C-Clamp - meander + return (1996, Ohio Girl)

Let's say it plain and simple, C-Clamp (Seek Lamp) was one of the major slowcore bands, with two albums leaning toward the tense side of the genre (math-rock is not so far), best exemplified by Seam, Idaho (the two first albums), Boy's Life (their second lp), Bluetile Lounge and Codeine. They offered dynamic, energetic, tense and emotionally restrained music for very subtle and continuously moving results.

Olan Mill - pine (2010, Serein)

Olan Mill is the project of Alex Smalley (Pausal, Alpine.) and Svitlana Samoylenko. "Pine" is their debut release. It's an instrumental ambient album with piano, violin, pipe organ and guitar, all instruments draped in reverb with attacks and levels smoothed and blurred. It floats somewhere between both other projects of Alex Smalley, more developed than Alpine and less complex, and engulfing than Pausal.

Carissa's Wierd - they’ll only miss you when you leave: songs 1996-2003 (2010, Hardly Art)

I discovered Carissa’s Wierd ten years ago by pure luck, a small article published somewhere, just a note from a live show, mentioning their lo-fi songwriting and their prevalence and predisposition for all things melancholic and slowcore. 

M. Ostermeier - lakefront (2010, Hibernate)

After his debut EP and contribution to a compilation, both on Parvoart, I was expecting more of the same, a development of promising atmospheres, but on this aspect, "Lakefront" is surprisingly something like a withdrawal, towards something more confined.  There is less reverb on this new ep and the piano is now playing a more central role, with field recordings of scraping and rubbing, and processed digital sounds. Guitars and beats are absent.

Trampoline Dreamers - hate patterns (2010)

Some days, this is all, All, aLL, alL, aLL, alL i I i neeeeed.

Superchunk at its strongest noisy melodic side, The Pine, Mineral circa "The Power of Failing", the most raging parts of The Van Pelt or Seam, all of this with a fantastic NZ accent à la David Kilgour never too far from what their compatriots Loves Ugly Children reached on their "Cold Water Surf" ep in 1994.