Oakland’s Houses of Heaven fuse the grit of early industrial with dizzying hits of EBM, techno, and drum & bass, all imbued with lyrical themes that draw equally from the emotional and the mechanical. Within/Without, their sophomore LP for Felte, delves into a realm of intricate intensity, pushing electronics to the forefront with the production prowess of Matia Simovich (INHALT), and features top-of-their-game guest vocals from Douglas McCarthy (Nitzer Ebb) and Mariana Saldaña (BOAN).

While the dub-influenced shoegaze throb of Silent Places (2020) immersed itself in the paradox of opulence against the unsettling backdrop of California’s wildfires, Within/Without confronts social order through the lens of inner strife. Opener, “Strange Temptation”, sets the pace with an energetic push as overlapping, staccato synths weave around a fuzzed-out vocal directive — “Release / Control” — that suggests an impasse between two conflicting states of being. According to singer Keven Tecon, it “captures the sense of being emotionally confined or limited by the bonds of love,” and “the relentless pursuit of fulfillment that forever remains just out of reach.” […]

Adriaan de Roover — Other Rooms (Dauw, 2024)

Ambient / Experimental / Musique concrète

[…] The oddly logical pacing of Other Rooms affords alternation between comfort and displacement, manifested in a contrast of low hums and upper-frequency glitch & flutter. Your mind may conjure machines malfunctioning at the far end of a museum corridor, or radios sputtering broken signals from the stratosphere. Amid this unique sonic language, “Dank U” ushers in perhaps the most traditional form of harmony in the set, giving a sense of standing atop a grassy hill with eyes closed, while the mangled call of a seraph encircles its droning core. The final act of the album is bathed in suspense, as microelectronics lap against each other, pensive piano motifs peek through, and bowed metallic objects flicker across the stereo field.

Other Rooms is an uncompromisingly adventurous listen, managing the rare feat of remaining concise while brimming with detail and playful inventiveness. De Roover notes an inspiration from “looking at different versions of a life, sitting in a space between them; a constant focus on those alternate things... What if, what if.” It is introspective music, informed by a desire for connection to oneself, to others, and to the boundless scale of everything else.

Aluminum — Fully Beat (Felte, 2024)

Indie rock / Shoegaze / Big beat / Jangle pop

[…] “Always Here, Never There” is Fully Beat’s first pure hit of melodic pop: its liquid bass groove winds beneath a melancholy-sweet synth hook and Marc Leyda’s plaintive vocals, while drummer Chris Natividad’s deep, pillowy snare and propulsive style maintain a driving pace.

Second single, “Beat”, brings a steady, mid-tempo pulse that nods to Happy Mondays, with a rhythm section and hazy guitars that blend beautifully into lo-fi bliss under the hypnotic, counterpoint coo of both singers. The shimmering “Everything” pairs long-tail strums and an exuberant pace with complex, yet beautifully breezy, vocal arrangements. It marks the summit of Fully Beat’s pop tendencies: a tight performance smeared with lush effects, rounded out by diligent mixing that still allows a buoyant haze.

“Call An Angel” ushers in the final act with a contrast of clattering drums, wobbling guitars and narcotic vocal delivery. The swell of a string section counters its experimental methods, offering a sense of resolute longing, and embodying the band’s dedication to creating different energies within a consistent atmosphere. […]

Black Swan — Ghost (Past Inside the Present, 2024)

Dark Drone / Tape Loops / Musique Concrète

[…] The dimensions of each movement on Ghost come from careful consideration of the overall narrative: some are brief vignettes, while others are given room to breathe and evolve; some showcase simple but effective means, and others push the limits of their analog formats with intense layering and harmonic surges. Beginning with “Somewhere But Here”, an uncanny tone is established by melodies trilling from dusty, endlessly re-dubbed tapes, and the medium itself emerges as an essential sculptural instrument.

