Ghostly International HHV Records 86 Items

Limited to 500 copies, only at HHV! Only 1 per customer!

For the first time ever since the digital-only release in 2011, the first "Minecraft" soundtrack is now released in physical form. The vinyl version contains twelve tracks! "Minecraft - Volume Alpha" is the work of German composer and musician Daniel Rosenfeld. Under his stage name C418, Rosenfeld created the sweeping soundtrack and vibrant sound design that brought the voxel-based universe of "Minecraft" to life. Fans and critics alike were blown away by his beatless, balanced electro pieces across the board. Popular gaming site Kotaku listed the soundtrack among its "Best Game Music" of 2011, calling the music "impressively soothing," while The Guardian compared Rosenfeld's fragile pieces of piano and minimalist ambient to legendary artists Erik Satie and Brian ENO. In an interview, Polygon distilled "Volume Alpha" down to its essence: "The soundtrack is not tied to the retro aesthetic of Minecraft graphics. The soundtrack overrides them. The album is an attempt to translate the combined game/music experience into something heavenly."

For the first time ever since the digital-only release in 2011, the first "Minecraft" soundtrack is now released in physical form. The vinyl version contains twelve tracks! "Minecraft - Volume Alpha" is the work of German composer and musician Daniel Rosenfeld. Under his stage name C418, Rosenfeld created the sweeping soundtrack and vibrant sound design that brought the voxel-based universe of "Minecraft" to life. Fans and critics alike were blown away by his beatless, balanced electro pieces across the board. Popular gaming site Kotaku listed the soundtrack among its "Best Game Music" of 2011, calling the music "impressively soothing," while The Guardian compared Rosenfeld's fragile pieces of piano and minimalist ambient to legendary artists Erik Satie and Brian ENO. In an interview, Polygon distilled "Volume Alpha" down to its essence: "The soundtrack is not tied to the retro aesthetic of Minecraft graphics. The soundtrack overrides them. The album is an attempt to translate the combined game/music experience into something heavenly."

As C418, composer and producer Daniel Rosenfeld designs sounds to resonate in both physical and pixelated realms. Best known for his original soundtracks to Minecraft, the single best-selling video game of all time, he's developed a discography of instrumental music over the last decade that traverses electronic pop patterns, neo-classical dreamscapes, and sparse ambient motifs. The latter element has broken from the "8-bit" pigeonholing of game music and earned him accolades that reference artists like Erik Satie (The Guardian) and Brian Eno (vice). In 2015, after quietly self-releasing Minecraft Volume Alpha and Minecraft Volume Beta, Rosenfeld partnered with Ghostly International to reissue Minecraft Volume Alpha on vinyl and CD. The release garnered attention from proper music critics and the gaming community alike, becoming one of the most sought after records in the Ghostly catalog. Now, following several restocks of Alpha to fervent fan response, it is time for the soundtrack's second installment to shine. For the legion of listeners and players to, at long last, have Minecraft Volume Beta in tangible formats. Originally self-released in 2013, Minecraft Volume Beta was C418's longest batch of music to date at nearly 140 minutes. The collection features tracks that were "silently" added to Minecraft during its music updates and a few that never officially entered the game. The run time is now adapted to fit the double LP format, while digital downloads include the full set Rosenfeld's unmistakable abilities are on display; he creates a sweeping variety of musical ideas that mirror the limitless universe of Minecraft. Ghostly International is thrilled to give this unique collaboration its due treatment and hopes to see the creative inspiration which drives Minecraft and Rosenfeld continue to disperse by virtue of this unexpectedly universal music.

Die limitierte Auflage kommt als "rauchig schwarzes" Vinyl mit Download-Karte, die digitale Bonustracks enthält. Nach Ausflügen in Deep House, Acid und Techno, die ihn laut Resident Advisor zu "einem der fesselndsten Künstler Berlins" gemacht hatten, brachte Lorenz Brunner 2013 sein Projekt Recondite mit dem Album „Hinterland“ bei Ghostly International unter.

Der Produzent schaute auf die Heimat seiner Kindheit, Niederbayern, und nutzte Field Recordings, um die Musik mit den Emotionen der Jahreszeiten in der Region zu verbinden. „Hinterland“ präsentierte eine besondere Atmosphäre - eisige, unheimliche, melancholische Musik, die intime Melodien mit knackigen Perkussion-Sounds kreuzte -, die zum Markenzeichen von Recondite werden sollte. "Das ist das Album, das irgendwann aus Recondite herauskommen musste", sagte er damals. "Es ist Recondite." Ein Jahrzehnt später ist der Sound immer noch ganz und gar sein eigener.

10 year anniversary edition on orange & red marble vinyl. While his formative years were spent listening to everything from Yes to Photek, Scott Hansen didn't get his hands on an actual guitar or drum machine until he left his native Sacramento for San Francisco in 1995. "Encountering this whole new world at 20 years old was a profound experience," says Hansen, better known by his musical pseudonym Tycho and as the graphic artist Iso50. "At the time, I was just learning the processes of design and music; both felt very similar, and have flowed back and forth for me ever since."As seamless as his two creative outlets have been, nearly a decade passed before the release of Hansen's first proper Tycho LP, Sunrise Projector (later expanded and reissued under the title Past Is Prologue). And while three striking singles have emerged since then, the sum of all those sepia-toned parts is nowhere near the double-exposed soundscapes of Dive. The product of a prolonged break from IS050's design work and blog, it pays tribute to Tycho's prismatic past (the dense, guitar-guided turning points of "Daydream" and "Adrift") but spends most of its time pointing to the project's not-so-distant future.That can mean any number of things, really, from the halcyon hooks and hopeful horizons of "A Walk" to the expansive, wildly expressive tone poetry of the title track, an eight-minute epic that unfolds like a compressed concept album. Or at the very least, a restless vision of prog-rock - one that's been coated in neon colors and filtered through a thick piece of blotter paper. And then there's "Elegy," a spare curtain closer that pairs a vulnerable crescendo with a fitting bridge to future works.And with that, Dive establishes its position as the most diverse musical statement of Hansen's multi-medium career; the point where his skills as a performer finally catch up with his vaporized vision of a world that doesn't belong to any particular time or place."Nostalgia is a common thread in my work," says Hansen, "but this album wasn't driven by that idea. I see these songs as artifacts from a future which might have more in common with our past than our present."

Since their debut as Brijean, the project ofpercussionist/singer-songwriter Brijean Murphy(the percussive heartbeat for live bands like Mitski,Poolside, and Toro y Moi) andmulti-instrumentalist/producer Doug Stuart hasmoved with ingenuity, fusing psych-popabstraction with dance floor sensibilities. Throughthe body and mind, rhythm and lyricism, theymake sense of the worlds around and within; 2021'sFeelings celebrated self-reflection; 2022's Angeloprocessed loss, coinciding with the duo's firstheadlining tour, which doubled down on thematerial's desire to move. Now, across the playfulexpanse of Macro, arriving in 2024 on GhostlyInternational, Brijean engages different sides ofthemselves, the paradox of being alive. They'veleveled up to meet the complexities and harmoniesof the human experience with their most dynamicsongwriting yet. Colorful, collaborative,sophisticated, and deeply fun, the album animatesa macrocosm with characters, moods, and points ofview rooted in the notion that no feeling is final andthe only way out is through.

Mary Lattimore's music functions as a kind of emotional synesthesia. Rather than seeing colors when she hears notes, Lattimore feels things: sadness, hope, longing, memory. She funnels all of that into stirring songs composed on her harp. "I feel like a lot of my music is me channeling feelings or memories," she says. "I just do whatever I want, and try to paint a picture of a memory."The memory that provides the basis for At the Dam is particularly striking. Lattimore received a prestigious fellowship from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage - a rare honor given out to just 12 people every year - and she used the funds to take a road trip across America with a friend, writing and recording songs at each stop along the way. Armed with little more than her harp and her laptop, Lattimore drew inspiration from each location, letting the environments in which she recorded seep into her work. The result is music that is stirring, delicate and beautiful, Lattimore's harp at times bright and skipping, other times distant and hazy, swathed in gauzy delay. The net effect feels like what it is, recreations of moments from the past, tender, soft and warm.

