★Mexican Summer
Tracing Back the Radiance
Some records aren’t as simple as they seem. Most are capsules of beauty and creative vision, or sublime objects of expression which occupy the abstract realms. But the rare few are also discrete philosophies, realized in sound - a truth brought to the forefront by Mexican Summer veteran, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma’s, latest venture, Tracing Back the Radiance. A radical departure from pop drenched melodies which have defined his recent efforts, its experimental forms offer a dynamic rethinking of the t…
A Year With 13 Moons
A master of romantic abstraction, Jefre Cantu–Ledesma is not new to the scene. In fact, he’s been releasing a steady stream of music for nearly twenty years. With the brilliant album A Year With 13 Moons, however, the ever–prolific Ledesma appears to be hitting a new high. Or low, depending on how you like to see things. More on that later. First, some background. Born & raised in Texas, Ledesma’s formative artistic years were spent studying painting & sculpture in San Francisco. He bega…
Wake Up Awesome
The second chapter of SStudios (Software Studio Series). SStudios is a new venture in the Software Recording Co.'s expanding catalog that invites artists in the field of electronic music to create collaborative works of quality and vision. Inspired by the historical intersections of live performance and studio post-production, Wake Up Awesome is a modern kind of fusion in technique as well as genre. At its core are three artists highly experienced with both instant and labored composition.…
Dispossession
Dispossession is the second full length from Brooklyn’s Mike Wexler, and his debut for Mexican Summer. An artist who defies easy categorization—a songwriter/guitarist without a traditionalist bone in his body, with an ear for far flung sound-worlds and sonic atmospheres both high & low, Wexler brings all of his manifold interests to bear in carving out a space for a singular vision uniquely attuned to the present moment. Dispossession is the product of over two years of intermittent recor…
Lucifer
Textural and whimsical, Lucifer is the latest effort by Peaking Lights couple in love, Indra Dunis and Aaron Coyes. Dunis enjoyed earlier success as a vocalist for Numbers, while wild child Coyes bounced between bands throughout the ’90s and early 2000s, always infusing his musical creations with spontaneity and psychedelia to spare. As he states in a piece for Domino Records: “I…went on a massive stone haze mushroom-induced tour-of-the-mind journey. I think the operative word is haze.”
Aft…
Replica
Copies from copies of copies upon copies to copies through copies on copies of more copies. Daniel Lopatin was but a babe in the early '80s - the global time frame which stands central to his Oneohtrix Point Never project, where Russian TV advertisements, faded slow-jam hits, and forgotten futures all get misinterpreted, rewired, and misremembered through an android dream. Much of his past work revolved around the step sequencing and ambient swoosh that filtered through the kosmische aes…
Honey Devash
Based in Oakland, California, Gregg Kowalsky and Marielle Jakobsons share internationally spanning solo careers as creative practitioners with a solid foundation in drone music composition and performance. However, it is a mutual love for analogue electric sound sources and tape multitracking that has resulted in their psychedelic, trance-inducing collaboration as Date Palms. Honey Devash, Date Palms' first release on Mexican Summer, is testament to their captivating skill for layering a…
God Is Saying This To You...
More than a mere odds-n-ends collection, Kurt Vile’s latest LP is a compilation of tracks from Overnite KV, a tour-only CDR, along with a handful of extra tracks recorded specifically for this release. Here we find Kurt solo, four-trackin’ as usual, and blowing minds with his mix of bluegrass guitar, blazed singer-songwriterisms, and the knowledge of how to balance these contexts out with laidback precision. Psychedelic to its core, these twelve tracks speak to the will of the casual perf…
Adventures In Experimental Electric Orchestra From The San Franc
Ground breaking reissue: numbered and limited lavishly packaged 2 X LP + 18 Page Booklet + Hand Written Liner Notes from Bobby Beausoleil + Unreleased Material. "The tales of Charles Manson and his family have been recounted from those who lived it, those who witnessed it, and those who were victimized by it. Deep within the sociopathic tendencies of a man who was abandoned by his blood family and left to rot on the streets and within the U.S. prison system during his youth, there laid a child f…