Lurching samurai vibes, phased vocal apparitions, and menacing bass lines are just a few of the disparate tricks that newcomer Forest Swords has up his sleeves. This savvy UK producer lays the groundwork with dark planetary dub-step akin to Not Not Fun affiliates and then decorates with ascending guitar lines that teeter between cloud-bursting ambiance and claustrophobic tension. His debut LP Dagger Paths is a dogged expansion of the potential we saw last summer on his Miarches cassette, and is already bound to be a fixture on our playlist for some time. It’s definitely not a go-to for any occasion, but if you feel like a spaced out trek up Desolation Peak and back, your ride is here.

Dagger Paths is available through Olde English Spelling Bee.

MP3 :::
Forest Swords – If Your Girl
Forest Swords – Visits

MP3 :::
Dum Dum Girls – Throw Aggi

4AD just released the first single for the forthcoming, as-yet-unnamed record from Ariel Pink’s Haunted Grafitti. The song is smoooooooth, ya’ll – but what the fuck happened to all the sonic bullshit that Ariel stuffs in his usual jams?! I hope 4AD isn’t going to start “cleaning up” the Ariel Pink sound and turn him into something retarded like St. Vincent. Either way, I still love Ariel Pink agape style. I can’t even say something like “he could fart in a mic for an hour and I’d still buy the record,” because he basically already does that (with pop finesse, of course). Ultimately, I’m very glad he’s discovered Yacht Rock in an even more intimate way on “Round and Round.”

MP3 :::
Ariel Pink – Round and Round

Austin trio Pure Ecstasy dwell in a swampy hybrid of past and present. Their recent string of patient, affected singles gave nods to peers in the tropical lo-fi scene with their cavernous, prismatic reverb guitar settings, combined with hefty dub baselines and crawling 4/4 beats. Where they tend to stand out the most is their vocal maneuvers, which forgo the expected Beach Boys idolization in favor of a syrupy southern droll that confidently steers the wall of sound into moments of anguish, and yes, pure ecstasy. No news yet on a proper full-length from the boys, but they’ve brought another rock solid teaser in the interim, dropping the Voices/Alexandria single on March 23rd on Acephale. You can also catch them playing the Underwater People’s Party at SXSW on March 17th.

Pre-order the Voices/Alexandria 7″ here.

MP3 :::
Pure Ecstasy – Voices

I made a half assed promise a while back to spotlight more left-field hip-hop on this site and never followed through (or all rap music ceased to exist during my absence of interest, you decide). So good looks to UK psych/soul producer Huess for helping me back in touch by releasing his new EP I’d Rather Be The Hunter.

His genealogy includes all the right departments: intuitive vocal stutters and stretches learnt from Dilla, pulsating new-school passages a la Bullion or Flying Lotus, and a good amount of his own Tron-tinted idiosyncrasies. The tempos fly pretty low, with druggy rhythms that constantly feel like they’re gonna nosedive but nevertheless find their way into ecstatic, fluid passages of late-night atmospheres, jazzy interludes, and hard hitting samples. Recommended. Stream and download the EP here.

For fans of:  Bullion, Flying Lotus, Onra

MP3 :::
Huess – I’d Rather Be the Hunter

Let’s get this out of the way: Spirit Spine, the one man laptop project of Bloomington, Indiana’s Joseph Denny, sounds a lot like Panda Bear. From the huge drums to the deep space reverb to the campfire singalong melodies, Denny has completely absorbed the template laid down on Person Pitch. But what saves him from the “Well, why don’t I just listen to Panda Bear?” tag is the fact that he jettisons so many of Noah Lennox’s more experimental tendencies (the crying babies, the owl hooting, and such) and just focuses on writing really catchy songs. This is a dude to watch out for.

“Slept Away,” off Spirit Spine’s new album Jungle Bridges, is offered below for your consideration. Jungle Bridges is available for download on Amazon and is streaming for free on Spirit Spine’s Bandcamp site.

MP3 :::
Spirit Spine – Slept Away

Austin-based label Kill Red Rockets is a humanitarian effort, providing a wealth of free shit. They currently host a killer (pun intended) compilation on their website available for free download called Jesus in Space made up almost entirely of good stateside shoegaze, dream pop, fucked electro, and ethereal meditations with teeth. The comp is packed with artists readers of this blog will be familiar with (Oblisk, Ceremony, Dead Leaf Echo), and many more that I’m not familiar with at all and will take measures to correct.  The nefariously titled Bloody Knives (pictured above) is one that stuck out. “Hands Around My Neck,” included below for a taste, is quality acid punk with a slight synth edge at its finest and most crafty – basically what M83 could’ve done had they not decided, on their own volition, to suck a big one after the Dead Seas set. 8-bit shoegaze hath been reared.

Quality abounds on this massive set, so no matter what else happens, go download this compilation right now and know that you’ve done at least one radical thing today.