Memories - places, vacancies, allusions - are fundamental characters in Mary Lattimore's evocative craft. The Los Angeles-based harpist recorded her breakout 2016 album, At The Dam, during stops along a road trip across America, letting the serene landscapes of Joshua Tree and Marfa, Texas color her compositions. In 2018, from a restorative station - a redwood barn, nestled in the hills above San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge - emanates Hundreds of Days, her second full-length LP with Ghostly International. The record sojourns between silences and speech, between microcosmic daily scenes and macrocosmic universal understandings, between being alien in promising new places and feeling torn from old native havens. It's an expansive new chapter in Lattimore's story, and an expression of mystified gratitude. A study in how ordinary components helix together to create an extraordinary world.

For nearly a decade, Tycho has been known as the musical alias of Scott Hansen, but with the release of Awake - his second LP for Ghostly International - the solo project has evolved into a three-piece band. Relating closer to post-rock than ambient soundscapes, the record is situated in the present, sounding more like Hansen than drawing from his in?uences. "This is, in many ways, the first true Tycho record." Following 2011's "Dive" LP, the San Francisco-based designer toured extensively, and with a full band on stage, his sound coalesced into a percussive, organic whole. Zac Brown (guitars, bass) rejoined Scott on the road for this tour, but it was the particular addition of Rory O'Connor's live drumming that ultimately sent Hansen back to the studio with a more precise vision. "After the tour, I decided that I wanted to capture the more energetic, driven sound of the live show on the next album," Hansen recalls. Bringing musicians into Tycho's creative process was a step towards expanding his own songwriting and advancing the project beyond its current sound. In a cabin near Tahoe last winter, Zac and Scott began ?eshing out the structure of the new record, but it wasn't until they set up shop in the hills of Santa Cruz with Rory that it all fell into place. "It crystallized the vision of how the drums would come to the forefront on this record," says Hansen. The sound was much more stripped-down and concise with more organic instruments in the fold. Songs like "Montana" and "Awake" are a departure from Tycho's previous material - unique to the group e!ort poured into the songs on the new record - while "See" and "Dye" echo ideas from previous works, bridging a middle ground between the old and new. Working with Count Eldridge, who also engineered Dive, the team could ?xate on the pulses that Tycho might previously layer under synthesizers and exhume them with distinct bass and guitar patterns. Also known for his design work as Iso50, Hansen's visual and sonic e!orts have dovetailed throughout the course of his career. "This is the ?rst time in my life I've dropped everything to focus on one artistic pursuit," notes Hansen. Previous Tycho releases came to fruition when an amalgam of songs were nearing completion, but "Awake" is where music becomes the focus and true expression becomes the result.

On vinyl for the first time.

Angelo is an EP, named after a car, featuring nine songs Brijean have crafted and carried with them through a period of profound change, loss, and relocation. It finds percussionist and singer Brijean Murphy and multi-instrumentalist/producer Doug Stuart processing the impossible the only way they know how: through rhythm and movement. The months surrounding the acclaimed release of Feelings, their full-length Ghostly International debut in 2021 which celebrated tender self-reflection and new possibilities, rang bittersweet with the absence of touring and the sudden passing of Murphy's father and both of Stuart's parents. In a haze of heartache, the duo left the Bay Area to be near family, resetting in four cities in under two years. Their to-go rig became their traveling studio and these tracks, along with Angelo, became their few constants. Whereas Feelings formed over collaborative jams with friends, Angelo's sessions presented Murphy and Stuart a chance to record at their most intimate, "to get us out of our grief and into our bodies," says Murphy. They explored new moods and styles, reaching for effervescent dance tempos and technicolor backdrops, vibrant hues in contrast to their more somber human experiences. Angelo beams with positivity and creative renewal _ a resourceful, collective answer to "what happens now?". Angelo the car is a 1981 Toyota Celica they got off Craigslist during their first stint in Los Angeles, where Murphy and Stuart have since settled. "Such a bro-y, `80s dude car, it's been super fun to drive around in a new town," Murphy says. "He's older than us, he's a classic, he's got a story." It is a spiritual vehicle with a cinematic appeal, first dropping them off in an alleyway for the scene-setting intro, "Which Way To The Club." The question is quickly resolved by "Take A Trip" as a cruising basslinemingles with crowd sounds, hand-claps, cuíca hiccups, whip-cracks, even a horse neigh. Brijean have found some club on this cross-dimensional trip - the kind of imagined space or cham...

Kate Bollinger's songs tend to linger well beyond their run times, filling the negative space of ordinary days with charming melodies and smart phrasings. She writes them at home in Richmond, Virginia, letting her subconscious lead, an open-ended process she likens to dreaming. From a chord progression appears a line, maybe a syllable will start to stick, enough to pursue, but she says sometimes the words don't feel likeher own, more like shapes that form in the mind's sky. Bollinger's musical universe is relaxed, tender, and unassuming; within lives a timeless sensibility, a songwriter's knack for noticing the little things and their counterpoints. Darkness and light, pain and pleasure, reality and escape. Her new EP, Look at it in the Light, her first project on Ghostly International, is collaborative; she shoots music videos with her friends and colors each of her folk-pop songs with musicians in her community. The title Look at it in the Light is a reference to the aspects of Bollinger's life that she knows need examining. For one, there's her persistent resistance to change _ she chooses to ignore it on the title track ("I try not to notice / I deny my fate"), as wiry strums sync with crisp drums. She surrenders to comfort on "Who Am I But Someone," a light and softly psychedelic number. "Yards / Gardens" finds Bollinger in full swing, skipping verses of uncertainty above a bright and nimble bassline and kick. Guitar riffs unravel across the bridge, trailing her lines like ellipses. The string-backed "Lady in the Darkest Hour" is the set's most luxuriant statement, recorded during a session at Matthew E. White's Spacebomb Studios with in-house arranger Trey Pollard (Natalie Prass, Helado Negro). Here her lines ring bittersweet yet reassuring, uplifted by swells of golden-hued instrumentation. From the hushed abstractions of "I Found Out" to the biting suspicions of closer "Connecting Dots," Kate Bollinger uses every inch of this dazzling EP to find her footing amidst the ever-present sways of life

Loraine James' new ambient-minded alias, Whatever The Weather, follows her 2021 solo LP Reflection (Hyperdub). In contrast to her club music sensibilities, this mode embraces keyboard improvisations and vocal experimentation, foregoing percussive structure in favor of shaping atmosphere and tone. From this divergent headspace emerged new coordinates and climates, a new outlet: Whatever The Weather. A longtime fan of ambient-adjacent Ghostly International artists such as Telefon Tel Aviv (who she'd ask to master the album), HTRK (whose singer Jonnine Standish features on Nothing), and Lusine (whom she remixed at the start of 2021), James saw the label as the ideal home for this eponymous album of airy, transportive tracks as they began to formulate. The titling on Whatever The Weather works in degrees; simple parameters allowing James to focus on the nuances as a mood-builder. Her suspended universe fluctuates; freezing, thawing, swaying and blooming from track to track. James describes her jam-based approach for the sessions as "free-flowing, stopping when I felt like I was done," allowing her subconscious to lead. The improvisations have an intrinsic fluidity to them, akin to sudden weather events passing over a single environment - the location feels fixed while the conditions vary. The album opens at "25°C," a sunshower of soft hums and keys. As the longest piece, it serves to establish stability, the inflection point where any move above or below this temperate breeze breaks the bliss. Given James' proclivity for organized chaos in her production, this scene is fleeting, naturally. From that utopia, we plummet to the most melancholic read on the meter, "0°C," its isolated synth line traversing a hailstorm of steely beats and static. Next, the dial jumps for the propulsive standout "17°C." Like a timelapse of springtime in the city, the single accelerates across a frenzy of frames; car horns, screeching brakes, and crosswalk chatter fill the pauses between rapid jolts of multi-shaped percussion. For portions of the work, James leans neo-classical, rendering pensive vignettes of cascading piano keys and warm delay. "2°C (Intermittent Rain)" ends the A-Side on a short and stormy loop; a resulting sense of reset permeates the B-Side's opener, "10°C." The producer mingles intuitively on echoed organ, locking into and abandoning atypical rhythms that suggest her jazz-oriented interests. "4°C" and "30°C" display the range of James' vocal experiments. The former chops and pitches her voice to a rhythmic, otherworldly effect, the latter reveals James at her most straightforward (she cites Deftones' Chino Moreno and American Football's Mike Kinsella as inspirations), singing tenderly and unobstructed for nearly the duration before beats collide in the climax. Whatever The Weather closes at "36°C," while a sweltering heat by any standards the track eases along comfortably on a chorus of synth waves, acting as an apt bookend for this evocative, sky-tracing collection that started in a similar state. Cyclical, seasonal, and unpredictable, true to its namesake.

