Emerging from rampant hedonism and desperate isolation is ‘II’, the new album from Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Behind the cartoonish colour of this collection of soulful, mind-addled psychedelia, lurks the fact that its author, Ruban Nielson, came close to never making it at all. “There were times when I felt that if I continued as I was that I would die, or some other bad thing would happen,” he admits, referring to the months following the release of Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s eponymous, self-recorded debut in June 2011, and a punishing, debauched touring schedule that would have a lasting affect on the 32-year-old multi-instrumentalist and songwriter.

Released after he swapped New Zealand for Portland and isolated himself from friends and family, Nielson’s first album as Unknown Mortal Orchestra fused Barrett and Hendrix to RZA and The Beatles. Coming midway through a journey that took him from cryptic, anonymous bedroom project borne of disillusionment and private amusement, to leader of a hard-touring, hard-living band; it marked his return to music after the messy break-up of Flying Nun punks The Mint Chicks, the band he started at home with brother Kody 10 years earlier. Now, building on the break-beat, junk-shop charm Nielson soon came to be renowned for, ‘II’ signals the solidification of Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s position as an infinitely intriguing, brave psychedelic band; unafraid to dig deeper and hit harder than the rest to lock into their intoxicating, opiate groove and bring rock’n’roll’s exaggerated myths to life. Time on the road may have eaten away at Nielson both physically and mentally, but, ultimately, it conceived an album that builds thrillingly on the jagged melodies, choppy percussion and meandering guitars on his debut. ‘II’ was recorded nocturnally (Nielson played everything but some of the drums himself) in the converted basement of his family home in Milwaukee, Oregon – an upgrade on the yurt where he and his wife and young children first lived after moving to America. Focus, inspiration and dedication streamlined his vibrant imagination during the sessions and extra time spent on the songs (compared with his previous one-night-one-song approach) gives the instruments space to flick between woozy stumble and nimble canter, highlighting the emotional turmoil that led to the revelatory bleakness of the lyrics.

“The album has a really specific mood,” he says. “It captures the way I was thinking when I was on tour and is surrealist and impressionistic. You try to fill the gap left by not having family and friends around, and you end up getting into trouble. The emotions I was trying to get into it were about relationships and drug taking.” Racked with paranoia and loneliness exacerbated by recreational chemicals, Nielson was exposed to an entirely new set of influences. “With the first record I didn’t have all these things to deal with, but this time I was running into a lot of situations…we were already a drug band but we were out of control, playing every day and not looking after ourselves. It’s hard to be away from my wife and children, they’re beautiful people, but my life at home is crazy too, I stay up all night. There are different problems, stories and weird impressions of my feelings, but this album is mainly about love affairs and how impossible it is to connect with people sometimes, and losing people.”

These conflicting themes are evident immediately; on the album’s sleeve is an unnerving image of Janet Farrar, the famous British witch, Wiccan, author and teacher of witchcraft. The chilling refrain of opener ‘Into The Sun’ sees Nielson deliver the line “Isolation can put a gun in your hand,” softly, his words starkly intelligible above a warm, slow-burning melody that quickly brands itself onto your brain. His playful imagery (‘I’m so lonely I’ve gotta eat my popcorn all alone’) mirrors the melody, before a solo that borders on psychotropic ends ‘II’’s introduction.

‘Swim And Sleep (Like A Shark)’ and ‘So Good At Being In Trouble’ plumb even murkier depths. Of the latter, Nielson says “It’s the best song I’ve written so far, there’s something really truthful about it”. Its grainy, lilting, Beatles-recalling simplicity allows delicate guitar and vulnerable, high-pitched vocals to fill a seemingly desolate sketch of Nielson’s touring problems with animated, life-affirming colour; especially with the line ‘Rolling alone I’m in a strange state of mind, it’s a strange old state of mind.’ On the swampy haze of ‘Swim And Sleep (Like A Shark)’ Nielson sings about escaping to an imaginary safe place at the bottom of the ocean, recalling his difficult childhood. But he explains that the apparent finality of the lyrics (‘I’d fall to the bottom and I’d hide ‘til the end of time) isn’t as morbid as it seems. “The song is about wanting to escape, not die. I’m not scared of death because it’s a release from the stress and pressures of life. It’s like an opiate song, about a state between life and death, so it describes the feeling of being at the bottom of the ocean and feeling really cold, drifting in a safe place, completely separate from being a human. It’s a feeling I’ve had since I was a kid, wanting to find a dark, cold place, crawl into it and just hide for a while until I get my energy back,” he explains.

