March 18th

7:02AM // Bill Frisell: Enigmatic, Unshakable

(via Jimmy Katz)


This contribution from Will Roane marks Tracknife’s first venture outside the realm of reviews. We hope you enjoy it, in light of Mr. Frisell’s 60th birthday.


Bill Frisell is an enigma. A guitarist by trade, Stereophile has called him “the most unique voice to come along in jazz guitar since Wes Montgomery.” And sure, he plays the guitar. But he plays it like a paradox. In his hands, the trappings and limitations of the instrument seem to cease to exist. His use of a wide range of pedals — distortion, octave shifters, and delay, to name just a few — somehow transform his tone into something alive and organic far beyond what one might expect from an electric instrument.

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March 8th

3:22PM // Radiohead - The King of Limbs

(via Essentially Eclectic)


Special contribution from Eli Goshorn


In the year AD 2026, humanity achieved the singularity. The consciousness of a person was successfully transferred into a machine. In the following decades, leading video game designers crafted sublime worlds for these for this posthuman consciousnesses to colonize. It is in these virtual worlds that we find Radiohead in the band’s 2011 LP, The King of Limbs.

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3:21PM // Iron & Wine - Kiss Each Other Clean

(via Stereophile)


Special contribution from Will Roane


No Iron & Wine LP has ever sounded like its predecessor. In 2004, Our Endless Numbered Days distinguished itself from lo-fi The Creek Drank the Cradle (2002) by utilizing a studio, and adding instrumentation besides Sam Beam’s distinctive whispered vocals and acoustic guitar — even if it was mostly just some mandolin and banjo. Then, 2007’s The Shepherd’s Dog introduced all manner of sound and quiet, experimental fury into Iron & Wine’s repertoire, establishing that the Florida native (and onetime film professor) remained staunchly unclassifiable.

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February 21st

7:35PM // 2 notes // James Blake - James Blake

(via Clash Music)


Special contribution from Sam Phillips


I don’t listen to dub-step, but if James Blake’s eponymous debut is any indication, I should. Over the last year, James Blake has gained a lot of high-profile exposure from the BBC Sound of 2011 poll and countless other members of the blogosphere. At the beginning of 2010, he released a series of impressive tracks under the alias Harmonimix. My favorite, a reconfiguration of Lil Wayne’s “A Milli,” demonstrated Blake’s uncanny ability to use Auto-Tune and vocal distortion in inventive, new ways. In a dazzling sequence halfway through the track, Lil Wayne’s voice seems to melt into a chorus of modulated tones, turning Weezy’s trademark flow into something even more ghoulish and strange.

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February 14th

6:52PM // 2 notes // Bright Eyes - The People’s Key

(via Some Kind of Awesome!)


Special contribution from Eli Goshorn


Like a few of their past albums, Bright Eyes’ The People’s Key spends its first few minutes trying to dissuade you from listening. Vaguely Rastafarian psychobabble is the order of the day here, and at once it manages to be both pretentious and obnoxious. Like a snarky slogan-emblazoned t-shirt, openers like these will impress once in the very best scenario before they become insufferably stale. Frustratingly, it seems lead Bright Eye Conor Oberst still hasn’t figured this out.

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December 13th

1:31AM // 3 notes // Mariah Carey - Merry Christmas II You

(via Bring Da Beat Back)

Releasing a Christmas album is a fundamentally bizarre activity. Each holiday season, many artists release albums mixing new versions of Christmas classics with newly penned Christmas songs. Year after year, these albums are largely ignored, as families choose to soundtrack their hall-decking and tree-trimming with Perry Como and Dean Martin, rather than Train, Jessica Simpson, or the cast of Glee (to name a few of this year’s releases). When artists choose to write new Christmas songs, they are very rarely added to the grocery store canon — if they are heard at all. Mariah Carey is one of the very few exceptions to this trend. In 1994, Carey released “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” which quickly became a modern holiday classic. Now, she has returned to the Christmas season with a new album of Christmas standards and originals entitled Merry Christmas II You.

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1:31AM // 1 note // Jessica Simpson - Happy Christmas

(via ConrongCodon)


Special contribution from Will Roane


If the holiday season is a time for checking things off of your list — presents to give, presents to receive, papers to write — Jessica Simpson has checked five or six genres off her “To Sing” list with Happy Christmas, her second Christmas album.

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December 10th

12:44PM // 1 note // Brian Eno - Small Craft on a Milk Sea

(via Very Telling)


Special contribution from Eli Goshorn


Small Craft on a Milk Sea is not a revelation. This may seem like an unfair expectation for anything but the most highly hyped album, but this is Brian Eno we’re talking about – father of ambient music, acclaimed producer, and composer of the Windows 95 startup jingle. Resumés don’t get much more impressive in the music business.

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November 29th

3:16PM // 2 notes // Girl Talk - All Day

(Courtesy of Illegal Art)

Girl Talk didn’t create the mash-up, but without his influence on the genre, there is a pretty good chance we would have never heard gems like this. He brought the mash-up to party playlists across the nation. After tearing down the house with Night Ripper in 2006, then rebuilding the house and tearing it down twice as fast with Feed the Animals in 2008, Girl Talk is back for another round with All Day.

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November 12th

11:52AM // Matt & Kim - Sidewalks

(via Daydream Station)


Special contribution from Eli Goshorn


Since 2004, Matt & Kim have been putting out cute electronic pop for sunny day listening. Their third LP, Sidewalks, finds the Brooklyn duo experimenting with a fuller version of their signature light ’n blippy sound. Trumpets, flutes, and sleigh bells all make appearances in this considerably more produced album.

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