10th Anniversary Edition on black & orange swirl vinyl! A decade ago, the static signal of "Terminal" booting-up sounded and Galactic Melt launched into the atmosphere for the first time; Seth Haley's Com Truise project arrived in full. A graphic designer based in New Jersey at the time, Haley found a sound on his synthesizers that sparked an immediate nostalgia response, tapping into classic sci-fi and proto-electro in a way that felt early '80s in scope, but also remarkably weird - stutter-step proggy and intoxicatingly psychedelic. Unknowingly he had stepped into a genre prism; suppose we know it now as synth-wave though the tag never landed squarely. To Haley, this was a space to explore and a story to tell, which he'd do across a saga of releases that would resonate with a legion of fans and send the producer touring the world in perpetual orbit. His full-length debut on Ghostly International, Galactic Melt delivered on the promise of Haley's Cyanide Sisters EP as well as high-profile remixes for Twin Shadow, Neon Indian, and Daft Punk. Bold, imaginative, and unapologetically cosmic, the set occupies a beloved coordinate in the Com Truise catalog, considered the gateway for many. To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Haley and Ghostly have repressed the long-sold out 2xLP and added five unreleased tracks to the expanded digital edition, giving this classic its due treatment as it passes the milestone. From the keyed-up, skyscraping machine love of "vhs Sex" and "Cathode Girls" to pulsing cuts like "Air Cal" and "Ether Drift," the music on Galactic Melt is mathy, forlorn, funky, and mighty in technical ambition. That they're all noticeably cinematic is, of course, by design. Haley envisioned Galactic Melt as a "sort of film score...from the mind," chronicling the life and death of Com Truise, the world's first synthetic/robotic astronaut, from his creation and time on earth to his subsequent mission to a newly discovered galaxy called Wave 1 (released in 2014).

In the afterglow of her acclaimed 2020 album Silver Ladders, Los Angeles-based harpist Mary Lattimore returns with a culminating counterpart release, Collected Pieces: 2015- 2020. The limited-edition LP features new and previously unreleased material, Bandcamp-only singles, and other obscurities alongside standouts from her 2017 tape Collected Pieces. Beyond the vinyl compendium, an expanded tracklist on the cassette/digital version brings more of Lattimore's archives together for the first time. Lattimore has described the process of arranging these releases as akin to "opening a box filled with memories," and here that box continues to populate, accessible for both the artist and fans. Evocative material separated by years, framed as a portrait of an instrumental storyteller who rarely pauses, recording and often sharing music as soon as it strikes her. Seemingly in constant forward motion for the last five years since her Ghostly debut, Lattimore glances back for a breath, inviting new chances to live in these fleeting moments and emotions; all the beauty, sorrow, sunshine, and darkness housed within. A trove of pieces are collected here, most recorded in the moment, just Lattimore and her Lyon and Healy Concert Grand Harp, contact mics, and pedals. Like her most affecting work, these songs showcase Lattimore's gifts as an observer, able to shape her craft around emotional frequencies and scenes. Her power as a musician is rooted in how she sees the world: in vivid detail, profoundly empathic, with deep gratitude for nature and nuance.

Debut full length from Portland-based DIY multi-instrumentalist; for Fans of King Krule, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Thundercat, Shigeto, Mild High Club, Crumb. Portland, Oregon-based musician Graham Jonson started early: playing piano as a toddler, finding the music of J Dilla in fifth grade, and self-releasing singles by age 16. First appearing under the name quickly, quickly in 2017, his project's profile has since grown fervently with fans in the beats-oriented corners of SoundCloud, YouTube, and Reddit. Some of his early tracks tally north of 10 million plays on Spotify. The figure isn't meant to flex as much as it is to point out that Jonson's work has resonated without the traditional industry levers; he is a wunderkind DIY internet success story, but, by his own assessment at the present age of 20, he's only now getting serious. With The Long and Short of It, his Ghostly International debut, Jonson reinvents his project as a full-fledged songwriter, vocalist, and arranger, playing nearly everything from drums to keys and guitar. The resulting sound straddles jazz, hip hop, R&B, and psych-pop while suggesting a wholly genre-less path forward. Recorded during and after a short-lived move to Los Angeles, songs find Jonson cool and comfortable, navigating the planes between anxiety and apathy, distance and desire with lyrical vulnerability and introspection. A student of the Stones Throw catalog (his favorite is Madlib's Quasimoto), Jonson remains rhythm-driven at heart, trusting his instincts in this new palette of organic instrumentation and verse-chorus structure. Tracks glide and bump with tasteful care to tempo as his scene-building and storytelling knack comes into focus. Jonson's past material often suited passive listenership, the kind of bedroom-produced beat music that offers secondary utility and function as a companion to primary activities. The Long and Short of It showcases an evolutionary step into a style that uses chops cultivated in that niche that demand a more active listenership. That attention is rewarded with earworms, dazzling production flare, and earnest, genre-spanning songwriting. Opener "Phases" launches on the radical wisdom of the album's sole vocal feature, courtesy of renowned poet and activist, Sharrif Simmons, who contributes a psychedelic poem spanning cosmic existentialism _ something he wrote off the cuff during a session. As the fiery spoken word unfolds, a frenzy of drum grooves from Micah Hummel and strings from Elliot Cleverdon rise higher into the mix, all setting the stage for Jonson's debut at the mic and keys. The back half of "Phases" shifts into a hypnotic instrumental, the drums interlocking on guitar lines, pausing for a spacious break before reassembling twice as potent, riding into a blissful, cathartic saxophone solo by Haily Naiswanger. "Shee" was written on his girlfriend's guitar and every line glows with uncomplicated adoration. He is captivated in this daydream, which drifts off into a haze of strums and hums. We wake to the looping drums of "Leave It." Above the pattern, layering piano and guitar, Jonson pokes holes in himself _ his "cognitive dissonance," being "too jaded" to see what's right in front of him - the notions blurring back into that haze on an outro of sublime ambient psych-jazz. Jonson returns to the piano for "I Am Close To The River," the place he goes to break a creative rut, as he was the morning this bittersweet melody entered his mind. He says the song is loosely based on a psychonautic experience he had along the Willamette River. Once home, he put the song to paper, over time arranging a bucolic mix of shimmering chimes, saturated percussion, and orchestral strings from Elliot Cleverdon. A highlight on the record's b-side, "Everything is Different (To Me)" features all the traits of the new quickly, quickly in one ambitious suite: a catchy guitar loop, a classic hip-hop drum break, a swell of strings, and sly chord progression changes, all in clever contrast to Jonson's lyrics detailing bouts with lethargy. The album ends on a series of questions in the poignant "Wy," a delightful resignation. Jonson, lonely in LA, spins the hypochondriac wheel and checks off concerns that seem to plague internet dwellers; his neck hurts, his hands are shaky, his stomach feels off. He dismisses his need to self-diagnose and opts to lean into the moment through music. A billowing outro builds on airy synths, his contemplative guitar strums, and a soothing water droplet sound. The comedown is "Otto's Dance," a brief instrumental reverie nodding to one of his favorite Brazilian albums, Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges' Clube Da Esquina. That's The Long and Short of It, a summary of transition, self-validation, and a great leap forward in a young artist's life.

