Kristoffer Ragnstam

ARTIST / BAND: Kristoffer Ragnstam

SONG (MP3): Swing That Tambourine

ALBUM: Wrong Side Of The Room

FILE UNDER: Rock / Shoegaze / Alternative

LABEL: Weekender / Bluhammock Music

INFO: While high-profile pop bands from Sweden were busily grabbing press attention, their countryman Kristoffer Ragnstam was working under the radar screen, making music that refused to fit the Scandinavian stereotype.
His sound was different – too different to ignore. Musicians took note, not only in his country but in Germany and Japan. The media responded too, going overboard with effusions that, at the request of this somewhat self-effacing artist, we won’t repeat here.

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Of Montreal

ARTIST / BAND: Of Montreal

SONG (MP3): Nonpareil of Favor

ALBUM: Skeletal Lamping

FILE UNDER: Indie Pop

LABEL: polyvinyl records

INFO: Skeletal Lamping is the title of the ninth studio album by Athens, Georgia-based band Of Montreal. Kevin Barnes said about the title: "This record is my attempt to bring all of my puzzling, contradicting, disturbing, humorous...fantasies, ruminations and observations to the surface, so that I can better dissect and understand their reason for being in my head. Hence the title, Skeletal Lamping. Lamping is the name of a rather dreadful hunting technique where, hunters go into the forest at night, flood an area in light, then shoot, or capture, the animals as they panic and run from their hiding places." The new album is set to be released on October 7, 2008 on Polyvinyl.^[1]

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Zach Hill

ARTIST / BAND: Zach Hill

SONG (MP3): Dark Art

ALBUM: Astrological Straits

FILE UNDER: indie

LABEL: ipecac

INFO: Though Hill earned his stripes as co-founder of the Sacramento-born duo-turned-quintet Hella, with whom he?s recorded four albums and a number of EPs, split releases and compilation tracks, Astrological Straits marks the first time he?s acted as ringleader, composer, chief vocalist and art director. In placing Hill front and center, the album also magnifies something about the drummer?s writing style that might not have registered with those who?ve heard him in other contexts. ?I?ve always been more influenced by people like Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane, to name a few, than by other drummers,? he explains. ?Those non-drummers? ideas and free-form expression are what I?m trying to apply to the drum set.?

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Lake

ARTIST / BAND: Lake

SONG (MP3): Blue Ocean Blue

ALBUM: Oh, the Places We'll Go

FILE UNDER: A'cappella / Bossa Nova / Nu-Jazz

LABEL: water island records

INFO: LAKE is a group of cloudy individuals brought together through lines drawn along Interstate-5, intersecting in olympia on or around 2005. Since forming, they have both gained and lost members, recorded 12 full length albums (only 3 of which have seen proper release), played across the world supporting such talented acts as Adrian Orange and Her Band, Half Handed Cloud, Laura Veirs, and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy. The sounds they craft are straight from the playbook of the good parts of Billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac, and Turkish psychedelic music. Caressing the Rhodes piano, endearing drum fills, guitars that dont sound like guitars, and some slamming bass lines: Listening to LAKE is like pouring sugar in your ears. They'll turn your brain into chocolate, 67% cacao.

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Richard Swift

ARTIST / BAND: Richard Swift

SONG (MP3): Would You

ALBUM: Ground Trouble Jaw

FILE UNDER: singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist

LABEL: Secretly Canadian

INFO: Richard Swift (Born Ricardo Swift Ochoa) is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and short-film maker. Swift began performing and singing in Quaker churches around the age of fourteen and began writing and recording his material at home not long after. He has appeared as a guest musician on dozens of albums of all music genres; he was a keyboardist in the band Starflyer 59 for most of 2003, and currently fronts his own ambient-electronic-outfit-side-project, Instruments of Science and Technology.

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