SHARK-FIN AWARDS

A whispering crackle seeps through the darkness and slowly triggers a threatening sonic explosion in the first few seconds of Lana Blac’s “Suck You In,” the latest single from her new album Nocturnal. A pulsating drum beat nudges us into the flames being ignited by Blac’s vocal, and before we have …

Fusing elements of soul-heavy funk, free jazz, blues, virtuosic hard rock and indulgent ambient music, musical collective Freightrain deliver a watershed release in their new album Outside Ourselves. Comprised of nine sonic treasures that challenge traditional pop framework with every striking note, Outside Ourselves is quite difficult to categorize using …

“Tree Of Life (Dedicated To The Victims)” is a song recorded in honor of the eleven victims of the tragedy that took place on Oct. 27, 2018 when a gunman shot and killed  members of the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. It’s also dedicated to the twelve college age …

The piano balladry of “Love Is,” the first track in Rebecca Blasband’s all new album Here, delicately drifts through the atmosphere of an airy production as it were as light as a feather. Blasband’s voice is the heaviest component of the entire song, and it actually weighs down the effervescent grooves …

A pulsating bassline ushers us into Xuan’s new album Have Some Fun shortly after we enter “Not the Man,” a groove-laden, bittersweet pop tune with a suffocating polish that makes its melody effervescent. Xuan wanders through the lyrics with supreme attentiveness; the words chase after the harmonies in the bassline while the …

URL: http://www.skyfactormusic.com/ Music doesn’t have to be overdriven with indulgent distortion to rock hard, and rarely has that statement been more applicable to an album than it is in Skyfactor’s A Thousand Sounds. Acoustic guitars take on hard rock rhythms in the eleven song masterpiece, which boasts a sharply refined mix …

URL: https://sarahparkermusic.com/ Sarah Parker’s album Strawberry Moon rates as a family affair of the best sort. Produced by husband and respected singer/songwriter/musician Robert Parker, Sarah Parker proves her mettle as a singer and songwriter alike with this release but goes a step further with her wholehearted embrace of traditional country sounds. The …

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/kazyaking/ Describing their music as essentially folk songs with modern influences seeping into work, Kazyak is led by singer/songwriter Peter Frey and their first full length studio release Reflection solidifies their standing as one of the most promising acts in recent memory. They are based in Minnesota’s Twin Cities area and …

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/TheBlackmailSeduction/ This is confident, strutting music not afraid to pursue its own ends and blissfully dismissive of any modern tradition. The Blackmail Seduction’s new release The Blackmail Seduction II doesn’t treat rock music like a butterfly pinned under glass however; instead, the songs discussed here are among the most stunning re-inventions …

URL: http://patientlyawaitingthemeteorite.band/ For those of us who live for progressive music that dexterously pushes us to reexamine the structure of sound and artistry itself, Canadian rockers Patiently Awaiting the Meteorite have gifted us an album for the ages in Canyon Diablo, their spellbinding debut LP out everywhere this year. PATM invoke …