Producer Miles Whittaker, perhaps best known as one-half of Demdike Stare, recently released Faint Hearted, his solo debut on home base label Modern Love (a large portion of Miles' has been put out through Modern Love, and he's DJed for the label as MLZ). His new EP, Unsecured, feeds off a similar strain of darkness, but the ghostly, industrial palette is more thoroughly attached to deep house composition and pacing. You can listen to "Infinite Jest," a track from the EP, below.

Unsecured is out now on Modern Love.

Japanese musician and former Yura Yura Teikoku vocalist Shintaro Sakamoto made an unexpected return last year with his solo record How To Live With A Phantom. It was one of our favorite records of the year, confronting loss, isolation, and spirit life with a distinct, soulful ennui-- tensions aren't resolved, they're wallowed in. Truths are swallowed like pills over the airy guitars, plump basslines, and tight drum beats. His new 7", From the Dead, takes a step further into the funkier aspects of his sound, slowly building a fleshed out atmosphere on a single, driving groove.

From the Dead drops July 9 on Other Music Recording Co.

MoMA PS1 has announced the line-up for Warm Up 2013, their sixteenth annual summer series of outdoor concerts in the PS1 courtyard. Additionally, there will be international collaborations in Los Angeles, Boston, London, and other locations than Long Island City. The performers featured span a wide variety of genres with a predominant focus on electronic music. The comprehensive line-up includes performances from Julio Bashmore, Hyetal, XXYYXX, Ryan Hemsworth, Gobby, Ratking, Stellar OM Source, Terreke, Cajmere, Jon Hopkins, Rizzla, A Guy Called Gerald, Majical Cloudz, Bangladesh, and many more. You can peep the full schedule after the jump, and on MoMA's site here. Tickets will be made publicly available June 5th at noon.

Bristol-based producers Julio Bashmore and Kowton just leaked a digital of "And What," the B-side to their forthcoming Mirror Song 12" on Bashmore's own Broadwalk imprint. Its snappy industrial grit has Kowton's fingerprints more flagrantly (it's actually tracklisted as a solo Kowton joint), whereas the echoing diva vocals and strangely panned house edits style of "Mirror Song" more strongly evoke Bashmore's solo style. The mood's much eerier by comparison, leaving nervous negative spaces in between distortion-decimated kick tones and loopy cybernetic chirps that make you dance as a matter of survival.

The Mirror Song 12" is out on May 27th on Broadwalk Records, you can stream "And What" below.

Deafheaven, the San Francisco-based US black metal group that is infamous among metalheads for having an open mind and an appreciation of styles outside the scene's norms (may God help us all), are set to release their sophomore full-length Sunbather on June 11. The group leaked two singles already-- the melodic nine-minute melter "Dream House" and the equally dynamic title track--, but are now streaming the record in its entirety on Pitchfork Advance.  It's a special blend of post-rock epic, hemorrhaging shredder, and a waking life full of soft shoegazing, streaming here.

Sunbather is out June 11 on Deathwish Inc.
 

A few weeks ago I spoke with Austin psych trio and perennial Ad Hoc faves Pure X over the phone. They were en route to Arkansas as they continued their trek across the U.S. touring in support of their recently released sophomore record, Crawling Up The Stairs, unfortunately forced to pass up on a litany of good skate spots along the way (the avid skaters, tragically, forgot their boards). Their heads stayed high as they searched for a peaceful camping spot in unfamiliar territory during a rare bit of free time on the road. All members were present, but singer/guitarist Nate Grace and bassist/sometimes-singer Jesse James were the most vocal as we talked about their new work, what records to make love to, and how the universe moves.

Ad Hoc: In what ways do you think you guys have grown or changed as a band since Pleasure? There are a lot of surprising choices in your arrangements and instrumentation, does it reflect any developments in your personal lives or lives as artists?

Jesse James: Just because we wanted to keep it fresh and have fun. We just gotta keep changing it up no matter what-- change or die! It’s been two years since we made that record and we’re different people now.

