Alright, let's get the glaringly obvious out of the way: this stunning work of art sounds straight out of the Flenser. It's clear there is a deep love and affinity for Have a Nice Life, Planning for Burial (who unsurprisingly follows The Exit Bags on instagram), and Drowse (the latter of which is a close friend of Mike James). Within this album I see a desire to create that is very likely aligned with why bands find community in The Flenser. I think fondly of Apistat Commander, who really ... read more

That Canon in D is working overtime, damn

Death grips but it goes even harder

The Glow pt. 1

First off: I cannot emphasize enough how viscerally emotional and theatric this album was, in a way very similar to my first listens of Daughters' You Won't Get What You Want, Swans and Nine Inch Nails. It’s abrasive, intensely poetic, queer, sensual, and demanding in a way that has you wishing you could listen to it for the first time all over again.

Initial reception of this album revolved around its similarity to Xiu Xiu and Daughters — and I don’t blame anyone for ... read more

Glitch Princess isn't just another album: it's an alternate world. Yeule dances sweetly with a created AI persona that is both "other" and herself, expressing what it's like to navigate the digital world without really knowing any kind of life before or beyond it. The beginning of the album, in tracks like the opener "My Name is Nat Cmiel" document the inseparability of life in the technological age, setting the stage for the albums later half, a surreal glitch pop ocean ... read more

mad lad

I'm just here for the loon calls sampled in ZIGOLO

The mountain goats but it’s emo

Guess the guy from suicidal tendencies’ institutionalized still hasn’t gotten that damn Pepsi

Foxtails have left their adolescent years of DIY for a crisply produced screamo record with heartstring-tugging violin, emotionally introspective post-hardcore about childhood abuse, and juxtapositions both soothing and arresting in their existentialist underpinnings.

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Foxtails kicked off a promising music career with their album “This is Not for You,” becoming an unexpected name in a ... read more

I can't think of many places where I haven't listened to Bonobo in the past 12 years...Black Sands on repeat during chill workouts at the climbing gym, The North Borders on meandering acid trips, Migration humming out the window of a car or a dimly lit bedroom. I've danced as wildly to Bambro Koyo Ganda around a campfire as I've cried to Break Apart. I've heard Bonobo at parties, in coffee shops, at the mall. His music even graces the corners of every chill Spotify playlist. It's helped me ... read more

This album, amazingly, feels like the woebegone, sleepy musings of someone who has endured too much for too long. It was a surprise, then, to realize it was created by someone merely 15 whose eyes are fresh to most of the world.

When I was 15, I was catalyzing the foundational doctrine of my own existence, the set of philosophies I would carry with me for the rest of my life. But I didn't know it at the time, and couldn't yet process that I was beginning to know myself in a significant way. ... read more

The vocalist's cat paws at a plush soccer ball in an album cover that inspires the dearest of emo fans to explore this album. You can smell the blurry suburban carpet and the melancholic nostalgia before you even play this record. You try to dust off the worn-looking cover before realizing your vinyl copy is brand spankin' new, lay upside down on the thrice-used couch you picked up from down the street, and press play. What fills the room is the contemplative twinkling of an introspective ... read more

Between this release and Parannoul's album Rough and Beautiful Place (under the project Mydreamfever), it seems as if the kickoff to 2022 is a delicate one. Tired by a wave of over-consumption, over-production, and over-stimulation, the first few releases of the year feel like a quelling response to the last year's chaos. In Antidawn, we see Burial abandon his groundbreaking electronic style in lieu of ambiance that gives in to worldly exhaustion rather than fighting it.

First receptions of ... read more

If Music for Airports is meant to quell the anxiety of public monotony, the Music for Bed is the attempt to lull the remaining anxiety to sleep.

“A” is the endless droning reverberation of a singing bowl that has no end. It circles in perpetual longing to loop back unto itself, like an ouroboros desperate to consume its own tail. It isn’t quite cyclical. It isn’t linear either. Melted into a multi-dimensional space it becomes a thing undefined by mathematics: time ... read more

In your childhood basement you find your old PlayStation 2, dusty and and cracked under the weight of abandoned gaming consoles. Inside is Kingdom Hearts, scratched to oblivion. It’s been 15 years since your last memories together, but you suppose you might as well give it a whirl. The cat tiptoes down the basement stairs and nuzzles up against you, batting at the old cords as you plug everything in.

Static from the old TV blasts across the room, and the cat’s hair stands on end. ... read more

Rough and Beautiful Place is obvious in its beauty, yet nestled within is also that roughness of a thing naturally chaotic — instead of aiming to quell the inherent chaos of the natural world, Parannoul uses it as a soundboard to harmonize with. The offbeat call of an unknown bird, the crickets not quite in sync with a bellowing cymbal, traditional chants they simply play along, play along, play along…we are invited to create patterns within seemingly unlike things, coaxed into ... read more

To make it into the top 10 of so many 2021 lists after 27 years and 13 albums later speaks volumes about Low's ability to innovate within the oceanic, transcendental world they've created. Right off the bat, Low was innovating with their 1994 debut album I Could Live in Hope, a record that established a new genre called "slowcore," bringing the nuances of depression and mundanity into a down-tempo rock aesthetic. Continuing through the 90s and 2000s, Low stylized their sound with each ... read more

Is this what the last moment before death feels like??