Mamiffer – The Brilliant Tabernacle (Sige)

The collaboration of ambient artist Faith Coloccia and post-metal guitarist Aaron Turner under the moniker Mamiffer was a recipe for success. The band joins together ambient music, folk, and post-rock into a delicate interwoven fabric, simply beautiful to behold. The Brilliant Tabernacle is one of those albums that are evocative and cathartic through their calmness and candour. It’s a marvellous record!

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Liturgy – HAQQ

Who can really claim to know what Liturgy is about? Mastermind Hunter Hunt-Hendrix seems to have borrowed the art style of his own side-project Kel Valhaal for the newest release of his main band. Whatever it is, it seems to be a glimpse at a vast interconnected network of theosophical concepts brought together into HHH’s own vision of philosophy and spirituality. If that’s not your thing, perhaps the music alone will be. As per usual for Liturgy, we’re presented with what’s best called “experimental black metal”, but for a more precise stylistic description, please do yourself a favour: listen to it and come up with your own descriptors.

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Chelsea McBride’s Socialist Night School – Aftermath

Toronto-based woodwinds player and composer Chelsea McBride just released Aftermath, the latest full-length from her project Socialist Night School. At close to eighty minutes long, this is one big chunk of modern big band jazz fusion sure to make you 1: think, 2: move, 3: dream, and 4: sit back and enjoy. With front-and-centre socially progressive themes, a thorough layered orchestration, interesting song structures and compositional tricks, and a suave singer on top of it all, it’s sure to be one of the hallmarks of the year in terms of jazz! Go listen to it!

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Rorcal – Muladona (Hummus)

A new Rorcal release is always cause for celebration. Muladona is its name. This time, the music is based off of the harrowing book of the same name by Eric Stener Carlson, in which the Muladona—”a doomed soul transformed into the Devil’s mule”—visits a fevered boy left to himself during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 each night to tell him horrific tales. Instead of the average fourteen-minute track of Κρέων (Créon), we here have no track over eight minutes. This shorter format does not by any means translate to weaker compositions. In true Rorcal fashion, the songs presented here are well thought-out, profoundly subversive, and intense from start to finish. It’s a truly awe-striking album.

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Nüshu – Sexe étranger

Montréal mathy noise rock band Nüshu has quickly become one of the most interesting acts going around in the genre. With their new full-length, they definitely solidified this assertion. Sexe étranger is overflowing with incredible multi-layered polyrhythmic riffs giving the whole an odd feeling of groove and funk that is only more alienated by the various effects on nearly all instruments and the stellar playing of both guitars that shroud any certainty under a veil of dissonant chords. You’re going to love it!

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Golden Hymns Sing ‘Hurrah’ – What Am I Afraid Of

Long Island post-rock is perhaps the vaguest description one could make, but it’s true to Golden Hymns Sing ‘Hurrah’: simple, grounded, and humble. However, the New York one-man band is rather ambitious, and this is reiterated once again on What Am I Afraid Of, stated as the project’s ultimate release. Lush, heavily layered, and exquisitely written; those are only some things I can say about Golden Hymns. If you like your post-rock slow, twisted, and semi-orchestral, this is right for you.