Orca, please
So the biggest news in today’s new arrivals is undoubtedly the Dirty Projectors’ latest. Message board nerds have been hailing it as a major achievement ever since it leaked (two months ago). Of course, said message board nerds are now retreating on their claims, just in time for the other 98 percent of the [...]

Quite the week for a lot of different reasons. There are some great new records to talk about this week, and I’m going to discuss them below. For Sony, note that both Cathy, head of communications here, and myself posted responses in this thread (mine is here). If we can direct conversation there and keep [...]

Photo courtesy of Shannon Taggart
New records? Let’s talk about ‘em, shall we?
Sunn O))) – Monoliths and Dimensions Opening of “Aghartha” sounds like a recording of a groaning glacier, or like Metal Machine Music chopped and screwed. Which means that it is a new Sunn O))) record. Long, droning sound vistas that shift over minutes [...]

I walked into today’s new arrivals having heard very few of them. So here’s a real-time guide to what’s good from today’s haul.
Passion Pit, Manners: Doesn’t it feel like you might shut your eyes and open them again two seconds later to find that Passion Pit are suddenly superduperstars? I’m hearing them for the first [...]

Lots and lots and lots and lots of records today. I am going the lazy route — there’s just too much ground to cover — and putting all of them together. Let’s talk about them together, shall we? Jump in in the Comments section and leave your thoughts, which will undoubtedly be more insightful than [...]

So obviously we are all pretty obsessed with the Altair and Julianna Barwick records we put out via eMusic Selects today. Yancey posted his great Q and A with Julianna earlier today, and here’s a look at the record itself.
Julianna Barwick – Florine – Really, this is the sort of record you fall backwards into [...]

An orange encased in a green apple. My mouth involuntary waters every time I see that image. This happens to me a lot because that tart apple/orange hybrid happens to be on the book jacket of Freakonomics, the ubiquitous pop economics sensation that both you and your dad can enjoy. And now you can hear [...]

I’m here listening to the second Syd Barrett solo album and figure it’s a perfect time for a UK-focused edition of New Arrivals. Some of these are available elsewhere — I will make note of territories for albums that are more than just “UK-only.” It’s too interesting a batch to let it slide under the [...]

So much to cover that we’re flying through things a bit, and leaving out a ton. Errors, omissions, corrections and opinions to follow in the comments. PS: Make sure to check out the Trouble Books record mentioned below. Total fan.
Junior Boys, Begone Dull Care: It’s spotty. This is definitely a record where picking and choosing [...]

Along with Hyperdub and Tectonic, Tempa rounds out the top triumvirate of genre-defining, classic-dropping dubstep labels. We’ve gotten Tempa releases on eMusic before, but today we got an unholy glut of releases in — a few of which are as essential as anything the genre has produced to date.
If you have even the slightest interest [...]

I have been waiting for this day for a long time. Until now I thought the only celeb with whom I shared a name was Niles’s ex-wife on Frasier, but apparently I was mistaken. Welcome to my world, Maris The Great and the Faggots of Death. A truly remarkable discovery–I love everything about this [...]

Big day at eMusic, as classic albums from the Reverend Al Green hit the site. Do I even need to say how timeless and essential these are? Most people will go for the Greatest Hits, and I get that, but the full albums here are just as rich and rewarding.
We’ve assembled all of [...]

So much for a quiet first-day-back from Austin! The site is loaded with amazing new releases today — a full run-down after the jump!

Yancey, Joe and Alex have departed for SXSW as of this morning, and hopefully we’ll be hearing about their experiences soon here. So it’s just Maris and me this week, and I’d say that “it’s all quiet here” except there is a brain-jarringly loud St. Patty’s Day parade happening on the street right below our [...]

For those of you out there who are not familiar with the Internet sensation of 2008, Christian the Lion, please take 2 1/2 minutes and watch this YouTube video. You will laugh, you will cry, your faith in beast and man and God will be restored. The story of the two British friends who adopted [...]

Exciting day on eMusic! Not only do we have a host of great new arrivals, but today also sees the debut of our new eMusic Selects artists — Victoire and Luke Winslow-King. More after the jump!

Tim Hecker, An Imaginary Country: Been excited to hear this one for a while now. Still haven’t listened, but Andy Beta’s review is glowing:
While still grounded in waves of pure sound (no doubt run through more filters than a Jersey water processing plant so as to become crystalline), An Imaginary Country feels like nothing short [...]

Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion: To herald this album’s arrival, we went to AC expert Andy Beta and asked him to give us a handy guide to all of the output by both the band and its many — and we stress “many” — side-projects. What he came up with is remarkable: the Animal Collective [...]

A wild and woolly day in New Arrivals today. Grizzly Bear back catalog is a biggie (and tidily answers the question, “Will Warp on eMusic just be obscure Autechre side projects?”) and I think we’re all curious what kind of public interest there will be in this new Prodigy record (first in seven years!).
Grizz, [...]

2009 marks Warp Records’ 20th year in business — a staggering achievement for anyone, and one all the more impressive considering the fickle taste of electronic music fans. But for Warp, they haven’t just adapted to the past two decades’ worth of faddish shifts and genre re-inventions: in many cases, they have led them. Certainly [...]