The American indie-pop band half•alive ( h•a to their friends) are not a band that you just simply listen to. You really must watch them as well. The video for their new EP (people still make them? Yay!) is a point in case. The songs are Billions, The Wolf and The Wonder. I was afraid that the sound on my device was malfunctioning to begin with, because the visuals of four office workers didn’t quite match up with the “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me” intro, but we segue elegantly into the…

Sonic Anonymous Be Good Tonight Sonic Anonymous is positioned as ‘weird, existential, late-night synth pop for the burnt-out generation’. Here on Be Good Tonight, we have an introspective piece dealing with grief and fatigue. Opening with a single extended chord, Be Good Tonight gradually surfaces, like something emerging from water, uncovering hushed falsetto vocals and a gritty electronic bass line tinged with acid. Cinematic synth washes combine with steely guitar sounds to create a…

Album of the Week, August 29, 2026 This week is another round of traditional qawwali music from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and it has a complicated release history. Originally there were two records, released separately in 1986 for WOMAD Records following Nusrat’s triumphal 1985 performance, Love Songs and Devotional Songs. These were rereleased on Real World following the 1992 liquidation of WOMAD as a standalone entity due to mounting debts.1 The records were subsequently combined on a CD under…

Hulder: VerbolgenOut 7th August on Season of Mist/20 Buck Spin Arranging the history of black metal into waves is a method as arbitrary as it is useful. The first wave being a retrospective concept imposed on a small group of early extreme metal artists who operated at the peripheries of the underground, only loosely related to one another. The second wave being the tipping point, the moment black metal became self aware, its musical traits codified, and where the thick layers of lore were laid…

Share a song that feels like it’s giving you permission to feel everything. I have a melancholy side. I’ve been through depression. It still sits in the background making me question everything. I now know that I don’t need permission to have feelings and emotions. I know that many people share these thoughts, I am not alone, I am not that unique. Occasionally I want to slip away from the world to a quiet place and just … be. No pressures, no thoughts, just a moment of existing. “The Other…

"No Parking On the Dance Floor" by Midnight Star Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. What song is your current obsession? I’ve really enjoyed this song over the years. I love saying “if you don’t get a move on that body, I’ll be forced to give you a ticket! So, get with it!” View Mandaris's Crucial Tracks profile Listen to my Apple Music playlist

This went out originally on Friday, August 28, to paid subscribers of my This Week in Sound email newsletter.

"Desperados Waiting for a Train" by Guy Clark Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. What's your favorite song about patience?- Desperados Waiting for a Train by Guy Clark I'll keep going back to the Texas singer-songwriter well forever when the subject is some aspect of the human condition. This is a tune about the patience of an old man waiting and watching as a boy grows up. View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile

Some days you wake up to news that a bunch of your favorite artists have released new music. I often share these types of releases on social media, but there were so many great ones today that I decided to recap some of my favorites here, along with music embeds when possible. Let’s go! Baths- 3 Negative Pop(?) Songs A short new EP by Baths, following up last year’s Guts, 3NP? is a return to the much more solo-electronic sound of his earlier albums. Erykah Badu & The Alchemist: “ Before the…

This double-disc promotional sampler appears to be the only one explicitly devoted to both ECM proper and its classical New Series imprint, making it one of the label’s most consummate yearly portraits. Its two halves suggest adjoining chambers within the same heart. Since the ECM disc was also issued individually as ECM Music & Words: Autumn 2012 for the Italian magazine Musica Jazz (see my review here), our attention turns to the New Series side. Johann Sebastian Bach provides the foundation…

Peak pop video? Probably not (some of the most expensive promos were made during the late '90s, the Hype Williams era - e.g. Busta and Janet's astounding" What's It Gonna Be") but this is getting up there - and has an added aura of decadence given that almost nobody saw it, I should imagine. I never saw it at the time, despite being an avid watcher of MTV and VH1, and also someone who interviewed Donald Fagen around this album, Kamakiriad. Michel Gondry must have recently done this little wonder

If the enemy is swinging… It’s because you are a threat. Swing back.

Tone Ranger Horse With No Name Tone Ranger is the musical project of Alex Simon, who resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Simon moved to the desert back in 2018, with an ambition to capture its stark beauty within his music. Here he channels that ambition into an ambitious cover of America’s classic slice of US-influenced folk, Horse With No Name. For the uninitiated, the group America actually hailed from the UK as Air Force kids who formed a band in London before moving to LA. Despite their…

Waiting for Pulp at Live in Wythenshawe Park tonight.

So here it is, as promised. My last mix in the foreseeable future. Join inn on a trip through the ages and various sound-spaces in gentle timbres and melodies of erratic beauty. Hypnagogia is the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep. I’ve attempted to establish a feeling of falling out of consciousness and into a dream state. Over and over again. Like fever dreams, but of the haunting, ethereal and enchanting kind. And kinda strange. But that goes without saying, doesn’t it? That was…

While they still haven’t moved into the “writing new music in the 21st century” phase of their career, Alison’s Halo have at least taken the intermediary step of recording and releasing new music written by someone else in the 21st century. Actually, check that. “Stuck”, which was written by Panchiko, whom they toured with last […] The post Alison’s Halo – “Stuck” appeared first on Space Echo.