Los Angeles-Based H...

Wendelbo's whispery vocals are sung in both French & English, calling to mind Jane Birkin & Francoise Hardy. The alluring, tropical warmth of Wendelbo's vocals is juxtaposed against the duo's signature icy cold, ultra-modern synth sounds.

In the late 2000s a sprawling catalog of what is now genre-defining music was emanating from an unlikely place. Cleveland, Ohio has a broad reputation for many things, but in the aughts, psyche-expanding Kosmische wasn't necessarily Cleveland's calling card_ until Emeralds. The trio of John Elliott, Steve Hauschildt, and Mark McGuire had released a profusion of limited-run cassettes, CD-Rs, and vinyl titles that had been passed around basement shows and then migrated to niche music communities online, creating a unique kind of murmur at the height of the DIY blog era. Three kids from the rust belt were crafting a distinctive and truly far-out strain of music on their own terms in the Midwest. They were flipping lids in wood-paneled basements and circulating around the underground with soaring sounds stylistically indebted to deep German electronic music pioneers and released with the ethos and twisted fervor of renegade Midwestern noise freaks. After several releases garnered a die-hard fandom in niche circles of internet/music culture, and then catching the attention of the late Peter Rehberg, the renowned artist and curator of the Editions Mego label, an expectation was set that the next Emeralds record was going to be a big one. And in 2010, Does it Look Like I'm Here was it.Artistically, the album is a definitive statement; this is to say it was crafted by heads for heads, a genuine article and a profoundly deep listen, but the mainstream dove in too. Pitchfork acknowledged the rarefied nature of the album's electricity with a "Best New Music" rating. This crossover success is a result of the tracks' potency and wonderfully engineered and succinct structures. It's dialed in. Still creating their distinct yawning cosmic sound, Elliott and Hauschildt shower the stereo spectrum with shimmering arpeggios, dusty, melodically dynamic swells, rippling FM textures, and canyon-wide waveshapes. McGuire's signature guitar playing echoes emotive new age pathos and cascading astral space rock trance states. Their p...

Since debuting his Khotin project in 2014, Edmonton's Dylan Khotin-Foote has fine-tuned an impressionistic, dream-like style of music that straddles multiple sonic worlds. His output often sways from gentle synthesized atmospherics to hypnotic, dance-minded frameworks. His self-released 2018 LP, Beautiful You, offered a study on melody and memory; the album's nostalgia-nudging use of passing environments,voices, and abstractions captivated a cult following, a rare 4.5 review in Resident Advisor and the attention of Ghostly International, who pressed the cassette on vinyl for wider circulation in 2019. Now, Khotin revealshis first collection of new material since the signing. The album is a fluid continuation of his blissful and melancholic songcraft, extended humbly and warmly, Finds You Well.As tongue-in-cheek as the title may appear, the phrase has haunted the producer for some time. Most often seen at the start of correspondence, the words "I hope this email finds you well" can land with varying levels of sincerity, depending on context and mood. Khotin-Foote started to read the line more ominously during the onset of the pandemic. So, this set ofmusic winks at both possibilities, mixing a platitude's opaque optimism with lurking uncertainty.Finds You Well can be heard in near-symmetrical halves: its 10 tracks represent the selections from a bounty of demos that, with less modes- ty, could have filled two records, one active and the other ambient. The resulting set isn't an even split but it's close. The A-side centers on the album's steadiest sequence of beat-centric material. "Ivory Tower" is inextricably tied to benchmarks set by late `90s downtempo forerunners, spilling lucious and narcotic synth modulations across a sprinkler's spray of breakbeats. Khotin's sprightly melodic noodling brings that touchstone sound into vogue, bubbling up in free-form spurts. The sequence contin- ues through the propulsive "Heavyball," into "Groove 32," which begins with a funky bit-clipped drum and bongo boogie...

Canadian producer Dylan Khotin-Foote has kept his Khotin alias going for the better part of a decade; the impressionistic electronic project shifts with the movements in his life. Sometimes it leads, like when the club-friendly grooves of 2014's Hello World immersed him in the heart of Vancouver's underground dance scene, and sometimes it follows, like 2018's Beautiful You, a downtempo salve for DJ fatigue His melodic sensibility and playful ear for atmosphere remain the rippling core of the project's fingerprint; whether beat-driven or ambient, a foggy smear or a dusted and pristine print, a Khotin track has a distinct and instantly recognizable swirl. During and after the 2020 release of Finds You Well, his second LP on Ghostly International, Khotin-Foote settled back into a slower vibe in his hometown of Ed- monton. Even before the pandemic, his pivots to softer production, and away from DJing, left him with fewer opportunities in Vancouver and club bookings overall, and as a self-identifying introvert, he was fine with that. But the change of pace did open space for Khotin-Foote to grapple with concepts of adulthood and career. At his lowest, he almost walked off this musical path altogether; instead, he doubled down on the craft _ the tone, pacing, and dynamism of new material _ arriving at a definitive full-length. With Release Spirit, Khotin releases himself from the pressure of expectation, fusing and refining everything we know about his music. The warmth and familiarity of Khotin's dreamy, dulcet style meet new ideas and frameworks, a natural progression, a modest revelation; Khotin confirms it is okay to move slowly and he's never sounded better doing it. The album title borrows from the "release spirit" mechanic in the video game World of Warcraft. When players die, they are prompted to release their spirit and return as ghosts to find their corpses and come back to life. Khotin sees it as a worthy metaphor for the impending change his return home presented and the resulting process of purging artistic expectations to find his creative self again. On this go- around, he is freer, more playful, and more intentional within his palette of warped synth, breakbeats, and piano sounds _ including the classic Casio Sk-1 presets he's used since the start _ mingling with wistful samples, field recordings, and other abstract snippets. For the first time, he enlisted Nik Kozub to do the mix and assist with sequencing. Khotin-Foote has long worked with the Edmonton-based musician and engineer in the mastering phase, as well as their days co-running the label Normals Welcome, and this time was able to involve his ears earlier given their newfound proximity. "I think it's my best sounding record to date." We begin on "HV Road" or Happy Valley Road, where Khotin-Foote spent time during a family vacation in British Columbia's Okanagan Lake. His plans to record crickets at night are quickly foiled by his younger siblings; the cute exchange orients the listener to a core memory of sorts, setting the tone of universally understood warmth and wonder that has defined some of Khotin's most transportive tracks. Hazy percussion takes hold, and we are swept further into the wisp of "Lovely," a grooving, melodic standout built on the interplay between the beat and human voice-like hums. Khotin knows this zone well; equally suited for a reverie or a club warm-up. The bubbling atmosphere and absurdity of "3 pz" offer a cosmic/comic interlude and also speak to reflections on his family's move to Canada two generations ago, and the audio tutorials they used to learn English. "I can only imagine my grandpar- ents repeating some of the bizarre phrases." "Fountain, Growth" finds Khotin in collaboration with Montreal's Tess Roby (Dawn to Dawn) for the project's first-ever vocal track. Roby's soft cadence echoes atop spiraling air pockets of rhythmic production, lending a breezy, almost shoegaze pop feel. Throughout the single and the album, wind gusts between the compositional layers, akin to the roaming spirits of its namesake, curving around the birdsong of "Life Mask" and seamlessly reaching "Unlimited <3." The latter bumps in slow motion; disembodied whirrs from his Casio collide with 808 drums and sub-bass for a vibe that teeters on trap and instrumental hip-hop. Release Spirit rests in a dream sequence. Oscillating synth lines dance around the heartbeat of "Techno Creep," a hyperactive REM state before the digitized ambient sprawl of "My Same Size." In the final pass, Khotin imagines transcontinental travel from the glow of his screen. He recorded "Sound Gathering Trip" to soundtrack a genre of YouTube videos he's taken to that follows train routes through Europe and Japan. The scene is serene and moving; piano keys warble as static-filled sound design shimmers off the rails, from cityscapes to the countryside, an introspective ride through a world beyond his bedroom. It doubles as an apt parting image for Khotin's project as a whole: dreaming big but happiest when riffing on the details, shaping environments from the inside out. Over the last decade, he has stretched from his core in Edmonton, leaving a trace in Vancouver and beyond; but when all signs point home, he loops back to see it all from a different vantage, revitalized, refined, and free.

