If any of the above points make you feel a little down, here’s a playlist of every band we featured during September to cheer you up. As always, click the artist name in the tracklisting to be whisked away to the specific post.

Tracklisting:

1. Hidden Driver – LVL UP
2. Death – CHUCK
3. Seskinore – Hiva Oa
4. Shut Out the Light – Tiny Dinosaurs
5. Foothills – Simon Balto
6. Lie 2 Me – Shana Falana
7. annie – moving in
8. A Lonely Road – Jordan O’Jordan
9. Augustine – The Chairman Dances
10. Golden – Mt. Wolf (feat. St. South)
11. I – Slenko & McKeys
12. zszs – rgz
13. Meditations – Tall Ships
14. Tossing & Turning – Saint Clementine
15. Century Woods – Lisa/Liza
16. Clear Section – Spartan Jet-Plex
17. Trancendless Summer – Peter Silberman
18. Where We Began – Tilman Robinson
19. will you?/you will – Fossil Jane
20. Ya w/Me? – Lomelda (from Swell Tone’s Summer of Sad)
21. Soon Soon – Praything
22. Drive – Mere Women
23. See Through – Suzy Callahan
24. Untitled (Slow) – Jana Irmert
25. Beyond the Stars – The Edge Of The Light
26. Northern Arm – Evening Hymns
27. It’s Not Real – Hazel English

You can check out the previous monthly roundups here, and our various other playlists and mixtapes here.

The post September 2016 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Two Channels and a Choir of Angels is one of two lost albums that were released by Sioux Trails Records for Net Label Day, and finds the pair making music that is noisy and lo-fi and wonderfully their own. Opener ‘I’ is a blown-out speaker jam, buried at the bottom of a murky barrel of lo-fi distortion. The track breaks the eight minute barrier, eventually gathering into a rollicking rock & roll song, smudged beyond recognition.

Five seconds into ‘II’ it becomes apparent that the whole album is going to follow a similar pattern, music intended to destroy your eardrums or your neighbours’ mental health. Fittingly, the Sioux Trails Records Bandcamp page recommends you “listen loud for best results”, and it’s clear that the sheer physical nature of its vibrations is almost as important as how your brain makes sense of them as sound.

And there really is no let-up. The album rumbles and clatters, occasionally ripping with these big bluesy guitar licks. The discordant squall of ‘IV’ coughs and splutters and rattles across its six minute run-time, before the fifth and final track (which is actually the most reserved cut on the album) brings ramshackle percussion and reverberating guitar. The final 15 seconds lurch in a completely different direction, a choir of perhaps-heavenly voices, but after the bruising that you ears have been through, and with the creepy sepia-tinged gazes on the album art, it sounds as ominous as a 3am phonecall.

You can get Two Channels and a Choir of Angels on a name-your-price from the Sioux Trails Records Bandcamp page. Be sure to check out the other Slenko & McKeys album, the perfectly titled Apparitions (Louder Than Whatever Shit You Listen To) on Bandcamp too!

The post Slenko & McKeys – Two Channels and a Choir of Angels appeared first on Various Small Flames.