"These days it seems all too easy to dig out a record that describes itself as 'droning', 'beautiful' or 'ambient', but when you're looking at where all this came from it is hard not to bump into the husband- and-wife duo of Carl Hultgren and Windy Weber. The band might be on their umpteenth release by now, but in their longevity they have never sacrificed quality control, and they have honed their style to a zenith most artists never touch. Sure there might be many newcomers and pretenders, but like so many things in life, sometimes it's best to get the real thing..."

Other Music

This new Tim Hecker release is composed of sketch pieces recorded in 2010 in preparation for what would become the Ravedeath, 1972 album. All of the compositions are piano driven and minimal in nature.

This is not a new Tim Hecker album, but rather a peek behind the curtains into the working process. That these pieces stand on their own as compelling soundworks is a testament to the fact that Tim Hecker is at the absolute top of his game at the moment.

Kranky records

Exile is the new Charalambides album. Five years in the making, it was recorded between 2006 and 2010 in various locations in New Hampshire, western Massachusetts and New York City, mixed at Black Dirt Studios, and mastered at Sand with Paul Gold. The group remains the core duo of Christina and Tom Carter, with contributions on one track by the string section of Helena Espvall and Margarida Garcia.

Deeply imbued with the full historical spectrum of american folk and blues song form, Exile is a tapestry of suppliant invocations directed at the heart of the unseen spiritual forces surrounding us. Dense arrangements and thickly-overdubbed tracks sit side-by-side with material that ranks among the sparest and most skeletal the group has recorded, giving Exile the psychic scope of their classic Market Square album while building on the refinements of the more recent Likeness and A Vintage Burden releases.

This album quite coincidentally marks Charalambides' 20th anniversary, as it was the fall of 1991 when they first started playing, and they made their live debut in December of that year. Since their last album, Tom Carter has released a series of collaborations and solo works on a wide array of labels, while Christina Carter has been steadily releasing her solo work through labels including her own Many Breaths imprint.

Kranky records

Black Earth is a haunted and magical place. There's an old barn there with many rooms and a silo that's filled with dead insects. Outside there's a big wood pile filled with spider webs that probably has black widows living in it. There are mysterious plants growing everywhere. At night, when the air is crisp and clean, you can lie on your back by the fire and look up at the stars and listen to the animals and insects making their music.

A trip to Black Earth could change you forever and you may want to never leave. Implodes has been to Black Earth and they made an album in its honor, dark and murky music for that dark and murky place. Cavernous guitar tones and dense melodies are present everywhere. Hidden beneath the layers of reverb, delay and distortion are deceptively simple and beautiful songs about experiences that have been obscured for many years that suddenly become profoundly important. The cobwebs just needed to be pushed aside a bit.

Kranky records

It's been five years since the last Belong long player, as the duo works slowly to organize their sound works. Both the time invested, and the wait, have been well rewarded with this return.

Common Era shows extraordinary progression from that first album of dense, scorched earth instrumentals, hints of a new direction having been revealed on the Colorloss Record EP from 2008 which contained covers of four should-have-been classics from the original psychedelic era. The new material has such common pop elements as "songs," vocals and drum machines, but the results could hardly be called conventional and are like little else happening on the current "scene."

The songs themselves are akin to radio transmissions received from another time and place, just as likely to be the future as the past, or even from a contemporary alternate universe. They are both passionate and dispassionate, grey yet technicolor, ghostly and palpable, distant yet immediate, grainy and focused. Upon listening these conceptual contradictions are dismissed with ease, as the recordings reveal that they fit all of these descriptors simultaneously, an extraordinary balancing act.

Kranky records

First time vinyl release for this classic Low holiday recording. We would suggest that few bands from an ostensibly "indie rock" background should release Christmas music, if not out of respect for the holiday or material then at least out of a sense of self-esteem. Low, however, were made for this. Their attention to musical detail combined with the heavenly vocal harmonies of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker are perfectly attuned to both traditional carols like "Silent Night" and more contemporary tunes such as "Blue Christmas."

Christmas contains a selection of seasonal songs, including four originals by the band, mostly recorded at Low's 20° Below studio in Duluth, MN. "If You Were Born Today" and "Blue Christmas" were released as a 7 inch single in 1997 on the English Wurlitzer Jukebox label, while "Taking Down The Tree" is taken from a 1998 compilation of live recordings issue by the Dutch VPRO radio station.

Kranky records

For Waiting, For Chasing was originally issued in a limited pressing by the Stefan Németh (Radian) curated Mosz label in 2006. This is the first time it is being made widely available in north america and elsewhere, and also the first time it is being issued on the vinyl LP format.

