Idaho - year after year (1993)

Idaho debuted with Year after Year, presenting their take on slowcore/ sadcore. The songs are based on 90's guitar indie, but this is just the springboard for singer Jeff Martin to wallow in his existential alienation, registered with a majestic baritone. "Skyscrape", "Gone", "Here To Go" and almost every song on the album are drenched in a slow motion psychedelic languor, no matter whether they employ heavy guitar distortions ("Gone"), mournful/ pensive acoustics ("Sundown") or even lively rhythms ("One Sunday"). What's more is the emotional power, halfway between drug hallucination and catatonic depression, and dilated to reach a metaphysical apex in songs like "Only Road" and "Endgame".

Another contribution by Nexd (= Kap_). Get it here.

Animal Collective - danse manatee (2001)

The Animal Collective's (here under their member names: Avey Tare, Panda Bear and Geologist) Danse Manatee is an anarchic, abstract, disjointed catalog of sounds. It's a tribal feast by primitives ("Penguin Penguin"), a factory malfunctioning ("Another White Singer"), an atavistic jazz band fronted by a cartoonish folk singer ("Essplode"), an acid overdose while listening to Throbbing Gristle lost in the Amazon forest ("Meet the Light Child"), a deranged priest chanting in a madhouse monastery ("the Living Toys"), the Beatles backed by cannibals in the set of Apocalypse Now ("Ahhh Good Country") etc. Great album.

Another contribution by Kap_. Get it here.

Ex Models - zoo psychology (2003)

Question: How do you update a movement that was renowned for it's sonic ferocity and spastic maladjustment (the no-wave of the late 70's)?

Answer: By turning it even more ferocious and spastic. Here the Ex Models go through 15 songs in about 20 minutes, and the icing on the cake is that they add intricate harmonic progressions to their DNA-fueled hurricanes of songs.

Thus this is no-wave via math-rock, spanning 2 decades worth of madness. It doesn't really sound as if the album contains 15 songs, but rather one big elaborate composition (Slint covering No New York).

Get it here.

Loscil - plume (2006)

Happy new year!

Plume is another winner from Loscil, from the frozen metronome "Motoc", to the sub-tension of "Rorshach" (though presented in gentle piano notes and warm ambience), the weightless state of "Zephyr", the aquatic "Steam", the galactic bliss of "Chinook", the calm flight of "Halcyon", the metaphysical "Charlie" (that radiates Brahman transcendence, where all existence and non-existence is one), and finally "Mistral", that clearly reincarnates back into life.

In that sense, the album is a major work. The point is that this isn't ambient music anymore. It's chamber, it's philosophical, it's impressionism.

Thanks to Kap_ for another contribution.

Get it here.