Surreal, unexpected, and compelling: the ten albums that follow hover somewhere around the experimental/avant-garde divide, musically speaking. They range from drifting textures born from manipulated guitars and vocals to more traditional verse/chorus/verse arrangements that nonetheless threaten to implode into a squall of noise. What they share is a fondness for pushing into unexplored territory, and sometimes recombining disparate elements into a unified whole.
Julianna Barwick
The Magic Place (Asthmatic Kitty)
The second album from Julianna Barwick relies on the manipulation of looped, haunting vocals. It feels more structured than her debut, 2009′s Florine. And on a few of these pieces — notably “Bob In Your Gait” and “Flown” — Barwick incorporates additional instrumentation into her sound, to a beautifully jarring effect.
Download: “The Magic Place” (Right click + “Save As”)
Release Date: February 22
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