As major labels continue to exist behind the times, artists and labels with little capital and lesser reputations are producing some of the most innovative, interesting, and inspiring music. Whether it’s creating a new niche in digital technology or looking to once obsolete formats, Agitated Atmosphere hopes to shed a bit of light and share a bit of information on the up and coming sounds of artists such as Maria Grazia Rosin.

Rather than shine a light on a particular album or a piece of recorded material, it only seems fair to delve into the world of art with the opening of Gelatine Lux. As is often the case with much that is covered within Agitated Atmosphere, Maria Grazia Rosin’s exhibit of science fiction, underwater exploration, and minimalist composition is a unique and daring work of art that not only teases aural sensations but challenges your imagination through sight.

Gelatine Lux happens to be the latest traveling exhibit taking over the Science Fiction Museum outfit of EMP|SFM. Italian glass artist Maria Grazia Rosin, with the help of her faithful glass blowers and a couple of musicians, has brought Seattle over 20 otherworldly sea creatures bathed in artificial light. Each figure is richly colorful against the deep ebon that envelopes much of the exhibit space. Dangling precariously from the ceiling, Rosin’s sci-fi interpretations of jellyfish, squids, and macrobiotic sea life hover amidst their fantastical blackened scenery. The swirling mass that pays homage to Rosin’s love of black holes and whirlpools acts as a spooky welcome mat, sucking you into Rosin’s vortex of mangling beauty in a dark, waterless sea.

Rosin’s elegant creatures are buoyed by the ghostly soundtrack from fellow Italians, Gianni Visnadi and David Mora. The duo, known as Visnadi & Camomatic, breathe life into the bright beings through a neary two hour loop of minimalistic found sounds, field recordings, and tempered noise known as “Glass Tongues.” Juxtaposed with the still life of Rosin’s aquatic mosaic, the exhibit begins to heave and sway with the mechanisms of a marine habitat. Manufactured groans, squiggles, and sloshes bounce from one set piece to the next, guiding you along with each voluminous echo from over ten channels. It’s the sort of soundtrack fans of minimalism scoop up from labels across the globe; yet within the realm of Rosin’s world, “Glass Tongues” functions as the heartbeat. The result of Rosin, Visnadi, and Mora’s collaboration may seem like high art for the aristocratic class but it lacks the pretentious shield that keeps the magician’s secrets from the unsuspecting assistants. You’ll be as dazzled and confused as the bourgeoisie, which has always been the breadth of lasting art. If you have the slightest slice of imaginative muscle, Gelatin Lux will make it fit.

Justin Spicer is a freelance journalist who also runs the webzine, Electronic Voice Phenomenon. He writes the Monday News Mash-Up for the KEXP Blog. You may follow him on Twitter.

As major labels continue to exist behind the times, artists and labels with little capital and lesser reputations are producing some of the most innovative, interesting, and inspiring music. Whether it’s creating a new niche in digital technology or looking to once obsolete formats, Agitated Atmosphere hopes to shed a bit of light and share a bit of information on the up and coming sounds of artists such as Dark Meat.

The enormous Athens, Georgia collective known as Dark Meat were set to take the United States by storm in the midst of 2008. Vice had reissued the group’s proper debut, Universal Indians, and plans were made for the near 20-person group to take America by storm while preparing an album for the hipster doofus label/magazine/vanity project. Of course, you’re staring at Truce Opium, Dark Meat’s follow-up — not on Vice but Emergency Umbrella. The band’s trimmed to a lean 9 members and despite many side ventures (Sweet Teeth, Gay Africa, etc.), Truce Opium is all the better for the turmoil and change-over.

