A two-piece collaboration between Wes Kaplan and Jared Arnold, The Craters bring lo-fi sensibility to everything they touch – a Midas gift in reverse, abstracting loose change from a pure source of gold. They come hewn from the Amazing Wow label, a free download project that “rejects the concept of music piracy and the antiquated notion that every download is a lost sale”. (Note this recent report which finds that “pirates” are “10 times more likely to buy music”.)

The band’s most recent release is billed as a double EP, but with such a disparate range of sounds employed, it could well be a compilation release from a bunch of bands that we only think we know. ‘Kissing/Samba Party’ is a collection of tracks that fold back with thoughts of someone taking a pair of scissors to our precious collection of Animal Collective, Anticon, Fleet Foxes and Ghostly International sleeves, and then using cheap, no-brand tape to bluntly force them together again. Of course, the end result is nothing like the original – it just keeps falling apart and, in the mess of junk on the floor, we might just find something altogether more interesting.

Download the full release at amazingwow.org.

The Craters – Samba Party | mp3

The Craters – Like You Used To Know | mp3

img | carlos cabral

Next month, Tortoise drop their sixth album ‘Beacons Of Ancestorship’. 2004’s ‘It’s All Around You’ was a recurring feature on my playlist for that year, the sound of Tortoise amalgamating all that had gone before into one cohesive session. In opening the promo mail from Thrill Jockey today, it was with some trepidation – they couldn’t have been more ‘Tortoise-like’ on their last release, so where to from there? I certainly wasn’t prepared for the answer.

The opener ‘High Class Slim Came Floatin’ In’ will knock you utterly askew (download below). Whilst the first few bars rolled into a familiar, jilted percussive rhythm, within moments we’re nodding to a clutch of large, fat keyboard stabs that clearly echo back to early 80s hip hop and electro. So much so, I was expecting an old-school MC to rock up on vocoder at any given moment. As you’re sucking on that particular surprise, it soon melts into a pool of alt.physchedlia, then draws itself to a premature quiet climax, before staggering on a final pile of riffs that stand toe to toe with Boredoms.

‘Prepare Your Coffin’ (also available for download below) daringly continues the side order of funk with some squealing 70s keyboards accompanying the main Tortoise thrill. Fans of cerebral introspection might shudder at the thought, but there’s a real joy that exudes from the pores on this track – a joy that’s carried right across the release. ‘Northern Something’ drives the group along with a bass-heavy acid squelch, ‘Gigantes’ hides an IDM 4-4 underneath its clipped, minimal guitar work, whereas ‘Yinxianghechengqi’ is as close to black metal as any of their contemporaries might dare to venture.

Straight off the bat, ‘Beacons Of Ancestorship’ is one of the most enjoyable Tortoise releases to date. There’s something deeply thrilling about listening to a group of accomplished musicians daring to have fun, to opt for the playful approach, whilst still driving home their incessant quest for innovation. Just when it seemed that their peers were clipping at their heels, Tortoise wrong-foot the pack by running right off the track – indeed, running right out of the stadium and into a freestyle, cross-country marathon of their own design.

Tortoise – High Class Slim Came Floatin’ In | mp3

Tortoise – Prepare Your Coffin | mp3

img | riotjane

I’ve been listening to the new I.U.D. album this week, led in by the hand of Lizzi Bougatsos of Gang Gang Dance. On ‘The Proper Sex’ she teams with Growing’s Sadie Laska for a six tracker that scored a mighty 3.5 over at Pitchfork. Whilst I agree that it’s undoubtedly a difficult album to love, the cacophonous junkyard of sounds is also bloody hard to ignore. Although, the reviewer notes: “it doesn’t share a lot of common ground with either Gang Gang Dance or Growing… Just because I own leather boots does not mean I want a hamburger. But if I give the hamburger a try and don’t like it, my waiter will remind me that I ordered a hamburger not leather boots. Admittedly, that’s not the cow’s fault”. Quite. Those loveable Pitchfork lads in their odd little ivory tower, bless ‘em.

Nonetheless, I.U.D. led me to Gang Gang’s label mates, Growing, and to the album ‘All The Way’. Following a back catalogue peppered by nearly two dozen releases – most self-released, many on cassette – this is a clear and timely example of experimental music as its most considered. Pulse and rhythm is key, run through hands-on effects pedals and Ebow boxes rather than laptops, and there’s a central aesthetic current that’s carried through each of the half dozen tracks. There’s not a great deal of variety here, but searching for change would be missing the point. It’s an album continuously built on layers and loops, flowing from ambience and drone on ‘Wrong Wide’ to thudding Fuck Buttons-esque reversed loops on ‘Rave Pie Only’.

