Emeralds

Emeralds - Does It Look Like I'm Here? (2010)

A band that never seems to fail no matter what title they want to give themselves. The new Emeralds album, their 3rd LP, appears somewhat different upon first look. It has 12 amazing tracks, most of which are around minutes in length. This one is a total mindfuck and perhaps their most wide-spread range and use of sounds. The last track is kinda messed up right now but it's the only rip out there that I know of, I'll try and get a better one ASAP.

Active Child

Some Sawngs

This band is a one-man show, and that man is named Pat Grossi.

The music he makes is pretty excellent - soaring vocals offset by ethereal synth and honeyed harp melodies. Unfortunately, no leaks yet... he has an EP out, but it's only two songs. However! I have painstakingly tracked down the tracks (PUN) from his upcoming album.

And so I say unto you, blog followers, visitors, and trollers: hype this shit. hype it hard, and hype it successfully.

Tobacco

Tobacco - Maniac Meat (2010)


Tobacco - Allegheny White Fish Tapes (2009)

Ahhhhhhh, finally :) been waiting a little while for this one to leak. i think it actually just leaked yesterday which is funny because I just went to a Tobacco show last night and it kicked ass. New stuff sounded really good live, very similar to the sound of fucked up friends upon first listens. Also, I included a link to this release that i just found out about recently. It's like old recordings and demos and stuff compiled onto one album so check it out if your interested

Vacation Dad

VDLIVEIMPROVSHIT

Vacation Dad made a Soundcloud page and uploaded a 20-minute excerpt of a live improvised set. I asked him if I could split it up into separate tracks. He said yes. You can download it from the link above. Or download the whole thing in one track here. It's pretty killer either way.

There's also a sweet new song on his Soundcloud page called "ihopeyrfavoritecoloriseverywhere." He wrote it "for a girl" who is "the best." It reminds me of a melted fun-size candy bar and when you're done eating it you bite the wrapper and scrape the rest of the chocolate off with your teeth but your fingers get sticky anyway.

Myspace // Last.fm

2nd Mix

STR SPH MIX VOL. 2
(photo by Brenna)

(click for tracklisting)

Started pulling together this volume a little over a week ago, when I was in an unexpected noise-rock nostalgia phase for a few days. It continued to take shape when that phase had evolved into a math-rock craving for another few days. So I guess I consider early math and noise rock bands to be the primary inspiration for this mix (a "central theme", maybe), even though it eventually expanded to include a somewhat wider array of tunes. Including a few from bands I just started listening to as a result of their connections to the establishment of those subgenres, and a few tracks from bands that represent how this kind of music has been shaped over time by the direct and indirect influence of those early bands. And a few bands who might be unrelated or whose placement here might be for personal reasons. It's debatable. Whatever. Enjoy.

-

Hey everyone. Just wanted to give you a heads up: I'm not going to be posting very much (if at all) over the next few weeks, while I attempt to salvage my academic standing. This blog has been exceptionally productive lately, so maybe take this opportunity to catch up on all those excellent bands we've posted that you may have missed? Give it some thought, okay?

On that note, there's a few points I want to address:

∞ We'd like to thank all the artists who have thought so highly of us to submit their music over the past few months. Without you, very little of this is possible. Not to mention that some of my favorite albums of late have been submissions that I never would have heard otherwise. Please, keep it up! We love hearing from you.

∞ As of last week, we accept mp3 submissions. Check the CONTACT page for more details. This is an experiment, for now.

∞ In an attempt to address complaints about corrupted tracks on Mediafire, albums I'm uploading personally will be on Megaupload from now on. Links (Mediafire and otherwise) provided by artists will be used when they're available. If you think waiting on Megaupload is annoying and you have Firefox, Skipscreen might help.

Thanks for reading. See you around.

Lush Cola

Lush Cola

Didn't know about Weed Diamond until a few days ago, so I was pleasantly surprised when Patient Sounds (same label that put out the M. Pyres and Smelly Magic cassettes last year) sent this little beauty over. Lush Cola is an old project of Weed Diamond's Tim Perry. The sparse, minimal arrangements often lean on his calm ghost harmonies and drum machine beats, occasionally joined by a guitar or bass that sounds like it's being played in the basement with the door ajar. Perfect music for driving at night down a road surrounded by forest but close enough to the city for you to be able to see a faint glow through the brush. Watch a cool video on Get Off The Coast, put together by Jheri Evans himself, and preorder the cassette from Patient Sounds below.

Myspace // Last.fm
Buy it!

Megabats

in/out

Spaced-out psych/drone made by two dudes utilizing one Korg DS-10 each. Imagine taking an elevator to the ∞th floor and when you exit you're in the blindingly dark expanse of a huge cave chamber (why is it up so high?) and it's so disorienting and you can't see the top and you think to yourself, "I've never seen the stars so bright before." Get it if you dig Oneohtrix Point Never, Caboladies, Fuck Buttons, Endless Endless Endless, etc. Stream it (I recommend "Battleground Sky") and buy it HERE from Debacle Records.