Canadian producer Dylan Khotin-Foote has kept his Khotin alias going for the better part of a decade; the impressionistic electronic project shifts with the movements in his life. Sometimes it leads, like when the club-friendly grooves of 2014's Hello World immersed him in the heart of Vancouver's underground dance scene, and sometimes it follows, like 2018's Beautiful You, a downtempo salve for DJ fatigue His melodic sensibility and playful ear for atmosphere remain the rippling core of the project's fingerprint; whether beat-driven or ambient, a foggy smear or a dusted and pristine print, a Khotin track has a distinct and instantly recognizable swirl. During and after the 2020 release of Finds You Well, his second LP on Ghostly International, Khotin-Foote settled back into a slower vibe in his hometown of Ed- monton. Even before the pandemic, his pivots to softer production, and away from DJing, left him with fewer opportunities in Vancouver and club bookings overall, and as a self-identifying introvert, he was fine with that. But the change of pace did open space for Khotin-Foote to grapple with concepts of adulthood and career. At his lowest, he almost walked off this musical path altogether; instead, he doubled down on the craft _ the tone, pacing, and dynamism of new material _ arriving at a definitive full-length. With Release Spirit, Khotin releases himself from the pressure of expectation, fusing and refining everything we know about his music. The warmth and familiarity of Khotin's dreamy, dulcet style meet new ideas and frameworks, a natural progression, a modest revelation; Khotin confirms it is okay to move slowly and he's never sounded better doing it. The album title borrows from the "release spirit" mechanic in the video game World of Warcraft. When players die, they are prompted to release their spirit and return as ghosts to find their corpses and come back to life. Khotin sees it as a worthy metaphor for the impending change his return home presented and the resulting process of purging artistic expectations to find his creative self again. On this go- around, he is freer, more playful, and more intentional within his palette of warped synth, breakbeats, and piano sounds _ including the classic Casio Sk-1 presets he's used since the start _ mingling with wistful samples, field recordings, and other abstract snippets. For the first time, he enlisted Nik Kozub to do the mix and assist with sequencing. Khotin-Foote has long worked with the Edmonton-based musician and engineer in the mastering phase, as well as their days co-running the label Normals Welcome, and this time was able to involve his ears earlier given their newfound proximity. "I think it's my best sounding record to date." We begin on "HV Road" or Happy Valley Road, where Khotin-Foote spent time during a family vacation in British Columbia's Okanagan Lake. His plans to record crickets at night are quickly foiled by his younger siblings; the cute exchange orients the listener to a core memory of sorts, setting the tone of universally understood warmth and wonder that has defined some of Khotin's most transportive tracks. Hazy percussion takes hold, and we are swept further into the wisp of "Lovely," a grooving, melodic standout built on the interplay between the beat and human voice-like hums. Khotin knows this zone well; equally suited for a reverie or a club warm-up. The bubbling atmosphere and absurdity of "3 pz" offer a cosmic/comic interlude and also speak to reflections on his family's move to Canada two generations ago, and the audio tutorials they used to learn English. "I can only imagine my grandpar- ents repeating some of the bizarre phrases." "Fountain, Growth" finds Khotin in collaboration with Montreal's Tess Roby (Dawn to Dawn) for the project's first-ever vocal track. Roby's soft cadence echoes atop spiraling air pockets of rhythmic production, lending a breezy, almost shoegaze pop feel. Throughout the single and the album, wind gusts between the compositional layers, akin to the roaming spirits of its namesake, curving around the birdsong of "Life Mask" and seamlessly reaching "Unlimited <3." The latter bumps in slow motion; disembodied whirrs from his Casio collide with 808 drums and sub-bass for a vibe that teeters on trap and instrumental hip-hop. Release Spirit rests in a dream sequence. Oscillating synth lines dance around the heartbeat of "Techno Creep," a hyperactive REM state before the digitized ambient sprawl of "My Same Size." In the final pass, Khotin imagines transcontinental travel from the glow of his screen. He recorded "Sound Gathering Trip" to soundtrack a genre of YouTube videos he's taken to that follows train routes through Europe and Japan. The scene is serene and moving; piano keys warble as static-filled sound design shimmers off the rails, from cityscapes to the countryside, an introspective ride through a world beyond his bedroom. It doubles as an apt parting image for Khotin's project as a whole: dreaming big but happiest when riffing on the details, shaping environments from the inside out. Over the last decade, he has stretched from his core in Edmonton, leaving a trace in Vancouver and beyond; but when all signs point home, he loops back to see it all from a different vantage, revitalized, refined, and free.

"Vermillion Plaza," the second single from Deastro's full-length debut, Moondagger, miniaturizes the album's best assets and shoots them out of a cannon. Plucky synth arpeggios, end-of-the-world choruses, joyously careening melody lines-it's all there, squashed into a life-affirming three minutes and 50 seconds. "Vermillion Plaza"'s hidden weapon is its songcraft, which may easily goes unnoticed as the pop-music blur flies by-the song lives uneasily in its skin, buttressing its fireworks display of a chorus with odd moments of synthesizer psychedelia, funk, and disco. And when Deastro's Randolph Chabot pleads for contact, singing, "Would you be my son / 'cause all of mine have died?," it's less a cry of self-pity than a salute to the power of human connection.The B-side is Mux Mool's lumbering, half-time remix of "Vermillion Plaza." The former Ghostly Swim featured artist plunges Chabot's vocal into a sinister electronic nightmare-scape, squelching through mud puddles of bass as synthesized strings circle the skies.

"Three years on from Lucky Shiner and following his DJ-Kicks set, the new EP from Gold Panda finds him refining his approach and exploring familiar themes, mixing bell-like textures, slow-mo house, and foggy drone." - PITCHFORK.comGold Panda is the moniker of English electronic record producer and songwriter Derwin Schlecker. He released several small-issue 7" records and singles in 2009, and in 2010 he signed with Ghostly International to release his debut full-length Lucky Shiner.In 2013, Gold Panda started the year releasing the EP Trust. His second album, Half of Where You Live, followed six months later.