Over at The Social Registry label site, it’s worth spending some of your meandering web hours getting to know stable buddies such as Psychic Ills and Sian Alice Group. Hit the ‘Free Music’ page for The Recap & Leaked Tapes, offering two compilations of album cuts and rarities.

Growing – Green Flag | m4a

img | rudenoon

The fact that 99.99% of the world’s population does not live in Brooklyn cuts both ways. Fortunately, we manage to avoid Dan Humphrey mumbling faux-etry on street corners whilst gazing longingly at the Upper East Side, but sadly we miss things like These Are Powers.

Their new album ‘All Aboard Future’ (released on Dead Oceans) transcends any genre identification that I can call to mind. If bags of bones and flesh marked Liars, Gang Gang Dance, Comanechi, Black Dice, Throbbing Gristle and PiL were thrown on the operating table and grafted together using some blunt electronics, the resultant Frankenstein would soon be found in the corner jamming rhythms for the next These Are Powers record. The band call it “ghost punk”, I call it an addictive, tribal goo. Whatever powers they actually claim to have, I swear that some primordial beast is at work amidst this artful mess.

In addition to these tracks ripped from the belly of the album, the trio – which features ex-Liars bassist Pat Noecker – have also curated a podcast at Urb, featuring Eliot Lipp, Salem, Mahjongg, Arp, Telepathe and other kindred spirits.

These Are Powers – Life Of Birds | mp3

Bonus: These Are Powers – Adam’s Turtle | mp3

These Are Powers – Life of Birds | Video:

These Are Powers – Life of Birds from Jon Dobrowolski on Vimeo.

img | mercuryvapour

While scratching around the interweb, seeking out anything new from Egypt-via-NYC producer Miss Mutamassik, I was led by the ear to Run Riot Records – home of Mutamassik’s new ‘Commo’ EP. If you’re like me (in which case, may your God help you), there’s nothing we cherish more than not only finding a deep repository of new music, but discovering that it is all of an absolute, five star variety. I feel it now something of a crime that artists such as YSLE, Kitimat, Landless Farm and Gouseion had passed me by entirely over the last 12 months.

And rather than have to choose one of these stunningly handsome new kids on the block, I’ve opted to share the whole tribe with you – ranging from the dragging, wonky electro of Gouseion’s ‘Caps13′ to Artemis Jackson’s booty punk rock, and from Mutamassik’s (wo)manhandling of Middle Eastern paradigms to YSLE’s bleep’n'crunch gambol into the local ‘Radish Patch’. Appetite whet, I’ll race you to the Run Riot candy store to spend the rest of our pocket money.

Gouseion – Caps13 | mp3

Artemis Jackson – Asps and Adders | mp3

Mutamassik – 5×8 Cell | mp3

YSLE – Radish Patch | mp3

img | marianone

As one third of Argriculture Records notional ’supergroup’ WeTM, Rich Panciera joined DJ Olive and Once 11 in not only crafting three fine albums in their own right, but also acting as top shelf suppliers of premium ‘illbient’. However, it was in his own one-man disguise, Lloop, that Panciera dropped the sampler-friendly ‘Bulbb’s’ in 1994, and thus chiselled a small hole for himself in the Story of Contemporary Music. The quasi-mixtape excursion was not only a fractured tale of NYC (with field recordings ripped from city streets), but to this day remains a renowned slice of the nascent illbient sound.

It’s taken him fifteen years to record the follow-up Lloops release, and thankfully there’s no notion of any retread here. As the story opens on ‘60 Hertz’, it’s clear that Panciera has embraced the bassline – not strictly forgoing the sense of infinite space on ‘Bulbbs’, rather tethering that echo chamber to both dubstep and ragga rhythms and to organic instrumentation in both fight and flight modes. As a preview, ‘Lei-Tzu’ (below) offers a mesmerising two-step journey into Middle-Eastern territory, exhibiting a nod to Filastine as a sonic brother in arms.

