A Great Big Pile of Leaves - Pono - CASSETTES

Emerald Sea, the third album from New York-based audiovisual project Sound of Ceres, tells the story of how the universe comes to know itself. Rendered in dynamic, ambitious orchestral passages, it forms the basis of future stage performances intended to draw it's half-submerged narrative into the visual sphere. In it's dreamlike impressions, it could also be the soundtrack to a long-forgotten early musical film - an experience that delighted and transported audiences and then vanished from record, surviving only in the imprint of memory. Written in three acts, Emerald Sea follows two deities who trail each other through the furthest reaches of experience. There is the Universe, all that exists, voiced by performance artist Marina Abramovic. And there is Venus, transformer of matter and avatar of love, sung by the group's lead vocalist Karen Hover (who goes by k). Through a dazzling suite of songs inspired by Les Baxter's midcentury exotica, Maurice Ravel's ballet Daphnis et Chloé, and Gustav Holst's The Planets, Emerald Sea studies intimacy on both an interpersonal scale and a cosmological one. Connection and severance, joy and grief, wonder and bewilderment all tumble through it's scope. In the widest frame, the universe begins, meets itself, and ends. In the closest frame, two people encounter each other, grow close, and then separate. These stories are two views of the same fractal. In every intimacy human beings cultivate, every rush of connection, no matter how fleeting, we reenact the universe for ourselves. InchI envisioned myself journeying through these different realms - space, the land, the sea, the heavens - and following Marina's character,Inch says k. InchI always saw her as a shadow figure that I couldn't quite figure out.Inch Ryan says, InchThe album's story is an allegory for the emergence of mind and meaning from the matter of the universe, and it's

Spiral Groove delivers us singer-songwriter Stewart Bronaugh at the height of his artistic powers both visually and sonically. This album is studded with stories of mortality, the challenges of addiction and sobriety, and the romance of a lifetime. Recovering from a seizure, Bronaugh's sudden awareness of the limits of his own body was a Inchpsychedelic experienceInch that shifted his perspective wildly. No longer Inchbulletproof,Inch Bronaugh splits himself wide open on Spiral Groove, encapsulating all of our existential questions into tidy love songs. You'll find pianos, string quartets, slide guitar, buzzing synth lines, and plenty of room to breathe. Each song is like a painting you can disappear into, a somber and hopeful spell for life after the end of the world. Details 1. Electric 2. Everyday 3. Gone 4. Here 5. Lifespan 6. Loveland Pass 7. Nothing 8. Real Life 9. Temporary 10. Ultraviolet

A million sweaty punks can't be wrong SPIN MAGAZINE Inchthey've spent the past 16 years refining what a modern-day rock band could be... a surprisingly detailed and evocative world, just beyond the limits of rockInch PITCHFORK InchPile is one of the strangest bands in rock music, and one of the bestInch AV CLUB InchApocalypse-core stunnersInch BOSTON GLOBE Sunshine and Balance Beams, Pile's ninth album, is a Sisyphean parable concerned with labor and living. To write it, singer Rick Maguire inhabited Incha dark place,Inch wrestling with the concept that there is no enlightenment, no end to suffering. Maguire explores workaholism, the myth of meritocracy, and acceptance of mortality-all through a devilish allegory of trudging through a shadowy forest towards the uncertain dream of a bright clearing. Pile wrestles with existential and social contradictions by evoking sonic in-betweens. The music exists somewhere in the temporary equilibrium of light and shadow, chaos and order. Heated rain-like guitars, shifting drums that pave sinuous roads in sound and pace, eerie synths, and aqueous strings add to a panoramic production of loud-quiet dynamism matching the emotionality of the band's thunderous performances. The group also favored freewheeling performances that would animate the storytelling, while enlisting a string section (violins, viola, cello) to perform incandescent, through-composed arrangements co-written by cellist Eden Rayz and Pile. They drew inspiration from cinema and opera scores by Chopin, Bernard Herrmann, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, lending Sunshine a larger-than-life sound that intensifies Pile's blistering realizations of some of their most accessible songwriting to date. The recording is a noticeable leap in production value, and centers Maguire's vocals in new and exciting ways. Pile traveled to Pawtucket, RI for two weeks of tracking at Machines w