Dark Meat borrows from the best the old world and new world has to offer. Truce Opium is rich with uninhibited jams, frenzied climaxes, and over-the-top instrumentation. The songs have no set trajectory, often settling into a sound in between relative footholds such as ‘folk’, ‘rock’, ‘jam’, and ‘experimental’. Through all of these stream-of-conscious tracks, Dark Meat somehow makes the repetitious and volatile collisions work. The group isn’t afraid to take a chance — or to take no chance at all. They’ll gladly offer up a 10-minute orgy of spastic horns, guitars, and percussion (”No One Was There”) and unapologetically follow it up with a 4-minute straight-up chaser of classic rock (”When the Shelter Came”). Theirs is a synergy of extremes, and while little of that revolves around hardcore experimentation, Dark Meat is able to place themselves and the audience in a different frame of mind. If all you’ve ever known of classic rock as been Jimmy Page solos, Pete Townshend windmills, and Keith Moon drum fills, Truce Opium will invigorate your dusty senses. In the face of convention stands Dark Meat and we should all be proud that label politics and relentless touring hasn’t dulled the spirit or diminished the shine for what is still Athens’ next great discovery.

Justin Spicer is a freelance journalist who also runs the webzine, Electronic Voice Phenomenon. He writes the Monday News Mash-Up for the KEXP Blog. You may follow him on Twitter.

As major labels continue to exist behind the times, artists and labels with little capital and lesser reputations are producing some of the most innovative, interesting, and inspiring music. Whether it’s creating a new niche in digital technology or looking to once obsolete formats, Agitated Atmosphere hopes to shed a bit of light and share a bit of information on the up and coming sounds of artists such as On Fillmore

It reckons your eyes have met this particular entry because you caught a fleeting glimpse of the name Glenn Kotche and your Wilco radar began to pulsate with expectant glee. Indeed, the multitasking percussionist is one half of the duo known as On Fillmore, but more importantly for fans of Kotche’s pop-oriented work, Extended Vacation will provide an introduction to Kotche’s true avant callings as well as his On Fillmore compadre, Darin Gray.

Extended Vacation marks the duo’s first proper album in five years and their debut for Dead Oceans, but neither are new to the game of creating experimental music that twinkles with the power of all the stars in the night skies. Gray has been a fixture on bass for the likes of Jim O’Rourke, Akira Sakata, Chris Corsano, Loren Connors… this could take awhile. Kotche’s work outside of Wilco is well documented as well and his last solo album, Mobile, provides a sturdy primer for the melodies that are woven throughout Extended Vacation. Toss out your traditionalist ideas about drum and bass duos because neither instrument takes center stage for Kotche and Gray. Rather, Extended Vacation is a collection of whistles, chimes, found sounds, and field recordings that are gently propped by deep rhythmic strings and hushed snares and toms. The results find refuge in a niche all their own — never quite crossing the pop threshold built on uniform melodies and traditional instrumentation nor daring to strike the right jazz stylings that historians romanticize and modernists dare to quell with exuberant wails and moans. Extended Vacation is more akin to adventurous literature, delving into childish fantasies of creation by any means necessary. Granted, the equipment Gray and Kotche utilize may be more reliable and inviting than a cupboard of pots and pans but the results are just as exciting, though a bit sleepy when compared to the thunderous syncopation of youth. Rarely does Extended Vacation raise its voice above a comforting whisper — and like the spacey canvas from which it draws its inspiration, it gently rocks us to peaceful rest with lullaby after lullaby.

Justin Spicer is a freelance journalist who also runs the webzine, Electronic Voice Phenomenon. He writes the Monday News Mash-Up for the KEXP Blog. You may follow him on Twitter.

As major labels continue to exist behind the times, artists and labels with little capital and lesser reputations are producing some of the most innovative, interesting, and inspiring music. Whether it’s creating a new niche in digital technology or looking to once obsolete formats, Agitated Atmosphere hopes to shed a bit of light and share a bit of information on the up and coming sounds of artists such as Chll Pll.

Last month, Agitated Atmosphere babbled on and on about the eccentric output of Portland virtuoso, Zac Nelson — often known by the name Hexlove. We can’t seem to shake Nelson — his eyes are from portraits of Jesus, scanning the foreboding living room landscape in an ever-ready stance to shame us into compliance with His will. So goes the abstract musical musings of Zac Nelson.