Myspace // Last.fm
Buy it!

1st Mix!

STR SPH MIX VOL. 1
(photo by S. Faitell)

This is a big deal for me -- the first mix I've created for Stratosphering, and the first that I've ever compiled for "public consumption." A lot of thought went into this; I've been tweaking it consistently throughout the past three weeks. I'm just glad to finally be able to share it with you. And if it ends up being a "success" (or even if it doesn't), I'll probably be making more mixes in the future.

The idea to make this mix happened to coincide with my discovery of Awesome Tapes From Africa, so a few tracks from that blog are here. I'm also indebted to the recommendations of All, Everyone, United, Collected Animals, and several good friends.

Read on for the tracklisting, including the last-minute addition of "Window View," that corrupted track from my Beach Fossils link (and, incidentally, my current favorite song on the album). I've also tried to make things easier for you by including (mostly other people's) download links to full albums, where applicable/possible. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the mix.

#. "Song" - Artist (Album)
1. "Cruiser" - Edibles (Super Space/Mind Peace)
2. "Ka Na Wu" - Snr Eddie Donkor (Eye Banker)
3. "Send Me Dub" - King Tubby (Explosive Dub)
4. "Trapez" - Black To Comm (Alphabet 1968)
5. "Come On Let's Go" - Broadcast (The Noise Made By People)
6. "Reaching" - Boas (Boas)
7. "Spring Break" - Atlas Sound (Another Bedroom EP)
8. "Highlight" - Growing (Pumps!)
9. "Latin Lover" - Mi Ami (Steal Your Face)
10. "That's Not Me" - Junk Culture (West Coast)
11. "You're My Excuse To Travel" - Baths (Cerulean)
12. "Splitted" - Illteeno
13. "West" - Endless Endless Endless (Things I Saw)
14. "The Bublight" - Joe Meek & The Blue Men (I Hear A New World)
15. "Winter Is Here" - Dirty Projectors (The Glad Fact)
16. "Moussa" - Sourakata Koite (Sourakata Koite)
17. "Transparent Popsicle" - Orchard Thief (Melt Day)
18. "Window View" - Beach Fossils (Beach Fossils)

Box Elders

Box Elders is currently on tour with Black Lips. I had the extreme pleasure of seeing them both play last night in St. Louis. Box Elders' psychedelic garage rock was an awesome precursor to Black Lips' anarchic set. They have a fairly interesting setup. Their drummer plays standing, and doubles as an organist for the band. The other two came out both sporting double-necked guitars, one a bass/six string combination and the other a 6 string/12 string. This will make you want to shake your rump and get grimy.

Alice and Friends (320 kbps)

Myspace//Last.fm

Have A Nice Life

Time of Land

UM HOLY SHIT

THANK GOD

...no, just kidding. dont thank god. thank me.

Parallel Pyres

Parallel Pyres

Distorted drums and organ, sometimes looped and layered, with the occasional garbled vocal echo. Those are pretty much the only sounds heard on this self-titled release, but it's the kind of basic structure that can easily amount to more than the sum of its parts. Here, that means subverting pop and new wave in a way that's just as catchy as anything Wet Hair and Vacation Dad have done. Could totally be a cassette on Not Not Fun. Visit All, Everyone, United to watch a few music videos he made.

Myspace // Last.fm

Kites Sail High (EP 2)

Secrets :: megaupload // mediafire

No excuse not to get this if you dig Teebs, RxRy, dreaming on beaches, hallucinating underwater, or playing Super Nintendo (perhaps specifically Donkey Kong Country) in a secluded cabin miles away from anyone. Start out with his first EP, if you haven't yet. The progression from there to here is evident -- I don't know if it's just me, but I get the sense that he's more comfortable now, taking interesting tonal detours and rhythmic risks on tracks like "Miracle" and "Dancing Sprinklers".

The new EP's closer, "Always," which evokes a cross between "Since I Left You" and a relaxed version of Teengirl Fantasy's "Love Don't Live Here," is streaming on his myspace now. Both EPs will be released on a split 12" by the dreamboats that comprise LIFE'S BLOOD in May, and I'm totally picking it up.

Myspace // Last.fm

Change Leopardon

Imperfect Bushes/Coral Empyrean

One of my best friends (you might remember him) just happens to be a pretty talented songwriter. This is his first release under a new moniker. On these two songs, he kinda eschews categorization -- they vaguely recall his earlier electronic shoegaze, but they also sound way more like eastern-influenced psychedelic drone. If that wasn't good enough, he somehow finds room to incorporate vocal hooks that fall somewhere between Washed Out and Raccoo-oo-oon.

I've heard the demos for his upcoming EP (one of them is on his myspace), and it doesn't feel like an overstatement to say that if these songs don't do it for you, you might be in for a surprise when you hear some of his other stuff. Stay tuned.

