Antonymes - beauty becomes the enemy of the future (2009, Cathedral Transmissions)

Antonymes is the solo project of Ian Hazeldine, a Wales-based UK musician, who is creating instrumental piano & keyboard  ambient pieces, layered with additional electronics and buried  in an ocean of reverb. 

You picture desolate natural landscapes, rainy days under gray skies, low lights and bare trees, decomposing leaves on the ground and a wind carrying away endless masses of clouds.

Rivulets - d e m o s (2010, Silber Media / 2000)

In 2001, just before his first album, I discovered Rivulets on MP3.com, a kind of ancestor of Myspace and Bandcamp were musicians were able to feature this music. 

S. Carey - all we grow (2010, Jagjaguwar)

It's a good think to see Secretly Canadian's alter ego Jagjaguwar returning to this kind of music both labels defended a few years ago, from Patrick Phelan to Richard Youngs, from South to Spokane, from Early Day Miners to Havergal.

The Morning Paper - it's getting clearer (2008, Skipping Stones)

I was 17 when I first heard Field Mice's 7 inch “September's not so far away”. 17 years later, the beauty of The Morning Paper's first album left me speechless, in a close state of emotional effusion. 

Karaocake - rows & stitches (2010, Clapping Music)

If she was American, Camille Chambon would be , probably, from the West Coast, somewhere between Seattle, Portland and Olympia, sharing shows with artists on K Records and similar labels.

She is French and after a few self-released records , which, I sadly missed and never heard of, she is making the jump with a "real" album on a "real" label with "real" musicians, "real" melodic & accessible songs, a "real" production and it's a remarkable artistic product which escapes the d.i.y. attitude typical to the style which often offers only generic stuff.  "Row & Stitches" is as a whole an unexpected surprise.