Deerhunter - Microcastle

The latest release from the world's foremost Marfran Syndrome rock band. I'd actually recommend giving this a listen to both fans and non-fans alike, just because it's so different from Deerhunter's prior records. Theres less droning, and the vocals don't seem to be looped through a delay pedal anymore. I haven't had much time to digest the album yet, but it doesn't seem to be floating around everywhere on the internet so I figured I would post it.

Download Microcastle

Dan Friel - Ghost Town

For those of you who dig Parts & Labor, I'd recommend checking out Ghost Town, the debut album from Parts & Labor keyboardist Dan Friel. This is a really fun lo-fi electronic record that sounds like it was made for no money at all with rag tag collection of busted synths and drum machines. The obvious lack of production/recording costs just makes it all the more inspiring. If you enjoy quirky electronic music and/or the blips and bleeps of the NES era of video games, don't hesitate and download this.

Download Ghost Town

Neutral Milk Hotel - Final Live Show

If someone twisted my arm and forced me to pick a favorite band, I'd probably go with NMH. I just about shit myself when I saw that this recording had popped up online, and then I almost busted out the adult diapers again when, much to my surprise, the recording quality wasn't shit. It's actually quite good, and easily on par with the Live at Jittery Joes record. Anyway, there's 13 tracks that cover the best material from their two LP's, as well as some spoken word/rambling and some rare/unreleased tracks like "Engine" and the final song, "Mother."

Download Neutral Milk Hotel's final live show

Did Your Guitar Just Turn Into A Ball Of Light?

Flying Saucer Attack - Further
Style: Shoegaze, Ambient, Psych-Folk
Label: Drag City

Combining the drugged out, mind-fucking, gleefully feedback-drenched madness of bands like the Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine with a gentle, pastoral folk sensibility, Flying Saucer Attack holds a truly special place in the canon of modern psychedelic music. Layering towering sheets of dissonance and feedback over chiming guitars and blissed-out, almost chanted vocals, their self-titled debut album still stands as one of the more interesting freak accidents of the post-shoegaze era. "Further," released in 1995, takes a less confrontational but ultimately more rewarding approach to sonic stargazing, eschewing the ocasionally tiresome noise-worshipping tendencies of its predecessor in favor of pure melodic beauty. If listening to FSA's debut was like staring into the sun at mid-day, hearing this album in the proper setting (preferrably sprawled out comfortably in a dark room) is like floating in reverie amidst the stars. All music critic bullshit aside, let me just say that this is one of the most beautiful albums I have ever heard. If you're in a receptive mood, it will take you places you've never imagined possible.

FSA

You Are Slowly Being Destroyed

William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops II
Style: Classical Minimalism, Ambient
Label: Musex

You are slowly being destroyed. It's imperceptible in the scheme of a day or a week or even a year, but you are aging, and your body is degrading. As your cells synthesize the very proteins that allow you to live, they also release free radicals, oxidants that literally perforate your tissue and cause you to grow progressively less able to perform as you did at your peak. By the time you reach 80, you will literally be full of holes, and though you'll never notice a single one of them, you will inevitably feel their collective effect. Aging and degradation are forces of nature, functions of living, and understanding them can be as terrifying as it is gratifying.
It's not the kind of thing you can say often, but I think William Basinski's Disintegration Loops are a step toward that understanding-- the music itself is not so much composed as it is this force of nature, this inevitable decay of all things, from memory to physical matter, made manifest in music. During the summer of 2001, Basinski set about transferring a series of 20-year-old tape loops he'd had in storage to a digital file format, and was startled when this act of preservation began to devour the tapes he was saving. As they played, flakes of magnetic material were scraped away by the reader head, wiping out portions of the music and changing the character and sound of the loops as they progressed, the recording process playing an inadvertent witness to the destruction of Basinski's old music.
The process may be the hook for this sprawling four-disc set, but the loops themselves are stunning, ethereal studies in sound so fluid that the listener scarcely registers the fact that it's nothing but many hundreds of repetitions of a brief, simple loop that they're hearing. I imagine that life within the womb might sound something akin to these slowly swelling, beauteous snatches of orchestral majesty and memory-haze synthesizer. The pieces are uniformly consonant, embellished with distant whalesong arpeggios and echoing percussion.
In essence, Basinski is improvising using nothing so much as the passage of time as his instrument, and the result is the most amazing piece of process music I've ever heard, an encompassing soundworld as lulling as it is apocalyptic. A piece may begin bold, a striking, slow-motion slur of ecstatic drone, and in the first minute, you will notice no change. But as the tape winds on over the capstans, fragments are lost or dulled, and the music becomes a ghost of itself, tiny gasps of full-bodied chords groaning to life amid pits of near-silence. Some decay more quickly and violently than others, surviving barely 15 minutes before being subsumed by silence and warping, while the longest endures for well over an hour, fading into a far-off, barely perceptible glow.
There is another, eerier chapter to the story of the Disintegration Loops-- that Basinski was listening to the playbacks of his transfers as the attacks of September 11th unfolded, and that they became a sort of soundtrack to the horror that he and his friends witnessed from his rooftop in New York that day, a poignant theme for the cataclysmic editing of one of the world's most recognizable skylines. Removed from the context of that disaster and transposed into the mundane world we live in every day, The Disintegration Loops still wield an uncanny, affirming power. It's the kind of music that makes you believe there is a Heaven, and that this is what it must sound like. - pfm

