New Music | July And August

SOLAR YEAR
www.onesolaryear.com

Solar Year (Ben Borden and David Ertel) have become part of the eponymously cool Montreal music family with a bunch of new-age electro-pop tracks under their belt, not to mention some guest vocals from the Grimes goddess herself. The duo have been heard to call their music ‘psalmgaze’, something probably said tongue-in-cheek but immediately pounced on by rabid music journalists like myself – all because of a Gregorian chant sample, ha! Check out their Brotherhood EP, available for free download on the Arbutus Records website and be on the lookout for their full-length, Waverly, which is due to appear at the end of June on Splendour.

//www.youtube.com/embed/HLqCp4wSkBo

LYDIA AINSWORTH
www.lydiaainsworth.com

Brooklyn music lady Lydia Ainsworth is simply thrilling. Lydia, if you’re reading this, come and have pizza with me! Come and have pizza with the world! This former student of Joan La Barbara has composed for filmmakers, visual artists, poets and contemporary dance groups, putting her at the epicentre of artistic expression, making her the coolest lady everrr. Lydia’s otherworldly vocals are accompanied by a string quartet, drummers, keyboards and this brilliant self-devouring fast-food collage animation. Listen and be happy.

ORPHAN
www.soundcloud.com/orphantracks

South London producer Orphan has been around for a while, but it’s only recently that she’s put out a five-track collection of aptly-named Retakes, an EP of new interpretations of one of her 2009 live sets. Combined with its release on patten’s Kaleidoscope imprint as a very limited cassette edition, it looks like Orphan is all about shaking off old dust and revisiting good things from a while back. And in the age of new music being forgotten after pressing play for five seconds, this is a totally ace thing to do. Download Retakes for free and let the foot-tapping begin to this lady’s wonderfully minimal beats.

TACHYONS+
www.tachyonsplus.tumblr.com

If a tachyon is a hypothetical particle that moves faster than light, TACHYONS+ might even be faster. Designed by Logan Owlbeemoth and wired by Omebi Velouria, these two are equipping video artists with the cool tools they need to produce their own experimental glitchy video art by tinkering with camcorders, VCRs, old TV sets and computers. The end result is an amazing explosion of fuzzy colour, interdimensional creatures and kaleidoscopic puzzles set to some amazing beats. This may sound like one of those scam daytime TV shopping ads, but I am seriously convinced it works. Get your own opti-glitch art machine from this duo before they sell out.

//www.youtube.com/embed/cNpolnrjPb8

PHARMAKON
www.sacredbonesrecords.com/releases/sbr099

NYC native Margaret Chardiet is one of the founding members of the city’s prolific Red Light District collective DIY space and supreme queen of the underground experimental noise and power electronics scene. Teetering on the brink of total breakdown and extreme control, Pharmakon’s sound is revelatory, cathartic, utterly brilliant. Her new album on Sacred Bones, Abandon, is a head-on collision of layered drones, drums and vocal dips and dives, with maggots and dried flowers on the cover to boot. You won’t find much of her stuff online, but I’m sure she’d play a show for you and your friends if you asked nicely.

PEALS
www.pealsmusic.com

William Cashion of Future Islands and Bruce Willen of Double Dagger make wonderful music under the name Peals. It is wonderful because it has that simple-yet-complicated quality that is so hard to create. Strung together from guitars, tambourines, toy pianos and the embracing of chance sounds, their music is the ultimate instrumental track for making quinoa avocado tofu salads and putting daisies in your hair (you could also wash your writhing dog to it too, though). A special treat awaits you on their website, but I will say no more. Their Walking Field LP is out now on Thrill Jockey Records.

//www.youtube.com/embed/zq9TYDlJ1rU