Music is really important to me. There is an album for every mood I'm in, and sometimes, I use an album to put me into a specific mood that my artwork requires.

What can you expect? New albums and old albums. A bit of music for everybody. A little hip hop & rap, a bit of bluegrass & country, lots of indie rock & pop, some punk & hardcore, folk, electronica, drum & bass, soul and everything in-between. I recommend albums, not songs, so I look for an overall feeling and mood to each record.

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Look for lots of great stuff coming shortly!

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AMORINO by ISOBEL

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This album will transport you back to the 1960s. It's loungey, it's jazzy, it's ambient. It has that smooth lazy-happiness of some old Astrud Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim songs with a tease of Esquivel. The male back-up singer sounds exactly like Joao Gilberto in one song. Plus, for an added jolt, a track in the middle switches things up and goes from slow to peppy––a burlesque song complete with trumpets, snare drums, a bicycle bell, whistles, and the cancan girls dancing in your head.

Isobel's voice–– the singer from Belle and Sebastia–– barely ever goes past a hush. Her voice remains light and airy, even in the midst of the boisterous orcherastraÐÐit tickles and teases. The music is sad, happy, and atmospheric.

Listening to it is like sun bathing in Paris, bottom bare, while drinking wine and nibbling on cheese.

This album is soft and easy going. The tracks rock along, mixing instrumentals with quiet vocal lullabies. It's well paced and wonderfully uses electronic noises and keyboards to keep the sound going. The male and female vocals are very controlled, almost still, , but they sound like something is lurking in the corner, and at any minute they will EXPLODE. Of course, they never do, but the tension there makes the album great.

This album reminds me of a long walk home, when the sun is almost below the horizon but it's not quite gone--it's still there, lurking. The streets are empty, but filled with the promise of a new day to come. It's peaceful, happy, serene, and sad, all rolled into one.

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HEM - Eveningland

Sweet, soothing female vocals and slow rollicking melodies make this album a great addition to anyone's folk/country collection. Hem uses a mandolin, glockenspiel, steel guitar, banjo, and upright bass to add flavor to their atmospheric orchestral songs and to give a new twist to Johny Cash's Jackson.

Hem calls their sound "countrypolitan," an infusion of metropolitan-style chamber music mixed with old-school country. The lyrics are poetic with lines such as "We are standing on the rooftops. We are circling like sparrows. We are tiny, we are trembling. Scared of everything. But the heart is still a red wing."

With just enough country twang and southern charm, this Brooklyn based group transports the sound of the south to the northeast and to your backyard.