Felix - "You Are The One I Pick" CD

This English chamber folk/pop duo consists of Lucinda Chua (a pianist/cellist who tours with Stars Of The Lid) and Chris Summerlin (guitarist from rock band Lords), and "You Are The One I Pick" is their debut album. It's a sweet, pure sound, with Chua's engaging voice recanting poignant, childlike tales like the lovely "I Wish I Was A Pony". "Waltzing For Weasels" is a sad little reflection, and the ambient, string-laden "What I Learned From TV" is perhaps most like Stars Of The Lid, though more intimate as Lucinda's words impart personal musings softly into the drifty soundscape. As one of Kranky's more straightforward indie outfits, Felix may surprise some listeners, but this classy, stylish, and slightly-askew sound is as sparse and austere as anything else on the fine label. Enjoyable, honest, and evocative music for the sensitive romantic in all of us. (Kranky)

Felixspace

White Rainbow - "New Clouds" CD

Portlander Adam Forkner's second release on Kranky shows an even more spacious, cosmic predilection than his excellent Krautrock-inspired debut of 2007. Beginning with the expansive 18-minute magickal-stoner ambience of "Tuesday Rollers And Strollers", White Rainbow produce a myriad of lush, even melodic sound-journeys that are hopeful, gauzy, and somehow primal and shamanic. I am reminded a bit of Popol Vuh's wonderful soundtracks to Werner Herzog's films, which isn't a bad thing at all. Forkner's vaporous, rapturous soundscapes are at once psychedelic, ambient, and trance-inducing, with each of the four extended pieces here gelling well together into 67 minutes of blissed-out, tripped-out space synaesthesia. Superb. (Kranky)

White Rainbowspace

White Rainbow tumblr

Greg Davis - "Mutually Arising" CD

His first Kranky release in (gasp) almost 5 years? Davis has evolved much in his "absence". Indeed, "Mutually Arising" is a set of 2 extended tracks, both with similar trajectories, but altogether different endpoints. "Cosmic Mudra" is nearly 29 minutes of buzzing, carefully-layered drone. To an untrained, or impatient ear, this could be construed as single-note nonsense, but upon closer "deep listening", this drone is a combination of sounds that gently twist and envelop itself again, like an ouroboros circle. The drones become intense at around the 18 minute mark, and it's really quite an overwhelming experience. "Hall Of Pure Bliss" runs at 22 minutes, and it's a more spacious, lilting, almost ambient journey, It really doesn't get much more minimalist than this, thank you John Cage. But Davis' ear is on a spiritual angle here, as evidenced by his titles. Is this meditational music? You betcha. Imagine opium dens and alternate planes of consciousness, then imagine the soundtrack. This is that. (Kranky)

Greg Davisplace

Autumn Records (Greg's personal label site)

Gregg Kowalsky - "Tape Chants" CD

Oakland, California-based drone/tone composer Kowalsky here shows a tremendous shift from his previous Kranky release, moving fully from the digital domain to purely-analogue sources. 'Tape Chants' utilizes cassette players, tape loops, oscillators, and acoustic recordings, and the hazy, gauzy sounds here are prime ambient material -- overall fairly static and (to jaded ears like mine) really quite relaxing and meditational. 'VI-VII' almost approaches a rhythmic direction, as several pitched pulse-tones (or loops) are layered together to create a rudimentary structure. 'IX' uses effected piano alongside lo-fi noises to evoke a mood of solemn nostalgia -- like a musty old photograph. The closer, 'X-XI' is closer to the noise of a furnace, insistent and jaggedly abrasive. Overall, 'Tape Chants' proves to be a curious and challenging experiment for Kowalsky, of which I'd expect greater fruits in the future. (Kranky)

Gregg Kowalsky website

Kowalskyspace

Stars Of The Lid - Environmental Defense Fund commercial

A curious and pertinent ad featuring the tired (and beautiful) sounds of Stars Of The Lid...

Windy & Carl - "Songs For The Broken Hearted" CD

Michigan's favorite dream/drone duo Windy & Carl are unheralded masters of effected, blurry, post-shoegazer soundscapes. This, their first major release in a couple of years, is an ode of sorts to love, both the beauty and bliss of it all, and the doubt, blame, and pain of it. Functioning much like one extended, hypnotic piece, 'Songs....' encompasses everything from tonally-layered driftworks ('the lulling When We Were') to gentle, fragile, and emotive subtlety ('Champion', which includes some hazily distant vocals). But if you read this as being some kind of lethargic release, you'd be wrong. Windy & Carl's freeflowing and gorgeous sounds are like meditations - organic and transcendent, and the 71 minutes here flow by far too quickly. Folks like Spiritualized or Mogwai take these sounds and put them into more rock-oriented frameworks, but W&C keep it pure, distilling the sounds of life into their barest essences, without concessions for melody or rhythm. Absolutely lovely, otherworldly music and full-on recommended. (Kranky)

Windy & Carl

Brainwashed podcast

Like to hear some of the music featured here? There are some wonderful podcasts that play it, and other similar sounds...check out my friend Jon Whitney's Brainwashed Radio here:

Brainwashed podcast page

You will not be sorry. Jon spins everything from Kranky Records artists (who have their own podcast, linked from the above page as well) to electro-glitch to ambient/drone to first-wave industrial classics.