In city never hesitant about giving its bleeding hearts to the U.K.’s crown princes of mopery, there’s always room for Ballerina Black, the Los Angeles trio who continue to produce some of the sleekest pre-millenial alt-rock around. The new EP “Whails” is their first substantial release since the 2012-13 “Injureless” EP trilogy (they teased with […]
It’s been a hot minute since Stephen Bruner, aka Thundercat, put out his last album, 2013’s “Apocalypse,” but the genius bassist-singer-songwriter has kept busy, contributing heavily to Flying Lotus’ jazzy “You’re Dead,” Kendrick Lamar’s masterpiece “To Pimp a Butterfly” and Kamasi Washington’s epic “The Epic.” Now he’s back with a batch of solo material in […]
As album titles go, Jutty Ranx’s “Discordia” represents a pretty nifty subtext, if it indeed refers to Eris (in Latin, Discordia), the goddess of chaos. Little about the L.A.-based trio’s career arc has been easy or seems to make sense; they’ve been big hits overseas (their single “I See You” is double-platinum in Italy), yet […]
Los Angeles quartet TETE find their antecedents in dream-pop pioneers like the Cocteau Twins and the ethereal enchantresses in the 4AD catalog. And their new conjuration, “Newblood,” suggests we keep a wary eye on the swirling dark clouds overhead, if not the person standing next to you in the club. “Somebody like you / I’ll […]
Sleep State‘s lead singer Troy Ritchie seems like a guy you could introduce to your mother at Thanksgiving. She would approve of Ritchie’s neat haircut and his band of equally nice looking boys from Silverlake, Parker Jackson, David Greenwood, and Michael Haua. Upon hearing “Make A Move,” the first track from the band’s self-titled EP, […]
As a producer, U.K.-born Alex Newport has a string of credits stretching back two decades, including work on albums by At the Drive-In, the Mars Volta, the Melvins, City and Colour and Bloc Party. It was while producing the latter band’s latest album “Four” that Newport bonded with drummer and fellow Brit Matt Tong over […]
As part of Grammy-winning Shiny Toy Guns, Jeremy Dawson was at the vanguard of advancing the sleek, synth-fueled sounds of the 1980s into the new millenium, negotiating the turbulent waters of band drama to make three albums of goth-inspired, hyper-emotional electro-rock. The keyboardist’s newest venture with singer Ariel Levitan is MXMS (“me and my shadow”), […]
Starting in April with “Sometimes I Feel So Deserted,” the Chemical Brothers have been teasing “Born in the Echoes” — arriving July 17 — by rolling out a song a month. And today, it’s the anticipated collaboration with St. Vincent, “Neon Light,” which finds singer Annie Clark incantational and rather intoxicating. “Born in the Echoes” is […]
In a world that’s so plugged in, it sure is easy to feel disconnected, and the melancholy that springs from a longing for the tactile underpins the debut album from Los Angeles quartet Northern American. “I don’t need to know everything about what you do,” Nate Paul sings on the languid title track. As is […]
L.A. psych-rockers Fever the Ghost have been out-weirding-out just about everything in their path since 2013, when they arrived on the scene, ostensibly by interstellar transport. Beyond making you believe in parallel universes, their music is rife with experimentation, a web of synths, guitar and vocals speaking to each other in a seemingly foreign tongue. […]