Aggressively Humble, released via Florida-based Porter Records, finds Nelson teaming with modern day thunder drumming god Zach Hill (who has played with just about every blog sensation imaginable), to create din of every conceivable genre. The results find the duo delving deeper into the obtuse, frequenting a region of out-of-control time travel holed up in bedroom experimentation. Nelson’s brand of glitch pop collides with Hill’s beastly rhythms to create an album heavy in sound, rich in texture, and ignorant of polish. Aggressively Humble is rough around every edge, but music should never carry a gleaming sheen. Hill and Nelson roll around in the primordial muck of prehistoric rock and futuristic materials. Aggressively Humble combines rock and roll’s earliest steps in harder — even metallic — melodies and filters it through the visions of musical growth once expressed in krautrock and no wave. Songs are often a bundle of space-bound laser shots that bounce off the dirty and worn padding of the duo’s psychiatric cell. Many of the tracks tend to rattle on and on like the ravings of a madman, yet they never wear out their welcome. There is profound wisdom to be found in stream of conscious and Chll Pll have translated their esoteric musings into music — the universal language. So as they Bill and Ted their way through meetings with John Bonham, Tangerine Dream, Can, and Big Black, you can guarantee that Aggressively Humble will bridge the language barriers.

Justin Spicer is a freelance journalist who also runs the webzine Electronic Voice Phenomenon. He writes the Monday News Mash-Up for the KEXP Blog. You may follow him on Twitter.

As major labels continue to exist behind the times, artists and labels with little capital and lesser reputations are producing some of the most innovative, interesting, and inspiring music. Whether it’s creating a new niche in digital technology or looking to once obsolete formats, Agitated Atmosphere hopes to shed a bit of light and share a bit of information on the up and coming sounds of artists such as Green Blossoms

As we bid fond farewells to the summer heat and greet the sheepish arrival of fall cool and autumnal colors, we look for something, anything to hold onto those warm memories absent of heat waves, work, and obligations. The kid in us craves the summers of our youth. Carefree days of no work, no worries, and all wonderment — days full of running with no purpose, jumping in the nearest watering hole for a brief respite from the blazing sun.

Look no further than Whiskey Leaves, the latest peep from Green Blossoms. Released via Digitalis, Whiskey Leaves is the perfect blend of summer’s warmth and fall’s cool touches, which mimics the balance inherent in its traditional Japanese strokes and adventurous Westerner pop. This highly functional blending is the product of Aiko Koga and Anthony Guerra, whose work is a welcome deviation from the wear and tear of daily life. Whiskey Leaves is brimming with meditative pop drawing from all corners of post-industrial civilization. The creations of Koga and Guerra may play superficial but as we’ve learned from many years of changing seasons, things aren’t always as they seem. Subtlety is the name of the game and though much of it is masked with two and three chord melodies, the chances Green Blossoms willingly take in crafting a J-pop doppelganger are rewarding. The staccato plucks, injecting bends, and hushed coos of Koga and Guerra haunt Whiskey Leaves at every turn, transforming a relatively simple album into a richly textured diamond in the rough. Like the breezes that usher out the sun and bring in the rain, Whiskey Leaves announces the change in weather without leaving us with a few warm days to reminisce about another summer come and gone, allowing us to hold onto them for 30 more minutes.

Justin Spicer is a freelance journalist who also runs the webzine, Electronic Voice Phenomenon. He writes the Monday News Mash-Up and Thursday edition of Song of the Day for the KEXP Blog. You may follow him on Twitter.

As major labels continue to exist behind the times, artists and labels with little capital and lesser reputations are producing some of the most innovative, interesting, and inspiring music. Whether it’s creating a new niche in digital technology or looking to once obsolete formats, Agitated Atmosphere hopes to shed a bit of light and share a bit of information on the up and coming sounds of artists such as Matt Valentine and Erika Elder.

In the annuls of folk exploration, no modern pairing has explored the outrageous hand-in-hand with the traditional quite like Matt Valentine and Erika Elder. The variety of sounds, styles, and effects Valentine and Elder have mined to create their monstrous creations are infinite. This cornucopia is ever-present on the duo’s latest, Barn Nova, released via Ecstatic Peace, which introduces a hefty amount of country spice in MV + EE’s psychedelic stew.

