Future Islands' romantic synth sound scales new heights with On the Water, the Baltimore trio's most ambitious and fully realized statement yet. Built around a song cycle exploring love, loss, and memory, their latest album finds the band continuing to deliver pounding rhythms, swelling melodies, and undeniable hooks - but finding new ways to probe inner space and tug at hearts.

Convening in March 2011 in Elizabeth City, NC's historic, waterfront Andrew S. Sanders House, vocalist Samuel T. Herring, bassist William Cashion, and keyboardist Gerrit Welmers lived together in a space that served as both studio and sleeping quarters. The band used this tranquil retreat to refine their most reflective and mature batch of songs to date, adding new material in the process.

What emerged is a lush yet visceral album about two parallel journeys--one physical and one psychological. On the Water's narrator offers enough detail that their story feels personal, yet open enough that any listener can inhabit each twist and emotional pang as their own.

Travelling on foot, we seek something - an exorcism, an epiphany, an ending. Memories wash across us as in life: non-linear, linked by emotional resonance rather than conventional chronology. And so, the pain of letting go channeled by "The Great Fire" collides with a moment's fleeting serenity in the Eno-esque "Open"; the triumphant rallying cry "Give Us the Wind, " despite its confident declaration of individual strength, remains a mile away from final chapter "Tybee Island." It is there the song cycle ends, and what is discovered in "Tybee Island" will be as different as the lives lived by each person who finds their way to this album.

On the Water may unearth aural memories as well. The mind may flash upon our first encounters with New Order's "Ceremony," David Bowie's "Heroes," or The Cure's Disintegration, memories which, are continually reborn and re-imagined in the context of the here and now. And as the song-cycle's narrator comes to terms with his own memories, his singular journey collapses into the collective experience of album-closer "Grease." It is here that the "I" of the nine previous songs collapses into the "we" of Future Islands, now singing the literal journey of the people who came together by the ocean to deliver these songs into our ears. Far from just a narrative trope, the ocean played an integral role in On the Water's creation. The bulk of the album was recorded with waves pounding sand mere feet away. The album opens and closes with field recordings made by the band on a nearby dock, and one pivotal track, "Tybee Island," began with vocals recorded on the beach (subsequently fleshed out in the studio with additional instrumentation).

The ocean inhabits every note of these songs. On the Water is an addictive ride that demands repeat listens, eagerly awaiting the test of time. To produce these results, Future Islands fleshed out its sound with the additions of cello, violin, marimba, and field recordings. As with their 2010 breakthrough album In Evening Air, On the Water was produced by frequent collaborator Chester Endersby Gwazda, perhaps best known as producer of Dan Deacon's Bromst. Noted guests include Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner, who provides vocals on "The Great Fire," and Double Dagger's Denny Bowen on live drums and additional percussion.

For all its undeniable weight, On the Water is not a sullen concept album. Every track on the record works both as a contribution to the whole and as a stand-alone pleasure, evident in the insistent throbs, addictive melodies, and stirring vocals of tracks like "Close to None," "Balance," and first single "Before the Bridge."

Make no mistake, On the Water is a record that aims to both break your heart and heal your wounds.

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Future Islands' romantic synth sound scales new heights with On the Water, the Baltimore trio's most ambitious and fully realized statement yet. Built around a song cycle exploring love, loss, and memory, their latest album finds the band continuing to deliver pounding rhythms, swelling melodies, and undeniable hooks - but finding new ways to probe inner space and tug at hearts.

Convening in March 2011 in Elizabeth City, NC's historic, waterfront Andrew S. Sanders House, vocalist Samuel T. Herring, bassist William Cashion, and keyboardist Gerrit Welmers lived together in a space that served as both studio and sleeping quarters. The band used this tranquil retreat to refine their most reflective and mature batch of songs to date, adding new material in the process.