As Mosz eloquently stated at the time of release, "...it is not about the process or the media, which have been used. It is about how elements and structures are put in a detailed relation to each other, ending up in a slow-moving, breathing organism. Filaments of percussive elements condense to polyrhythmic elements, layers of sound, instruments and field recordings merge to build up a mystic parallel, not so much fictional world."

Perhaps the most skeletal and minimal of all of the works in the Pan•American canon, it may also be the most compelling.

Kranky records

2010 was a busy year for the Disappears. They finally saw their debut album Lux released, they did a fair amount of touring, and they recorded this new album. Having worked these new songs into proper shape in the live setting, they went into the studio and ripped through the recordings, using the first take on all but one of the tracks. And Disappears are so much about the NOW and not the THEN that they recorded over the same reels of tape that they used for their first album.

"Guider" means to control or influence, which is what all the songs ended up being about in one form or another. This is a heads down, blinders on, damn the distractions, forward driving, controlled squall. Drop the needle, turn up the volume and surrender to the delicious.

Kranky records

Lasted is the third album by Thomas Meluch under the alias Benoit Pioulard. Thomas has toured throughout North America and Europe since his last record, the process of which has had a marked impact on the development of these songs as lyrics and structures have been scrapped, tweaked and reworked in the live setting. As with previous albums it was recorded and mixed in domestic isolation, this time throughout the rainy season in his current home of Portland, Oregon.

While the extent of the dreary climate's influence on the results is left to the listener's discretion, what is certain is that Thomas has a preternatural ability to weave disparate sound components into a cohesive sonic tapestry, mixing a varied palette of field recordings and percussive elements along with melancholy melodies to create songs that recall - and are akin to - vespers of long-buried memories."

The result is a mesmerizing journey to cracked and digitized moonscapes where Reinhardt's transparent relationship with instruments, sound, and form are made whole and hints of a beat-centered future are just around the corner.

Kranky records

This is the debut studio full length from this Chicago quartet after two singles and a limited live album, all self-released by the band.

Disappears are that rarest of musical things, a 'rock' band affiliated with kranky. But at least they are a rock band and not some less than reasonable facsimilie, because let's face it; most bands using that descriptor would not sonically intimidate your grandmother if she were alone in a dark alley. And deliver the granite the Disappears do from the opening chords, delivering scuzzy, driving rhythms that certainly imply a threat of ill will.

Drawing on a combined reverence for reverb, heavy tremolo, distortion, delay and repetition, Disappears play minimal rock music inspired by krautrock, punk rock, the mid 80's New Zealand scene, and a bit of everything in between. And in their minimalist approach the band finds their real strength, hammering home chord structures that are tried and true and can and do remain fresh in the hands of the right talents such as these.

As a wise man once said, "keep it simple stupid".

Kranky records

Endless Falls is the fifth full length release by Scott Morgan under the loscil moniker. The album begins and ends with the sound of rain recorded by Scott in his back yard, precipitation being a constant presence in his home city of Vancouver. Many of the other sounds on the album are derived from these same recordings, processed and combined with other harmonic sounds to create the textures and drones.

Something completely new to this release would be vocals, of a sort, a first for any loscil composition, contributed by Daniel Bejar on the final track. Scott states "The collaboration with Dan made us both incredibly nervous. Dan felt out of his element doing 'spoken word' but rose to the challenge. I felt self-conscious about changing the listening perspective from abstract, ambient music into foreground, conscious listening. The first time I heard Dan's voice recording I was terrified and was tempted to call the whole thing off. I listened to it a few more times and it completely grew on me. Now I can't imagine that piece without his performance. I love Dan's use of words, his vocal rhythms and the intimate intensity of his voice."

Jason Zumpano is the only returning performer from past collaborations, he is responsible for the piano parts. Kim Koch and Robert Sparks make appearances on violin and bass recorder. The cover photos for the album were taken from the backseat of the family car by Scott's newest collaborator, his 4 year old daughter Sadie..

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Ken Camden plays guitar. While those four words might imply something extremely limiting, Ken's playing and execution are anything but. His work seamlessly melds elements of modern composition, kosmische musik, eastern modal themes and academic electronic works; in other words, a good amount of the things we love here at kranky.

All of the pieces were recorded in real time with no overdubs, with the exception of Jupiter which was designed and recorded as a duet for two guitars. While this process may not result in the technical perfection that many strive for, it leaves in the idiosyncrasies that give sound recordings their life and their soul, that make them unique to the individual and the moment. Each final mix was chosen from multiple versions of each composition for the qualities inherent in the specific selected take.

What results are six intoxicating, structured atmospheres perfect for headphones and a deep recline into an enveloping chair.