As it unfolds, ‘II’ does find Nielson reenergized. ‘One At A Time’ and ‘Faded In The Morning’ boast dizzying choruses and instrumentals; these crusty hunks could have been excavated from a lost 1960s treasure trove. ‘Monki’ unravels over seven minutes like the yarn from a stoner’s cardigan with an eye-frying pattern. ‘Dawn’ is a minute of disconcerting noise that stands out between the nooks and crannies of the choruses, guitar solos, groove-heavy bass and drums that were recorded live by newly-recruited drummer Greg Rogove and Kody Nielson in a move away from the electronic percussion employed on album one. ‘II’ closes with ‘Secret Xtians’, a tender observational puzzle that fizzes to a satisfied end.

‘II’ is a precisely assembled insight into a frayed and frazzled period of a fascinating life; journeying from despair to euphoria with stops for highs, hangovers, communication failure, anger and love in between. Unknown Mortal Orchestra was once Ruban Nielson’s closeted, home-recorded concern. With an album that uses his singular musical imagination and extraordinary talent to parade his emotions with unyielding honesty, it is now a fully realized, reinvigorated, mature band operating at the peak of its powers. In making ‘II’ Ruban Nielson has taught himself how to survive as a musician again. He’s given away perhaps more than he ever intended; his musical craft and fragile mind are fully exposed. Now you know more about him than ever before. The words Unknown Mortal Orchestra have never carried so much meaning. – Ben Homewood

K.Flay’s new EP, Eyes Shut, is a response to apathy. Thematically, the disc’s five tracks offer a dialogue about what it means to care—and not care—in the twentysomething era. K.Flay, the moniker for San Francisco-based musician Kristine Flaherty, reacts to this generational indifference musically. Her spit-fire rhymes and distorted indie-electro production are infused with unabashed passion and thoughtful concern.

Flaherty, who grew up outside Chicago and launched her music career while enrolled at Stanford University, arrived at this subject matter after spending nearly a year touring the country solo. Although she was opening for artists like Passion Pit, 3OH!3 and Wallpaper, Flaherty took the stage alone each night, urging a deep sense of introspection that initially resulted in a mixtape called I Stopped Caring In ’96. The mixtape, which Flaherty self-released last spring, initiated the writing process for Eyes Shut.

“I spent my first few years making music just messing around, not really having a sense of what I was about,” she explains. “With the mixtape, I started to realize my vision for the project. I made it in isolation, which was liberating in a creative sense. The songs on this EP start where the mixtape left off and reflect where I’m at in my own life now. There are no love songs. It’s really about a mindset, a perspective. A lot of the people I know are pretty apathetic and disillusioned. They’d rather check out than engage in something. I’m drawn to that myself at times and at other times I’m repelled by it.”

Isolation is a theme in Flaherty’s creative process. She is a songwriter, musician and producer, who works alone on many of her tracks from conception to completion, sometimes in her mother’s basement.

The five tracks on the EP were written during the spring and summer of 2011, with most of the recording occurring in September. Influenced by a diverse array of artists including OutKast and Lykke Li, the EP is an innovative combination of hip-hop, electronica and indie rock aesthetics, all bolstered by Flaherty’s undeniable rapping ability.

The K.Flay live show shines through the recordings as well. “Until recently my recorded stuff hasn’t captured what I’m trying to do,” Flaherty says. “It’s only been in the last nine months that I’ve honed in on that. You hear ‘white girl rapping’ and you get wary. But the live show has really shown people what I’m about and the production aspect of what I do. So with the EP it was about how I can replicate that accurately in a live setting.”

The EP is a precursor to K.Flay’s debut full-length, which she hopes to release in the first half of 2012. Meanwhile, between writing, recording and touring, the musician, who recently performed at San Francisco’s Outside Lands Arts & Music Festival, has been sharpening her production skills by remixing other artists, including Beastie Boys, Young the Giant, Walk the Moon, and Oh Land. And she’s not touring quite so solo anymore—Flaherty recently added a drummer to the mix.

