Artist: Sightings

Last night the legendary, but reclusive Linda Perhacs wowed McCabe's guitar shop in Santa Monica with her ethereal songs. Sadly, I was not able to attend, but was delighted when a series of videos of the show surfaced, courtesy of The New Los Angeles Folk Fest . Here Perhacs performs as part of a gang of five that includes Ramona Gonzales ( Nite Jewel ), Julia Holter , Aaron Robinson, and Michelle Vidal. Perhacs met Julia Holter at her first performance ever at The Red Cat in Los Angeles. This beautiful live rendition of "Chimicum Rain" features [...]

Gaurav Bashyakarla of Kansas' C V L T S , we learned recently, has teamed with a few friends to found his own tape label,  Beer On The Rug . First on the menu, the self-titled debut from Ohio's Casino Gardens, a one-man, "hypnogogic" concept project centered around a fictitious Florida casino. Rose Quartz was spot-on in describing this stuff as a "nice mix of Rangers and Ducktails ian pop," though this album teaser from video artist Zahid Jiwa plays out like the collected distopian vacation fantasties of the entire Olde English Spelling Bee [...]

• Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version ... » 09 Finding You in the Plaza.mp3
• audio:05%20Casino%20Gardens.mp3 » 05 Casino Gardens.mp3

Der April gestaltet sich dieses Jahr ja angenehm krachig. Gleich am Montag bringen die New Yorker Noiserocker Sightings ihren immensen Sound in den Stadtgarten, eine Woche darauf kehren die großartigen Action Beat in den Sonic Ballroom zurück. Nicht nur in Köln machen die Energiebatzen Mi Ami , neuerdings zu zweit und elektronisch unterwegs, halt, auch den Avant-Rock von Zs gibt es zu mehreren Gelegenheiten live zu hörensehen: Sightings 11.04.2011 Stadtgarten, Köln Action [...]

Deep Magic - Lucid Thought from Motion Sickness of Time Travel on Vimeo . Deep Magic 's Alex Gray is on a roll, in the most contemplative, zen way possible. The Oxnard, CA native, and Sun Araw band member makes tranquil music that starts off rather unassumingly, and slowly seeps through all your pores. "Lucid Thought 13, whose video is posted above, is subtly accented by bass drones and the cacophony of rain sticks. The video takes us to a beautiful landscape, with layers and layers of flowers bursting open, [...]

Rough Fields is the moniker of Manchester-based, "electro-acoustic" composer James Birchall. According to Soundcloud , this track - "Manila" - was recorded during "time spent alone in a studio with a range of instruments, plenty of booze and a reasonable degree of introspection." The blend of delicate folk sounds and bright electronics present on "Manila" certainly lend credence to that notion. Hell, even the instruments present on the track were lonely castaways rescued by Birchall. Discarded chopsticks and makeshift-cardboard-kick drums deftly lead listeners along as barely working guitar, mandolin, violin, and plinky melodica work their magic in the [...]

Photo Credit: Caitlin C. Mitchell M. Geddes Gengras seems to make music for maximum body/mind harmony. He has sent many Los Angeles house shows and DIY spaces into the stratosphere with his expansive, slow brewing analog synth compositions. This track, which he created under the alias Personable, takes his sound into a more rythmic, acid house direction. This should come as no surprise to those who have been listening to Ged's DJ mixes for Where's YR Child , the DJ night that he does along with Cameron Stallones of Sun Araw [...]

Reverb-drenched, blissed-out garage jams are nothing new these days. The streamlined guitar freak-outs, toe-tapping melodies, and below lo-fi production of Heavy Times make each listen go by in a breeze. Based out of Chicago, these dudes have been putting out sun-drenched melodies since 2005, with sometimes only one or two of the members recording at a time. Through a steady stream of self-releases, Heavy Times incarnate a younger generation taking an entirely new spin on the sound of hope in the forgotten, half-filled neighbor’s pool worth skating in. Primary contributor Bo Hansen’s lyrics are somewhat lost in the haze [...]

GILLETTE - I teaser from 100% Silk on Vimeo . Amanda Brown ( Not Not Fun , LA Vampires) has certainly been making strides with her new 100% Silk imprint. The young label has put out long playing techno releases from The Deeep, Maria Minerva, and Ital to name a few. This new track from Gillette is as smooth as your lover's face after a clean shave. Although we are only given a snippet here, I am excited by Gillette's enchantingly spacey minimal techno. The video, which was directed by Amanda Brown and Ben [...]

With temperatures rising and the sun shining on a semi-regular basis it definitely appears to be time to pack away winter-y synths and bust out the loud guitar jams again. Enter Brooklyn's Flower Orgy who sent us a few demos from their upcoming, Alex Bleeker-produced EP. Unlike the folkier sounds of the band's recent Curatorial Club release, here Flower Orgy guide listeners on a garage rock journey chock full of everything that will always be pure and good about this kind of music. On "Mama Earth" the band immediately bring the noise with a flurry [...]

Image Credit- Kasper Vogelzang There's a strange sensation that I like to call "The Beautiful Foreboding". Those of us who reside in California know it well. Its a common to feel this sensation right before an earth quake. Imagine you are are enjoying a cup of tea on your sunny porch, but some part of you knows that the ground may start to shake and disrupt your peace in a profound way. The track "Pac Al I" by Utrecht folk duo Bebe Fang is a sonic encapsulation of that feeling. The meandering chimes, coupled [...]

