mmpsuf • retina

Last year the rather obscure mmpsuf gave us the wonderful Expeditors, seemingly arriving out of nowhere with what was one of the year's best releases. With little information available and no other releases in their catalog, here we find ourselves in February with another new release, Retina. The new material is much more moody and calm, and nothing short of beautiful. Check out the videos below, and visit the website to download their new album for free.

http://www.mmpsuf.lt/

mmpsuf (Eglė Sirvydytė): The Rooms from mmpsuf on Vimeo.

mmpsuf: The Sailors. Indie Kirtimuose from mmpsuf on Vimeo.

tropics • nautical clamour

After last year's excellent Parodia Flare, a collection of "unreleased material, old and new" is quite a nice surprise. B-sides? Sounds pretty damn good to me.

grimes • visions

Grimes, one Claire Boucher, has been consistently getting better as time passes. Visions, with its array of pop, dance and electronics, including Boucher's ethereal yet somehow energetic vocals, is a fun listening experience that showcases Boucher's ability to combine elements of many styles yet also be creative. The song "Circumambient" is posted below, tell me what you think.

lindstrøm • six cups of rebel

The year is off to a slow start for me, though this is often the case with music. Plenty of exciting releases on the horizon, but only a few trickling out this early. I figure some of you might enjoy the new Lindstrøm if you need something upbeat and happy to help you power through the rest of winter.



From Amazon:

Five. four. three. two. one.With the latest album from dance producer Hans-Peter Lindstrom, Norway's latest entry in the space race has been launched out of the wooded outskirts of Oslo. Six Cups Of Rebel, Lindstrom's fourth solo album, is a super-sized cosmic disco rocket that burns up a galaxy of eclectic influences in its wake, from Bach to Deep Purple, from Prog rock and arpeggiator disco to Acid House, while sounding sleek and utterly contemporary. He may worship at the temple of godlike European DJs from the 80s like Daniele Baldelli and Beppe Loda, but the relentless, occasionally monumental scale of Six Cups Of Rebel has the power to move mountains all by itself. From the opening "No Release" - a five-minute coitus interruptus of cascading cathedral organ - to the pumping Detroit pistons of "Call Me Anytime" and the wah-wah stabs and fizzing 808 basslines of the title track, Six Cups Of Rebel acts like a star map of Lindstrom's own voyage to the outer limits of electronic music. When he holds back, as on the ten-minute "Hina", it's only to let rip with added propulsion, like a satellite using a planet's orbit to push it to the next level.

marcus fjellström

Whilst searching for songs to post from his new album Library Music 1 (and failing, miserably) I came across this gem, a audio-visual piece that Fjellström did. It's a rather interesting concept, info on which you can find below the video.

Commissioned for the Unsound Festival 2010, Lichtspiel Mutation 1 is the first part of a planned series of audiovisual music drama pieces, closely resembling the silent film performances of cinema's infancy.

The underlying idea behind the Lichtspiel Mutation series is to use old films in the 'public domain' as raw material, to be de- and reconstructed into new pieces of experimental music drama. The original film constitutes the seed of its own rebirth; themes, arch and narrative from the film are kept intact, as well as actual moving image material, but 'remixed' into a completely new form; a poetic visual/musical work that conceptually shares similarities with opera and/or ballet, but becomes something completely different altogether.

This first work in the series is based on Hugo Fregonese's 1953 film "Man in the Attic", a Jack the Ripper narrative. Lichtspiel Mutation 1 opened the Unsound Festival in Kraków, Poland in october 2010, featuring an expanded 45-piece Sinfonietta Cracovia and a guest appearance by fellow Miasmah artist Elegi (Tommy Jansen) on live electronics.

This version is based on a recording of the rehearsal session with the Sinfonietta Cracovia (conducted by Daníel Bjarnason), and is edited together with an electronic music track that slightly differs from the one used at the 2010 premiere in Kraków (the most significant difference being the omission of Elegi's live electronics).

re-cap-ish

Finally 2012 is here, the year in which the world will be reduced to ash and civilization as we know it will cease to exist. It better be a good year for music then, right? Seeing as we're only four days into the new year I haven't listened to many 2012 releases, thus I would like to take the time to go back and highlight some 2011 artists/releases you may have missed.

Has-Lo - In Case I Don't Make It

I mentioned Has-Lo in my earlier 2011 hip hop post but I still feel he is being slept on. I've heard his music referred to as 'rainy day rap,' which I suppose is a fancy way of saying that Has-Lo makes chill, slightly melancholy hip hop. Here are a couple tracks from the album.





While I'm on hip hop, I should mention that if you haven't been paying attention to the Green Ova Undergrounds collective this past year you've been missing out. Aside from Main Attrakionz laying down 808's & Dark Grapes II we've got the Blackberry Kush EP, Chandalier, Squadda B's I Smoke Because I Don't Care About Death, and more. Here is "Swaggin' Hard" from the Chandalier EP, followed by "On Deck(Remix)" from the Blackberry EP.





My apologies for the huge contrast in material for this post but I haven't taken any time to mention Esoteric (the UK psych-doom act, to be clear). Last year they released the soul devouring The Paragon of Dissonance which is quite the addition to their discog. It's more of what you might expect from these guys but the quality and craftsmanship is unflinching. There is no doom band on the same level as Esoteric. I promise. Slow, monolithic walls of psychedelic, noisy doom.



Kreng is an artist I've been watching closely for a few years now. Although he has mostly done difficult to find music for many theater and dance productions, in 2009 he released L’Autopsie Phénoménale De Dieu and now in 2011, Grimoire. Excellent darker ambient that contains modern classical elements, maybe even a bit of free-jazz.



Next post I will continue to expand on music similar to Kreng, highlighting other great ambient/experimental/modern classical releases from the past year. Stay tuned!