This double CD etches their drifts through scopes of textured electronic tones, progressive arrangements of lush melody and dynamic har monies. Antarctica blends the swooning syncopated pop of New Order and the deep hypnotics of Underworld with their indie heritage.

Akron, Ohio's If These Trees Could Talk will release their third full-length, The Bones of a Dying World, on June 3rd worldwide via Metal Blade Records. Featuring 9 instrumental tracks of the quintet's signature post-rock, The Bones of a Dying World can be pre-ordered in various formats at: metalblade.com/ifthesetreescouldtalk - where the first single, "Solstice", is also streaming.
Formed in 2005, If These Trees Could Talk has grown tremendously since their humble origins in drummer Zack Kelly's basement as an instrumental project in college. After self-releasing their If These Trees Could Talk EP (2006) and two full-lengths, Above the Earth, Below the Sky (2009) and Red Forest (2012), the group garnered buzz from the global music community, and consequently sold out a three-week European tour in 2012. Music from the band's catalog has also been heard in Sony PS3 titles, and on NBC, MTV, VH1, the NFL, in videos for Vans, and for projects on the Sundance Film Festival. Cumulatively, If These Trees Could Talk has sold over 20,000 copies for their efforts, with 3,000 on vinyl alone across all of their albums. Their upcoming third full-length, The Bones of a Dying World, promises to be another landmark achievement in the band's career. "We feel this album 'steps up the sound' in a way that could only come after 'Red Forest' and not before," Mike Socrates (guitar) comments. "The songs were constructed in a much more deliberate and cautious approach. A lot of time was spent on small parts and transitions in order to maximize the full effect of the song as a whole. In a way, we feel like this is the perfect continuation from 'Red Forest'."
Recorded over the past year at NE Meadow Studios in Akron, OH, The Bones of a Dying World was once again produced and engineered by the band's own Zack Kelly (drums). Mixing duties were handled by Zack Kelly and Freddie DeMarco while the final master was completed by Alan Douches at West West Side Music. For the album artwork, If These Trees Could Talk called upon long-time designer Charlie Wagers, who worked with the band on their past two releases. After four years of fine-tuning these audio and visual components, the quintet is now ready to unleash their Metal Blade Records debut this summer.

Delayer is the debut album from Chicago’s RLYR (pronounced “relayer”). The trio boasts a lineup composed of some of the most esteemed members of the city’s experimental rock community: Trevor Shelley de Brauw (also of Pelican, Chord), Steven Hess (also of Locrian, Pan American, Cleared, etc.), and Colin DeKuiper (also of Bloodiest, Lasers and Fast and Shit) . Existing at some hypnotic cross-section of guitar-forward indie, noise, punk, prog, and post-punk, the band represents some of the most energized music in each musicians’ storied careers. Spanning four songs in 42 minutes, Delayer is epic in scope, but pointedly direct in its approach, recalling the charged anthemics of mid 80s SST via the explosive catharsis of post-hardcore.

2012 release from the Metal upstarts. Never before has a band generated such a huge buzz on the strength of a single demo release. With only a three-song self-released cassette to their name, Little Rock, Arkansas's Pallbearer have risen through the ranks of the Doom Metal scene with unprecedented speed. The group's sound recalls classic traditional Heavy Metal, taking cues not only from legendary Doom bands like Candlemass, Trouble and Warning, but also from '70s Prog and Hard Rock.

Though she maintains some reservations about the implications of something as abstract as identity, Charlie Hilton, known up until now for her work in the band Blouse, has now forged a new one with her debut solo album, Palana. The album’s title itself is a nod to Hilton’s given Sanskrit name, an identity she shed completely after high school in favor of the androgynous “Charlie,” and Palana‘s overarching theme can be summed up by a quote from Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, a phrase Hilton cites as a personal mantra: “Man is not by any means of fixed and enduring form…he is much more an experiment and a transition….”
Enlisting Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Jacob Portrait as producer, Hilton freely experimented with diverse sounds and moods — some minimal and some cacophonous — out of the confines of a band structure. “Funny Anyway” is truly stark, featuring only string accompaniments, with Hilton assuming a role akin to a confessional French chanteuse, while “Let’s Go to a Party” is Hilton’s cheeky take on an icy dance track with thick, bouncing synths and a chorus that echoes “I’m only happy when I’m dancing.” Alternatively, tracks like “Pony” harken back to the psychedelic strengths of Blouse, saluting bands like Broadcast and United States of America, and then there’s “100 Million,” the sole track produced by Woods’ Jarvis Taveniere that rounds out the album in a soft, acoustic and light-hearted way with labelmate Mac DeMarco lending his talents on instrumentals and back-up vocals.
This wide range of moods on Palana recall several of Hilton’s key influences — the solemn beauty of Nico, the whimsical nature of Marc Bolan, and the naïveté of Jonathan Richman — but the album is undeniably the work of one artist, perhaps best summed up by the artist herself: “The music on this record is diverse, but so is the inside of a person. I feel like I’m many people.”

GRASS WIDOW-HANNAH LEW, RAVEN MAHON, and LILLIAN MARING-write their hypnotic, layered melodies collaboratively. Their haunting songs, rich in metaphor and couched in reference and allusion, are mined from the personal narratives of each member. Vocal duties, shared equally all around, complete the overall sensibility. Grass Widow has no front-person, and offers a musical experience not based on celebrity or spectacle. In line with these principles, they have maintained their objective of playing age- and gender-inclusive shows since their formation. Grass Widow formed in 2007; their first release was a self-titled LP on San Francisco's Make a Mess Records in 2009, followed by a 12-inch EP on Captured Tracks and their second full-length, Past Time, which came out in 2010 on Kill Rock Stars. The band has toured Europe and China, and recently started their own record label, HLR. The ready-steady build for Grass Widow is representative of their music and overall band aesthetic, and it reaches a new high point with the release of Internal Logic, their third album.

Alex Somers is an American visual artist and musician from Baltimore, Maryland, who attended Berklee College of Music and Listaháskóli Íslands. Somers runs a recording studio in downtown Reykjavík where he has produced, engineered, and mixed since 2010.