Callers met in New Orleans before ultimately relocating to Brooklyn. This isn’t necessarily important in their creation of music, merely a statement of historical fact. Well, that’s not entirely true. When I think of New Orleans, I think of a place somehow lost post Katrina and struggling to renew their culture. But it’s different; things are different. So culture has changed. Of course, this is all in my head as I have not been to New Orleans. But in a way, I hear that side of New Orleans (at least the version that resides in my head) in Callers. The band’s sound is difficult to describe, highly unique, and a bit odd. It’s like that music in Twin Peaks — a bit other-worldly and a smidgen awkward. Likewise, their video for the song follows suit. And that’s what makes it damn good.

“How To Hold Your Arms” is available on Live Of Love, Callers new album out now on Western Vinyl.

Download: “How To Hold Your Arms” by Callers

J. Tillman has always created a very minimalist style of folk, and this sound once again dominates his new track “Three Sisters”, from his upcoming Singing Ax release. With minimalism, there’s a fine balance between the risk of being bland and sans any melody, and creating something astonishingly brilliant. Tillman knows this line well, and flirts with it frequently. No surprise: his skilled footwork keeps him on the side of brilliance.

With a soft guitar tap, a few twangy harmonic plucks, and a dominating near a cappella vocal melody, “Three Sisters” is quiet folk at its best, stripped down and brutally honest. And in the moments where the volume increases substantially in little bursts of accompaniment, pure genius is achieved.

Singing Ax is Tillman’s seventh record. Recorded in three days by Steve Albini and mastered by Bob Weston, the album is available from Western Vinyl.

Download: “Three Sisters” by J. Tillman

Music is often experiential, but none is more so than that which embodies the hypnotic. Drone, shoegaze, post rock – they all often tell stories through notes rather than words, and with Tomorrow Becomes You Slow Six does just that. The band combines classical music with rock in a way unlike contemporaries such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The emphasis is comparably on strings, but the sounds are much more cosmic – more along the lines of Explosions In The Sky’s post rock sensibilities, but with classical leanings and less of the soft-loud-soft progressions.

“The Night You Left New York” introduces the album with a pleasant drone of strings, which gives way after nine minutes to the agitated, dissonant strings in “Cloud Cover (Part I)”. Mixing in samples in “Cloud Cover (Part II)”, Slow Six builds subtly from the minimal conclusions of “(Part 1)”, not reaching any substantial increase in volume until the second half – even then it remains fairly minimal and drone-ridden. Like other instrumental post rock bands, some of whom add elements of classical music, Slow Six creates eerie, quiet valleys and monumental, epic heights.

The band shines brightest when strings are at their most endearing – tracks like “Sympathetic Response System (Part II)” and the anthemic concluding track “These Rivers Between Us” focus this instrumental energy into harmonic melodies that are at one moment dreamy and the next nightmarish and ferocious. This band proves that there is beauty in horror.

Slow Six takes just as much influence from modern classical and rock as it does from minimalist electronica – artists like Klaus Schulz and Brian Eno. From the swirling sounds to ear-piercing hums and purrs, Slow Six re-imagines the sound-scapes of time. The title of midpoint track “Because Together We Resonate” is a perfect designation for this music. Experimental, at times seemingly random, yet all part of a greater being, Tomorrow Becomes You is truly the cosmos as fully realized in conceptual song.

Slow Six: The Night You Left New York [mp3]

Western Vinyl [CD, 2010]

1. The Night You Left New York
2. Cloud Cover (Part I)
3. Cloud Cover (Part II)
4. Because Together We Resonate
5. Sympathetic Response System (Part I)
6. Sympathetic Response System (Part II)
7. These Rivers Between Us

Experimental electronic folk never sounded so dreamy. “Cotton Curls” by Sleep Whale has soft, pleasant melodies supported by a heavy percussive tromp. Fronted by mysterious, psychedelic, cooing vocals, the song splits reality with the dream-life. It’s like an Animal Collective track without all the bells and whistles; just peaceful and colorful. It’s evocative of a midsummer afternoon half-slumber, warm with soft pillows and messed up sheets. You can almost feel the sun streaming in through the blinds, and hear a lawnmower in the distance. And as you flicker between deep sleep and a lazy barely-awake, Sleep Whale’s lyrics ring true: What is this place? … It doesn’t make sense. But in a way, it makes perfect sense – dreams always do when you’re in their midst.

Sleep Whale: Cotton Curls [mp3]