‘60 Hertz’ is out now on The Agriculture, available digitally via Boomkat – check The Agriculture blog at postambient.blogspot.com

Lloop – Lei-Tzu | mp3

img | Spookygonk

And thus a new Prefuse album was born. From the mind of the prolific Guillermo Scott Herren comes another superior exercise in beat physics, once again pushing himself out of the cocoon of the last album sessions, gorging and filtering all that’s new and blending that into his own individual timeline. It’s for tracks like this that the Oxford English Dictionary will soon come to include ‘prefusian’ in their mighty tome.

In this episode, Herren weaves an unrecognisable and somewhat wonky vocal into a multi-layered slice of midtempo sunshine – at just over 2.5 minutes, it’s the perfect soundtack for nipping quickly out to the shops to grab some suncream and a six-pack. Not so much a road trip, as a swift excursion.

The full-length record, the 29-track ‘Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian’, lands planetside on April 14 via Warp, flaunting track titles such as ‘Periodic Measurements of Infrequent Frowns’, ‘Gaslamp Killer Feedback Text’ and ‘Whipcream Eyepatch’. In the words of the great Stan Lee, ’nuff said.

Prefuse 73 – Preparation’s Kids Choir | mp3

img | libraryman

Let’s do ‘pop’ for five minutes: albeit right-angled, Liars remixed pop – no Gaga here. LA quintet Fol Chen draft Liars drummer Julian Gross for a reversioned take on their new cut, ‘Cable TV’.

For all the promise Liars might bring, it’s a restrained beast (oddly close to the original as if the remix is merely an itchy-fingered refix); sounding all the while like Gross is trying to boot a robot Geisha into life, while an indie-chip kid fumbles with the strings from behind.

Imbibe the original and nine other slices on the new Nabokov-referencing album ‘Part 1: John Shade, Your Fortune’s Made’ on Asthmatic Kitty.

Fol Chen – Cable TV (Liars Remix) | mp3

Bonus: Fol Chen – No Wedding Cake (Remix by Matthew David) | mp3

img | Adam “Slice” Kuban

Let’s talk about the name first: Lemonade sounds as if they are a pre-teen, happy-clappy, singalong, soda-popping bunch of adrenalised muppets. It is not the wisest choice of names for what is actually a rather interesting band – it’s the sort of name that actually encourages people to look away, to say to themselves “I’m not the sort of person who listens to bands called Lemonade”. This would be a great shame, for there is actually much to enjoy from this San Francisco trio.

Coming on like a ramshackle, juiced-up younger cousin to Hot Chip, Lemonade map out a path that leads the 1s and 0s into a drunken tussle with a cupboard full of percussive paraphenalia. Dare I say it might be something akin to El Guincho fronting 90s one hit wonders EMF? Unbelievable, yes.

If all that terrifies you, blow into a paper bag for this download. This (somewhat far removed) echo drenched remix comes from fellow SF producer, Bookworms, who also recently threw his talents over a remix of Mi Ami’s ‘African Rhythms’. The boy’s certainly keeping good company.

Lemonade – Sunchips (Bookworms Remix) | download page

info | Lemonade MySpace

img | Pink Neko

A few weeks back, I hit All Tommorrow’s Parties in Sydney and caught Harmonia, featuring some of the legendary players in 1970s krautrock and electronica – Neu’s Michael Rother, Dieter Mobius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius. They appeared on a sun-drenched harbourside stage in the middle of the afternoon, which – depending on your point of view – was either the best or the worst place to see them. Nonetheless, it ticked off another in the ongoing list “Artists That I Must See Before They Or I Die”.

This brings us circuitously to Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp, trading as Mountains – an act which feed directly from Harmonia’s spacial continuum. Harmonia is actually a perfect departure point, particularly the influence of Michael Rother’s guitar work, as we check our passports at the start of Mountain’s latest album release ‘Choral’. But such a direct reference doesn’t detract from the precise, sculpted expertise that Mountains exhibit, as they layer exquisite electronic excursions with reverb guitar fuzz, sun-kissed strings and a cherry-pick of acoustic instrumentation. The net result is an expansive savanna that stretches out in front of us, peppered with references to specific trajectories, yet stacked with seemingly infinite possibilities. Six tracks build together to form the album, which is available from February 17th via Thrill Jockey.

Mountains have curated their own label, Apestaartje, over the last ten years – featuring many examples of similar experimentation, including earlier Mountains releases. Despite experiencing some neglect in recent times, their web site contains a full release catalog and accompanying audio streams.

Mountains – Choral | mp3

img | josef stuefer