Let me tell you something—listening to "Falling From The Floor" feels a bit like slipping through the cracks of your own memories. It's not about soaring or plummeting. No. MJ Lake and his Salt Lake-based cohort (Dylan Schorer, M. Horton Smith, Travis Mickelson, and the enigmatic touch of Joshy Soul) have crafted something that doesn't rise or fall. It levitates in that strange, almost...

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...