Keith Kenniff's (aka Helios)

ARTIST / BAND: Keith Kenniff's (aka Helios)
SONG (MP3): Shenandoah 
ALBUM: All Will Prosper
FILE UNDER: Minimal, Post-Classical 
LABEL: Western Vinyl
INFO: Keith Kenniff is an American composer, multi-instrumentalist, and electronic music producer. He composes ambient/electronic music under the moniker Helios and post-classical piano music under Goldmund (the latter’s music once described by no less an authority than Ryuichi Sakamoto as “…so, so, so beautiful…”). He is also half of the indie band Mint Julep, and ambient project "Hollie & Keith Kenniff". Keith is also a composer for film, television, dance and performance art. In 2010 he began the record label Unseen.
read more from the source...

Luke Temple

ARTIST / BAND: Luke Temple

MP3:  "More Than Muscle"

ALBUM: Don't Act Like You Don't Care

FILE UNDER: Pop, folk

LABEL: Western Vinyl

INFO: Luke Temple is an American pop-folk singer-songwriter, born in Manchester, Massachusetts. He is an alumnus of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. While living in New York, making a living by painting murals in wealthy New Yorkers' apartments,^[1] he released a four song self-titled EP, recorded entirely on a four-track recorder. With this, he was signed to Mill Pond Records in Seattle, Washington.

read more from the source...

Nat Baldwin's

ARTIST / BAND: Nat Baldwin

MP3: "Weights"

ALBUM: People Changes

FILE UNDER: Free jazz /Experimental / Minimalist

LABEL: Western Vinyl

INFO:

Double bassist/singer-songwriter Nat Baldwin’s forthcoming album People Changes, out May 24 on Western Vinyl, is much like the stark Maine setting which it was created. Of course, his fourth full-length shows welcome markings of his experimental bent from years as the Dirty Projectors bassist and former disciple of free jazz legend Anthony Braxton, but the serene isolation of 17 million acres of New England forestland make this cabin-born set intimate and sincere. The album follows A Split EP with Extra Life (2008, Shatter Your Leaves) on which earlier versions of “Weights” and “Lifted” appear,Most Valuable Player (2008), Enter the Winter (2006) and Lights Out EP (2005) on Broken Sparrow Records, and his experimental free jazz debut Solo Contrabass (2003, Peacock Recordings). In addition to Dirty Projectors, Nat Baldwin has performed on Vampire Weekend’s Contra andDepartment of Eagles' In Ear Park. He will tour behind the album’s release this spring.

Head over to Brooklyn Vegan to check out the video for “Weights” from People Changes.

BOTANY

ARTIST / BAND: BOTANY

MP3s: Feeling Today / Waterparker

ALBUM: Feeling Today

FILE UNDER: Psychedelic

LABEL: Western Vinyl

INFO: Feeling Today is Spencer Stephenson's debut release under the Botany moniker. The culmination of years of assembling music, this EP, and his forthcoming full-length, flow with a transcendental radiance. Under the gauzy patina of decades-old samples, this Texan sound-sculptor masterfully merges the past and the present, the earthly and the infinite.

read more from the source...

Balmorhea

ARTIST / BAND: Balmorhea

MP3: "Bowsprit" / "Night Squall"

ALBUM: Constellations

FILE UNDER: Acoustic / Classical / Experimental

LABEL: Western Vinyl

INFO: Rob Lowe and Michael Muller, the songwriters and core duo of Austin’s Balmorhea (pronounced “bal-more-ay”), will release their newest full-length, Constellations, on theWestern Vinyl label Februarly 23, 2010. Closely following the release of the group’s critically-acclaimed prior albums – All is Wild, All is Silent (2009) and Rivers Arms (2008) – Constellations further showcases the band’s songwriting and attention to detail, establishing Balmorhea as a major force in contemporary American independent music.

read more from the source...