It’s a couple days late, so I was about to fire off a quick post saying “sorry, no weekly ‘Boston-shows’ update this week, too busy, too unfocused”, then wondered if anyone has even noticed, and then figured, well, what the hell, let’s see if I can do this extra quickly. This is that attempt. My […]

Sorry this one is a little later. I completely lost track of the days. However, it’s now time to dive in to this week’s metal releases. Hails! Torturous Inception - death - USAMorgued - death - USAAngoixa - death - SpainAtomic Aggressor - death - ChileEpicardiectomy - death - CzechiaNekomeshi(222) - melodeath - JapanProjector - melodeath - ChileXenith - melodeath/thrash - UKStatic Abyss - death/doom - USAGorod - death/prog - FranceMiscreance - tech death/thrash - ItalyAmbulacrum - black/death -…

As a little addendum to yesterday's mention of Nick Cave, I feel remiss that I offered no examples of said songs that stopped me in my tracks. Cinnamon Horses.

The Kinks - BBC Sessions 1964-1972 [A Prof Stoned Comp]If your kink is Kinks rarities, well, this one is for you! Prof. Stoned recently unleashed a fairly massive, absolutely crucial overhaul of the band’s BBC sessions from 1964 through 1972. Most of these recordings have been available on various comps or piecemeal on boxed sets, but as usual, the Professor has dug up the best available sources, cleaned up shoddy recordings, and worked his usual magic. Thank you, Professor! And hey, he’s even…

What’s your favorite song about patience? I am not patient. I am more patient than I used to be for sure, but my default is not to wait, is to do the thing. Unless there is thinking involved, in which case I have a tendency to over think things. I’m also better at NOT doing that too. A lot of my patience has been found through meditation, and learning to be in the moment and, if that’s a struggle, finding a way to accept that things will come when they come. Tomorrow is always a new day. It all…

Hey people! Today I thought I would share with you a traditional tune that’s got a bit of a strange history to it. From the title of it, one could easily expect it to be Scottish – Galloway is, after all, a region of Scotland. But it’s actually Irish, and the “Galloway” is more than likely a corruption of Galway. Already the first collection of tunes that it appears in misspells the name as “Gallaway”. The lament later travelled to London and Scotland as well, and in London it got further…

A track exchange, like a painting exchange, involves two people prompting each other to pen their thoughts about a track that the other has chosen for them. A copy of this note is published on James’s website as well. James’s pick for me was ‘A satisfied mind’ from Bon Iver’s 2026 record VOLUMES: ONE which presents the song from a concert at the State Theatre in Portland, Maine, in the US. I first heard ‘Satisfied mind’ when Willie Nelson covered it in 2010 and I have loved the song for its…

If the enemy is swinging… It’s because you are a threat. Swing back.

Chinese American Bear “Dance Dance Dance (跳舞跳舞跳舞)” This song could have stayed in ESG/Liquid Liquid post-punk funk minimalism mode and I would’ve been happy. I’m a total mark for that sound and always will be easily won over by most attempts at it. But the switchover in this track to orchestrated disco is magical; like the song suddenly shifts from grainy black and white to full garish color. This cut is a stand alone single pulled from the sessions for Chinese American Bear’s Dim Sum & Then…

Little Annie Bandez began performing in New York, in the late 70s when she was still in her early teens. Taking to the stage at venues like Max’s Kansas City, both solo, and in the band Annie & The Asexuals. Her circle included artists such as Lydia Lunch and Alan Vega. In 1980, a chance meeting Steve Ignorant of anarchist collective Crass resulted in Annie relocating to the UK, joining the group and living communally at their legendary squat, Dial House. Through working with Crass, Annie met…

There are very few celebrities as beloved as Dolly Parton. To wit, even people who aren't fans of country music, such as myself, loved Dolly. But then Dolly was much more than a country singer. She was a movie star, who appeared in such movies as 9 to 5 (1980) and Steel Magnolias (1989). She was a comedian, with a razor sharp wit that was often self-effacing. But most of all, she was a humanitarian. Dolly would easily have been a billionaire, but she insisted on using her money to help people,…

Across selections gathered in this rare promotional release, ECM’s 2018 landscape holds together by an invisible underground current in which every melody becomes a thread whose destination remains mercifully uncertain. John Surman opens that map on Invisible Threads (ECM 2588). In “At First Sight,” his soprano enters the upper air, stitching daylight to the needle-eye of time. Thomas Strønen’s Lucus (ECM 2576) carries this paradox inward. “Time Is A Blind Guide” separates filaments of…

“That boy needs therapy!” The post Project Since I Left You: a reimagining of The Avalanches’ classic debut album appeared first on Sampleface.

Hey people! Today I thought I’d share with you a very interesting piece, from a project which I’ve become familiar with quite recently. In January 2020, Welsh harpist Rhodri Davies, who works in the field of free improvisation/reductionism, released “Telyn Rawn”, an album of improvisations played on an instrument of the same name – a mediaeval Welsh harp strung with plaited horsehair, as opposed to the now more normie gut or wire. The earliest known reference to the horsehair harp appears in…