bonar releases her new album release ‘impossible dream’ on 5th august 2016.
recorded on analog tape at pachyderm studios, minnesota and produced by bonar and jacob hansen, the new album is the follow-up to 2014’s ‘last war’, which enjoyed widespread critical acclaim and featured in rough trade, npr and village voice’s ‘albums of the year’ lists.
bonar says of ‘impossible dream’:
“everybody wants a story. something to sell. i’m here to tell you that there isn’t one with this album, at least in the traditional sense, but ten. i could sit here and tell you that some of the songs are about growing up in the black hills. some of the songs are about my parents. some of the songs are about homosexuality. some of the songs are about loss of youth, teenage parenthood, the lines of social disorder for women, or the terror of jealousy and suspicion. but what i write is borne of my own set of memories and ideas, and once they are released into the world, they do not belong to me anymore.”
haley bonar was first discovered by low’s alan sparhawk who spotted her at a local club in duluth, minnesota and was so impressed he immediately invited her to join them on tour. which is how, a week later, nineteen year old haley bonar, was transformed from college student to ambitious dropout, crammed into a honda civic with a guitar and a drummer for company, touring the us opening for low.
in the decade since haley has released a succession of recordings, each of which have garnered more praise the last, and has seen her collaborate with the likes of andrew bird (with whom haley occasionally plays live) and justin vernon (who featured on last war).

For Mamiffer’s Faith Coloccia and Aaron Turner, music is a divine language, a code to be deciphered, a map riddled with clues. Their latest album, The World Unseen, is a conceptual and liminal document of numinous connection through an experience with loss. It is an exploration of subconscious and psychic bonds between the past and present, and the ways in which the musical devices of repetition and incantation create hands across the chasm that divide the human from the divine.
Through the use of piano, voice, guitar, Wurlitzer organ, bass synthesizer, tape machines, and effects pedals, Coloccia and Turner have created an eight-song aural lexicon that vacillates between Arvo Pärt’s delicate minimalist beauty, Thomas Köner’s narcotic pulses of noise, and Richard Pinhas’ sublime textural patterns. Further expanding upon their explorations, Mamiffer enlisted Eyvind Kang for string arrangements. Geneviève Beaulieu (Menace Ruine) and Joe Preston (Thrones) make guest appearances on “Domestication of the Ewe pt. III”, contributing additional choral vocals and bass, and adding greater dimension to their auditory crossings. Despite this impressive arsenal of musicians and instruments, Mamiffer ultimately depends as much on empty space as they do upon the various oscillating frequencies within their sound. “The record is imperfect,” says Coloccia. “It has within its heart an incompleteness, a stillness containing the presence of absence and loss.”
It was a slow and patient journey to arrive at the final formation of The World Unseen. Chance, accident and imperfections were used as compositional tools, and unplanned chaos revealed itself as having its own harmonious order and healing litany. The songs took their shape from source material that stretched back as far as 2011. Mamiffer then began to capture those songs in recording sessions at their home studio and at AVAST! Studio in Seattle with producer/engineer Randall Dunn throughout 2013 and 2015.

Keep your eyes and ears open when the Spanish Acuarela Records releases albums from an American band, because these nice folks have made an excellent choice throughout the years, and yet again, they manage to surprise me with the release of this debut full length by this quintet with residence between Boston and New York. Apse is the name of the band, and honestly I had never heard of them before, but this record has been stuck on my iPod for quite some weeks now. Apse has already released some fairly unnoticed EP's before, and after checking them out I can understand that these records were left unnoticed, because they don't even reach the heels of the sheer quality of Spirit.
It is kind of hard to describe the music of Apse. Surely, their influences reach from post rock over post punk and gothic to ambient music, but the end result is something quite unique and sounding as if it was recorded with a rope around the neck. The album opens with a short soundscape, but when the real opener From The North starts, you're sucked into the dark world of Apse. From The North is a song that grows gently from a percussive slow core song with whispered vocals on top of each other into a sonic whirlwind of guitars and synths, and sounds as if Godspeed You Black Emperor has finally found a way out of their anaemia from the last years. The production is just perfect, and you can almost hear how the five musicians are torturing their instruments. Legions starts off with organs and soft lalala's, strange noises of footsteps in the background, threatening and reminding of the old glory of Dead Can Dance, until in the middle of the song again this tribal percussion comes thundering in.
It is without any doubt the drums, percussion and the bass that play the leading role on this album. In certain parts they even reminded me of The Cure's Pornography-era: tribal, hard, inventive but oh so dark. Listen how in the middle part of The Crowned only the drums keep playing, and you'll catch my drift. Vocals are eerie and are floating somewhere between the pathos of Sigur Rós and the coldness of Robert Smith, and the guitars know their place and don't try to fill all the space like for instance Explosions In The Sky does too much on their last, rather weak, effort. Blackwood Gates for instance is an ill-omened song driven by a kind of dubby bass and imaginative drumming, with distorted vocals and whispers on top, and after a sudden break one would expect the guitars to come into full force, but Apse manages to avoid the pitfall of so many clichés, and the song drifts away like the moon disappears behind clouds.
Cloudy, grey, and rainy weather is a perfect setting for listening to Spirit. It probably won't make you feel any better, but you'll have had a mind-blowing musical experience. Only the title song that concludes this album drifts a little too long on just noises and is less of a song, but don't let that critical remark stop you from having a listen, and I can only recommend using headphones to discover the full richness of this music. Too bad that Acuarela released this album on the brink of a new year - I'm sure Apse could have deserved its place into our own Semtex top of 2006 had we only discovered it a little earlier.

