Articles
2010 Top 10s and 20s
Will Long (Celer)

Albums
Bilxaboy
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma
Celer & Yui Onodera
Cepia
Dead Leaf Echo
Ferraris & Uggeri
Ernesto Ferreyra
Flying Horseman
The Foreign Exchange
Les Fragments de la Nuit
Ghost and Tape
Andrew Hargreaves
Head Of Wantastiquet
i8u
Anders Ilar
Quintana Jacobsma
Kaiserdisco
Leafcutter John
Clem Leek
The Lickets
The Machine
Magda
My Fun
Ostendorf, Zoubek, Lauzier
Part Timer
Phillips + Hara
RV Paintings
Set In Sand
Shackleton
Shigeto
Matt Shoemaker
Sun City Girls
Supersilent
Swartz
Ben Swire
Collin Thomas
Tomo
Upward Arrows

Compilations / Mixes
Exp. Dance Breaks 36
Fünf
Lee Jones
The Moon Comes Closer
Note of Seconds
Tensnake

EPs
8Bitch
Celer
Jasper TX
Jozif
Lerosa
Machinefabriek
Patscan
Pleq
Simon Scott
SHEMALE
Thorsten Soltau / Weiss
Jace Syntax & BlackJack
Weiss

RV Paintings: Samoa Highway
The Helen Scarsdale Agency

Samoa Highway is both the premiere vinyl release from the Helen Scarsdale Agency (available in 500 copies) and the second full album for RV Paintings, coming as it does three years after the Root Strata release Trinity Rivers. California-based brothers Brian and Jon Pyle man the RV Paintings controls and do so with an assured hand during the album's five psychedelic-soaked ambient soundscapes. The album title refers to a stretch of land running between two coastal communities in Humboldt County, one of which houses a municipal airport. That detail isn't insignificant, as plane sounds figure prominently into the powerful opening track. A warm drone sweeps in, inaugurating “Millions” restrainedly before the swelling haze is pierced by knife-edged guitar accents and the unsettling sounds of airplanes taking off and fireworks explosions. The mass continues to suspend itself in mid-air, all the while repeatedly punctuated by the violent roar of the plane engine and the combustion of fireworks, until the appearance of a piano theme imposes a normalizing effect near the ten-minute mark. In addition, ambient setting “Round-a-Bout Bench on a Cold, Foggy Day” pairs the metallic ripples of six-string shards with the gentle breaths of flute tones, storm clouds darken the horizon when “Mirrors” arrives with an ominous see-saw of strings, and ride cymbal splashes and flutes generate an ethereal cloud during “From Manila to Forever.” The contrast between the brooding guitar-fueled atmospheres and the warmth of the flutes is one the recording's major drawing cards, and the additional colour wrought by strings, piano, and cymbals enhances the tracks' appeal further. Samoa Highway clocks in at a svelte thirty-three minutes which normally would seem modest for a full-length but in this case feels just right. There's enough material on hand for the listener to get a complete sense of the artist and the music's character but also just enough that the listener is left wanting more.

December 2010