“Like Dust, I Linger” is one of the album’s most heartbreakingly beautiful entries, rising with a tender warble that unfolds beneath a soaring, atomized loop. “Ad Infinitum” follows, with shimmering synths that merge and overlap like sun shafts on a cobalt lake, their harmonies forming a slow, emotional crescendo across its ten minute sprawl. On “Time Loop”, the low end vanishes, and we are untethered into airiness, accompanied by a quietly bustling, tactile clatter. […]

Viul — Secret Recess (Dauw, 2024)

Ambient / Experimental / Lo-fi

The vividly textured layers of Secret Recess – the debut Dauw LP from Viul – comprise a sacred experience that leaves a unique emotional residue with each listen. Some pieces feature delicate melodies curling over themselves, while others offer gradually evolving loops underpinned by subtle guitar plucking, distant found sounds and obscured voices at half-speed. All are crafted meticulously with analogue sources, and sifted through soft-edged tape processes that reward a dedicated headphone session, conjuring the solitary space promised in the album’s title.

Secret Recess emerged slowly across an era when most of us turned inward by necessity, and draws upon a library’s worth of sketches, recombinations and lightning strikes. The artist also cites a road trip to the national parks of the southwestern US that significantly informed the hazy, spacious atmospheres of the work that followed. By his account, “the desert wind was too intense for field recording,” but you can still feel it drifting across compositions like “Taurum” and “Eighties”. Such a union of urban huddle and open-sky expanse allows the album to take on new colours anywhere it’s heard. […]

Unwed Sailor — Underwater Over There (Current Taste, 2024)

Post-rock / Instrumental pop

Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Unwed Sailor have been on a tear over the past few years. Following a quiet phase through much of the 2010s, they reëmerged with the aptly titled Heavy Age (2019), as well as two more full-lengths, Truth Or Consequences (2021) and Mute The Charm (2023), that chart a remarkable evolution of their bass-led, pop-leaning post-rock. On Underwater Over There – their ninth LP overall – a current of 80s goth and jangle pop runs beneath a litany of memorable hooks and compositional left turns, creating a propulsive and intricate world of sound.

The band worked collectively on all elements of mixing and production to craft a meticulously layered environment, while maintaining an air of spontaneity and experimentation across the set. Early standout, “Final Feather”, drifts through varying landscapes of airiness and haze on a high-neck bass hook, while the hum of voices adds a contrast of angelic comfort. Bearing influence from New Order and The Cure in particular, its balance of gravitas and shimmer is the result of founding member Johnathon Ford’s intuitive writing method: the lead bass line comes first, followed by supporting melodies, drums, guitars, keys, and final detailing. […]

marine eyes — to belong (Past Inside the Present, 2024)

Ambient / Folk

[…] Through Cynthia Bernard’s meditative methods, belonging is approached as it should be: a rare and delicate sensation that might describe one’s place in the physical world, in the continuum of time, or in the arms of a loved one. She chiefly uses treated guitar, soft synthesizers, and layers of radiant vocals to achieve a holistic sense of embrace, but to belong is also mottled with field recordings and the voices of her dearest family and friends. In these we find a through line to the love of journaling and documentation that previously inspired chamomile (2022).

The opening title track eases in with a menagerie of textures teased like yarn from a skein, with birdcall and vocal incantations arising and receding in gentle waves. “bridges” emerges from the fog with gently-strummed guitar and a clear-eyed mantra, intended for her children as they navigate the confusion and complexities of young adulthood. You imagine her playing it for them around a beach bonfire at dusk, a moment held close in unifying comfort. These are deeply personal creations, but one can’t help but be overcome by their disarming air of benevolence and empathy. […]

zakè — Dolere (Affin, 2024)

Drone / Ambient

[…] First movement, “Dolera” (from the Latin dolor, describing anguish), drifts on gorgeous, melancholy waves that encourage total focus and slow, sympathetic breath. It is ensconced in a trademark analog hiss, adorned in the stereo field by sonic streaks of light and the contemplative sound of decayed tape samples, mimicking a mind unceasingly turning over its preoccupations. Nearly album-length in its own right, “Dolera” may act – like many zakè pieces – as a sonic Rorschach Test, equally capable of serving as emotional commiseration, or as the backdrop for the essential inner work of meditation.

Fittingly, the title piece, “Dolere”, is named for the present tense, infinitive form of dolor. This subtle linguistic difference echoes the shift in mood from the album’s first half, as a more darkly tinged drone underscores barely perceptible field recordings of birdsong, and the quiet drama of a glow peeking through somber fog. “Dolere” progresses at a deliberate pace, shifting its hues in the way tree shadows move across a forest floor, while a background of white noise builds in tandem with intensifying fixation. The only time entropy wins is when the final notes fade, and we’re returned to the ticking of the clock on the wall. […]

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