Evening, folks!

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I had to step away for the most part to handle some life stuff for a while, but I still managed to listen to a pile of great new music whenever time allowed. Here’s a quick sampling of some of the releases I’ve been enjoying as of late.

Seawind of Battery – East Coast Cosmic Dreamscaper

Seawind of Battery’s hotly anticipated followup to 2022’s Clockwatching finds the NJ-based astral guitarist expanding the horizons of his sound to include brighter, more lively rhythms that you could dance to. This, coupled with the inclusion of new member Jarrod Annis on lap steel gives the album a sharper, excitable vibe, surpassing Mike Horn’s debut in terms of vividness and energy. A definite must-have of 2024, but click here to read my more extensive thoughts in the album’s liner notes.

Means of Production – s/t

Brooklyn’s Means of Production brought me countless hours of pure joy with their kaleidoscopic blend of psychedelic funk, crispy lo-fi jazz and soulful grooves. Formed initially as singer Ben Pirani’s backing band in 2006, this group crafts hazy, laid-back instrumentals with snappy rhythms and a deeply hallucinatory but smokey cool. This is an LP to put on when it’s late and you’re in dire need of cutting loose at home.

Wes Tirey – Wes Tirey Sings Selected Works of Billy the Kid 

Singer-songwriter Wes Tirey’s work has always been quite literary and full of grit, so basing music off of Michael Ondaatje’s 1970 collection of poems and prose about famed outlaw Billy the Kid seems like a very natural project for him to take on.

With dust-filled acoustic instrumentals and roughened ballads that ache with Tirey’s stark, ghostly vocals, this album is the perfect folk music interpretation of The Kid’s enduring myth and legends. With just a guitar and a gravely home-recorded atmosphere, Tirey makes you feel as though you’re thumbing through a sepia-toned, dirt-stained tome or standing under the sun in Old Fort Sumner Cemetery, running your hands across the carved etchings on The Kid’s very tombstone. Listen to this record when you’re in a remote place out in the country as the sun begins to set on a sweltering summer day.

Pat Keen – I Saw a Bug

One of the latest albums to grace the great Island House Recordings roster is Pat Keen’s wholly unique I Saw a Bug. Playing many of the instruments himself and sharing co-production duties, Keen has invented a new approach to the nebulous “cosmic American music” sound. Throughout the album, you’ll be treated to warmly warped honky-tonk bawlers, brassy fingerpicked fantasias and even some drum-machine fueled exotica. It’s a damn fun time whenever you put this record on, but the more you play it, the more layers it begins to reveal. A strong contender for one of IH’s top releases of the year.

On that note…

Ben Felton – A Lot

Ben Felton is one half of RCU faves, Tacoma Park, and on this dazzling solo album, you’ll be treated to kosmische tone poems with corrugated guitar cloud banks that hover menacingly over seas of synthesizer pulsations. Lo-fi drum machine patterns and foggy guitar solos make this a deeply atmospheric and sometimes even melancholic counterpoint to the sunny analog synth vibes of Prairiewolf.

This is a solidly essential record for fans of environmental music that is rich with texture and a well balance of earthy and cosmic ambience. There’s a whole universe going on in the layers of this album. It’s best to submerse yourself into these sounds and let them sweep you away.

Richard Tripps – Between The Morning

Ah this one has the vibe of a warm but breezy summer’s day spent in a hammock. Recorded directly to a 4-track, appropriately enough in a tent cabin by a river in Big Sur, Between The Morning features warmly lo-fi folk-pop nuggets that wouldn’t feel too out of place on a tape by Smog or Dear Nora. With occasional fried guitar solos and vocals compressed with some tight reverb, there’s a slight sense of a bleary-eyed psychedelia hiding just beneath the surface of this record.

Regardless of the style and the sonic stylings, Between the Morning is a must-grab album of 2024 largely due to Tripps’ laidback but catchy songwriting skills. The lazy strut of the flute-adorned title cut alone tells you immediately just how addictive this record can be. If this track doesn’t become the theme of your heat-dazed summer nights, then nothing will.

Chitinous Mandible – “Field of Vision” (and other singles)

I had the pleasure of finally getting to meet a long time favorite local artist, Chitinous Mandible (real name Tom Herman JR), at our last garden party. He had informed me that he had a batch of new tunes on the way, and my excitement couldn’t have been more palpable. Fast forward a month and a half later, and six singles have appeared on his Bandcamp page. My expectations are far beyond met, to say the least.

CM’s new tunes are handcrafted psychedelic pop gems with phased guitars, tasty hooks and hauntingly distorted vocals that echo like a distant flashback memory. His plethora of new material is proof enough that psychedelic New Jersey is thriving. Check out the video for “Field of Vision” below, and be sure to check out the rest of CM’s new singles here.

Amelia Courthouse – Broken Things

Out September 6th, Amelia Courthouse (Leah Toth) will be dropping her first album since 2019’s Ruby Glass. On this record, Toth builds up deeply lived in ambient tracks that are as dynamic as they are soothing. With a strong emphasis placed on texture, tone and melody, listening to this album is like the sonic translation of the act of reliving sensory memories.

