Earl Patrick pivots sharply away from his usual indie-folk and guitar-driven comfort zones for his newest release, the wildly inventive album "Conditioned By Machines". The Portland, Oregon-based composer, singer-songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist has spent over two decades building a dense, eight-album catalog. Here, however, he entirely flips the script. Feeling that classical flute music too often prioritizes gesture over pure melody, he set out...

Sometimes you put on headphones expecting a brief escape, but Watch Me Die Inside's new single "Infinity Fall II" actively hunts down your peace of mind. The anonymous entity behind the project, Aleph, builds what they call an "Autopsy" out of these heavy sonic fragments, and this addition is brutally terrifying. The track opens with a shockingly delicate, melancholic sequence. It tricks you. It...