Happy New Year!  We’ve finally finished our year-end lists, reflections, and vacations, and are about to turn our ears to the new.  With nearly 75 new releases on the horizon for January and February alone, 2015 is already shaping up to be a winner.  We’ve had the privilege of hearing many of these albums in full, and samples of many more.  If you just want to hear the sounds, head over to our News page, which is a constantly updated scroll of upcoming music.  But for initial observations and picks, stay right here!

A huge congratulations to all those artists and labels who sent their press releases out early.  Advance notice is definitely the way to go.  A happy and healthy new year to all!

Our gorgeous cover image comes from journalist, photographer and educator Tara Haelle at Tara Incognita.  Tara writes about family, art, and social and health…

As has become my habit, I’m sitting down to reflect on the last year on New Years Day. I can’t reflect properly on the year until its actually over, and so I resist writing my End of Year list until then. (And didn’t Black Messiah prove that!?)  It was a big year in a lot of ways, not least in the music world.  I listen to a lot of new music since I’m always reviewing music, but as usual I tend to dig old records and revisiting old favorites, this year especially early Industrial/Noise music, musique conrete and hip hop.  Many of my favorite releases of this year, including records by Kate Carr, Kyle Bobby Dunn, and Valerio Tricoli, have already been featured on our end of the year list so below I’m just going to spotlight some of my favorite records that we haven’t covered. I did a lot…

The 13-track release features unreleased music from Ghostly artists Shigeto, Heathered Pearls, Lord RAJA, Dauwd, and Patricia among other artists. From the description “Ghostly Swim 2 combines zonked ambient textures with punch-drunk house and techno” . This is the second Ghostly Records/ Adult Swim album released. Click on album above to download.