Nate Grace: Plus, by the time [Pleasure] was out we were already burnt out on playing those songs-- we had been playing those songs for a minute. Then I got hurt so then it was like, “Well, fuck... Let’s go hard on this record that we’re already doing," because we had started recording Crawling Up the Stairs before Pleasure was even out so we were already knee-deep into the next record. People were telling us “oh, put out this 7-inch; oh, put that out," but we just wanted to work on this album. I was injured for that while and had nothing else to do which actually was kind of a blessing because it did force us to just keep cracking in the studio, staying off of the road, and just concentrating on making this record. And right now it’s like we can finally reap the benefits of it which is so nice. Now we get to fuckin' tour! It feels good.

JJ: It would’ve taken us a lot longer to do this right had we been on the road-- It was really easy to tell people “no, we couldn’t tour” because we actually couldn’t, you know?

NG: That was just one of those weird things about getting hurt, too. We came back from Europe and I was just on Cloud 1000, dude. The last show on that tour in Madrid was one of the best shows we’ve ever played. One of the most fun shows, like, fuckin’ ever. It was ending on such a high note, and then we come back and not even two weeks after, I get hurt.  We got really good on that tour-- it was the longest tour we’d ever done-- and then we came back and were forced to just go straight in and start recording, which was great because we had all this energy even despite all the injury and shit. We had all these juices going.

For the 37th and latest episode of Experimental Half-Hour-- Portland's aptly titled experimental music and performance show-- one of the city's foremost synthesists, Daryl Groetsch (aka Pulse Emitter), gives a live performance alongside choreographed performances by Keyon Gaskin and Portland dance company bobbevy. The episode waivers between dream and nightmare, contrasting the feeling of being lost with the feeling of being hunted between cuts of patterned psychedelia and eerie jams. You can stream the whole episode above.

Tonight, Ad Hoc will be presenting a night of music at The DL in NYC as an after party for night two of Angelina Dreem and Valerie Veatch's internet based art exhibition, The FEED. Blondes, Shams (record release!), and Teengirl Fantasy will all be DJing on the roof alongside Mr. Ad Hoc himself, 10pm doors, no cover.

The FEED is a B.Y.O.Device show that functions through QR codes-- whether relaying original pieces in full or clues about things in the room itself, left up to the discretion of the artist. In attempting to "present an environment in which content is simultaneously being created, consumed, and shared, "attendees' behavior in the gallery is intended to mimic, and also expose, the ways in which we consume or interact with web culture." The show features original work from Vuk Cosic, Nick DeMarco, Deanna Havas, Alexandra Gorczynski, Travis Egedy, Jónó Mí Ló, and many others. It's located at Jack Chiles Gallery, and will be open today and tomorrow from 2pm-9pm, more details here.

Our relationship with our own sexuality has changed significantly since the early '70s and the coinciding Golden Age of Porn. That was back when one of the first, best, most influential, and US hardcore porn flicks, Behind the Green Door, had just released, back when the mystery of eroticism and the transgression inherent in unfiltered, unpredictable intimacy had a little breathing room. Now, these are things often paraded cloddishly around instead, flowing like water and becoming as inane of pick-ups as lines from a shopping list.

When asked by NPR, Brooklyn electronic artist Laurel Halo had explained "Sex Mission," the latest track from her upcoming EP also titled Behind the Green Door, as a "track about driving energy and elevation via dynamic topographies," unintentionally reviving an older style of abstracted intimacy by distilling sexuality down to its essence: infinite energy exchange. The deep thud of the kicks keep anchor while a rotating cast of lovers-- whether humans, stars, or spirits-- shift through the mix in the form of glistening metallics, warbling synthetics, and suspended sorts of padded "breath." You can listen to the track here, via NPR.

Behind the Green Door drops May 21st on Hyperdub.

The release date for SFV Acid's forthcoming record, The Dwell, is fast approaching, and a new single, "PT Sex," just dropped. Mishmashes of squiggly acid tones, one-off giggles and breaths, and shuffled woodblock backgrounding reveal themselves in unexpected sideway glances before the abrupt conclusion. You can stream and download it below, via the producer's Soundcloud.

The Dwell is out May 28th on UNO NYC.