What emerged is a lush yet visceral album about two parallel journeys--one physical and one psychological. On the Water's narrator offers enough detail that their story feels personal, yet open enough that any listener can inhabit each twist and emotional pang as their own.

Travelling on foot, we seek something - an exorcism, an epiphany, an ending. Memories wash across us as in life: non-linear, linked by emotional resonance rather than conventional chronology. And so, the pain of letting go channeled by "The Great Fire" collides with a moment's fleeting serenity in the Eno-esque "Open"; the triumphant rallying cry "Give Us the Wind, " despite its confident declaration of individual strength, remains a mile away from final chapter "Tybee Island." It is there the song cycle ends, and what is discovered in "Tybee Island" will be as different as the lives lived by each person who finds their way to this album.

On the Water may unearth aural memories as well. The mind may flash upon our first encounters with New Order's "Ceremony," David Bowie's "Heroes," or The Cure's Disintegration, memories which, are continually reborn and re-imagined in the context of the here and now. And as the song-cycle's narrator comes to terms with his own memories, his singular journey collapses into the collective experience of album-closer "Grease." It is here that the "I" of the nine previous songs collapses into the "we" of Future Islands, now singing the literal journey of the people who came together by the ocean to deliver these songs into our ears. Far from just a narrative trope, the ocean played an integral role in On the Water's creation. The bulk of the album was recorded with waves pounding sand mere feet away. The album opens and closes with field recordings made by the band on a nearby dock, and one pivotal track, "Tybee Island," began with vocals recorded on the beach (subsequently fleshed out in the studio with additional instrumentation).

The ocean inhabits every note of these songs. On the Water is an addictive ride that demands repeat listens, eagerly awaiting the test of time. To produce these results, Future Islands fleshed out its sound with the additions of cello, violin, marimba, and field recordings. As with their 2010 breakthrough album In Evening Air, On the Water was produced by frequent collaborator Chester Endersby Gwazda, perhaps best known as producer of Dan Deacon's Bromst. Noted guests include Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner, who provides vocals on "The Great Fire," and Double Dagger's Denny Bowen on live drums and additional percussion.

For all its undeniable weight, On the Water is not a sullen concept album. Every track on the record works both as a contribution to the whole and as a stand-alone pleasure, evident in the insistent throbs, addictive melodies, and stirring vocals of tracks like "Close to None," "Balance," and first single "Before the Bridge."

Make no mistake, On the Water is a record that aims to both break your heart and heal your wounds.

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For several years, Tunnels has been the moniker for the solo output of Nicholas Bindeman. Over time Bindeman's sound has evolved from the slow, breathing landscapes of his earlier ambient/drone releases (Colour Seance, Vexations) to completely fried-out bedroom psych explorations (Astral Collage, In Between Dreams). Throughout these releases he has been committed to an expanding array of music based on sounds invoked from a wide open, psychedelic dream state more akin to Angus Maclise. Rarely has he adhered to any formal song structure, as is also evident with his role in bands Eternal Tapestry and Jackie-O Motherfucker.

In the spring of 2008, Bindeman began playing live sets singing over a four track recorder. His initial output, like a dirtier, playful Suicide, with backing tracks acting as vehicles for live exploration. Bindeman would often go into a frenzied state, mumbling and slurring through slapdash songs. These performances gradually evolved into more cohesive and clean music and recording became the focus of the project, writing material through the recording process and eventually falling victim to the lure of pop.

