Pitchfork Music Festival was nothing short of incredible this year.  From Friday to Sunday, over 40 of independent music's most talented artists took on three different stages in Union Park, Chicago.  Friday kicked off at 3:00 with Lower Dens and the day went on with perfromances from Willis Earl Beal, Japandroids, Dirty Projectors, and Purity Ring, just to name a few. buffaBLOG made the trip out to Chicago and got in on the action! Check out all the pictures from Friday below. You can click on a picture to see it larger.

Lower Dens

















Dirty Projectors













Purity Ring

Hunter is often associated with the freak folk movement in the U.S., and certainly her work with the likes of Davendra Banahrt and Deer Tick has earned her that distinction, but there was little in the way of folk on Twin Hand Movement and on Nootropics there’s even less.  This time around the band’s eyes are set clearly on the stars, and the touches of krautrock, electro, and ambient music they add to the mix are superb if not a little unexpected.

Heading into the recording process Lower Dens were reportedly listening to a lot of Kraftwerk, Eno and Iggy Pop, and those varied influences appear almost immediately.  ‘Alphabet Song’ kicks everything off with a droning guitar riff and a plodding, determined beat that frames Hunter’s deadpan vocals with a distorted fog.  Fans of Berlin era David Bowie will warm to the luscious drifting expanses of  ‘Lamb’ and ‘Candy’, which make up the heavily atmospheric core of the album.

Closing track ‘In the End is the Beginning’, at over 12 minutes in length, finds the band indulging fully in their ambient tendencies and using little more than a guitar and some doom-fixated electronics to cast a sinister shadow over the final piece of the record.  On the flipside is lead single ‘Brains’, the most propulsive track on the album, it employs the motorik beat of krautrock along with a dense layer of synths and guitar.  It’s not necessarily upbeat, but by Lower Dens standards it’s downright ecstatic.

No matter one’s perceptions of this record it is clear that it’s a collaborative effort for the band and a much more fully realized sound.  Hunter’s vocals may be an important piece of the puzzle, but now the music, with its new textures, vast spaces, and wonderfully diverse atmospheres is just as easy to latch onto.  The tried and true methods that art-inclined rockers have been employing for years are all present on Nootropics, but Lower Dens have given all those things a fresh take.  In the modern music world where it seems bands are always evolving it is nice to hear a group take so many risks, not out of necessity to leave an imprint on the blogosphere, but rather as a natural and totally unforced function of growth.

Grade: B+  

Okay, I’m a little late on this month’s countdown, so bare with me. Luckily, many of the albums on this list won’t be seeing record store shelves for a couple weeks, so the list can stay relevant for a bit. We’re only a week into May, but it already feels like we’ve entered into summer. When you live in a city that gets overcast by the never-ending shadow of seasonal lag, it’s hard to define months like spring and autumn. I heard once that Buffalo really only has two seasons: snow and construction. Yeah, a bit pessimistic. Still, I'd much rather have an awesome new mix of music to listen to while stuck on the I-90 due to road work instead of a blizzard.