Clams Casino - “What You Doin”
Instrumental

Walking the line between electronic ephemera and lushly produced hip-hop, this record is a great example of hybrid vigor. The deep beats are decidedly bass-heavy and urban, but the ghostly samples and full-spectrum atmospherics are more like Cut Copy crossed with Tim Hecker. The drums are a melange: the last track, “13,” combines a metronomic high hat from the 80s with a thunderous bass from the mid-2000s, with an old school clap that makes you think it’s going to drop into a house spiral at any moment. And then you’ve got this track, like a drugged, gauzy trip to a slow-motion dance floor. Where did this come from? (insound)

Plants And Animals - “Celebration”
La La Land

A slow-grow track from this versatile band, with one of those great sounds that keeps growing when you think they can’t add any more. Shades of Yeasayer. I’m hoping these guys have gotten popular over the last couple years but I have no way to be sure. (insound)

Au Revoir Borealis - “Bella Ballerina”
Dark Enough For Stars

A wispy, melancholy instrumental from this shoegaze-y 2008 album. Would work well as background music for a day-in-the-life montage of a forlorn and lonely grocery bagger. (site)

Do Make Say Think - “In Mind”
You, You’re A History In Rust

The last track from a solid album that demonstrates the musical breadth of which Do Make Say Think are capable. Most of the post-rock motifs have been stripped out, or at least aren’t front and center. There’s more songwriting and less atmospherics — not a change many fans expected, I think (when I saw them live, they admitted they would sing on their next album as if it was a crime), but after three or four excellent albums along their original line of musical thinking, a little variety can’t hurt (and at any rate, their next album was a return to form). This final track is a good distillation of the album, which is well worth a listen and may in fact be the best starting point for new listeners. (insound)

Bibio - “Mr. & Mrs. Compost”
Vignetting The Compost

Despite the fragrant name, this track and to a great degree this album are surprisingly tender and beautiful. Bibio has since diversified, but within his purview at the time, this was expansive, playful, melancholy, and absolutely unique in sound.

The Psychic Paramount - “Intro/SP”
II

While not as mind-shatteringly intense as the near-nuclear Gamelan Into The Mink Supernatural, The Psychic Paramount’s new album is still louder and more powerful than 99% of music. The songs lack some of the traveling I liked on their previous album - the tripartite “Para5,” the ambient freakout of “Ex-Visitations,” the hypno-slow-build of the title track. There isn’t as much of that here, but there are plenty of moments where the noise and the drums and the chaos and the noise seem to transcend themselves and achieve something akin to cosmic glory, and if you were hearing it live, your eardrums approaching the limits of their durability, you would fall on your knees and worship.

Ghosts and Vodka - “Futuristic Genitalia”
Addicts & Drunks

I’m not sure how to categorize this instrumental guitar play-date, but I love it anyway.

Voltron Opening Theme (no narration)

A break from the usual. This one lacks the opening narration (“This… is the story… of the super force… of space explorers”) and lets you focus on the sweet horn breaks.

Whitenessmovesdownward - “Decay / Renewal”
Meditation: Ground Zero

A bit of atmospheric electronic piano I collected around ten years ago, in the supreme madness of the Audiogalaxy years. Obscure to the point of near non-existence.

Porcupine Tree - “Feel So Low”
Lightbulb Sun

A few of my friends in college were hugely into Porcupine Tree, and while I didn’t catch the fever, this song and a few others have been in regular rotation for ten years now. “Feel So Low” is a just a melancholy melody with no pretensions.

Raising the Fawn - “Drownded”
The North Sea

While parts of this album stray into the falsetto melancholy of bands like Aereogramme and For Stars, the meaty guitar and willingness to extend their songs into epic territory (at 11:11, this is the longest on the album but not by far) make Raising the Fawn a bit more exciting. “Drownded” covers a lot of ground, or water as it were, and while it leaves plenty of space to breathe, it never gets boring and the songwriting is just plain solid.

Tape - “Switchboard Fog”
Milieu

Crickets don’t chirp, nor birds sing, to a score. There is no conductor. Perhaps that’s why Tape’s haphazard harmonies and pastoral noodling are so compelling. They lack the exactitude of produced music. This track and others on Milieu, their best album, are less like songs and more like a dawn chorus of guitars, keyboards, and bells.

Tarentel - “Two Sides Of Myself (pt. 1)”
Ephemera

A shimmery exhalation from this variable band’s collection of singles. Like taking a slow boat through a tunnel of stars. And also, you’re drunk.

Kepler - “The Changing Light At Sandover”
Fuck Fight Fail

While their follow-up to this album, Missionless Days, is a quiet masterpiece, this one is far more ambitious and their sound expansive enough on it to rival Mogwai and Explosions In The Sky. But somehow it remains intimate. Past the first couple minutes of crashing intro, this is a remarkably delicate song. The same can be said for the other long track on this album, “Upper Canada Fight Song,” which has an even more Mogwai-esque closer. (insound)

Macha - “Calming Passengers”
Forget Tomorrow

The synth-rock Macha creates is usually poppy and forgettable (not in a bad way), but they occasionally exhibit just a fantastic ear for sound. The ripples constituting the waves of sound lapping along in this song are superbly matched, and the overall rhythm, while not dancey, is difficult not be become caught up in.