Kranky
Kranky is a highly regarded home for artists who combine experimental and electronic influences with conventional rock and pop song structures. The label was founded in 1993 by Joel Leoschke and Bruce Adams, both music industry veterans from Cargo and Touch and Go, respectively. The pair have released records by more than two dozen artists, including Low, Bowery Electric, and Pan-American.
Aix Em Klemm
A collaborative venture featuring Bobby Donne of Labradford and Adam Wiltzie of Stars of the Lid, Aix Em Klemm deals in glimmering washes of ambient sound made with a guitar, bass, keyboard, and a ton of effects. The music feels a bit like the aural equivalent of the ocean beneath late afternoon sun.
Aix Em Klemm
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2000
Jessica Bailiff
Seeming to emerging from the depths of a blurry dream, Jessica Bailiff's ambient lullabies slip through the ether and entice you to dream along with her.
Jessica Bailiff
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2002
Fontanelle
Borrowing elements from improvised jazz, this Portland foursome uses two guitars, keyboards, and drums to shape gentle, elegant sound compositions full of hypnotic rhythms and playful melodies that soar and dip like a bird aloft on trade winds.
Fontanelle
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2000
F
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2001
Style Drift
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2002
Godspeed You Black Emperor!
Canada's most famous nonet builds majestic, hypnotic, sublimely odd orchestral rock compositions that swell and soar and dip, pieces that can be rich and lush, but which tend towards the stark, the melancholy, the desolate, and the borderline apocalyptic. Their music makes the familiar so very strange that it often feels like a document of another civilization, field recordings from another planet.
Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven!
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2000
Labradford
Virginia trio Labradford creates ethereal drift music which incorporates ambient noise, Spaghetti Western soundtrack sounds, chamber pop, and avant-experimental tendencies, arriving at a dreamy, intensely meditative sound which feels like the soundtrack to a period of suspended animation.
Fixed::Content
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2001
Loscil
Loscil is the pseudonym of Vancouver-based recording artist Scott Morgan, who uses synths, samplers, and computer programming to create hypnotically pulsing ambient minimalism.
Triple Point
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2001
Submers
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2002
Low
You can call them what you like -- "slowcore," "sadcore," or what have you -- but you can't argue with the fact that this Minnesota trio makes exquisitely, overwhelmingly powerful music. With minimal arrangements never consisting of more than a guitar, bass, keyboard, delicate strings, a hint of percussion, and sublime vocal harmonies, Low has the impact of a full symphony orchestra.
In The Fishtank
Things We Lost in the Fire
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2001
Pan-American
Pan-American's sound is menacing, sinuous, and darkly beautiful, as slow-moving and graceful as a panther in the underbrush, patiently stalking its prey. With a minimum of dub, techno, and bossa nova-inflected instrumentation, Pan-American creates a maximum of atmosphere, mood, and emotional effect.
360 Business/360 Bypass
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2000
The River Made No Sound
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2002
Stars of the Lid
Austin ambient rock duo Stars of the Lid have made a career out of elevating the consciousness through the medium of the shimmering, strange, effects-heavy instrumental drone. Their nocturnal sound is next to impossible to describe, but something near heaven to experience.
The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid
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2001
Avec Laudenum
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2002
Keith Fullerton Whitman
There are some who believe that spacetime is made up of strings of
probability. If they are right, experimental guitarist Keith Fullerton
Whitman will be there to play the cosmos.
Playthroughs
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2002
Windy & Carl
With their coolly hypnotic adventures in texture and drone, the Michigan duo of Windy and Carl takes you way far out, past simple rhythm and melody, past the rigid lines of waking consciousness, out into the star-flecked deep space beyond the Milky Way.
Consciousness
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2001