Kranky records

A few things have changed for Adam Forkner since his last White Rainbow album from 2007, Prism of Eternal Now. A national tour with fellow kranky heads Valet and Atlas Sound, and countless hours jamming with Portland avant-music collective Rob Walmart inspired him to hunker down and dig deeper into his personal vision of what head music can be.

Adam Forkner lives and loves in Portland, Oregon. This is the second White Rainbow album released on kranky

Kranky records

Nudge returns with a slow burning full-length of sounds perfect for the dying days of the summer's swelter.

The varied stylistic shifts of previous material have garnered their fair share of comments regarding a schizophrenic nature, but here the experimental lean of the group is placed to deliver it's most cohesive sound to date. Masterfully blurring the music's entangled live and programmed approaches to the point of imperceptibility, layer upon layer of synth, guitar and vocals are draped over skeletal pop structures and anchored by dub basslines born of resin-stained fingers. Covered in an electric blanket of atmosphere that can surely only come from years in outer space memorizing the top of one's shoes, the gothic trappings reveal themselves as hard-earned circles beneath the eyes as opposed to poorly applied hot topic nail polish.

As Good As Gone is a proper album whose arc is intended to be absorbed stem to stern.

Kranky records

from Mark Nelson:
Thank you to my family and kranky for the freedom to make this record.
Thank you to the musicians and engineers who contributed.
Thank you to all listeners.
Mark N

The sixth album from Mark Nelson's longtime solo project follows his Quiet City album on kranky, and more recently the For Waiting, For Chasing release on the Mosz label.

Kranky records

One of the latest "true queer art punks" to emerge from the cracked pavement of southern suburban sprawl, Atlas Sound is the solo moniker of Deerhunter frontman / provocateur Bradford Cox. Here on his debut album, Cox / Sound moves out of dank nightclubs filled with eternal existential drone punk, and relaxes at home in his Grant Park, Atlanta bedroom. And this is, essentially, a bedroom album, a collage, mixing the garage rock and ambient electronic influences previously explored with Deerhunter in a new context, with newly explored recording techniques, mainly laptop-based, learned with guidance from kranky artist Nudge's Brian Foote. The result is 14 Songs of melancholy and mania.

This is a true solo album, entirely created and produced by a single person. That is certainly not unique, especially in the contemporary scene. But Bradford Cox's unusual talent is the ability to take a wide variety of seemingly incongruous sound elements, and seamlessly meld them into a cohesive pop narrative. A sunken 4/4 techno beat underpinning "Winter Vacation"? Perfect. Mbira loops running over the top of "Quarantined"? Just what it needed. An insistent, clipped drum roll carrying "River Card"? Masterful. And ultimately it is this innate ability to combine all these disparate elements into a singular whole that makes this album such an enjoyable, and unique listen.

Kranky records

Harmony in Ultraviolet is Tim Hecker's sixth album. It is a continuation of Hecker's interest in spectral communications, noise, impressionist musics, thresholds of listening pleasure/pain, and the limits of digital composition. This album is a significant development of his song-craft, challenging the usefulness of descriptors such as ambient, drone, metal, noise and even electronic music. If references are necessary it could be described as a sonata for the elements, songs of crackling embers, tidal pools, spruce skylines and autumn winds. Gerhard Richter's abstract paintings are also a fair orientation. Materially speaking, it is a record of whirring drones, whispering fissures, dense disintegrating chords, late-night noise and truth-telling harmonics. Yet this record follows no overarching process, no underlying narrative. It is both a homage for the Italian partigiani and also not at all. It is songs about ghost writing and midnight whispers but then again it isn't. In many ways this album can be viewed as a work of total destruction, embracing indeterminacy as an aesthetic ideal.

Kranky records

To say that the words "unique" and "singular" are over-used in describing music is to state the obvious. To apply these words to the sounds created by the various duo/trio configurations of the Texas group Charalambides over the last decade plus would be understatement. To be sure there are numerous antecedents to their music; to deny this of any artist's work would be akin to saying that they are deaf. But they have surely broken new ground in the primitive/folk/mystic/improv/psych valley in which they toil. This new album is certainly not for the faint of heart.

Five songs stretch and crawl over 75 minutes, with Christine Carter finding a new fearlessness in her voice that will draw comparisons to Patty Waters or the early work of Meredith Monk. Joy Shapes is the first studio album recorded by Charalambides in a long time. The main tracks were recorded in June 2003, with subsequent overdubs, mixing and mastering done throughout the summer and early fall of 2003 including one night of vocals recording done in what Tom Carter calls a "lost evening."

Kranky records