The Blackout delves into a world of sound unheard of on any prior Tunnels release as Bindeman steps away from the heady guitar wizardry of Eternal Tapestry to craft a pulsing and dark record steeped in cold dread with a pop sheen. Bass lines, often the centerpiece of the song, play alongside glistening, glass slipper synths and jagged guitars, seeping like silver lined shadows into disaffected vocal incantations. Drawing on a disparate palate of sounds from various facets of electronic music, his version of a new cold wave is a sound both novel and infectious. Taking after synth pop pioneers such as Charles de Goal and Crash Course in Science, with a hint of Throbbing Gristle, The Blackout still manages to resonate with the new. Many songs revolve around sampled sources which Bindeman then collages together to create the framework for any given piece. For example, opener "Crystal Arms" draws its slightly off kilter pulse from a Laurie Anderson performance in which she sports a pair of contact mic'd sun glasses which pick up the vibrations of her fists pounding on her skull. With these fractured and psychedelic tones, Tunnels join the ranks of Silk Flowers, Gary War, and others that call labels like Not Not Fun and Sacred Bones home, all the while taking shards of the dark '80s pop sound reminiscent of Gary Numan and The Cure, and reconfiguring them for the underground.

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Formed in 2006 by Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti, Barn Owl use their guitars to paint broad musical strokes on a canvas stretched between the framework of ambient, drone, americana, and black metal. In 2010, this unique blend of stylistic references coalesced into their debut Thrill Jockey release, Ancestral Star, an album that marked the evolution of the Barn Owl sound into something wholly their own, transcending the sum of its influences. The arrival of Ancestral Star fostered comparisons ranging from Sunn O))) to Ennio Morricone, often within the same critique.

The new material on Shadowland takes inspiration from the devotional sounds of Popol Vuh and Alice Coltrane and also possesses the pitch black weightlessness of Fushitsusha and early Tangerine Dream. With waves of guitar soaring over liquid synthesizers tones, Barn Owl combine lush, melancholic serenity with cacophonous, deconstructed guitar to exhibit a visceral meeting of light and dark. Cyclical themes were explored heavily: mantric guitar processions, swelling bass waves, and fluttering tremolo hypnotism.

The band describes the record:

Void and Devotion "Anchored to an ominous arpeggio, the gradual ascension levitates the listener with rumbling bass tones, lazer beam guitar and choral tone clusters drifting into an buzzing, apocalyptic devotion."

Shadowland "A distant, hazy mantra marches into infinity, a seemingly unchanging organic cycle of interwoven guitars all tracked live without actual loops, the horizontal motion eventually interrupted by bombastic, feedbacking, twang guitar and a malevolent yet beautiful mirage-like lead (thanks to a Leslie speaker) that warbles atop the mix."

Infinite Reach "Crackling, sun baked guitar sputters and moans atop a bed of lush, lunar synthesizers, gliding into a serene yet eerie wash of tones where noise and dissonance give way to floating peace-zones and phantom slide guitar."

Shadowland was recorded by Phil Manley (Trans Am) in San Francisco. For the overall sound of the EP, the band focused on using monolithic stacks of tube amps and sent guitars and synthesizers alike through them and utilized intense amounts of stereo delay.

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Mountains is Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp, two sonic explorers whose long history, shared philosophies, and love of sculpting sound, has resulted in some of the most densely layered and blissful music crafted in recent memory. The duo is known for obscuring the boundaries between acoustic instrumentation and electronics. Their debut Thrill Jockey release Choral was universally critically acclaimed, sold through three LP pressings, and ended up being one of the label's best selling releases of 2009, a remarkable achievement.

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Brooklyn based Liturgy is Hunter Hunt Hendrix, Greg Fox, Tyler Dusenbury, and Bernard Gann. Aesthethica, their second album and third release, shows the band exploring, in greater depth, themes initially touched on by their critically acclaimed debut album, Renihilation. The band used every instrument, literal or figurative, to produce meaning and intensity, disregarding the genre boundaries of black metal, hardcore and experimental music.

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After several years focusing predominantly on film and video, Koen Holtkamp began working with sound in 1997. He co-founded the Apestaartje collective/label in 1998 while studying at The Art Institute of Chicago. The label released works by like-minded artists from Australia, Japan, Germany, Austria, France, and the US as well as several of his own works. Holtkamp has released two solo albums under the name Aero (Apestaartje) and four albums as Mountains (Apestaartje, Catsup Plate, Thrill Jockey), a duo project with Brendon Anderegg, as well as an album under his own name (Type). Gravity/Bees marks his first solo release on Thrill Jockey.

