A synthy trio that formed this year and which describes itself as "the Paul Pfeiffer of bands," Lean Hounds are a welcome addition to the electronica contingency of Austin's musical landscape. In the last couple of years we've witnessed breakout projects like Fillenium Malcon and Human Milk hit stages and release albums, to say nothing of Survive from Light Lodge records, Silent Diane and more...it's an exciting time to be tired of guitars and live drums. more ›

How did Silver Apples become one of the most influential bands of the late 1960s? Why, a guy in the East Village named Simeon Coxe III began to sing weird modal tone poems over a vintage 1940s audio oscillator, which eventually grew into a homemade synthesizer monstrosity of 12 oscillators stacked on top of one another and manipulated through a total of 86 manual controls, which he dubbed ‘The Simeon,’ of course. (As you can see from the picture, The Simeon appears to be a nightmarish, postwar German version of something The Octopus Project might play, something that’s probably worth the price of admission even disregarding its stellar musical progeny.) more ›

Oscillating joyfully between the skeletal and meaty in the vein of Blonde Redhead, Golden Beds is a charming setpiece from a band who continually delights with their mastery of musical mis-en-scene. It’s fantastical but also familiar, as if they were climbing into your head and nonchalantly performing feng-shui on your ears. more ›

Knob-twiddling German indie rockers The Notwist have come a long way since their eponymous punk-rock-metalhead debut. A looooong way. Unless you have a copy of their first LP, it's hard to imagine singer/guitarist Markus Acher's gentle vocals and plaintive lyrics - almost naive in their simple English - being hassled by shred. more ›

Whether it's love, death, or racing down the night highway in a blind panic, no musician can pull off the electro-melodrama like Anthony Gonzales, otherwise known as M83, the undisputed king of sensational, overwrought shoegaze. With 2005's Before the Dawn Heals Us, M83 veered a wild right away from its beginnings in otherwise humble ambience and synth-heavy noodling, catapulting over a dead-man's curve and emerging from the wreckage rejuvenated. From curb to coma, BTDHS was a thrilling experience. Unabashedly incorporating dramatic vocal samples and recursive opacity a la David Lynch's Mulholland Drive by way of the hard obsidian aesthetic of DePalma's Heat, the album went for broke on every track. It wasn't surprising to find one's self panting heavily after a listen-through. more ›

The here-and-there national media coverage that Wait Til the Ice Melts, an electronic music compilation, has received seems to suggest, not without a hint of mockery, that it's somehow a shock that the massive state of Texas can come up with anything beyond yokel-driven acoustic guitar and other brands of slack-jawed musical idiocy. Maybe it's the subtitle of the compilation which is causing the problem, as "New Music" doesn't necessarily imply electronic music, or wordlessness in any way; or maybe, conversely, it's the presence of the word "Texas" which is causing the problem, as that five-letter word seems to evoke in non-residents a sense of simplemindedness, Bushism, pickup trucks, cowboy boots, and hootenanny tomfoolery. But to get past these preconceived notions is to dig into Wait Til the Ice Melts, Exponential Records' way of doing us all a favor by culling from hundreds of possibilities a quick and satisfying mix of electronica from contiguous America's largest state. more ›