“I feel like I’m taking the next step,” she says. “I’m in the process of taking something that was just nascent and, with the help of a few people, starting to flesh it out a little more. It’s been a real year of growth.”

Flaherty may write about apathy, but she’s anything but apathetic.

From Atlanta, Georgia, the origins of Deerhunter can be traced back to when frontman Bradford Cox first met guitarist Lockett Pundt at high school. Years later Bradford met Moses Archuleta and started jamming together. Other contributors to Deerhunter since its establishment in 2001 include Josh Fauver, Colin Mee and Whitney Petty. The current incarnation consists of Cox, Pundt and Archuleta plus bassist Josh Mckay and guitarist Frankie Broyles.

Deerhunter’s first album was a lo-fi experiment not initially intended for the wider world, but appeared in 2005 on a local Atlanta label, Stickfigure. Although officially untitled, it has since become known as Turn It Up, Faggot; a phrase that doesn’t actually appear on the sleeve but is an insult that Cox claimed was often thrown at the band during their early gigs. Their next album, Cryptograms (2006), was generally considered to be their real debut and as such things started to get serious for the band. They had moved to fêted Chicago indie, Kranky (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Low, Stars Of The Lid), and the world outside was starting to pay attention.

Then in mid-2008, Deerhunter and Kranky signed a deal with 4AD, allowing them to finally release music outside the US and the band’s next move was to prove epic in more than just musical terms.?? Recorded over the course of a week at the Rare Book Studios in Brooklyn, NY, the Can and Wire-inspired Microcastle (2008) was to propel them to further heights. However, the album leaked four months before release, leading the band back to the studio to record Weird Era Cont., an album in its own right added as a bonus disc to make Microcastle a 25-track colossus. Not content with such prolificacy, the band announced a new five track EP, Rainwater Cassette Exchange, in 2009 and that its release would coincide with the band’s extensive European, Japanese and Australian tour in May and June.??

Displaying few signs of slowing down, Halcyon Digest, the band’s fourth studio album was released in September 2010. Remaining in their native Georgia to piece together the album, Halcyon Digest took just a few weeks to complete. The recording sessions took place at Chase Park Transduction in Athens with Ben H. Allen helping to co-produce the album, while final track, ‘He Would Have Laughed’, was recorded separately by Bradford Cox at NOTOWN SOUND in Marietta. To announce the release, the band fully embraced the DIY mindset of their New Wave heroes from the 70’s and 80’s with a Cox-designed, cut-and-paste Xeroxed flyer. It’s with these kind of approaches that Deerhunter continue to widen their sphere of influence and impress with each subsequent release.

After a brief hiatus, during which time Bradford Cox and Lockett Pundt released their own albums as Atlas Sound and Lotus Plaza respectively, a new Deerhunter line-up (with additions of bassist Josh Mckay and guitarist Frankie Broyles) reconvened in January 2013 at Rare Book Studio in Brooklyn, New York. Produced by Nicholas Vernhes and Bradford Cox and recorded in the dead of night, Deerhunter’s new longplayer Monomania will be released in May. Monomania finds the group recalling its scrappy punk aesthetic; a perfect nocturnal garage rock album full of the layered and hazy vintage guitar sounds that define them.

Jackson Scott has developed out of a weird audacity; bending spoons with apocalyptic melodies, sugared with solipsistic textures. How did the world conceive this young cosmonaut? A college dropout with a 4-track and a one-track mind. A listener and a conceiver. His voice, whether pitched up or androgynous, speaks of a still life. But painting is meaningless, songs irrelevant, aura outdated if you are a revivalist. Jackson is not.

The upcoming debut Melbourne shows we’re all alone together, sharing the same tragedies, ecstasies and phenomenon. He conspired it out of isolation, deprivation and hunger…you can’t survive on candy. Jackson’s transmutative live act is to that of the occultist – achieving eternal perfection. A trio that is liquidating the senses, seeking the perfect elixir, channeling kraut, punk, surf and pop as one psych rock solvent.