Ah, foreboding electronic music with a twinge of videogame adventure soundtrack bubbling beneath. And surprise strings! Excellent.

The title track from Idle Bloom’s forthcoming Theory Eight release is now available for your listening pleasure. The EP will be officially available on December 4th, just in time for your Best Of lists.

Listen to the new PUJOL EP in its entirety. There is plenty of oddness floating about – spoken word, strange samples, tripped out explorations – but it all fits nicely together. Good to see PUJOL keeping it weird.

As you likely saw reported in great depth over on The Cream, it’s been a solid ten years since SLACK recorded at Dave Grohl’s Studio 606 with producer Nick Raskulinecz and, ultimately, had to shelve the album. It’s eleven tracks of high energy, big riff rock with just a bit of punk snarl lingering throughout. Glad to see the album wasn’t lost forever!

Read the whole story over on the Album Page.

Did you know John Davis (of Superdrag) has a label where he releases recordings of his own put to high-bias cassette. In his words: “No packaging, no mastering, straight out the back of the mighty Yamaha MT-4X for your enjoyment—the same one that’s been in operation continuously since 1996.”

The latest is Johnny Flame and the Jaws of Victory, an EP of mellow 70′s style songs with just the right balance of slide guitar, Indian sitar, keyboards and crunchy guitar where appropriate. 

There are plenty more releases from the undertaking but this is a great place to start as it feels fully fleshed out.

I’ve made the comparison between German Error Message and The Microphones previously and I hold true to that! Lumping all haunting bedroom pop cut with a melancholy vibe together would be lazy journalism but there’s a familiarity between Phil Elvrum’s voice and Paul Kintzing’s that works.

The overall vibe works quite well in the quiet hours of the evening. It has moments of largess and exploding drums but the production keeps the listening experience intimate and personal.

This particular album was released almost a year ago but it’s new to me and the more I listen, the more it grabs me. 

How about a little bit of dreamy indie rock for your Friday? Organ Stills is a new name in Nashville but their members have been playing around town for over a decade. It’s only one track released so far but I’m certainly curious to hear the full EP as it fits with the current winter-y vibes quite well.

Here’s what I love about Linear Downfall; they’ve found the perfect blend of pleasant, ethereal vocals and absolutely brutal sound onslaughts. “Violence” is a great example of this drift between enjoyably dreamy and nightmarish hellscape. That’s a compliment.

There’s a lot to digest on this album but it’s worth the reward.

I dunno about you but I’m really feeling the onset of winter. Dreary rains, dropping temperatures and all sorts of reasons to stay indoors. The full-length release from Phoul, Sunday Mourning, really helps augment those desires. It’s a soft, small feeling, collection of bedroom pop musings. The melancholy runs deep throughout these thirteen songs but never dives too far into depressive territory.