"Art is awe, art is mystery expressed," writes Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith. "Art is somatic, even if it is experienced cerebrally. It is felt." The central mysteries of Smith's ninth studio album, Let's Turn it Into Sound, have to do with perception, expression, and communication: How can we communicate when spoken language is inadequate? How do we understand what it is we're feeling? How do we translate our experience of the world into something that someone else can understand? For Smith, a self-described "feeler," the answers are inspired by compound words in non-English languages, translation, sculptural fashion, dance, butoh, wushu shaolin, and other forms of sensory and somatic experience. Just like fashion uses lines, shapes, colors, textures, and silhouettes to communicate on a sensual level separate from the conscious mind, Let's Turn it Into Sound strives to use sound to communicate what words alone cannot. "The album is a puzzle," Smith says. "[It] is a symbol of receiving a compound of a ton of feelings from going out into a situation, and the song titles are instructions to breaking apart the feelings and understanding them." The energized "Is it Me or is it You" comes from traversing the gaps between how you see yourself and how another might see you, through a filter of their own projections. The hushed sense of revelation that brackets "There is Something" refers to the feeling of walking into a room and being subconsciously aware of the dynamic present. All the while, Smith interprets these feelings through sound. This auditory interpretation process, driven by earnest curiosity, led Smith to record some thoughts and questions that popped up along the journey in Somatic Hearing_a booklet which accompanies the album. Over three frenzied months, recording alone in her home studio, Smith allowed herself to pursue new experiments to accompany her usual toolkit of modular, analogue, and rare synthesizers (including her signature Buchla), orchestral sounds, and the voice. She created a new vocal processing technique, and gave herself permission to pursue a pacing that felt intuitive, rather one that followed typical song structures. She walked around in the windiest season with a subwoofer backpack and an umbrella, listening to the low end of the album amidst 60mph gusts. She listened to herself, and, in doing so, to an inner community which suddenly opened to her. Underlying the album is a dynamic relationship between what Smith describes as six distinct voices, each a multifaceted storyteller. By acknowledging these characters, she was acknowledging her whole being: the woven plurality of self, the complex process of noticing and resolving inner conflicts, and the joy of finding harmony in flux. "I started to feel so embodied by all of these characters. This is all the felt, unsaid stuff [my inner community] wants to communicate but it doesn't have the English language as its form of communication, and so [this album was a form of] giving space to let it talk and not judge it and just let it play." By not adhering to expected song structures, each song feels even more like a conversation, with each character getting to express themselves in full.

"Art is awe, art is mystery expressed," writes Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith. "Art is somatic, even if it is experienced cerebrally. It is felt." The central mysteries of Smith's ninth studio album, Let's Turn it Into Sound, have to do with perception, expression, and communication: How can we communicate when spoken language is inadequate? How do we understand what it is we're feeling? How do we translate our experience of the world into something that someone else can understand? For Smith, a self-described "feeler," the answers are inspired by compound words in non-English languages, translation, sculptural fashion, dance, butoh, wushu shaolin, and other forms of sensory and somatic experience. Just like fashion uses lines, shapes, colors, textures, and silhouettes to communicate on a sensual level separate from the conscious mind, Let's Turn it Into Sound strives to use sound to communicate what words alone cannot. "The album is a puzzle," Smith says. "[It] is a symbol of receiving a compound of a ton of feelings from going out into a situation, and the song titles are instructions to breaking apart the feelings and understanding them." The energized "Is it Me or is it You" comes from traversing the gaps between how you see yourself and how another might see you, through a filter of their own projections. The hushed sense of revelation that brackets "There is Something" refers to the feeling of walking into a room and being subconsciously aware of the dynamic present. All the while, Smith interprets these feelings through sound. This auditory interpretation process, driven by earnest curiosity, led Smith to record some thoughts and questions that popped up along the journey in Somatic Hearing_a booklet which accompanies the album. Over three frenzied months, recording alone in her home studio, Smith allowed herself to pursue new experiments to accompany her usual toolkit of modular, analogue, and rare synthesizers (including her signature Buchla), orchestral sounds, and the voice. She created a new vocal processing technique, and gave herself permission to pursue a pacing that felt intuitive, rather one that followed typical song structures. She walked around in the windiest season with a subwoofer backpack and an umbrella, listening to the low end of the album amidst 60mph gusts. She listened to herself, and, in doing so, to an inner community which suddenly opened to her. Underlying the album is a dynamic relationship between what Smith describes as six distinct voices, each a multifaceted storyteller. By acknowledging these characters, she was acknowledging her whole being: the woven plurality of self, the complex process of noticing and resolving inner conflicts, and the joy of finding harmony in flux. "I started to feel so embodied by all of these characters. This is all the felt, unsaid stuff [my inner community] wants to communicate but it doesn't have the English language as its form of communication, and so [this album was a form of] giving space to let it talk and not judge it and just let it play." By not adhering to expected song structures, each song feels even more like a conversation, with each character getting to express themselves in full.

"His music filled me with the urge to connect with the world," Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith says of Emile Mosseri. She first heard his work while watching the 2019 film The Last Black Man In San Francisco; just minutes in, she paused it to look up who did the score and wrote to him immediately. "I love Emile's ability to create melodies that feel magically scenic and familiar like they are reminding you of the innocence of loving life." Those talents saw recognition in 2020 with an Oscar nomination for Mosseri's original score to the film Minari. He was already a fan of Smith's and became increasingly intrigued by her impressionistic process as they started to talk. "The music feels so spiritual and alive and made from the earth," Mosseri says. "I think of her as the great conductor, summoning musical poetry from her orchestra of machines." I Could Be Your Dog / I Could Be Your Moon, their two-part collaborative album, introduces an uncanny fusion of their sonics. Constructed using synthesizer, piano, electronics, and voice, this soft-focus dream world is lush, evocative, and fleeting. It finds two composers tuning their respective styles inward as an ode to mutual inspiration, a celebration of the human spirit and its will to surrender to the currents of life. As a full album set, I Could Be Your Dog / I Could Be Your Moon moves fluidly from track to track, panning through textural vignettes. Two roughly 17-minute halves, the set evokes the bittersweet sense of something too bright or rare to last, a short-lived glimpse into a golden hour. There is a dreamy, elemental intention to this music, which Smith and Mosseri say came naturally, as they both embraced intuitive interplay throughout their creative back-and-forth. The stylistic threads of each composer are recognizable yet become more ambiguous as the album progresses, sewn into a singular vision.

After nearly three years and sixty demos, Launder's full-length debut is Happening. In 2019, Orange County-raised, Los Angeles-based musician John Cudlip signed to Ghostly International to build his recording project, developed out of casual sessions with friends Jackson Phillips (Day Wave), Soko, and Zachary Cole Smith (diiv). Launder's music had seen unexpected attention, with Stereogum placing it "somewhere at the intersection of `90s lo-fi and shoegaze," and Gorilla vs. Bear noting Cudlip's "serious knack for the kind of wistful, soaring choruses that immediately make you feel like you've known these songs forever." With live shows paused in 2020, he immersed fully into writing and arranging an overflow of ideas. Cudlip also embraced sobriety, redirecting his once-destructive addictive tendencies into studio craft _ all his thoughts consumed by melody and texture, all his resources lobbed into gear, every buzz, hiss, and hum of this record became his entire world. The resulting set sprawls across a double LP release; it's a considered beast of a debut and he's proud of it, living with it, finally. Through its thirteen songs, Happening is timeless, grappling with something bigger than just melody, the cathartic and the tender, indebted to indie rock greats while informed by modern and prudent self-reflection. "I feel like I've evolved into a much more self-reliant writer compared to the EP and 7-inch releases but I couldn't have made this record without the band," he says. "The songs came to life in the rehearsal space with them, it was like a light switch went on." To record the album, Cudlip and collaborators _ including Chase Meier (bass), Bryan DeLeon (drums), Nathan Hawelu (lead guitar) _ joined co-producer, engineer, and mixer Sonny DiPerri (My Bloody Valentine, Nine Inch Nails, Diiv) at New Monkey Studio, the vintage analog/modern digital recording studio in Van Nuys, California once owned by Elliott Smith. Cudlip mapped out his dream setup; alternate-tuning a fleet of Fenders to facilitate his left-handed playing, experimenting with different amps (a late `70s Marshall JMP carried much of the sound), and getting the vocals just right on Smith's old Neumann U48 microphone and Fairchild compressor. With each nuanced adjustment and improved take, they'd joke, "it's happening." The sort of phrase you say to keep the vibe light _ but there was some gravity behind it _ as the group was forced to wait to be safely in the same space again. It was apparent to them that something magnetic was shaping this record. Where debuts often feel full of rough-hewn potential, Launder has crafted a deeply honed collection that is happening right now. A process-oriented album, the work of a person maturing with their art, the sound of a songwriter pushing through their limits with thrilling and anthemic outcomes.