Barn Nova will be immediately familiar to fans of classic Neil Young and Crazy Horse. The album packs the sort of distorted soul and aromatic guitar work that has forever been Shakey’s calling card. Of course, in the hands of an equally skilled guitarist and visionary such as Matt Valentine — and paired with the fragile tones and silky slides of Erika Elder — Barn Nova becomes gnarly, transforming country ethos into tie-dyed waves all while toning down the overarching experimentalism that has occasionally littered previous MV + EE releases. The fat’s been trimmed for Barn Nova and the album’s better for it.

Fans may be a bit afraid to find that tucked inside of Barn Nova are songs that could be considered ‘radio friendly,’ but as the stigma boldly implies, these gems couldn’t be more potent if bogged down by the spectrasound. The groovy blues and catchy drum beat of “Get Right Church” feels like a new creation in the hands of Valentine and Elder. “Wandering Nomad” has all the crunch of “Down By the River” but filters it through a slow jam; the announcement that the party’s winding down but the good times are still to be had. “Fully Tanked” is a dusty back porch anthem thick with greasy slide and rustic folk leading us to rapture.

It’s a subtle shift in the MV + EE dynamic. Much of the fuss that often clouded past albums is still to be found, though it’s easier to find your way through the fog. There are plenty of heavy jams that will stir the soul and expand the mind, such as the eleven-minute psych-country opus, “Bedroom Eyes.” Contrails of guitar cascade over the twang-filled melody to fuel the sexy glances the title implies.

Despite the noticeable deviations, Barn Nova is just as comfortable and pleasing as any MV + EE of recent memory. Valentine and Elder continue to reinvent folk through devices old and new and as long as the results match the whimsical personalities and avant inventions of albums past there’s no shaking their devout audience no matter how close they fly to commercially friendly skies.

Justin Spicer is a freelance journalist who also runs the webzine, Electronic Voice Phenomenon. He writes the Monday News Mash-Up and Thursday edition of Song of the Day for the KEXP Blog. You may follow him on Twitter.

As major labels continue to exist behind the times, artists and labels with little capital and lesser reputations are producing some of the most innovative, interesting, and inspiring music. Whether it’s creating a new niche in digital technology or looking to once obsolete formats, Agitated Atmosphere hopes to shed a bit of light and share a bit of information on the up and coming sounds of artists such as Sean McCann.

Sean McCann will never be a household name for most but there’s a growing contingent of music aficionados who are growing ever-more enamored with the work McCann proliferates. Be it from the many DIY and boutique labels that spread his cassettes and CD-Rs like rose pedals on a honeymoon bed or the calmer variety of releases from McCann’s own Roll Over Rover label, there’s no dearth of McCann ingenuity to go around.

Now McCann is taking his art to the next level. Going beyond the many musical mediums that gladly populate a growing number of collections, McCann has now added video to his mixed formats on Coppicing, release via his Bay Area-based label. The DVD is twenty minutes of vast coniferous landscapes as viewed through the psychedelic prism. Layer upon layer of forest green is blanketed with dark hues of green, red, purple, and blue as McCann’s achingly somber drone provides the mellow soundtrack. The true beauty is in the idea of coppicing as a musical and visual practice and not just a study on the act of coppicing in the physical realm. McCann’s piece cuts to the stump of musical exploration, leaving nothing but a barren and flat plane of bark and pulp in its place before McCann begins to metaphorically sprout shoots of subtlety within his monochromatic melody. Creaks, scratches, and distant knocks take root in the fertile, and seemingly plain, soil. Coppicing isn’t just a reference to the lucid visual fodder on the DVD but the music with which McCann surrounds the display. The idea of destruction is loud and painful but Coppicing presents the idea of life anew; raised from what is perceived as dead. It’s this ideology that fuels much of Sean McCann’s artistry, be it of music, film, or local access television. Beauty is all around us and Coppicing is the plastic bag caught in the billowing wind.

Justin Spicer is a freelance journalist who also runs the webzine, Electronic Voice Phenomenon. He writes the Monday News Mash-Up and Thursday edition of Song of the Day for the KEXP Blog. You may follow him on Twitter.