To celebrate the compilation and generation awesomeness of the KRR community, the dudes are throwing a big SXSW party in Austin. Thursday March 18 and Friday March 19, Kill Red Rockets will welcome 21 different acts from around the nation to play at, get this, an apartment complex with a giant pool. Wall of sound noise squalls… and a pool party. That sounds like some intergalactic MTV Spring Break/Beach House action. Where Dasiy Fuentes and Pauly Shore at? Oh, looks like Pauly Shore is over here hanging out with White Rainbow. Maybe they’ll both roll through.

Details on the festivities, as well as download sampler of everyone playing, are right here. This is a Kenny Bloggins-approved event, and that should hold some weight on your itinerary, for realz.

MP3 :::
Bloody Knives – Hands Around My Neck

We’ve tended to avoid the whole beach meme (save for Real Estate) that has propagated itself across the voluminous festering pit that is the blogosphere. That doesn’t mean that we don’t enjoy sunny jams, especially when done with pizzazz and that certain je ne sais quoi that makes music immediately difficult to categorize. Bedroom recording artist double U’s latest, Pineapple Dream, fits the mold for rolled down windows and vibing out in some lounge furniture. However, a visceral intensity and dark sonic space runs throughout Parisian Franck Rabeyrolles’ 14 tracks, providing some ominous clouds to obscure the rays when it seems necessary.

Surf-inspired clean guitar tones, light percussion, an occasional unusual instrument (banjo, accordion), warm synth flourishes, distant vocals, and a shit-ton of reverb make up the entirety of Pineapple Dream. The way in which this simple formula is realized, with great effect, vastly varies the mood throughout. The album’s intro best represents the ends of double U’s spectrum, included below for your consideration. And yes, that’s Stereolab’s Laetita Sadier taking up throat duty on “Interludic.” Simple, layered psychedelic pop just in time for the warming weather, Pineapple Dream is available now from Wool.

For fans of:  City Center, Atlas Sound, Galaxie 500

MP3 :::
double U – Hey Bro
double U – Interludic [feat. Laetita Sadier]

From the people who brought you Disappears (well, not people, but city), comes two additional and excellent new groups who eschew the “the” in their project name, go for the jugular, and do it up verb-style. I can usually get behind that.

First on deck is Follows –  a brand new project featuring Mia Clarke of Electrelane on spooky throat duties, Tony Lazzara of Milemarker, Colin DeKuiper of Russian Circles, and Eric Chaleff from bands that I am unfortunately not familiar with. “Black Black Rose” is an excellent primer for the dark territories in which Follows were reared, and reminds me a bit of a stripped down, mid tempo, and frightening Stereolab with a post-rock slant. The unencumbered sonic foreboding and minimal, gnarled, snakey guitar attack within this jam is perfect for a drive though nuclear winter. No full length or EP available just yet – only a demo preview, available for you to check out. The day of reckoning is neigh, so be prepared when Follows rolls up to your town in a horse drawn caravan with survival foods. Fans of Mogwai, Pram, and Indian Jewelry, listen up.

Next, meet Implodes. Just as dark and scary as Follows, with silky swells of fuzz rather than doom-invoking space as their weapon of choice. Think Flying Saucer Attack, but replace the serenity with paranoia. More upbeat than, say, Bardo Pond, but just as terrifying, Implodes put a new spin on shoegaze, keeping the melodies within the Hollow Earth rather than letting them soar like many dream pop bands are wont to do.  So I guess it isn’t just a clever name, amirite? Bad vibes are the new good vibes, and Implodes is spearheading this, along with a very nice budding shoegaze movement coming out of Chicago. Perhaps the Windy City will be the next Thames Valley? Stay tuned to The Decibel Tolls to find out!

Follow Follows amongst the MySpaces here, and Implodes lurk around these parts.

MP3 :::
Follows – Black Black Rose
Implodes –  Meadowlands

As regular readers of this mediocre blog (as well as our Twitter followers) are aware, both Hansen and I are obsessed with LOST. Here’s a photo of me drinking a DHARMA beer. I mention this because the last and current seasons of LOST touch on the ideas of the Multiverse and time travel (by way of the Time Loop Theory). This relates to Steven R. Smith, a.k.a. Ulaan Khol, in two ways. The first and most pedestrian point – dudes who are into shit like time travel, theoretical physics, mysticism, and the like can groove to Ulaan Khol no sweat.

Secondly (and most importantly), Ulaan Khol’s latest, III, practices what it preaches – bouncing about time with great ease like a pandemensional cosmic ball. Sacred mystic moods and Ben Chasney-esque eastern modal tonalities fraternize with apocalyptic noise and ambient bliss blasts from the future. Both sides make a compromise by settling somewhere in ’70s lo fi freak outs a la early Can.  Ulaan Khol is timeless not in the sense that he amalgamates genres from many movements or that he fails to convey what place in time his music exists, but rather, Ulaan Khol has no time. Does that make sense? I promise I’m not stoned.

As evidenced around the 1:15 mark of “Untitled Two,” included below, Ulaan Khol is a bad dude. III is available from Soft Abuse this Tuesday, March 9, and it will dislodge your dome.

For fans of:  Six Organs of Admittance, Can, Flying Saucer Attack, Sir Richard Bishop

MP3 :::
Ulaan Khol – Untitled 2