After nearly three years and sixty demos, Launder's full-length debut is Happening. In 2019, Orange County-raised, Los Angeles-based musician John Cudlip signed to Ghostly International to build his recording project, developed out of casual sessions with friends Jackson Phillips (Day Wave), Soko, and Zachary Cole Smith (diiv). Launder's music had seen unexpected attention, with Stereogum placing it "somewhere at the intersection of `90s lo-fi and shoegaze," and Gorilla vs. Bear noting Cudlip's "serious knack for the kind of wistful, soaring choruses that immediately make you feel like you've known these songs forever." With live shows paused in 2020, he immersed fully into writing and arranging an overflow of ideas. Cudlip also embraced sobriety, redirecting his once-destructive addictive tendencies into studio craft _ all his thoughts consumed by melody and texture, all his resources lobbed into gear, every buzz, hiss, and hum of this record became his entire world. The resulting set sprawls across a double LP release; it's a considered beast of a debut and he's proud of it, living with it, finally. Through its thirteen songs, Happening is timeless, grappling with something bigger than just melody, the cathartic and the tender, indebted to indie rock greats while informed by modern and prudent self-reflection. "I feel like I've evolved into a much more self-reliant writer compared to the EP and 7-inch releases but I couldn't have made this record without the band," he says. "The songs came to life in the rehearsal space with them, it was like a light switch went on." To record the album, Cudlip and collaborators _ including Chase Meier (bass), Bryan DeLeon (drums), Nathan Hawelu (lead guitar) _ joined co-producer, engineer, and mixer Sonny DiPerri (My Bloody Valentine, Nine Inch Nails, Diiv) at New Monkey Studio, the vintage analog/modern digital recording studio in Van Nuys, California once owned by Elliott Smith. Cudlip mapped out his dream setup; alternate-tuning a fleet of Fenders to facilitate his left-handed playing, experimenting with different amps (a late `70s Marshall JMP carried much of the sound), and getting the vocals just right on Smith's old Neumann U48 microphone and Fairchild compressor. With each nuanced adjustment and improved take, they'd joke, "it's happening." The sort of phrase you say to keep the vibe light _ but there was some gravity behind it _ as the group was forced to wait to be safely in the same space again. It was apparent to them that something magnetic was shaping this record. Where debuts often feel full of rough-hewn potential, Launder has crafted a deeply honed collection that is happening right now. A process-oriented album, the work of a person maturing with their art, the sound of a songwriter pushing through their limits with thrilling and anthemic outcomes.

Kate Bollinger's songs tend to linger well beyond their run times, filling the negative space of ordinary days with charming melodies and smart phrasings. She writes them at home in Richmond, Virginia, letting her subconscious lead, an open-ended process she likens to dreaming. From a chord progression appears a line, maybe a syllable will start to stick, enough to pursue, but she says sometimes the words don't feel likeher own, more like shapes that form in the mind's sky. Bollinger's musical universe is relaxed, tender, and unassuming; within lives a timeless sensibility, a songwriter's knack for noticing the little things and their counterpoints. Darkness and light, pain and pleasure, reality and escape. Her new EP, Look at it in the Light, her first project on Ghostly International, is collaborative; she shoots music videos with her friends and colors each of her folk-pop songs with musicians in her community. The title Look at it in the Light is a reference to the aspects of Bollinger's life that she knows need examining. For one, there's her persistent resistance to change _ she chooses to ignore it on the title track ("I try not to notice / I deny my fate"), as wiry strums sync with crisp drums. She surrenders to comfort on "Who Am I But Someone," a light and softly psychedelic number. "Yards / Gardens" finds Bollinger in full swing, skipping verses of uncertainty above a bright and nimble bassline and kick. Guitar riffs unravel across the bridge, trailing her lines like ellipses. The string-backed "Lady in the Darkest Hour" is the set's most luxuriant statement, recorded during a session at Matthew E. White's Spacebomb Studios with in-house arranger Trey Pollard (Natalie Prass, Helado Negro). Here her lines ring bittersweet yet reassuring, uplifted by swells of golden-hued instrumentation. From the hushed abstractions of "I Found Out" to the biting suspicions of closer "Connecting Dots," Kate Bollinger uses every inch of this dazzling EP to find her footing amidst the ever-present sways of life

After a run of critically-acclaimed singles and EPs, British producer Michael Greene, aka Fort Romeau, returns to the full-length format with Beings of Light, the long-awaited follow-up to 2015's Insides and his second LP on Ghostly International. While a prolific DJ who orients many of his productions for the dancefloor, Greene still sees the album as the ultimate statement of intent, "a space to stretch out, to speak in full paragraphs rather than stunted sentences." He has explored several stylistic fragments in recent years (including the summer 2018 anthem "Pablo," hailed a Best New Track by Pitchfork), but when faced with the extended pause to the dance community in 2020, Greene felt compelled to focus on a larger body of work. Embracing a back-to-basics mentality, he amassed over a dozen hours of sounds, asking himself throughout the sessions: "Does the music move you? Is it honest?" He came out the other end with Beings of Light, an expressive collection traversing rainy day ambient, moonlit disco, and dream-like techno in pursuit of the power found within our subconscious. Album opener "Untitled IV" ushers in a sprinting tempo in its exploration of the human voice, a recurring device in the Fort Romeau project. Greene uses it as a compositional layer, disembodied with its context often opaque or reduced to a single phrase. Here the voice is scattered in percussive twitches, colliding with a kick drum to induce a near state of hypnosis as horns sound off in the distance. Propulsive standout "Spotlights'' is Greene's ode to the romanticised New York City that lives in our hearts, nocturnal and carefree. A vocal snippet repeats the title with a breezy poise, reminiscent of classic house cuts. "Ramona'' honors the beloved Robert Johnson club in Offenbach, Germany. Hazy, spacious, and sustained, Greene designed the beat with their system in mind, "also with a strong nod to the more modern lineage of exceptional minimal house music from Frankfurt," he says. Two ambient pieces surround the track, "(In The) Rain" sets the scene and "Porta Coeli" (a Latin phrase which loosely translates to "heaven's gate") soundtracks the comedown. The album's closer, the title track, is an arc constructed with atmospheric textures, euphoric swings of percussion, and a well-placed piano refrain, "Beings of Light" is adaptive; one could imagine it reverberating from a club, scoring the emotional apex of a film, or radiating through the realm of dreams.

In the afterglow of her acclaimed 2020 album Silver Ladders, Los Angeles-based harpist Mary Lattimore returns with a culminating counterpart release, Collected Pieces: 2015- 2020. The limited-edition LP features new and previously unreleased material, Bandcamp-only singles, and other obscurities alongside standouts from her 2017 tape Collected Pieces. Beyond the vinyl compendium, an expanded tracklist on the cassette/digital version brings more of Lattimore's archives together for the first time. Lattimore has described the process of arranging these releases as akin to "opening a box filled with memories," and here that box continues to populate, accessible for both the artist and fans. Evocative material separated by years, framed as a portrait of an instrumental storyteller who rarely pauses, recording and often sharing music as soon as it strikes her. Seemingly in constant forward motion for the last five years since her Ghostly debut, Lattimore glances back for a breath, inviting new chances to live in these fleeting moments and emotions; all the beauty, sorrow, sunshine, and darkness housed within. A trove of pieces are collected here, most recorded in the moment, just Lattimore and her Lyon and Healy Concert Grand Harp, contact mics, and pedals. Like her most affecting work, these songs showcase Lattimore's gifts as an observer, able to shape her craft around emotional frequencies and scenes. Her power as a musician is rooted in how she sees the world: in vivid detail, profoundly empathic, with deep gratitude for nature and nuance.

