Morgan Delt-Sad Sad Trip

While bands like Tame Impala and Ducktails are steadily keeping psychedelic music alive and well with their latest releases, LA’s Morgan Delt is driving the hazy, reverb filled sounds of the genre to the brink of hallucination. On his debut album, Psychic Death Hole, Delt slowly strips listeners of their sanity and then casts them into a vast, blistering desert and though the release easily sounds like a drug induced nightmare, it’s tenebrousity is perfectly balanced  with layers of underlying  vibrancy. You can pick up the album now by heading over to bandcamp and paying $4 for a digital copy or $4.50 for a cassette copy. 

Au.Ra-Sun

Now that the semester is done I can finally get back to doing one of the things that I love, which is posting great tunes for all of you. After going through my submissions I came across the tranquil, psychedelic sounds of a duo hailing from Sydney by the name of Au.Ra andtheir track “Sun” turned out to be exactly what I needed to kick off a few weeks of pure fun and relaxation. The track is surrounded by a mesmerizing ambiance that’s carried along by lush sounding guitars, hypnotic vocals, and a warm, reverb induced haze that’s easily reminiscent of something from Tame Impala’s Lonerism. I’ll be keeping my ear to these guys and you can too by following them on soundcloud. 

Ducktails-The Flower Lane

Lately it seems like a lot of projects that began as mainly solo efforts are starting to flourish and become more expansive. I’ve got no problem with that at all because it usually produces good results and when it comes to Matt Mondanile and Ducktails, that’s exactly the direction that things are taking for the follow up album to last year’s Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics which will be titled The Flower Lane. The upcoming LP isn’t due out until January 29th but yesterday the band gave us a taste of what’s to come with the album’s jangly psychedelic title track. Ducktails has always known how to crank up the chill factor to maximum output and on “The Flower Lane” things are no different in that aspect, but it’s clear from the first few moments of the track that things are larger and more polished and that probably has something to do with Mondanile deciding to make the project more of a band and less of a one man thing. It certainly works for Ducktails and now, more than ever, listeners may have that feeling of pure (maybe drug induced) bliss while walking through a forest or being really high sitting on your couch or even imagining that they can soar through the sky on a cloud. Regardless, “The Flower Lane” is brimming with good vibes and that’s something that we can always count on Ducktails to deliver. With this and Toro y Moi’s new album Anything In Return both dropping in January, 2013 is already shaping up to be off to a great start. Recommended for fans of Weird Dreams, Real Estate, and Tame Impala.

Tame Impala-Apocalypse Dreams

Kevin Parker has been a busy man lately. He’s been in the studio mixing and recording with Melody Prochet of Melody’s Echo Chamber (check out “Crystallized”) and also working on new material with his psych rock outfit Tame Impala. Earlier this week the band dropped news of a sophomore record titled Lonerism and with that came a new track from the LP titled “Apocalypse Dreams”. Of course when I found out about this I had to visit Pitchfork to hear the single for myself and needless to say, I was thoroughly impressed. If you thought that 2010’s Innerspeaker was as good as it gets then you’re certainly mistaken because Tame Impala has only improved on their blissful style of psychedelia pop since then. I promise that I’m completely sober at the moment but when I put on “Apocalypse Dreams” it’s like I’m in a completely different state of mind. If you think I’m just over exaggerating then listen to the track for yourself and I’m sure that you’ll catch my drift. You can grab the song for free via Pitchfork and expect the group to drop the next single “Elephant” later this month. Lonerism is scheduled for an October release through Modular People.