2011′s Best Underground Music (So Far), Part II

Last month, we told you about some of the best new releases from from the ambient/electronic underground. Here are a few more artists whose work has caught our attention as of late.

Waskerley Way makes beat-heavy electronic music in the UK. Also, he loves cats. (No, seriously, dude’s got a thing for cats; last year he dedicated an entire EP to them.) Waterfall doesn’t exactly break any new ground, but Michael Bridgewater nonetheless puts his own spin on the otherwise tired “chillwave” trope. In fact, it sounds like the sort of chillwave your future grandkids might discover on a dusty old hard drive in your attic. Meowgaze? Hear and download Waterfall on his Bandcamp.

Ra Cailum is Anthony Engelhardt from St. Louis, Missouri. Not all of the songs on latest EP, Passage, are new, but they’ve been lovingly collected and offered to curious listeners free of charge in the wake of the December 2010 release of his Walkabout LP, which he says marked the “end to the CHILLWAVE ERA sound of Ra Cailum.” He says that sound is “becoming a crutch,” but it’s a catchy crutch that resonates even more now that the weather’s finally warm.

Sean McCann is a cyborg. He has to be. Dude puts out like a bazillion full-lengths each year, and they’re all amazing. “Drone” doesn’t really do his music justice; McCann uses all sorts of instruments and sound effects–including banjos and warped violas–to evoke different emotional responses in the listener. His latest, entitled The Capital, explores the symbiotic relationship between chaos and beauty. Or, you know, not; sometimes it’s best to not sully music this good with academic conjecturing.

A tip of the hat to the ever-awesome ambient music blog Weedtemple for introducing the world to Rug. I know absolutely nothing about this project other than that it’s made by a guy named Zach Stenger. But such anonymity is fitting; Deep Sky Clusters sounds less like the work of a person and more like the spontaneous combustion of years’ worth of VHS memories and borrowed melodies. It’s all very strange, but if you give it a chance, you’ll be surprised as to how rewarding these songs can be.

Maria Minerva is 23-years-old and lives in Estonia, where she seems to spend most of her time holed up in her bedroom making ghostly electronica of the lo-lo-fi variety. Her latest cassette is called Tallinn at Dawn, and it’s infectious; disco and new wave tinged synth pop backs her ethereal vocals that consistently sound like you’re hearing them from another room. Sometimes, one can’t help but regret an artist’s studio limitations for obscuring a potentially revelatory sound; in Ms. Minerva’s case, however, the low fidelity only adds to the atmosphere. Her music sounds like it’s actually from 1983, and you’ve only recently discovered it after finding her cassettes in a shoebox buried behind your local public library.

Food Pyramid make Kosmiche Musik with a psychedelic twist. They’ve just released the third and final cassette in their krautrock-inspired trilogy. The cassettes are entitled I, II, and now III. Don’t worry, their song titles are a lot more creative; who wouldn’t want to hear songs with titles like “Lesbian Seagull” and “Speedboat Exit Miami Sunset” and “Last Shuttle To The Red Planet?” I mean, this type of music either is your thing or isn’t, but if you wish that Klaus Schulze were actually a trio from Minnesota, then you’ll like what Food Pyramid have to offer.