After leaving Soulwax (the band) dormant for well over a decade, it feels fitting that the Dewaele brothers resurrect their original guise with a subversive, one-take electronic blitz. FROM DEEWEE is a combative record, rigid with taut drums, hypnotic synths, and a deliciously portentous mood. “Conditions of a Shared Belief,” “Is It Always Binary,” and “My Tired Eyes” are highlights, but this is meticulously engineered to be enjoyed as one relentless thrill ride.

Washed Out is Ernest Greene, a young guy from Georgia (via South Carolina) who makes bedroom synthpop that sounds blurred and woozily evocative, like someone smeared Vaseline all over an early OMD demo tape, then stayed up all night trying to recreate what they heard.
There’s a sense of longing and distance in Greene’s somber, filtered vocals, but it’s what he does compositionally that makes Washed Out stand out. Backed by gently pulsing, Balearic-tinged disco, Greene’s voice takes on a new dimension. Reminiscent of groups like The Glass and the Chromatics, Washed Out is the music to end your night with, when the city is quiet and the walk home, long.

封面松树取自南宋刘松年《春山曛暮图》。

Toronto’s Nathan Micay first rose to prominence under the alias Bwana, where he released everything from of-the-moment post-dubstep like 2011’s “Baby, Let Me Finish” to anthemic progressive house tracks like 2014’s “Flute Dreams”, gradually leading to more ambitious, concept-driven releases like the Akira-inspired 2016 mini-album Capsule’s Pride. But it was with last year’s “First Casualty” that Micay’s work took on a new dimension. Tellingly released under his own name, “First Casualty” was a euphoric, melodic club record that became an underground anthem, sitting somewhere between progressive house, trance, and techno, but ultimately just sounded like – well, like Nathan Micay.

On respective edges of America — Oregon and Maine — Keith Kenniff records quiet music at night. “When things are calmer,” he says. “My mind is less distracted when I know that everything is dark outside.” For over a decade, such has been the mode — nocturnal, unrushed, using the same mini-cassette recorder, "a lovely little imperfect way to treat sounds" — for one of the country’s most understated composers. Kenniff has housed dozens of ambient releases under the name Helios since 2004, alongside post-classical output as Goldmund, shoegaze pop with his wife Hollie as Mint Julep, and commissions for film and television. It is a reliably transportive body of work that's earned Kenniff a cult following, and a genuine modesty that’s kept him on the fringes, right where he prefers, in the dark.
Kenniff mostly lets his music breathe free of explanation, open to interpretation. As listeners, we follow subtle suggestions — the fiery sky on the cover of 2012's Moiety, the countryside daydream of 2015's Yume — extracting meanings from imagery and inscriptions. Veriditas, the sixth Helios full-length, shares its name with twelfth-century philosopher Hildegard von Bingen's notion of "the greening power of the divine," the term derived from the union of two Latin words: green and truth. Bingen saw the abundance of the earth as vitality to be cultivated, interconnected with the body and spirit. Take the concept in concert with Veriditas' vistas of sound, gazing beyond the tree-lined wonder on its artwork, and we undoubtedly recognize the album's rooting. Kenniff elaborates, "While I’m not a very spiritual person as it relates to a religious belief, I do feel an overwhelming connection between the aesthetics I find pleasing in my experience of nature and my experience of writing music."
Veriditas introduces unusual shapes and landscapes to the Helios catalog. Whereas past songs have followed traditional structures — discernable bell curves with beginnings, arcs, and ends — the focus here is texture and harmony. "I wanted to explore emotionality within something more static." Synth-tones radiate and hum as vignettes, often crisp and cloudless, other times smeared to a queasy Boards of Canada-like unease. The latter burbles below the last moments of "Eventually" and looms over the opener "Seeming" like darkness inching across a forest. Tracks cease at will. "Seeming" fades just after a sliver of light cuts through the mossy pillars. "Latest Lost" mists for just one minute. "Row The Tide" for two, hovering like a helium balloon lost to the horizon. "Even Today" hangs above the snowcaps, suspended in an upper arboreal sequence, as shimmering surges of static trace the treetops below.
Moments on Veriditas pass quickly, but as a series of moments, they are fluid, almost regenerative. Disassembling the album by instruments is difficult. Unlike past Helios work, there is no percussion. The one straightforward use of guitar appears on the ambling "Upward Beside The Gale," strummed solemnly as if over end credits, watching the greenery lapse to grey in the twilight. In the second half of “Dreams,” crystalline piano chords converse with washes of orchestral notes and deep drone, advancing towards temporal clarity, a lookout point, that once presented evaporates.
In a way, Veriditas parallels the path of the Helios project to date: patient, immense, and wondrous without ostentation. Kenniff continues to find a soothing and centering quality in his craft. Aligned with Hildegard von Bingen’s philosophy, Kenniff looks towards sound, like many do to nature, for momentary vigor, for elemental and nourishing prolificacy. Here, in pursuit of viriditas, with precise textures and harmonies, he humbly extends that verdant expression outward, wide and pliable.

