Ever had your mind blown by some thrilling, strange new sound and wondered, “Where on earth can I find more music like that!?” Look no further. The following Modern Classical Masters, all recorded for the flagship classical label Deutsche Grammophon, are some of the most influential musicians you may have never heard of; together, they [...]

It seems like just yesterday Chelsea Wolfe was releasing her stark solo debut, The Grime and the Glow, on the mysterious New York label Pendu. That title was no accident: the album was split between dense, overcast tracks that nestled Wolfe’s voice deep beneath strange waves of sound and tracks that purred and cooed slowly [...]

“If you’re in a studio making an album you can easily say, “Fuck everyone, I’m making this music for me” … but if you are going to start standing up and inviting people to come and see you … You have to at least something that’s worth being there for.” So says acclaimed electronic musician [...]

[Tomorrow will see the release of one of the year's best records to date, the solo debut of former Gowns frontwoman Erika M. Anderson — who records under the name EMA. Stark, haunting and evocative, Past Life Martyred Saints is a portrait of a young woman in transition, grappling with adult uncertainty and emotional turbulence. [...]

April was a phenomenal month for new releases here, and of course when the influx is so great many fantastic albums end up falling through the cracks.  Here are a few of the most criminally overlooked albums of April, please to be sharing your lists as well!

On May 3, the venerable Thrill Jockey label will release Aesthetica, the second album from the Brooklyn band Liturgy. Over the course of the last few years, Liturgy has grown increasingly difficult to pin down. Their early outings scanned as a kind of American scholar version of black metal (and, if I’m being honest here, [...]

So this is pretty much all you need to know for the next 10 years, right here in this video. This is the secrets of the universe. I’ve been pretty obsessed with this record for the last few weeks (as evidenced by my staff picks selections) and now, clearly, I need to see them live. [...]

(fuck you, terminal 5, until the end of time) Polly Harvey looked like a ghost on stage at New York’s Terminal 5 Tuesday night, her tiny body lost inside a billowing white gown, shock of black hair sprouting a host of haphazardly-arranged raven’s feathers, her hands, when they weren’t cradling an autoharp, positioned stiffly at [...]

California’s Not Not Fun label follows its own weird muse into dark, enchanted forests — and if that prose strikes you as too purple, you probably haven’t spent enough time digging through their stacks. Spanning everything from harsh, confrontational noise to Umberto‘s straight-up Goblin hat-tips, NNF is the place to begin if you’re looking to [...]

I’ve got to be the only person in the known universe who’s not completely put-off by the term “chillwave.” You guys know we used to have a genre called “cuddlecore,” right? Like, let’s reserve some of that ire for shit that actually matters. Genre tags are idiotic but necessary, so let’s all figure out ways [...]

Innova Recordings was founded in 1982 by an organization called the American Composers Forum so that composers, that most embattled and consistently maligned species of contemporary music makers, would be able to record the forward-thinking, fresh and visceral music they were making. This was music that had a firm foothold in no markets — not [...]

Terry Riley’s A Rainbow in Curved Air is a record of two pieces, each roughly 20 minutes in length, that are extremely contemplative at their core. Both are rooted in an “om”-like hum (an elegant image of “curved air”) and they play off of it in very different ways. “A Rainbow in Curved Air” tests [...]

(we have ways of making you talk) Every now and then a record shows up on the site with little warning, and gets lost in the onslaught of bigger titles with more cache or cred. Do not let Reichmann’s Wunderbar be that record — especially if you have a soft spot for the B-Side of [...]

A deeply weird and haunting clusterfuck of an avant-garde record came into eMusic on Friday. It is filed under Jazz, but the only distant relation it bears to Jazz is the fact that it is completely improvised. Otherwise, it lays about thirty miles safely outside of any genre borders. It is called The Songs, and [...]

It ain’t summer yet, at least in New York. Today, it’s not even very spring-like — although I suppose April showers are part of the deal. Point is, if you’ve got any glum residue left, any room in your psyche for a few more ruminative, mournful, moody, drippy musical moments, then I have the album [...]

He makes it soooooo easy. When someone is this good at this many things — and things so wide-ranging in scope, you can’t help but be shocked in spite of yourself — it’s damn near impossible not to tumble down the rabbit hole. The Arthur Russell story is well-chronicled amongst music obsessives, the gist being: [...]

“I like new Sonic Youth the best.” It was an innocuous-enough sort of thing to say, I figured. In the canon of “stupid stuff I say in the office,” I figured it wouldn’t even be top five (today’s winner was “I never really ‘got’ The Stone Roses”). The link to a Thurston-edited snippet/preview track from [...]

If you paid attention to the commercials during the Super Bowl yesterday (great game!) you may have noticed a familiar-sounding acoustic chant number in the background of a John Turturro-starring Heineken spot. Turns out to be none other than “Higher Than the End,” from 17 Dots fave Twi the Humble Feather! A shocking turn to [...]

(Courtesy of Alex. I actually had this comic when I was a kid) New on eMusic today: weirdness. Lots and lots of weirdness.

New on eMusic today is a record that’s particularly close to my heart — mostly because it’s a record I worked with the Arena Rock label to get reissued. It’s one of my favorite records of all-time: Darn Floor — Big Bite by the group Daniel Amos. We’re giving a track away free, and I’ll [...]