The main idea behind this recording was to combine the live and studio approach, older material with newer, as well as document Holtkamp's shift from digital processing on computers to the physical world of creating patches via modular analog electronics. Both "In The Absence Of Gravity Please Note The Position Of The Sun" and "Loosely Based On Bees" combine these elements and serve to document that transition.

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On their Thrill Jockey debut Eternal Tapestry have delivered an album not unlike their epic live shows. Beyond the 4th Door contains long stretches of melodic guitar improvisations, dark brooding songs that slowly build and expand to allow in layers of light. The album was recorded in their home studio and was created by recording more that two hours of material, mostly live, and hand picking what you hold in your hands. There is a free and open nature to their structure creating for the listener a spacious environment to explore. Harkening back to the early 70's experimental rock that inspired them, such as Popol Vuh, Cluster and Trad Gras och Stenar, Beyond the 4th Door is an album meant to be listened to in its entirety. There is no single, no easy sound bite. It is not a record made for the pop world – it is a record made despite it. The brooding psych rock builds from the contemplative, atmospheric opener of "Ancient Echos" through to the heavy epic "Galactic Derelict", taking the listener way out and then gently calling them back with the reprise of Nick's ghostly vocals on "Reflections in a Mirage". The album finishes with a hint of light in the delicate guitar and bass interplay, floating on the ambient waves created by the open cymbal and horn work of "Time Winds Through a Glass, Cleary."

Eternal Tapestry are in every way musicians of the now. Extremely active in the new underground of cassettes and CD-Rs, releasing limited edition carefully designed albums on the premier purveyors of the counterculture. Turning the warehouse show on its head by making it a mini-festival of like-minded musicians whose shows are very much a unique event as opposed to an attempt to sell or recreate a record. What is old is what is new, the openness of the 70's comes back to thrive well beyond the parameters of Pitchfork and the like. We invite you to explore the world, Beyond the 4th Door.

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Comprised of J. Gerrit Welmers (synthesizers and programming), William Cashion (bass), and Samuel T. Herring (vocals), Future Islands has continued to make passionate music through an electronic medium for the past four years. [Although, the three have been working and performing since the spring of 2003.] They call their music "Post-Wave," taking in part from the emotional fragility of New Wave and coupling it with the power and drive of Post-Punk.

Future Islands' music is spearheaded by Welmers, whose layers of synths and drums create the landscape for Cashion's punching-strum style, that pulses and fights--the two--creating noise and bliss. Herring, who has been called "one of the most magnetic frontmen in indie rock," finds his space in between. Carving through the music, at times, with a whispering croon, and at others, with a deathly wail.

In Evening Air marks the first full-length release from Future Islands since moving to Baltimore, and also their first full-length release as a focused three piece. However, there's no lack of spirit in this paring down. More so, there's a greater intensity and eye to detail than we have yet witnessed from the group. These changes are felt and heard. In Evening Air takes us and swirls us around those feelings of growing outside of one's city and one's self. It moves through gripping loss and the search for peace from a heavy head, with an ease and understanding where there was none.

With production by Chester Endersby Gwazda, Future Islands fuses together their poetry with a dynamic musical range. Traveling from the slow burn to the highly ecstatic while holding on to the quill and not letting go. These songs are answers. They are born from fire and pain, yet are filled with light, acting as breathless testaments to love and it's consequences. But this isn't just a group of songs. This is a book of stories. From darkly quiescent and imaginative tales, to the passionate burnings of a searching heart. From the fear of being misunderstood and coming to terms with the loss of love. Future Islands speaks a language of forever and always, with an honesty that falls but never touches the ground.