You probably know Mater Suspiria Vision by now as the mysterious European entity with an unhealthy obsession with long-haired beautifies from the '70s- manifest in some 63 "non profit promo video collages" of found footage from horror, exploitation, and art-school classics. Last Fall saw creative mastermind "Cosmotropia de Xam" remixing the soundtrack from Peter Weir’s  Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) over images from the film itself; "Das Haus der Hexe," a track from their new  Inverted Triangle I LP, sounds like a Goblin cover coughed up from smoky mouth of a [...]

For me, SXSW is a time to both fall in love with new music, and to remember the music that I already adore. The warm air and twilight BBQs certainly make it easy to lose your heart for a moment. In perhaps the oddest of settings, I was reminded of my deep affection for Austin based quartet Soft Healer . They played on the later side at a Libertarian bookstore called Brave New Books during a showcase put on by the members of Sun Araw and Prince Rama (Prince Sun Arawma). I had [...]

Recorded in an old country store-turned restuarunt, the debut self-titled EP from Blacksburg, VA outfit Nash Smith & Ganges is full of scuzzy dream-pop quietly awaiting its chance to burst forth from old country confinement. On "No Names" keyboardist/vocalist Melissa Smith channels Beach House's Victoria Legrand but strips Legrand's croon down to a hauntingly mellow wail that echoes off the old room-turned-studio's historic walls and through the earlobes of intent listeners. Subtle synth lines and rhythmic drums support Smith's vocals well and lay a baseline groove that bursts into a bright guitar crescendo loud and scuzzy enough to [...]

Serhat Koksal is a very prolific man. The Istanbul based multimedia artist started making work as part of the global cassette tape movement in 1983, and has been incredibly active ever since with video art, curating the roaming Tehran Biennial , DJing and his own music. 2/5BZ is his electronic music project, and perhaps the output he is most known for. "I Am A Green Child" is a composition that Koksal started working on in 1997, under the original title "Anadolog". In 2005 he updated the track, and changed the name to "I Am A Green [...]

• 2/5bz - I AM A GREEN CHILD

Spring reared its welcome head for the first real time today in my humble upstate New York abode. Sun poured out onto the street and giant slabs of piled snow finally began to recede from sidewalk paths. The glitter-y vibes of Luxembourg-based electronica peddlers, Sun Glitters , provided my high-on-sun self a warm and welcoming backing track for a day like today with their debut Everything Could Be Fine . On standout track "Too Much to Lose" the group approaches the practice of pilling on sampled sounds and warped vocal effects with a subtle touch; gently [...]

If you're looking for a Psychedelic Hip Hop treat today, you came to the right place. Chicago's  Jeremiah Jae , who just put out his Rappayamatantra EP on Brainfeeder has a playfully odd sensibility, and knows how to turn that into a tripped out sonic delight. "King's Bop" starts out dramatically with a celebratory scream, and grooves on through with some Hendrixesque guitar riffs, organ accents, blunt drum taps, and a vocal sample in an indeterminate language. Much like Low End Theory staple Gaslamp Killer , Jeremiah Jae's music will get both the [...]

Funded via Kickstarter , Aaron Roche and Tim Hinck 's plainspeak is the kind of album that leaves me wondering how to convey the feelings it invokes. It's hard to even write "this kind of music," because I've never heard anything like it before. Assisted by members of the Chattanooga Symphony, the classically-trained pair blend noise, jazz, and psych-folk to explore the possibilities of an indie-folk-classical album. Plainspeak points to their talent crafting intricate out of unusual melodies, reverb harmonies, and elusive lyrics. The album gathers around themes of [...]

Sifting through E-Mail submissions for Visitation Rites often feels like an endless hunt for buried treasure. In my time writing for this publication I have been lucky enough to find several hidden gems, but my favorite is still Lizard Kisses , the Brooklyn, NY duo of Marc Merza and Cory Siegler. Together they create simple lo-fi pop nuggets that fit snuggly into familiar songwriting tropes and wrap around listeners like a cozy blanket. On new track, "Waywards," the duo stays relatively within the same cozy blanket of sound. However, "Waywards" proves to be a much hazier affair [...]

As mortifying as it is, a lot of my love for music started with musical theater.  To my young ears, the rich lyrical worlds, accompanied by lush, orchestral instrumentation really did the trick. When I say that Julia Holter's song "Gigi" sounds like musical theater, I certainly mean it as a compliment. Since Julia's upcoming full length on Leaving Records (tentatively titled  Tragedy ) is an ode to Greek Tragedy, It seems that she's no stranger to theatricality. The song is named for the novel by Colette , which was actually adapted into [...]

Another red-eyed Studio One revery from Madison, WI's Peaking Lights , the husband-wife duo of Aaron Coyes and Indra Dunis, formerly of San Francisco's Rahdunes . "Key Sparrow" opens with the squish of a record player booting up to 33, as though its base synth motif were playing directly from a raspy dub LP. In come some minor-key fingerpicking, a few screaching guitar flyaways, and Indra's minimal sing-song vocals, midway between double-dutch chant and teutonic battle cry. Their new  936 LP on Not Not Fun, which also includes  "Tiger Eyes" and "All the Sun That Shines" [...]