Tucked deeply inside New York’s music scene lies a group of musicians so talented, so diverse and so driven that only they could pull off something like this. Imaginary Weapons, a band that quietly formed in New York is fronted by music Maniac Hektor Fontanez ( Twi the Humble Feather, Liek, Blizzards), Hisako Konami,  “joe”, “Veli”, and Dave Giuseppe. When referring to Fontanez’s other projects, Imaginary Weapons may seem like some sort of alter ego.

Vent Somewhere Else by Public Dims

Who could forget the Klaxons? One of the first acts in that huge “Nu Rave” Movement that sweeped over the end of the 2000’s. Along acts like CCS, mgmt, Glass Candy, Late of the Pier, Foals, Crystal Castles, Shit Disco, Etc. You like good dance music? Insatiable Desire to dance? A deep seated love for cat meems. Well drop what your doing and check out the klaxons sophmore release “Surfing the Void”. The albums is a super fun refresh on where they left off, below we got the second single on the album “twin flames”.

Johnny Hawaii-The Lonely Smurfer

Download Johnny Hawaii’s EP  “Smurfs up” HERE

Dreamy prestine melodies across soft electronic waves, Miracles Club is pleasure in audio form. The ghostly melodic vocals create such a eerie euphoric atmosphere. Being one of the many flavorful acts coming from Mexican Summer, their cold shoegazer electro is a breath of fresh air of clean cut production in a noisy ambient enviroment. The tracks are a icy cool journey across the heart strings, these tracks take you a place. They are each a journey in themselves and bring nostalgic memories of young love and adventure. check out one of their videos above.

Denver based zine Food Fantasy, the brainchild of the cleverly named Milton Melvin Croissant III, is rad beyond all measure. It features trippy collage-photo-illustration hybrids of psychedelic awesomeness.  The pictures featured here exemplify the juxtaposition between the two main foreground images. Bert and Ernie and a seemingly devilish child? A giant beard and a man dressed as a taco? Food, costumes and exaggerated, out of context images make this zine completely amazing.

When I see colour spectrums and prisms I am immediately brought back to fourth grade science class where we were taught the fascinating illusions of colour and how they are projected. Richard Colman’s trippy and disorienting art demonstrate a keen awareness of how colour is separated and projected through the prism. These ideas seem to be the focus of his work.

White Fence Mr. Adams

White Fence Destroy Everything

Change-Leopardon-A-Small-Bees-Nest

The Vivids, a brand new band from LA, take a guitar-heavy psychedelic sound and add a pinch of punk energy to create a collection of brooding, darkly dreamy tracks. Their frontman’s high falsetto delivery stands out sharply from the cloudy background, a nice point of contrast to the overall sound. And although it’s hardly ever possible to hear what he’s singing, his delivery suggests pain and longing, in the best way possible.

I feel like I should be on some kind of enhancing drug when I look at the art produced by psychedelic art troupe Assume Vivid Astro Focus. It’s the kind of amazing art that one can appreciate clean or flying high because it appeals to all of the senses from its interactive nature. This collective has been making a splash since 2001 and their performance and installation art with bright colours, intriguing poses and costume design make for an interesting marker in art history. My reaction is immediate to the age old, child-like response of “oooh! Something shiny!” and it captures my attention. But when looked at closer, the art pops but is not meant to be simply static; you must work to understand its intent and be a part of the art too.

Don’t confuse him with the musicologist of the same name.  This Spampinato is an art man. Painting in psychedelic fractals that call to mind the idea of eternal return, Francesco Spampinato blurs the distinction between whether his paintings are collapsing inward or exploding out. But if we do lose our senses a little as we ponder his work, we might be able to guess this is part of the point. Spampinato is a theorist too, and one of his favorite subjects is hypnotism.

You know when you have a crush on someone, and every time someone asks you about them, you just blush a little, and you can’t really think of anything to say. You can feel your face heating up, and you can feel a really stupid smile starting to stretch across your face which you try to contain, that makes it all the more suspicious. This happens to me every once in a while with bands. When I’m describing music either in writing, or simply during a conversation I try to be at least sort of objective, keeping in mind that everyone’s taste is different, but in this case, I just can’t do it. I am infatuated with Warpaint, maybe even a little bit in love. The only thing I can manage when trying to describe them is giggling, and maybe, “They are soooooooooooooooooooooooooo good!” When I first heard their EP Exquisite Corpse, it was like my dreams come to life. I love girls with pretty voices, I love psychedelia, I love make out music, and songs that I can listen to, and day dream about wearing long flowy dresses and being in a cult. For me, it doesn’t get much better than this. Their new full length The Fool is gorgeous from beginning to end. Lush, dreamy, sexy, and scary, and if you get a chance to see one of their live shows, ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE. This is an instance in which the buzz surrounding a band is not overblown. And IMO, much more deserving of the hype they’ve received than some of 2k10’s other big blog artists not to mention any names AHEM (Best Coast/Sleigh Bells,) but of course to each their own. As for me, The Fool is definitely in my top five for 2010. You can purchase it on vinyl, cd, or digital download here.

Guest post from Brody of Family Portrait:

From doing time in popular space rock bands like Yume Bitzu to working with Bradford Cox in Atlas Sound, the Dirty Projectors, and Devendra Banhart, Adam Forkner’s crib sheet reeks of “Indie” cred.

While not lending his genius to other band’s sound, Adam Forkner does his own thing in White Rainbow. Instead of re-hashing old sounds and flavors like Oneohtrix Point Never and Emeralds, Forkner has decided to forge on into the future. From his Alpha-Wave inducing ambient explorations to psyched-out-tribal-jams, White Rainbow’s music bravely explores the fringes of music and consciousness.

Liek might be dead. This was information passed on from Liek himself. Unfortunately the project is musically dormant. He has morphed into a shadow, disappeared under colorfalls, and possibly fell under the spell of the forest of skreeing trees. While Liek may be on an adventure to the undying lands of Aman, its creator Hektor Fontanez is flourishing. He can be found between being a core member of New York’s classical guitar themed Twi The Humble Feather, to the newly formed hard hitting psychedelic rock project Imaginary Weapons. All these projects show various flips and twists that Fontanez is capable of preforming in his eclectic career. He was even the voice of Matt on MTV’s animated show Downtown! In the long run of it all, Hektor Fontanez loves music.

Gary War-Scales

Gary War is kind of a secretive figure. He seems ambivalent and super psychedelic.  If the tracks streaming on his MySpace and LastFM pages are any indication, the latter is definitely true. Based out of New York, War is an experimental musician favouring a trippy sounding version of auto-tune but without all the B.S. of auto-tune. War’s pages share little information on himself and focus rather on the music he is creating. This, if anything, adds to the illusion that he creates in every sound on the newly released record, Horribles Parade.

Easy Tom-Slow Metamorphosis

Mindless Vinyls‘ psychedelic enfant terrible, Easy Tom, has released his LP, “Their Only Dreams”. ’Most of the songs are born from lyrics that pop in my head while I am driving around Los Angeles doing my day job,’ claims Easy Tom. And you can hear it – the album oozes claustrophobic gridlock. “Everyone’s got a chip on their shoulder, everyone’s checking out each other’s cars”, he sings on “Slow metamorphosis”, as guitars gurgle and playful keys bubble up from the 70s-informed cauldron. “Their Only Dreams” is available via Easy Tom’s bandcamp page.