My favorite of the "Disintegration Loops" series, and definitely some of Basinski's best work. The second piece of the set sounds like an orgasm of light that keeps on cresting for 40 minutes.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=B2YCFOCU

I Know A Bear That Lives Here

Keith Fullerton Whitman - Lisbon
Style: Ambient, Drone
Label: Kranky

All art based in time has a trajectory. In music, consideration of trajectory is most crucial during long stretches of uninterrupted sound. Anything requiring attention for 20, 30, 40 minutes or more-- a DJ set, say-- needs a logical structure, a steady payout of inducements to encourage the listener to maintain focus. Listening to Lisbon, which documents an October 2005 performance at the Galeria Z� Dos Bois in the Portuguese capitol, I get the idea Keith Whitman has done some thinking about structure. Here he uses the tools (guitar, processed via computer) and palette (an emphasis on slowly shifting drone) first brought to bear on his 2002 album Playthroughs, and extends them to suit a long-form piece.

The opening few minutes are close to "Track3a (2waynice)" from Playthroughs, with clean tendrils of drone only marginally more harmonically complex than a sine wave undulating in space like a Chinese dragon kite. Whitman gradually folds in additional layers and hints of counterpoint, from organ-like chords, soft bells, and an assortment of subtle glitches. The placid ramp upward lasts 13 minutes, and then harsh chords creep in. From there it's a steady plow into dissonance, as sheets of noise are piled on and most traces of pleasantness are left behind. Had it started somewhere heavier, the knotty bass (please don't listen on computer speakers) churning away at the 20-minute mark would have long grown tiring. But after the crystalline foundation of the piece's first quarter, the snarling ugliness proceeds with an undercurrent of poignancy, magnified emotionally through careful arrangement.

Heard loud, filling a room, Lisbon can be a little overwhelming. The climax comes about three-fourths of the way in, around 27 minutes, where the gritty outer layer has been shed and the drone conjures images of a metaphysical ascension through clouds. A minute later, the engines cut out and it falls toward earth in a tumble of creaking furniture, blown fuses, and bent sprockets. Apparently, Whitman had microphones placed throughout the space to capture ambient noise, and he devised a patch to process it and add it to the mix. After the purely electronic immersion the live room sounds are jarring, but the piece quickly reassembles itself for a noisy sprint to the finish, with coarse sawtooth waves sparking fountains of harmonics. A wispy finish gives the piece a circular quality, ending very near the serene opening.

It's a 41-minute piece that, like Fennesz' Live in Japan, doesn't make much sense cut into smaller segments. The time commitment is an obstacle, but the payoff is substantial. It comes back to the trajectory. When I picture a successful long-form laptop set, the perfect arc is something launched low-- 35 degrees, say-- with great force and a heavy wind coefficient so the piece dies quickly after reaching its expressive peak. Whitman here has followed it to the letter, constructing a riveting piece of music with the organic drama of a three-act play. - pfm

i am just the messenger. listen to this album and be reborn.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4EVIXWUF

Six Organs

Six Organs of Admittance - Dark Noontide
Style: Psych-Folk, Raga / Drone
Label: Holy Mountain

The fourth album from Ben Chasny and one of his most complete, 'Dark Noontide' sees the guitarist exploring the Eastern themes approached in his earlier work and also delving further into the dark drone and unsettling ambience of his debut. Indeed, sidestepping some of the more upbeat solo-guitar moments of 'Dust & Chimes', Chasny manages to create an opium fuelled moonlit Middle Eastern haven in the comfort of your front room; you can almost smell the burning rose oil somewhere behind you as your eyes cloud from the heavy substances. Taking as usual the guitar as his instrument of choice, Chasny fleshes the tracks out with flute, tabla and occasionally his voice to come out with a deeply varied work and one of the finest records ever to emerge from the scene. If you've only managed to come across Chasny's Drag City albums before then you simply need to grab hold of this record as soon as you can, it takes you places other albums just can't reach. - bmk

http://www.mediafire.com/?dxfrc2fyymt

Not An Animal Lover?

Artist: The Field
Album: From Here We Go Sublime
Genre: electronic, microhouse, ambient
Sounds like (according to last.fm): Isolée, Thomas Fehlmann, Superpitcher
Link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZH30RL6T

Deer Anyone?

Artist: Deerhunter
Album: Cryptograms
Genre: psychedelic rock
Sounds like (according to last.fm): Caribou, Deerhoof, Grizzly Bear
Link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LJ14ORBG

Rise!

Artist: Dirty Projectors
Album: Rise Above
Genre: experimental, art rock
Sounds like (according to last.fm): Animal Collective, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Devendra Banhart, Parenthetical Girls
Link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=B4THH7A5

Person Pitch

Artist: Panda Bear
Album: Person Pitch
Genre: experimental, freak folk, psychedelic
Sounds like (according to last.fm): Akron/Family, Animal Collective, Six Organs Of Admittance
Link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=90LSG5QU