Thrill Jockey US レコード& CD

Review: Talk about the perfect meeting of minds. Ellen Arkbro is one of Europe's most sought after contemporary composers and musicians right now, having worked with revered institutions such as London's Barbican, GRM Paris, and Kolner Philharmonie in recent times, to name but a few. Johan Graden stands head and shoulders above almost all the rest in the list of Sweden's finest pianists and modern jazz masterminds.

Together, as you might expect, they make beautiful, sometimes sweet, occasionally mournful, always heartfelt music that refuses to sit in classical or jazz camps, and instead straddles the two while reaching for the stars in search of whole new tones that have never, or rarely, been discovered before. Really special stuff you'd be a fool to ignore, and crazy not to fall head over heels for.

Review: BIG BRAVE's music epitomises what has been called 'massive minimalism,' with layers of textural distortion and feedback accentuating its weight and frayed edges. Their artistry blends traditional folk techniques with a modern deconstruction of guitar music, all of which is evident in the new album A Chaos Of Flowers, which is a follow-up to their fierce 2023 album Nature Morte. Lyrically, the songs delve into vulnerability, isolation, and co-existence in nature and guitarist and vocalist Robin Wattie drew inspiration from poetry by female-presenting artists, exploring alienation's impact on the psyche. This record is a testament to the band's ability to evoke intense emotions through minimalist yet powerful arrangements.

Review: The third album from Baltimore synth pop romanticists Future Islands was one of 2011's best moments, and represented yet another change of tact from the band in question. We'd only just got over In Evening Air, the preceding record which felt like being trapped in your mind's eye as it descended into heartbroken madness following a sudden breakup (it remains, after all, one of the finest breakup albums of all time).

With that in mind, On The Water was the redemptive "everything might be OK there are plenty of fish in the sea we just need to embrace life" shot to the head everyone deserves once they've done with their wallowing. Which isn't to say things feel resolutely positive here, more that the tracks no longer feel confined, but instead free to run through wide open spaces.

Review: Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo vocalist-guitarist Ripley Johnson seems like the kind of guy who's never going to get boring. Having seduced pretty much everyone in earshot with a unique brand of psychedelic country music, earning the kind of cult following that gets you booked for the equally cult, sorely-missed, and utterly legendary All Tomorrow's Parties festival (RIP), he's continued to explore the possibilities and prospects of that sound.

Garden Party is the fourth LP under his Rose City Band project, and is gorgeous and alluring as ever. Apparently Johnson was inspired by long summer days and nights spent on verandas kicking back and enjoying balmy temperatures, and that feeling emanates from the tracks here. A beautiful collection of crooning guitars within lackadaisical arrangements, capable of transporting you to warmer, slower places.

Review: Rose City Band is a solo project of Ripley Johnson, who is known for his work in Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo. 'Garden Party' is the fourth album of the project. Thematically, it deals with the summer months and what Johnson has taken to calling 'porch music', two words which conjure a wealth of relaxing mental images. From 'Chasing Rainbows' to 'El Rio', Johnson creates lush, rich psychedelic rock soundscapes with a country influence, sure to excite road-trippers just as much as they are to sate veranda-loungers alike.

Review: Los Angeles-based Canadian-American experimentalist Claire Rousay has made a name for herself due to her unique approach to post-rock-inflected ambience built off of primitive DIY field recordings captured on a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder, resulting in a curious form of emo musique concrete or "emo-ambient". Following on from a myriad of collaborations, projects, and singles, Sentiment marks her first full-length to put her usually hidden voice front and centre; utilising auto-tune to craft emotive hyper-folk musings delivered with androgynous hues. Described as a "meditation of the poignant emotional terrains of loneliness, nostalgia, sentimentality, guilt, and sex"; Rousay uses fractured narratives and one-way conversations to deliver painfully relatable, often uncomfortable musings, smothered beneath layers of droning reverb, monotonous acoustic plucking, and everyday sounds almost too familiar to pinpoint. The end result is the musical equivalent to our inner monologue at its lowest ebb, nattering incessantly while the world moves on around us, while sonically, it's the culmination of all Rousay's experimentation thus far, yet simultaneously more fearless and fragile.

Review: Sightless Pit is Lee Buford (aka The Body) and Dylan Walker (aka Full of Hell). The creative pair's debut album Grave of A Dog put them right up there with the best bands in the heavy metal scene. They now follow it up with another album that redefined heavy guitar sounds. Lockstep Bloodwar is an eclectic one sound wise and it features some big names making guts appearances such as Gangsta Boo from Three 6 Mafia, YoshimiO from Boredoms, plus Midwife, Lane Shii Otayonii and more. This version comes on limited translucent red marbled vinyl for a look as freaky as the music sounds.

Review: Esteemed American IDM producer Drew Daniel is back with a new album under his The Soft Pink Truth alias titled Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? Of the title, Daniel explained it's an actual question proposed to him which has become a mantra of sorts, with the album created as a way to imagine possible musical responses to her question. Created during Covid lockdowns, Daniel recruited a virtual disco band from friends across the world and traversing many genres such as disco, minimalism, ambient, shoegaze and jazz, then pieced together in his Baltimore studio. Guests include Turkish arranger Ulas Kurugullu, Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xu, Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Flock of Dimes), Brooklyn techno artist Rose E Kross and Daniel Clark.

Review: Purely democratic bands are hard to come by, but Tortoise might just be a known exception to that rule. 'Rhythms, Resolutions and Clusters' is probably ther best LP in their lot to encompass this outlook; a well-rounded album of trudging quasi-electronic codi, released in 1995 as part of the industrial and post-rock scenescape. It hears 7 tracks nod to wonky, pained, muddy dub in the vein of 23 Skidoo, This Heat, Pole or Muslimgauze, and this new cream reissue of course contains all the remixes; Steve Albini, Jim O'Rourke, and Bundy K. Brown et al.

Review: Tortoise's 1995 album Rhythms, Resolutions & Clusters gets a first new vinyl pressing in almost three whole decades. It is a fine collection of remixes that is from ended associates and family including Casey Rice, Mike Watt (Minute Men), John McEntire, Bundy K.Brown and many more. They all help make it a much better than average remix album with a couple of all time gems from these a-listers who are all in fine form. Jim O'Rourke's 'Initial Gesture Protraction' and Steve Albini 's take on 'The Match Incident' are two particular standouts.