Storage units hold possessions on pause from the outside world, objects capable of reconnecting us to a time or place. Hana Vu (born in 2000s California) grew up with her family making regular use of public storage spaces in Los Angeles, moving every few years, leaving a mix of the sacred and the mundane to sit inside concrete and steel. Public Storage builds on the sound of Vu's early work underscoring her strengths as a songwriter with a deeper sense of luster, sophistication, and urgency. She calls it "very invasive and intense sounding music," refreshingly out of step with contemporary trends; this is music to engage with rather than lean back to. Co-producer Jackson Phillips (Day Wave) helped Vu create a vast, grainy, multifaceted world to stretch into vocally, her distinct contralto drifting freely between evocative low-lit ruminations and soulful, skyward bursts. Vu opens the album fixed on a force that recurs throughout. The first sounds we hear are charming: isolated piano keys cycle into warm strums and self-harmonies on "April Fool," as Vu's protagonist dismisses her surroundings and ability to communicate. The soft amber glow diffuses into the album's title track, a darker, murkier, louder place. Vu rips through "Public Storage'' with a series of defiant rejections (failure, family, magic) and cathartic demands. It's a rare and powerful display of vulnerability from a lyricist who favors the abstract over autobiographical. Built on a disco synth pattern and grooving bass stabs, "Aubade" has the bright bounce of its morning namesake, cleverly at odds with its downbeat subject. The contrast continues on "Keeper," a pulsating new wave cut, replete with soaring dreamy synths and a cooly snarling narrator, again challenging that force. "Gutter" returns to the grungy lowlight, with muscular guitar riffs striating above a bed of feedback, swelling alongside orchestral strings to a roaring finish. The back half of Public Storage features some of its most striking moments: the rhythmic, hook-heavy "Everybody's Birthday" speaks to the evil absurdity of the present, the end of times. The night is red, the mood is blue, and her character's shame is painted gold. Vu saves "Maker" for last, a final go at the existential.

Storage units hold possessions on pause from the outside world, objects capable of reconnecting us to a time or place. Hana Vu (born in 2000s California) grew up with her family making regular use of public storage spaces in Los Angeles, moving every few years, leaving a mix of the sacred and the mundane to sit inside concrete and steel. Public Storage builds on the sound of Vu's early work underscoring her strengths as a songwriter with a deeper sense of luster, sophistication, and urgency. She calls it "very invasive and intense sounding music," refreshingly out of step with contemporary trends; this is music to engage with rather than lean back to. Co-producer Jackson Phillips (Day Wave) helped Vu create a vast, grainy, multifaceted world to stretch into vocally, her distinct contralto drifting freely between evocative low-lit ruminations and soulful, skyward bursts. Vu opens the album fixed on a force that recurs throughout. The first sounds we hear are charming: isolated piano keys cycle into warm strums and self-harmonies on "April Fool," as Vu's protagonist dismisses her surroundings and ability to communicate. The soft amber glow diffuses into the album's title track, a darker, murkier, louder place. Vu rips through "Public Storage'' with a series of defiant rejections (failure, family, magic) and cathartic demands. It's a rare and powerful display of vulnerability from a lyricist who favors the abstract over autobiographical. Built on a disco synth pattern and grooving bass stabs, "Aubade" has the bright bounce of its morning namesake, cleverly at odds with its downbeat subject. The contrast continues on "Keeper," a pulsating new wave cut, replete with soaring dreamy synths and a cooly snarling narrator, again challenging that force. "Gutter" returns to the grungy lowlight, with muscular guitar riffs striating above a bed of feedback, swelling alongside orchestral strings to a roaring finish. The back half of Public Storage features some of its most striking moments: the rhythmic, hook-heavy "Everybody's Birthday" speaks to the evil absurdity of the present, the end of times. The night is red, the mood is blue, and her character's shame is painted gold. Vu saves "Maker" for last, a final go at the existential.

Debut full length from Portland-based DIY multi-instrumentalist; for Fans of King Krule, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Thundercat, Shigeto, Mild High Club, Crumb. Portland, Oregon-based musician Graham Jonson started early: playing piano as a toddler, finding the music of J Dilla in fifth grade, and self-releasing singles by age 16. First appearing under the name quickly, quickly in 2017, his project's profile has since grown fervently with fans in the beats-oriented corners of SoundCloud, YouTube, and Reddit. Some of his early tracks tally north of 10 million plays on Spotify. The figure isn't meant to flex as much as it is to point out that Jonson's work has resonated without the traditional industry levers; he is a wunderkind DIY internet success story, but, by his own assessment at the present age of 20, he's only now getting serious. With The Long and Short of It, his Ghostly International debut, Jonson reinvents his project as a full-fledged songwriter, vocalist, and arranger, playing nearly everything from drums to keys and guitar. The resulting sound straddles jazz, hip hop, R&B, and psych-pop while suggesting a wholly genre-less path forward. Recorded during and after a short-lived move to Los Angeles, songs find Jonson cool and comfortable, navigating the planes between anxiety and apathy, distance and desire with lyrical vulnerability and introspection. A student of the Stones Throw catalog (his favorite is Madlib's Quasimoto), Jonson remains rhythm-driven at heart, trusting his instincts in this new palette of organic instrumentation and verse-chorus structure. Tracks glide and bump with tasteful care to tempo as his scene-building and storytelling knack comes into focus. Jonson's past material often suited passive listenership, the kind of bedroom-produced beat music that offers secondary utility and function as a companion to primary activities. The Long and Short of It showcases an evolutionary step into a style that uses chops cultivated in that niche that demand a more active listenership. That attention is rewarded with earworms, dazzling production flare, and earnest, genre-spanning songwriting. Opener "Phases" launches on the radical wisdom of the album's sole vocal feature, courtesy of renowned poet and activist, Sharrif Simmons, who contributes a psychedelic poem spanning cosmic existentialism _ something he wrote off the cuff during a session. As the fiery spoken word unfolds, a frenzy of drum grooves from Micah Hummel and strings from Elliot Cleverdon rise higher into the mix, all setting the stage for Jonson's debut at the mic and keys. The back half of "Phases" shifts into a hypnotic instrumental, the drums interlocking on guitar lines, pausing for a spacious break before reassembling twice as potent, riding into a blissful, cathartic saxophone solo by Haily Naiswanger. "Shee" was written on his girlfriend's guitar and every line glows with uncomplicated adoration. He is captivated in this daydream, which drifts off into a haze of strums and hums. We wake to the looping drums of "Leave It." Above the pattern, layering piano and guitar, Jonson pokes holes in himself _ his "cognitive dissonance," being "too jaded" to see what's right in front of him - the notions blurring back into that haze on an outro of sublime ambient psych-jazz. Jonson returns to the piano for "I Am Close To The River," the place he goes to break a creative rut, as he was the morning this bittersweet melody entered his mind. He says the song is loosely based on a psychonautic experience he had along the Willamette River. Once home, he put the song to paper, over time arranging a bucolic mix of shimmering chimes, saturated percussion, and orchestral strings from Elliot Cleverdon. A highlight on the record's b-side, "Everything is Different (To Me)" features all the traits of the new quickly, quickly in one ambitious suite: a catchy guitar loop, a classic hip-hop drum break, a swell of strings, and sly chord progression changes, all in clever contrast to Jonson's lyrics detailing bouts with lethargy. The album ends on a series of questions in the poignant "Wy," a delightful resignation. Jonson, lonely in LA, spins the hypochondriac wheel and checks off concerns that seem to plague internet dwellers; his neck hurts, his hands are shaky, his stomach feels off. He dismisses his need to self-diagnose and opts to lean into the moment through music. A billowing outro builds on airy synths, his contemplative guitar strums, and a soothing water droplet sound. The comedown is "Otto's Dance," a brief instrumental reverie nodding to one of his favorite Brazilian albums, Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges' Clube Da Esquina. That's The Long and Short of It, a summary of transition, self-validation, and a great leap forward in a young artist's life.