Ryan’s Music Picks 🐇 March 2018

We made it through March. There’s a few albums in here that aren’t on Spotify or Apple Music. I’ve added download links if that’s the case and you can’t get ’em from bandcamp. Non-streaming albums are marked with a

• Spotify Playlist

• Apple Music Playlist

Khruangbin – Con Todo El Mundo (Bandcamp)Thai funk-inspired mostly instrumental groove rock from Texas. Addictive to listen to, with an unkillable vibe.

Wall of Death – Loveland (Bandcamp)Heavy psychedelic rock, like a jangly shoegaze band. Dark and driving music.

Superorganism – Superorganism (Bandcamp)The millennial/gen z answer to Odelay. The songs have a coherent sound that incorporates Beck, The Tough Alliance, Kanye, Animal Collective into a hazy slime from which earworms emerge. Something for your M.I.N.D. indeed.

Clive Tanaka y su orquestra – Jet Set Siempre 1° (Bandcamp)Chillwave that actually gets closer to that Daft Punk played on a warped cassette than any other. Also sequenced just like Discovery: Dance on the A side, Romance on the B side.

 Dux Content – Lifestyle (Soundcloud, Download)Built from samples that are immediately recognizable but not identifiable, this whole album is catchy in its own right but it constantly feels like it’s about to be a song you know. Mesmerizing.

U.S. Girls – In a Poem Unlimited (Spotify)Funky and complex songs that feel handmade, but clearly created by an expert craftswoman who knows exactly how to move you with her music.

2 Mello – Memories of Tokyo-To: An Ode to Jet Set Radio (Bandcamp)A super fun tribute to one of the most fun video games with one of the best soundtracks ever. If you need more @jetsetradiolive in your life, this is a good start.

Stars of the Lid – Gravitational Pull vs the Desire for an Aquatic Life (Bandcamp)A stone classic in calming, enveloping ambient noise. Warm and inviting, familiar but still ahead of its time.

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – The Kid (Bandcamp)Whimsical and enrapturing psychedelic layers of electronic sounds and voice that brings to mind a more experimental Björk or a more laid-back Fever Ray.

 You c + Foresteppe – Seven Sleepers (Bandcamp)Gently gorgeous twinkling noise from Siberia, meant to lull you into sleeping for several hundred years.

Groundislava – Groundislava II (Bandcamp)A “lost record” that’s blippy and woozy like the best vaporwave but a lot more interested in having fun and crafting actual songs than the cliches of the genre typically imply.

Old Tower – Stellary Wisdom (Bandcamp)“Black metal” with none of the guitar and drums that you’d expect from the “metal” label, but plenty of mood to get you deep into droning darkness.

 Teen Daze – Reinterprets Selections From “Mend” by Geotic (Bandcamp)An ep of remixes that take Geotic’s master relaxer and redeploys it for maximum chill.

Mythless – Patience Hell EP (Bandcamp)Half of the dudes in band Fang Island take their posi-metal to two simultaneous extremes: it’s both heavier and more ambient while still having that whole unironic sunshine vibe.

Trentemøller – Into The Great Wide Yonder (Bandcamp)An electronic album that is only 8 years old but sounds totally classic. This thing balances introspective atmospherics and solid jams so solidly.

Prayer – I/II (Bandcamp)Two epic gospel house tracks that each traverse the ground between meditation and workout with open hearts.

Baloji – 137 Avenue Kaniama (Bandcamp)Afro-beat influenced rap with plenty of horns kinda like a Congolese Chance & the Social Experiment.

About – Bongo (Spotify)Glitchy laptop pop-punk from the mid-2000s.

Caroline Says – No Fool Like An Old Fool (Bandcamp)Hushed guitar-fronted dream pop that travels a careful continuum between lush and stark.

 The Seatbelts – Music For Freelance (Youtube, Download)An album of remixes from the show Cowboy Bebop’s soundtrack, with canonical radio interstitials. Pure turn-of-the-century funk.

 Jason Forrest – The Unrelenting Songs of the 1979 Post Disco Crash (Bandcamp)A very mid-2000s mashup album that’s more Avalanches than Girl Talk but harsher and more intense than either of them.

Gost – Possessor (Bandcamp)Dank and brutal synthwave with death metal vocals and horrorshow samples.

Orquesta Akokán – Orquesta Akokán (Bandcamp)Fantastic mambo that instantly washes away conceptions of 50s sitcoms or 90s pop songs through its sheer excellence.

Cavern of Anti-Matter – Hormone Lemonade (Bandcamp)Driving beeps and boops to get you through a work day.

Yamantaka//Sonic Titan – Dirt (Bandcamp)Experimental psychedelic metal that grabs you. Like the music a psychic alien entity would create if trying to reconstruct the birth of heavy metal.