As major labels continue to exist behind the times, artists and labels with little capital and lesser reputations are producing some of the most innovative, interesting, and inspiring music. Whether it’s creating a new niche in digital technology or looking to once obsolete formats, Agitated Atmosphere hopes to shed a bit of light and share a bit of information on the up and coming sounds of artists such as Emeralds.

First things first, forget every new article you’ve read labeling the synth drone movement ‘hypnagog[ic]‘. While a fine descriptor, it does a large disservice to the myriad DIY artists to be smooshed under the same lazy umbrella. Consider it as lazy a journalistic term as ‘indie’ or ‘alternative’. The age of overusing simple terms for the layman are over.

Why make such a big deal over something seemingly so trivial? When talking about the latest from Cleveland trio, Emeralds, it seems that every Tom, Dick, and Harry is quick to rely on the passed around term in their blurbs concerning the output Mark McGuire, John Elliott, and Steve Hauschildt when, in fact, the work of Emeralds is not all that far removed from the psychedelic experimentations of Tangerine Dream or Ash Ra Tempel. Granted, moods and techniques have evolved across four decades of music, but the heart of adventure is still the same bloody red effigy it was during the era of love children, flower power, and third eye spirituality. Without sounding grandiose or absorbent, Emeralds tap into those past fetishes with a degree of precession that surgeons dare to dream.

The latest LP from the trio, released jointly via Emeralds’ own labels Gneiss Things and Wagon, delves deeper into the karmatic center of synth and drone. Hailed as the proper follow-up to last year’s Solar Bridge, Emeralds is less an album trying to build on past achievements and more a trek to spiritual well-being. Emeralds create a thunderstorm of guitar, synth, and effects that baptizes listeners with a summer deluge. Clothes soaked with hair firmly matted to skull, you move your hands toward the heavens in a greater understanding of god — whatever form or presence it may or may not have in your life.

Emeralds begins with the ominous “Overboard (Off the Deep End),” which sets a bleak tone in some faraway desolate land. The winds screeches mercilessly as dark forces descend from the dim heavens with gnarled faces and unearthly powers. Soon, you’re surrounded by the unknown; swallowed by foreign invaders and evil-intentioned malcontents ready to feed on your fear. “Geode” finds your pulse quickening with the jumpy melody, unable to stem the fear welling up inside. The sinister plans of those who surround causing any idea to escape and any hope to fade — until McGuire’s guitar cuts through the disorienting synth with its thunder burst and rapid rain, washing away those fighting against you. It’s a cleansing track, clearing away the fear of the unknown — in this case the hard-edged melodies of Elliott and Hauschildt’s dueling synthesizers — for moments of meditation. “Diotima” provides the glowing orange sunshine to drive away the dark clouds that have hovered over much of the album’s A-side, which is carried over to the album’s flipside finale, “Passing Away.” Every emotional connection made through Emeralds is revisited on “Passing Away;” a slow, but rewarding seventeen-and-a-half minute ride through the good times and the bad. It’s a mainstay of Emeralds—tapping into the unblemished soul and finding the balance between our worst creations and our wildest fantasies.

Justin Spicer is a freelance journalist who also runs the webzine, Electronic Voice Phenomenon. He writes the Monday News Mash-Up and Thursday edition of Song of the Day for the KEXP Blog. You can now follow him on Twitter.

As major labels continue to exist behind the times, artists and labels with little capital and lesser reputations are producing some of the most innovative, interesting, and inspiring music. Whether it’s creating a new niche in digital technology or looking to once obsolete formats, Agitated Atmosphere hopes to shed a bit of light and share a bit of information on the up and coming sounds of artists such as Jim O’Rourke.

Agitated Atmosphere has focused on plenty of small run labels and demassified artists in the hope of better understanding the vast music market beyond the major labels and the digital age, but it’s a fair assumption to believe many of the labels floating in complete autonomy would be hard pressed to think of their successes without inclusion of Jim O’Rourke. O’Rourke may be known for his solo albums on more visible labels, as well as his work with indie favorites such as Wilco, Sonic Youth, and Loose Fur but his canon is long with collaborations of every fashion; on labels of every shape and size. There have been jaunts to frenzied electro-orgies, meditative guitar duos, and painstaking compositions all under the O’Rourke banner; yet most fans excitedly point to his ‘pop’ albums as continued sources of enjoyment.

