April 24th / Third Man Records

Track list:
1. Missing Pieces
2. Sixteen Saltines
3. Freedom At 21
4. Love Interruption
5. Blunderbuss
6. Hypocritical Kiss
7. Weep Themselves To Sleep
8. I’m Shakin’
9. Trash Tongue Talker
10. Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy
11. I Guess I Should Go To Sleep
12. On And On And On
13. Take Me With You When You Go

Gonjasufi drops a video for one of his latest tracks, “the Blame.” The song comes from his new mini-album, MU.ZZ.LE. It’s out now on Warp Records, and you can find a review of it here.

With loads of beautiful sounds and intensely sad emotions, the new Perfume Genius record brings together an assembly of powerful, yet short, songs.

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A touch of electronic soul coming through on this new Gang Colours track, “Fancy Restaurant.” Though it’s not exactly dubstep, future garage, post-dubstep, or whatever you wanna call it, the vocals and chilly synths remind me quite a bit of James Blake. I suppose there’s something for Beach House here as well, considering the beat feels like it’s getting produced by a quirky, vintage drum machine. The vocals have a nice atmosphere on them, too. Very calming, pretty.

You can grab a copy of this “Fancy Restaurant” single right here, right now. The single even features a Machinedrum remix.

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“Mercy” is a collaborative track from two of contemporary underground electronic music’s most creative producers, Joy Orbison and Boddika. It’s not the first time they’ve put a track together, and I’m hoping it won’t be the last after getting exposed to the mutated bass and choppy vocal cuts on this track.

The groove on this thing is absolutely nasty, and it’s made nastier by this incessant and odd bassline. The sound resembles that of smacking a PVC pipe with a bat, or doing something strange with a long sting of piano wire.

The sounds are really something else, and the rhythms are always in a state of flux as well. This track is loaded with top-notch textures and detail. Grab “Mercy” and the other track on this single, “Froth,” here.

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Pallbearer is one of doom metal’s newest faces, and was recently turned onto them by NPR Music. You can actually stream the band’s debut studio album, Sorrow and Extinction, right here.

Though I continually catch flak for enjoying metal–from both fans and haters of the genre–it’s a drug I just can’t quit. Sorry, y’all. I’m passionate about the stuff, so you can imagine how distraught I was to find that my favorite albums of 2011 list was almost devoid of anything from the world of doom metal. After a short falling out with metal, artists like Earth and Electric Wizard rekindled my love for heavy riffs and uncompromising volumes. Maybe testosterone played a factor as well.

The music of Pallbearer appeals to way more than a primal, male rage, though. Pallbearer’s music has enough saturated low-end frequencies to shake the Earth’s core, and the drumming emphasizes the heavy grooves these songs offer. However, I’m sure the track streaming above, “An Offering of Grief,” has characteristics that would appeal to most music fans.

Pallbearer’s guitars lay copious amounts of melody and harmony against their sludgy, monstrous riffs. The vocals are sung in a clean and dramatic style that actually reminds me of Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson. The chord progression makes the song feel pretty triumphant as well.

You can find Pallbearer’s debut album, Extinction and Sorrow, on Profound Lore. It’s out today. Check the cover art below:

On the third album to come from the Canadian synth pop project Grimes, the songs feel a little undercooked–however, I will this this project has a nice, clear sound and style.

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Watch PressPausePlay here.

Of course everyone on the planet can’t be a career musician. The economy couldn’t possibly sustain such a world. However, are there just too many musicians releasing their music onto the internet right now? Could there ever possibly be such a thing as too much music on the internet? If there was such a thing, what would it look like? Do you feel great music is being drowned out by how much music is out there right now? Is the in calculable mass of music on the internet killing the art? Is it killing musical culture?

Last year, New York’s the Men dropped an album of some pretty solid rock songs. I didn’t love it, though, and I suppose it all boiled down to have disjointed the album felt. While I appreciated the styles of underground rock that were being shown off on the tracks–everything from doom metal to post-hardcore–it was hard enjoying all of them as a complete piece.

Despite the slight disappointment, I’m still looking forward to the band’s next album, Open Your Heart, which is set to drop on Sacred Bones March 6th. The label has seen fit to drop the track “Ex-Dreams” in promotion of the album, and I’m digging what I’m hearing.

While this track doesn’t guarantee the next Men album will be stylistically consistent, it does bring some Fugazi-esque guitar chords and a grunge-y slacker attitude to the table.

A stream of the third Scuba album, Personality. The album is dropping this week via Hotflush, and strikes me as being much less ambient and spacious than the project’s last album, Triangulation. And that’s fine with me, because the rhythms on this album are pretty driving and engaging.