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"Standards," the fourth full-length recording from Chicago's Tortoise, boldly announces their return following 1998's TNT. Tortoise spent the bulk of 1998 and a portion of 1999 touring the world. Following tours of the U.S., Europe, South America, Japan, Brazil, and Australia, Tortoise members worked on other projects that occupied them until the spring of 2000 when they began to record Standards. In 1999 members of the band toured the US as the backing band for legendary Brazilian composer/singer Tom Zé's. Tortoise-members Dan Bitney, John Herndon and Jeff Parker worked fastidiously to record and tour in support of two full-length Isotope 217 albums. Parker also contributed to two records made under the Chicago Underground moniker, appeared in the film High Fidelity and lent his talents to a variety of other records. Douglas McCombs realized a full-length album and EP (due out January 2001) as Brokeback and recorded new records with Eleventh Dream Day and Pullman. John McEntire completed construction of his Soma Electronic Music Studios, composed and recorded music to the John Hughes film Reach the Rock and was still able to record and/or produce Stereolab, The High Llamas, The For Carnation, Smog and The Sea & Cake as well as Standards. Musically, Standards is their most concise statement of purpose thus far. The tunes are direct and immediate, yet they maintain the exploratory edge that has always characterized the group's output.

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Nobukazu Takemura was born in Osaka in August of 1968. His interest in music began with Punk and New Wave at the ripe old age of ten. By the time he reached Junior High, Takemura was recording music with keyboards and two tapedecks. Working in a record store, Takemura became exposed to Free Jazz, Contemporary Music and Hip Hop - the foundation for his music composition and theory for re-mixing. By High School, Nobukazu had several regular dj gigs and was composing music.

Creatively, Nobukazu Takemura is inspired by both the "impressionist and objective conception" of John Cage, Brian Eno and Africa Bambaata, and the free form creativity of John Coltrane and Robert Wyatt. These influences are evident in his debut solo release, 1994's eponymous Child's View. Child's View and the accompanying single, For Tomorrow, garnered not only critical acclaim in Japan but recognition throughout the world. 1997 saw the release of two records from Takemura; the second Child's View record, Child and Magic and Changing Hands, a collaboration with Steve Jansen and Richard Barbieri. Child and Magic was selected for the soundtrack for the Center of Civil Rights Protection's film entitled "Human Rights Watch." Takemura has also recorded or performed as Spiritual Vibes, Audio Sports and Kool Jazz Productions.

Scope is Nobukazu's debut Thrill Jockey full-length. The five tracks all vary widely in style. Some focus on repetitive grooves that gradually transform into symphonies of delicately layered waves of sound while others offer organ based melodies and alluringly stretched vocals. Also evident are intricate conversations between blips and bleeps that have more personality than half the humans you know. Put away your b.p.m. counters, this is modern technology morphing Musique Concrete.

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TRANS AM's third record, The Surveillance, is the first record recorded and mixed entirely by the band. Their home studio, the Bridge, took several months to build. The Surveillance was to take an equal amount of time as the band labored hard to give the recording what they call "a dangerous quality" . What is dangerous to TRANS AM? It is no noise reduction, no digital tape compression, and no computer aided editing. Instead they relied on live performances, hours of hard work, hands-on mixing, careful microphone placement, and, to quote the band, "faith in their experimental vision." They built the Bridge to allow themselves this freedom, and they ran with it.

The results are raw, sparse electronic breaks mixed with diesel-powered rock and roll. TRANS AM put it in more masculine terms—"balls-to-the-wall- rockers", which perhaps better capture not only the sound but the intent. TRANS AM tour almost constantly. The Surveillance captures the urgent energy of their live performance. On the electronic side, several drum machines, keyboards and effects processors have been added to their tremendously outdated arsenal, though TRANS AM are unwilling to divulge the specifics. Paranoid? Hardly. Some things are just too important to share.

When asked to describe the results of the careful construction known as The Surveillance, TRANS AM merely stated, this is "A no bullshit album.

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