Music Downloads

Rarely has one week sounded so good. A quintet of releases of stunning sonic proportions! Here we have music to fit many moods from quiet introspection to percolating Argentinian pop, to brooding noir-colored chanson, electronic dreams, and dreamy tales. I don't have a favorite among these five wonderful releases unless you talk to me while I'm listening to one in which case it will be it.

Haley Fohr is Circuit des Yeux and Overdue is her new release which is a co-release from Ba Da Bing! Records and her own Lewis & Lynn Records (I would not recommend buying another version that's floating around titled Every Day Is a Sale). There's always mystery in Circuit des Yeux's music and while past releases have been more drowned in sounds, Overdue speaks out much more clearly. Heavy textured sounds, strings, over and under sometimes searing guitar with Haley Fohr's mostly mournful-sounding vocals, wails, and moans as centerpiece to a banquet of earthly delights driven, at times overdriven, into ecstatic states of song. Lovely.

Get your copy of Overdue here.

Lucrecia Dalt was responsible for one of my favorite releases last year, Commotus (see review) which I still spin often. Syzygy is more of a piece, more mysterious, dreamier, whisperier, but still ripe with unexpected sounds while remaining rooted in a song-driven language. Lucrecia Dalt knows how to spin an entrancing tale and Syzygy rewards repeated listening. Just like her last. Sounds good too.

You can pick up Syzygy in FLAC form from Boomkat.

If you don't know the music of Argentina's Juana Molina, you'll be happy to have found it. Her music has always brought to mind fairytale worlds inhabited by all kinds of strange jungle creatures and Wed 21, her first release in five years, is no exception. Positively bubbling over with exotic sounds and danceable rhythms while Molina's vocals pull everything together albeit ever so slightly strangely so. If I had to use one word to describe her sound, it would be de-lightful and the sound quality is also a sonic treat, all neat and clean.

Wed 21 is available from Boomkat.

Sarah Lipstate is Noveller and her music is mainly comprised of her own guitar playing looped, overdubbed, and echoed, now amid synthesizer and piano accents creating vast dreamy landscapes for you to get lost within. There are some moments on No Dreams, her latest, that are positively Vangelis-ian (in a very good way) and if you enjoy getting rapt up in music that lets you float, Noveller's got your dance card.

You can get No Dreams directly from Noveller's Bandcamp site in nearly any format you desire.

Is that jazz? Laurel Halo is another artist who completely captured my imagination with her Quarantine release from last year (see review). This go around with Chance of Rain, released on Hyperdub, Laurel does away with her vocals and in their stead offers up multi-layered beats and rhythms that move in her typical peculiar alien-sounding ways. Keyboards pump out some lovely sounds that at times sound downright jazzish in their meter and mood but when those beats kick in, there's no doubt we're in Hyperdub land. Chance of Rain is arresting, confounding, and funky.

Chance of Rain is available from a number of the usual places including directly from Hyperdub.