Many albums strive to create a singular sonic universe. Few achieve it. The albums we’re highlighting today do just that. The connective tissue is that each of them is that they create an immersive listening experience, one that transports you elsewhere for the duration of its runtime.
Mystic 100’s – On A Micro Diet
Had Milk Music existed in the 80’s, I have no doubt they would have ended up in Our Band Could Be Your Life. Their 2010’s output felt indebted to the fuzzy SST-style punk of many featured players in that book, and they also seemed to operate by the same DIY principles as those artists; their music has been consistently made on their own schedule without heed to commercial appeal or press cycles. After a six year absence, the group has reemerged with a new name (Mystic 100’s) and an almost entirely new sound. Though hints of the old Milk Music remain (see the relatively straightforward rocker “Windowpane”), they’ve largely transformed themselves into a sprawling jam band. You can hear hints of Hendrix, Young and even Bitches Brew-era Davis, but it’s the band’s almost telepathic connection that pushes this music to the next level. They act as a single unit, each stray idea or apparent tangent eventually revealing how it connects to the greater whole. It’s a marvel to watch unfold.
audry – Differentiated Intercompletion
I know very little about audry except that they are incredibly prolific. The project popped up on my radar earlier this year with Undisclosed Advertising & End Credits, an intriguing if uneven mix of oddball sonic collage and slowcore. Their latest, Differentiated Intercompletion, leans into the latter. Slowcore is a meditative genre by nature, but audry takes that tendency even further. Tracks stretch over ten minutes, shimmering guitar phrases intertwining over and over again. While there are vocals, their meaning is barely discernible; instead they often just dissolve into the background, becoming little more than another sonic texture. The end effect is akin to watching a river flow or clouds drift through the sky: meditative, calming and peaceful.
Monde UFO – Vandalized Statue To Be Replaced With Shrine
What first drew me to Monde UFO’s hallucinogenic pop vignettes was the seemingly disparate set of influences cited in their press release: exotica, bossa nova, free jazz, drone, and indie rock. Once I actually listened, what kept my attention was the peculiar gravitational pull of their music. A typical Monde UFO song is equal parts fever dream and cryptic alien dispatch, the fantastical blurring into the mundane; angels and devils consort and prophesies unfold against a backdrop of trash filled forests and vandalized churches. These stories play out against an equally fluid musical backdrop, one that can sound like Stereolab one second and Gilberto Gil the next. Untangling all these references is only half the fun; it’s music that stands easily on its own merits, pulling you into its orbit and refusing to let go until its final notes ring out.