These guitars enable that coveted soaring feeling, with warm chords and frantic, noisy delivery that flesh out the sound into something majestic, even otherworldly.

On All That Fall by Dick Texas on the other hand, grief manifests as a stagnant, arid August heat wave, gradually dialing up our discomfort without releasing all its energy in one cathartic blast.

Musical influences from post rock and skramz pull the record further into the darkness, with a highly percussive sound whose sparse and unconventional use of melody only intensifies the suffocating atmosphere of stagnant dread.

Chugging acoustic guitar and mumbling vocals get dipped (and sometimes soaked) in reverb to create the dusky, foggy atmosphere, a gothic tone which amplifies the record’s macabre lyrical storytelling.

These motifs, simple melodic lullabies played on pianos or other minimal synths, appear on each track, planting the seed of a mesmerizing memory.

Aesthetically, this record juggles an extreme diversity of styles, smoothing over its angular math rock riffs with traditional folk fiddle, then breaking into staccato post punk segments that devolve into aggressive, difficult post rock anti-harmonies.

We may see the body as existing entirely outside, or potentially in opposition to, spirituality, but for Maud the Moth on The Distaff, the body serves as the source, purpose, and pilot of spirituality.

Highlighting the queer struggle and those who paved the way for future liberation, the record honors these figures without sanitizing them, giving them a full-color afterlife to mirror their time on earth.

Assembling a historical narrative with modern sounds to address these emerging experiences, Welsh noise rock band This Is Wreckage presents Transaction/Service, a blisteringly heavy, cavernously dark musical experience.

Taking inspiration from skramz, math rock, and old-school hardcore, Foxglove rockets from end of end of the dynamic spectrum, with jazzy, twinkly, progressive guitar leads giving way to colossal waves of distorted chugging.

 Swelle’s folk rock sound on Gift Horse takes heavy inspiration from the noisier elements of shoegaze, utilizing a grungy songwriting style with choruses that soar on the wings of noisy guitars and melodic basslines.

Combining the filthiest possible tones with the tightest imaginable arrangements, Thoughteater by Delirant is masterfully orchestrated chaos that expands to fill every corner of our consciousness, sending our entire being down the funnel of its intensity.

Shemp Tropical by The Fred Karger Memorial Lump Band uses a highly novel, progressive, challenging sound to create a future current events podcast that realizes the worst of today’s psychedelic nightmares

In some ways, Songs for Lost Travellers by Confucius MC and Bastien Keb fulfills our core expectations for an introspective experimental rap album, but at every turn this record offers us something unexpected to hoist itself to true left-field greatness.

A suspicious, pessimistic misanthropic worldview animates Wish Defense by FACS, a grimy, industrial post punk record whose massive rhythm section and eerie guitars personify an inner demon.

Animal Collective member Geologist and longtime collaborator D.S. take this concept to experimental depths on A Shaw Deal, a record whose sparse yet impactful sonic source material embarks on an undead cyclical march into unexpected emotional territory.

Traditional religious instrumentation like organs, pianos, and choir immediately sound antiquated, but these ancient tools holds within them the keys to expansive, inventive modern compositions. Honey for the Ants by Wojciech Rusin chops, layers, and sequences these components into boldly contemporary, warmly optimistic landscapes.

Modernism promised emancipation through all its products, from factories that provided financial security to architecture that emphasized workers’ wellbeing to art that glorified the future. We now live in that future, and the scattered remains of this ill-fated optimistic fever inspire the sonic landscape of What Is Success by Open Head.

Spontaneous Human Combustion by Hot Organs takes a magnifying glass to this surreal horror, approaching gothic proto punk with lo-fi production and half-spoken vocals to deliver biting social critiques.

Spontaneous Human Combustion by Hot Organs takes a magnifying glass to this surreal horror, approaching gothic proto punk with lo-fi production and half-spoken vocals to deliver biting social critiques.