The Visitor, the first of these pop albums in nearly 8 years, was recently released by O’Rourke’s rather visible label partner, Drag City (who also work with O’Rourke’s reissue/re-exploration label, Dexter’s Cigar). Comparisons have flown left and right around The Visitor: many honing in on its similarities with the orchestral pop complexities of Eureka, many hearing the lighthearted plucks of Halfway to a Threeway. They are all right, as O’Rourke’s singular 40 minute construct is everything we’ve come to embrace about his previous pop albums all the while keeping with the tradition of pushing the envelope further.

O’Rourke has produced many lengthy pieces, so The Visitor’s length is not unusual. The breezy riffs and angelic piano amidst rolling toms and changing tempos are also all too familiar, but when it’s been 8 long years since this sound has been emitted from the hands of Jim O’Rourke, it seems fresh once more. The Visitor poses the problem of trying to explain O’Rourke’s music considering it takes its cue from so many of his past solo albums but always sticking true to the more ‘accessible’ parts of his musical dialogue. It’s a retrospective of his pop offerings, compiled, rearranged, and updated with a decade’s worth of growth behind each and every note. As the title implies, O’Rourke just seems to be visiting with us through the album’s duration. It’s a pleasant affair with tea attire and a wry sense of humor required. At the end of the day when O’Rourke parts with our company, we’ll always have The Visitor as a priceless chotchkie to fondling remember him by.

Justin Spicer is a freelance journalist who also runs the webzine, Electronic Voice Phenomenon. He writes the Monday News Mash-Up and Thursday edition of Song of the Day for the KEXP Blog. You can follow him on Twitter.

As major labels continue to exist behind the times, artists and labels with little capital and lesser reputations are producing some of the most innovative, interesting, and inspiring music. Whether it’s creating a new niche in digital technology or looking to once obsolete formats, Agitated Atmosphere hopes to shed a bit of light and share a bit of information on the up and coming sounds of artists such as Rameses III.

Despite the obvious connection to Egyptian Pharaohs, nothing in the glacial armory of Rameses III could be mistaken for hieroglyphic pretense. The trio of Daniel Freeman, Spencer Grady, and Steve Lewis transform guitars and keyboards into sweet melodic drone. Rameses III is the music of pleasant dreams; Technicolor masterpieces of soft focus, angelic light, and exuberant occasions.

I Could Not Love You More, found on Type, continues the grand tradition of Rameses III’s blend of baroque folk, post-rock melodies, and new age drone. The end result is uncomplicated, unpolluted despite the amount of aural bliss packed into each lengthy piece. Rameses III tap into the human chakra, channeling the spirits of the greatest Yogis, Senseis, and Gurus of bygone eras—but don’t be misled into temptation, I Could Not Love You More isn’t some tonal chant to some Zen god. Rather, Rameses III continue to meld music that soothes the tired and nourishes the weak. This is a work of tenderness, and the faint hints of sweeping guitar notes and mellow atmospherics that sound like warm summer breezes and cool fall rain lend themselves to fits of vivid daydreaming; visions of carefree flight from a bustling world that demands every ounce of your attention and effort to navigate. I Could Not Love You More is a test of patience but the reward is ever-lasting. It may seem like a load of schlock to heap such heartwarming sentiment on an album etched in the avant community but often experimentation yields beauty that static, white noise, or jangly pop will never reach. Rameses III may seem like a one-trick pony but it’s the subtle changes from song to song and album to album that have found them an increasing audience, and I Could Not Love You More strikes the same harmonious chords as album’s past. Now’s the time to meditate in your own way and embrace the sunrays of Rameses III.

Justin Spicer is a freelance journalist who also runs the webzine, Electronic Voice Phenomenon. He writes the Monday News Mash-Up and Thursday edition of Song of the Day for the KEXP Blog. You can now follow him on Twitter.