WHAT RULES WEDNESDAY
EVERY Wednesday we feature albums, eps, splits, tracks, anything we’ve found recently that we think you should hear.
In this format we share shorter write-ups about the music and a link to listen!
We hope you find great new music EVERY WEEK here.
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ALBUM:Mythical Motors-Upside Down World
Matt Addison stands too close to the microphone, while also on the other side of the room, and somewhere in the center of the wood paneling, and hot carpet, a bridge of voice builds and guitars dangle like aging fruit on forgotten trees.
Somewhere in the air a family of flies buzz like nothing else matters.
As 14 songs gaggle and bubble, Addison leads a muted set of bashed out drums along the thin strings of guitar chords plucking like the feathers of a prepared bird.
These are songs to sing along to in the middle of a city coated in summer haze.
Even if the words are hard to catch, the melodies trail in perfected cuts of deli sliced sandwich layers.
The louds scorch, the quiets leave space for somewhere to sit.
It’s the sounds of a lake drying up.
It’s the sounds of someone winning a medal for having a car that looks cool.
Addison has a certain ability to cut the pieces into stone that need to be there and leave the rest of the ornaments in storage.
(Repeating Cloud)
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EP: Woods-Five More Flowers
This is the space right before falling fully asleep.
The nodding off space of still hearing people’s voices in the room, while the voices in the dream are starting to echo wherever we “hear” inside of our heads.
As is habit, any new Woods release magnetizes to an immediate listen that always angles in, like the leftover sunlight of afternoon melting into evening.
Voices like drops of water on big leaves, bass and drums casual as cold holiday hands.
Auxiliary sounds whir and whine like the memories a ghost holds.
“Do you feel alone, today?” sounds like a personal inquiry and not a hook in a chorus so big it could hang the world off the edge of a cosmic tree.
Woods crafts in a certain direction, while always refreshing the page.
These 5 tracks deserve a moment of close listening when a horizon is available to stare at, or a moon is shining in a cloudless blue sky, or wind is blowing the stalks of thin flowers around like forever standing bowling pins.
Lost in the thick of branches, leaves are each painted individually, every second of these songs is one of those leaves and the whole tree is the entirety of the EP.
(WOODSIST)
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TRK: Fabiano do Nascimento & Matthewdavid-Ohayou
Coming across a collaboration of these two names should draw every listener immediately to a stopping place in the day to take these 10 minutes in.
Fabiano do Nascimento walks the frets and strings of the guitar like paths winding in a sphere shape.
Matthewdavid closing the sounds in with wide open synthetic brushes of hum and slur.
There’s space to breathe in the cavern.
It’s warm like a cooling engine.
Chords drawn out into single picks at a note like a seed in an apple core that will eventually sprout a whole new tree.
This track weaves and bends, a tapestry, a blanket, a fire burning in the desert.
Shimmers on a fish’s back.
Ice in a glass melting into a second drink.
The gathering of insects at the foot of a plant nearly crushed by a shoe.
It’s a gathering of shapes into dimensions.
A collecting of stars into night.
Gold in a river without being discovered is just a swirling reflection.
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ALBUM: Sam Gendel & Sam Wilkes-The Doober
One of our FAVORITE collaborations in the world is back! The double Sam connection always delivers in palettes of sound and space to watch birds move however they want with wings we’ll never fully understand.
Gendel on a C-Melody Saxophone and Wilkes on a Fender P-Bass collaborate in an existence of melody and structure, mashed against “total freedom.”
The ticking clock of “GBTC” feels like a pathway on a public transit, but inside the bus everything is moving around like pieces of puzzles from different boxes in a pasta strainer.
The steady hand of Wilkes allows Gendel to soar in crunched and pressured tones.
This album loses itself immediately, and there’s only one option: to follow it.
Listen to “Rugged Road,” and find a better song this year. The bass blabbering, the melody of the Saxophone like TV to watch forever, percussion like a voice inside of a half empty can of flat soda.
“Boa 2” squeaks into life and steadily paces. Footsteps in an empty quarry.
This album needs to be heard more than talked about. Listen to it. Keep listening to it.
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TRK: Forest Fallows-Hotel Radisson
Sometimes I find a project that sounds like the creators know me and know EXACTLY what I want to hear, and Forest Fallows is one of those instances.
The warmth but never overheat of summer air blows gently as Mike Barnett and Alex Morton strum soft chords, and sing like the fur of a rabbit in a straw hat.
Flute flutters that break up the quiet undercurrents layer just enough, but don’t pull from the slow blinking eyes of car windows passing something monumental on the side of the road.
This new single follows up “Saturday Rose,” with yet another splash in the same cooling pool. A tiny bicycle bell rings out off time, and falls back to sleep. Saxophone ends the track like a frosted pastry in an open window.
(Fort Lowell)