Good Year For Music!

So much music by some of my favourite artists has been or will be released this year but there's a few bands in particular which have either impressed me with a new album or that I'm particularly excited about:

Jakob
Probably the best New Zealand band of all time, these guys are slowly getting the international recognition they have long deserved. It's been six years since they last released their last album Solace, but they have a new album in the works which should be released late this year. Below is a teaser of snippets of demo tracks they recorded a while back, which sounds great. Having heard three of the new songs live in Auckland last June I know this album is going to be killer!


Sigur Ros
These guys are one of my all time favourite bands and have been around since 1994, releasing a number of quality albums in that time. They're well-known around their world for writing hauntingly beautiful music and the incredible singing in Icelandic, Hopelandic (an invented language), and even English of their chief vocalist, Jonsi.

They released a new album this year titled Valtari which a return to form for them and bit of a departure from their previous album Með Suð I Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust, which was their weakest effort yet. To accompany the release of Valtari they came up with the awesome concept of commissioning a music video to accompany each track from different artists all throughout the world, giving them a small budget and giving them complete creative freedom to produce whatever the music inspires from them. Three of the eight videos have been released and the one below, by Inga Birgisdottir, is my favourite so far. It's a really simple, clever, and well-executed video and the song is probably the best on the new Sigur Ros album as well, combining for an awesome visual and auditory experience.


Mono
Mono are another well-known stalwart of the post-rock genre, with a number of epic albums under their belt. They are one of the greatest exponents of the post-rock crescendo and are going to be releasing a new album on September 4. From the looks and sound of the trailer they recently posted to YouTube it's going to be epic!


Hammock
Tied with Jakob for the title of best band ever, Hammock will also be releasing a new album sometime this year, which is currently being mixed in Australia. I'm super excited about this as pretty much everything they've ever released has been 100% quality!

Lights Out Asia
A very recent release (June 5th), Hy-Brasil follows in the tradition of this band to release huge-sounding and sonically-appealing songs of electronically influenced post-rock. All of their previous albums have been awesome and have got a lot of listens from me, and this one sounds like it will be no exception after the first few listens. They also released a music video to accompany the song They Disappear Into The Palms, which you can check out (and try to make sense of) below.


I'm really loving the frequency with which bands are releasing music videos to go with their songs, and not just boring old videos of them playing. When an accompanying music video has some sort of artistic quality to it, it really can draw the listener deeper in to the music and provide a whole new listening experience.