Angel Olsen is an American singer-songwriter and musician from St. Louis, Missouri who lives in Asheville, North Carolina. To date, Olsen has released five studio albums: Half Way Home, Burn Your Fire for No Witness, My Woman, All Mirrors and Whole New Mess.

2016 release. The Casket Girls are the virtually reclusive Savannah sisters, Phaedra and Elsa Greene, and Ryan Graveface (Graveface Records, Dreamend, etc). The groups bond has continuously strengthened over the course of their four releases, culminating in Night Machines, their third full length LP and strongest effort to date. They wrote, recorded and mixed the record in Savannah and Athens, GA with local hero Andy LeMaster. Drum duties were taken on by fellow Graveface Records artist T.W. Walsh. The Casket Girls have gained momentum and a substantial cult following due to the unflagging catchiness of their songwriting and the compelling development of their polarizing live show, the likes of which prompted one reviewer to write The Casket Girls are more than just a band; they're a living art piece. Their descent into the crowd at the end of the show for hugs that culminated in a shared embrace between the sisters was grand. In this final moment, Seeba's earlier declaration rang true. We were The Casket Girls, they were The Casket Girls.

Society would deem a prodigious girl can't be in a progressive rock band while also being in complete control of its creative vision, business plan and social messaging. Society is wrong. Clem, a 19 year old teen Queen dreamed up Cherry Glazerr in her LA bedroom alone and is perhaps more capable of figuring a music career out than anyone who attempts this treacherous life path. Back in 2014, much-loved Cali imprint Burger Records released their intoxicating debut Haxel Princess and Suicide Squeeze released the Had Ten Dollaz 7-inch. On Apocalipstick the band worked with "rock'n'roll wizard" Joe Chicarelli [White Stripes, The Shins, The Strokes] and Carlos de la Garza [Bleached, M83, Tegan and Sara]. With their help and the band's newfound self-discipline and motivation, Cherry Glazerr has evolved into a wildly complex, hugely guitar heavy, and unapologetically loud machine.

In contrast to Liz's previous work, her second release is a surprisingly hi-fi affair. Gone are the hissing ghosts and unsure echoes that once haunted and obscured her recordings. Her voice and guitar are the focus here, and she performs with more energy, determination, and flat out rawness than ever before. These eleven songs cover a lot of ground. Produced by Vic Chesnutt and engineered by Andy Baker (Macha, Japancakes, Glands).

Aretha Louise Franklin was an American singer, songwriter, actress, pianist, and civil rights activist. Franklin began her career as a child singing gospel at New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, where her father C. L. Franklin was a minister.

Daughtry is an American rock band formed and fronted by namesake Chris Daughtry, who was a finalist on the fifth season of American Idol. Their self-titled debut album was released in November 2006 and reached number one on the Billboard 200.

Kylesa ranges far and wide, using their utter disregard of musical boundaries to bring together avant-garde experimentalism with the pure fury of dirty, sludgy riffs and raw, impassioned male and female vocals. There is a relentless intensity to their music, from the ambient noise interludes that sometimes link songs to the doom-inspired punishment they are capabe of dishing out with dual drop tuned guitars.