Myspace // Last.fm

Beach Fossils

SELF-TITLED FULL LENGTH

Click here for track 8, "Window View," if it's corrupted in the link above.

This is almost too good to be true -- at long last, the full-length debut of a band that I think about name-dropping roughly every three posts to describe another band has arrived. The album I haven't been able to stop anticipating since the first notes of "Daydream" licked my ears like a tide coming in and a foam seems to rise right out of where the sand meets the water and then you squint up and see orange and purple smudges just above the horizon and you remember sorbet Push-Up Pops with the Flintstones on the package and then you remember light refracting and how comforting the science behind sunsets is.

Wait, where was I? Oh yeah. One of the most deservedly buzzed-about bands last year, whose only other release to date is a 7" and whose hazy surf-pop gems have been slowly trickling one-by-one out of rifts between HTML codes since last summer, finally has something more substantial for hungry listeners to prematurely nibble on -- or swallow whole. This thing doesn't even have a release date, official artwork or a tracklisting yet (EDIT: nevermind, I numbered the tracks and posted a new link), but that doesn't matter -- like any other album this good, the music speaks for itself.

Thanks to the angels at Late For School for somehow getting their hands on this.

Myspace // Last.fm
Buy it!

Gauntlet Hair

(link contains all three songs from their myspace)

I'm too in love not to post this. If you haven't heard this band via GvB or P4K yet, you're in for a surprise. Listen to the track "I Was Thinking..." via everyone's fav bilingual blog or on their myspace (link below). When I posted it on my tumblr earlier, I described it as "a snowball made of sunlight and wrapped in glass, floating in a hall of reverb. It probably also has a Cadbury Creme center, for all I know."

The story so far is that they apparently played Todd P's MtyMx festival and blew a lot of people away. They sound like a cross between Japandroids and Band Of Horses. No one knows much about them, except they're two dudes from Colorado and they're apparently writing their debut right now.

Myspace // Last.fm

Melt Day

This is that split between Glass Buds (a.k.a. Pawlic) and Orchard Thief. It's as awesome as you could have imagined. Glass Buds' side calls to mind an ambient bizarro version of Kickball, and Orchard Thief's contribution is like Beach Fossils and Atlas Sound in a slow-motion light cycle race. The whole thing is streaming on their respective myspaces.

Orchard Thief :: Myspace // Last.fm
Glass Buds :: Myspace // Last.fm

Edibles

Super Space/Mind Peace

This is a cassette that was released on Not Not Fun. This means you should download it. I'm pretty sure it sold out in a matter of days. This means it is awesome. It sounds like Ducktails but better, or Sun Araw in small doses. Swamp guitar slithers and crescent moon bass grooves cradle the carved-out flesh of a mango peel.

Myspace // Last.fm

FDVCE

Every Machine On

FDVCE is short for First Dog To Visit The Center Of The Earth -- so, you can certainly understand his preference for the acronym. Would you just look at the album cover for a second? And try to imagine that it sounds like that. Or like an oreo milkshake spiked with LSD and hooked up to electrodes. Or a cross between recent Black Dice and Dan Deacon before Bromst, but with a darker sense of humor. Listen to "Gator 5" and "Inner Dudsmind" on his myspace if you need more convincing. All of his other albums are free downloads on that page and his last.fm. If you like this, I recommend Colossus Archosaur, for starters.

Myspace // Last.fm

Many Mansions

I have no links for you in this post but it's a good thing, i promise. I found this dude a few months ago and got into him really easy, I come back every couple weeks and his stuff is still awesome. On top of all that i was lookin around on his last.fm page and you can download a bunch of his stuff for free, which means he's a cool guy. this stuff is kinda like tropical african jams with some ambient drones and really cool vocal harmonies.

Make sure to grab his latest full length release:

Return to Source

Another full length release, it's more acoustic guitar stuff and it sounds like it would be his earlier release of the two:

HOLYMOUNTAINLIFEADVENTURECLUB

some more stuff:

The Dream is Changing

Compilation 2 - New Weird American

Spirit Songs EP

Beyond Realms of Ecstatic Revelation

more Caboladies

Well it looks like someone already beat me to uploading the new Caboladies, so instead i'm just gonna post some more Caboladies that I uploaded to mediafire a while ago, i posted these links on CA with intentions to someday put them up here as well

it's worth upgrading your collection:


Atomic Weekender (2009)


Body Tides (2007)


Constellation Deformity (2009)


Optopio


Psychic Birthmark (2008)


Split w/ Oneohtrix Point Never (2009)


Waterslide Mines (2008)



I really love these dudes, one of my favorites of the genre. I think it used to be a 3-piece but now it's just down to 2 dudes. Doesn't seem like they tour much but if they ever come around I have a feeling they'd be great to see live. If anyone's interested I could post both of the dudes solo works as well, I have a few albums here and there.