With soft, pulsing bell-like notes, pillowy beds of backwards keyboards and Toth’s dog, Virgil, snoring quietly away in the background, tracks like “Vihangi” evoke the familiar and the comfortable in order to address the human side of real life struggles. In this song’s case, these sonic qualities pay homage to Vihangi Patel, an 11-year-old girl who tragically passed away with her family while traveling by foot across the Canada-US border in the extremes of a midwestern winter. It takes heartfelt music like this to sometimes feel the lives that are living behind the headlines. Click here to pre-order this album from Spinster ahead of its 9/6 release date.

Otherworlders – Hidden Energy​/​Positive Light

This is without a doubt one of the most slammin’ releases on Aural Canyon Records to date. With fuzzy psych-funk grooves, sick break-beats and thick hallucinatory atmospheres of collaged sounds, this is a record to crank up loud and get totally lost within.

Throughout the tape, you’re treated to reverb-soaked trumpets that weave sweetly around cosmic loops and ethereal synths, while completely manic drums propel you like an overpowered engine that’s just about ready to burst into flames. It’s basically impossible to feel anything but energized while listening to this album. This is a wild, fun listen.

ATOP – The Mystical Gentleman

ATOP’s latest album, also on Aural Canyon, is a splash into digitally astral pools that suspend you into the ether as you listen. Harkening back to the ambient techno of the ‘90s, as well as the more beat-centric and technologically minded of the classic kosmische groups, this tape can easily be a go-to for all synth lovers out there.

For a bright and hypnotic experience, give this album a try when you have access to some colored lighting and enough time to meditate or practice some yoga. It’s a record that chills you out but also provides a place of warmth to sink into when you need it most. All Ozric Tentacles and Tangerine Dream fans should snag this tape ASAP.

Adeline Hotel – Whodunnit

This just recently hit my inbox, but I fell in love with the tender title track immediately.

The Brooklyn-based Adeline Hotel, AKA Dan Knishkowy, crafted together a sweetly melodic ballad that pairs rustic acoustic guitar with soft piano and sun-kissed vocals that are as hushed as a shared secret. The piece as a whole feels as cozy and warm as a nap in the comfiest nook of your home, but there’s also a layer of melancholy that can be felt in the background. This mix of moods reminds this reviewer of the somber realization of the passing summer that creeps up each late August. So the timing of this track is absolutely perfect, and it makes you wish to live in the moment before it becomes just a memory.

Based on the strength of this one track alone, you know this is going to be a gorgeous record through and through. Click here to preorder yours ahead of its 9/27 release.

Powers/Rolin Duo – Clearing

Jen Powers and Matt Rolin go on a vast and intrepid journey on their latest record for Astral Editions.

Clearing finds the duo conjuring a sonic seance with their mesmerizing wall of hammered dulcimer and fingerpicked 12-string guitar. Infusing their acoustic instruments with a wash of celestial drones and crashing cymbals, Powers and Rolin have truly mastered the ability to create a maximalism styled soundscape with the barest of essentials. Scenes of nature, homespun comforts and interstellar expansiveness are all deeply embedded in the record’s two side-length suites. It feels as though the music is inviting you within the duo’s intimate world, making you wish you could stay there after the record’s end. You will forever be rewarded when you sit down with this album with patience and focus. 

Buck Curran – One Evening and Other Folk Songs

On One Evening and Other Folk Songs, Buck Curran continues to develop his own unique branch of psych folk that is steeped largely in the realities of the heart, the spirit of the wilderness as well as the jazz-folk adventurous nature of bands like Pentangle. With the aid of drummer Dave Barbarossa (Bow Wow Wow and Adam Ant), Jodi Pedrali and wife Adele Pappalardo, Curran dazzles and entrances like a more minimalist-leaning Espers.

On songs like “Red Bird,” and his unique take on the traditional “Black is The Colour,” Curran and company lean into a spectral and atmospheric vibe that gives each tune a timeless quality that feels both deeply intimate and also instantly relatable. Sounding at once vintage, current and still somehow ahead of its time (especially on the rollicking “Song for Francesco”), this is an album we all need to be discussing and listening to more. Get yours here today.

On that note, be sure to also check out Curran’s album of cinematic synth music on Eiderdown Records, The Long Distance.

TTTC – Foretold

Based out of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, TTTC (A.K.A Trang Trại Trái Cây, which translates to Fruit Farm) produces adventurous experimental music that often conjures up otherworldly moods and lived-in environments.

On Foretold, tttc invites us into his realm via hypnotic ambient tracks, calming field recordings and mutated noise explorations. With its manipulated homemade sounds, cricket-filled street recordings and groaning dronescapes, this album feels akin to the fever dream and faded memories of a long-populated piece of land. Equal parts relaxing, discordant and deeply personal, Foretold is a fascinating audio document of an artist’s little corner of the world.

-KH