准确的说，除了肯定不是后摇外，这其实是一张电子乐专辑。跟摇滚乐无关，它只是代表摇滚音乐人对不擅长的领域初生牛犊般的尝试，这也是一张在不断的自我否定中完成的唱片，它不代表任何方向，只是对源于某个阶段好奇心的自我唤醒。
从听觉上，这张忽略了人声的唱片不符合痛仰听众旧有审美习 惯，尽管它面对的人群也并非小众。
如果你期待这张有唱或人声，那么我们不建议购买这张专辑，如果你的好奇心一定驱使这么去做，那么我们希望你可以坚持几个月，因为我们会在明年的四月一日开启线上免费模式，而节省下的钱，你可以用在更需要的地方。
另外我们会将网络平台实际收入的一半捐给关爱抑郁症项目，尽绵薄之力抛砖引玉。

Heavy ambient comfort blankets from Malibu; the new moniker for DJ Lostboi, whose string of self-released enigmas 2017-2019 found cult acclaim with the likes of Julianna Barwick among many others.
Bringing a gorgeous pop-ambient sound sensitivity and directness to the current groundswell of ambient music in the air right now, Malibu’s ‘One Life’ is set to touch susceptible souls with its supine, spine-playing qualities.
Strongly reminiscent of Celer and indeed even Julianna Barwick’s style of plainchant, Malibu doesn’t f#ck about when it comes to heart aching composition, stirring up the sweetest, forlorn feels between her windswept intro ‘Nana (Like A Star Made For Me)’, the wistful string figures of ‘Tilting On Windmills’, her Enya-esque mini-epic ‘Camargue’, and the cinematic sweep of ‘One Life.’

SOFT SMELL
夏日已逝，青春嬉靡。金色菠萝散发的果香，雨后空气中的泥土味，潮湿木头的自然清新。
Lin Feng 用合成器和Rhodes Piano混合出薄雾般的Jazz和声并与跳跃的BassLine结合，仿佛踏着阳光与浪花。
他把这些奇妙的气味吹到你的耳边，无论是动感的House，抑或安静的Beat，都充满着奇幻夏日味道。
同时Lin Feng包办整张专辑Bass，Guitar的演奏和封面设计制作，将自己对音乐和美的理解倾注于这张全新专辑中。
Emily Yao

#挂在山顶的花园，一场神秘的奇幻之旅

沉寂7年后，21世纪最具持久创作活力的纽约乐队 Gang Gang Dance 宣布回归。他们的全新专辑《Kazuashita》将于6月22日正式发行。
《Kazuashita》是乐队继2011年名作《Eye Contact》后的首次重聚，他们带来的 shoegaze 与电子氛围，依旧令人沉醉不已。拥有脱俗嗓音的 Lizzi Bougatsos 也是乐队背后的主脑，十多年来，她和伙伴 Brian DeGraw、Josh Diamond 一起，不断试图打破音乐与艺术的界线。如今，他们已从一支即兴组合，成为无论在 Coachella 音乐节还是惠特尼艺术双年展上，都能从容表演的乐队。
专辑在纽约的数个录音室与艺术空间录制，由 DeGraw 担任制作，并得到鼓手 Ryan Sawyer、制作人 Jorge Elbrecht 等的鼎力相助。