King Ropes Super Natural, King Ropes’ fifth album, is at once their most ambitious and most intimate work, expanding the parameters of the band’s desert rock and ragged americana sound. It is buoyed by a directness that brings out Hollier’s most stirring songwriting to date. Hollier has a gift for writing about tragedy and pain with wry humor and conversational bluntness. Long-simmering family trauma, visions of animal reincarnation, mysterious respiratory ailments — all are worthy songwriting prompts as the record vacillates from the pounding rhythms of “Hello Sun” and thick, stoner-rock roar of “Drunk Donny” to the tenderness of “Sure,” a sorrowful, synth-driven ode to regret, and the quietly stunning, disarmingly plainspoken “Breathing”.
Modular Haze Comprised of Sam Kaley, Chris Bacon, Chris Lee, and Sarah Frazier, Modular Haze is Missoula’s most expansive neo-synth trip out there. From dystopian constructs to robotic love songs to eerie underwater journeys, Modular Haze narrates a cosmic journey using affected vocals and rippling sonic layers with subtle hints of Brian Eno, Kraftwerk and Kavinsky. Every live show is unique and ever evolving.
Perfect Blue Perfect Blue is a genre-bending, instrumental post-rock quartet hailing from Missoula, Montana. Their music blends elements of post-punk, psych, shoegaze, folk and black metal for an eclectic spectrum of sounds moving between somber, intricate passages to dark, heavy soundscapes.