Bouncy, new wave stream-of-consciousness — as catchy as it is fleeting.
Kennedy
Space-folk-gospel-disco pop, with a hint of The Who. It’s all here, kitchen-sink rock. Gotta hear it to believe.
Broken Spindles
Joel Peterson, aka Broken Spindles, runs the gamut of electronic music; from chilled-out synth symphonies to dark, bass-heavy grooves, he serves up a fitting soundtrack to our post-everything lives.
Thavius Beck
Collages of stuttering breaks and swirling samples, along with extended doses of “spoken word” culled from the underbelly of American pop culture. A potentially played-out formula turned downright entrancing.
Weevil
Lonely, loping folktronica with a healthy shoegazer sheen.
TRS-80
I keep thinking CLOADM “donkey”…sorry. I actually played a Donkey Kong clone on my TRS-80, loaded from cassette. These tracks are much better than Donkey Kong; reminiscent of DJ Shadow’s work with UNKLE.
On!Air!Library!
The chin-stroking ambience of O!A!L!’s 2003 material (see “Ex’s and Ho’s Oh’s”) makes way for a more diverse palette of bristling pop and sprawling sonic gems in ’04.
Four Tet
The “As Serious As Your Life” B-sides come in all flavors: Jay Dee and Guilty Simpson capitalize on the original’s funky underpinnings with b-boy savoir faire while the live version pushes the limits of both RAM and patience.
Adem
Intricate, next-level folk music from Fridge bassist Adem Ilhan.
Say Hi to Your Mom
This pick inspired by Sam’s 3/4/04 pick: SHTYM is what you’d expect from someone who grew up using a Commodore 64, Atari 2600, Compaq Portable II, and an Epson dot matrix printer. Now he’s making music on those machines about the girlfriends who beat him in Centipede.