Person L : “Good Days” from ‘The Positives’ (use secret code 11172009)

Kreg & Dez : “Stupid Fruity Hookah”

Tom Shaw : “Stop in the Valley” from ‘Blind Lemons Buddy’

Phosphorescent : “Mermaid Parade” from ‘Here’s To Taking It Easy’s’ (out May 11th)

The Black Swans : “Rooster” from ‘Words Are Stupid’ (available now)

Airship : “Kids” from ‘Algebra EP’ (out May 11th)

Dead Country : “Euro Thrash” from ‘Dead Country’

The New Pornographers : “Crash Years” from ‘Together’ (out May 4th)

From the introspective debut ‘We Don’t Need to Whisper’ to the exploratory ‘I, Empire’, Angels & Airwaves are one of the few big stadium rock bands left whose album releases add a little delight to everyday happenings.

The third full-length named ‘Love’ was released a while back and on the first few weeks hit an astonishing amount of downloads – over 500 000. The record marks a new approach by band to consumer and fan. Free of all charge, you can get on the action of ‘Love’ on angels-and-airwaves.com.

The 11-song epos, soon coming to a theater near you, entrusts on DeLonge’s songwriting talents to grasp the fan-approved sound of previous records and bundle them into an esoteric explanation of human relationships and the mystery of love. While being offered free-of-charge the record has a twisted familiarity to it – the ease of access to ‘Love’ can play against it but with a nicely arranged introduction piece and the more memorable songs put at the start, the record can only gain followers.

Smart business people as AVA are, they’ve easily combined their authentic, larger-than-life sound and pop qualities with the most popular subject of music since the beginning of time. All the way ‘Love’ feels solid, accomplished and wired exactly to tackle your emotions with the familiar background acoustics, occasional anthemism, melancholic melodies, spacious echos, attractive guitar riffs and, as always, brilliantly sounding drums. The main difference sonically between the previous records are the amassed spheric and electronica volumes that evoke the intro’s and outro’s and paint a familiar picture in sophisticated and eclectic colors.

If you like or hate DeLonge or Blink, give ‘Love’ a spin, because Angels & Airwaves are still one of the most distinctly sounding big rock bands from the US with an excitement and hope to their songs that can make you run marathons.

Seems that a white guy with guitar still has a place in music.

Kate Miller-Heidke : “Are you F*#king Kidding Me?” (The Facebook Song)

The Dig : “You’re Already Gone” from ‘Electric Toys’ (Out June 8th)

Lovedrug : ‘+/-’ Sampler

The Butchers : “You a Liah”

Skeat : “Dumelang” from ‘Basimanyana Mamela Meropa’

The Burning Hotels : “To Whom It May Concern” from ‘Novels’ (Out Today!) – Review here

Sabrina Siegel : ‘A Silent Forest’

Collage Ensemble : “Petis Peiu” from ‘Forty Seven Minutes Four Seconds’

Stigma : “The Undertaker” from ‘Concerto for the Undead’ (Out April 30th!)

The Styrenes : “Drano in your Vains”

Mona De Bo are an experimental rock duo from Riga, Latvia. Their second full-length release is a dark and noisy journey named ‘Nekavējies, Šīs ir Spēles ar Tevi’ and paints a doomed picture of battles settled long-before war. The duo is joined by various artists on this record and have produced an emotionally demanding drone-doom record.

From the start, with the romantically named ‘Viņi Aiziet Saulē’, the listener is immediately dragged into the world of Mona De Bo. The soulful guitar spiritual with a spacey keyboard flight gradually progresses into a skillful fuzz & drum mass. The seemingly lighthearted start is accompanied by french-horns that vividly paint the bright tones into dark chroma. Like a march of titans, a pre-war anthem if you will, all angst, rage and determination of the unfolding world is captured into a sheer perfect album opener.

Hauntingly lingering guitar riffs anxiously present the last evening before battle on “Priekšpēdējais”. The noise levels rise and the sound drones jump from assurance to fear, to reflection, but the subconscious is never lacking the feeling of damnation.

“Spēles ar Tevi” starts slowly but by minute six we are engaged in glorious soundscapes that are as epic as gladiator battles in ancient Rome, by far the most uplifting track on the record. Continuing to “Dejosim!”, whose title is excellently misnamed, is by far the heaviest load of absolution and frailty on the record, it brings about levels of claustrophobia experienced in Wolfgang Petersens’ “Das Boot”.

On the more playful track “Vēstījums”, the band plays out a morbid jazz improv with the formerly established down-tempo drone punctuations that depict a more illuminated spectacle, like a slow motion dance by Zappa at a funeral. “Un Dienas Īstums Neizdziest” sees Mona De Bo sketch the final grandiose struggle between darkness & light, easy & hard, romantic & realist. And by “Lielo Koku Ēnā” we know who has won, but not until the final minutes, in this colossal 20 minute unraveling saga. The piece is a world of its own and merely contemplates and compliments the journey afore with punishing musical free-flow, dark karma and references of Sunn O))), Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine and, of course, Earth that end in necrosis a.k.a. white noise.

Overall, ‘Nekavējies, Šīs ir Spēles ar Tevi’ is a record with high production value, mind-bogglingly dense orchestration and noise layers that can feel a little hard to lift emotionally in the long run but it seems as a perfect soundtrack for an art movie about the Russian submarine Kursk.

The record can be downloaded for free on the bands website.

Jonsi : “Time to Pretend” (MGMT Cover)

X – A Free Techno Compilation

Robert Ellis : ‘Full Bellies And A Den For The Singing’ (Daytrotter Sessions)

State Shirt : ‘Computer’

Jack Penate : “So Near” (Penguin Prison Remix)

The Portland Authority : “Stealing Time”

Theory of Flight : ‘Within Reach’

The Depreciation Guild : ‘Spirit Youth’

Grand Atlantic : ‘How We Survive’

Those Mockingbirds : ‘No Symmetry EP’

LCD Soundsystem : ‘This Is Happening’

CocoRosie : ‘Grey Oceans’

Avi Buffalo : ‘Avi Buffalo’

Paul Weller : ‘Wake Up The Nation’

Deftones : ‘Diamond Eyes’

This is the music video for Samantha Crain’s new song “Santa Fe” off her new album, You (Understood) featuring Frontier Ruckus. Directed by Sterlin Harjo. For more information please visit Ramseur Records (home of our great friends Bombadil).