I first wrote about Either/Orwell — the ambient side project from Writ on Water’s Jeff Mackey — several months ago. I’ve been listening to the final full-length for awhile now, and it’s certainly worth checking out if you’re a fan of Hammock’s guitar-based ambience, Robin Guthrie’s recent solo recordings, or Stars of the Lid.

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Chicago’s Lightfoils take their name from wing-like objects that use light pressure instead of air pressure to generate lift and motion (no really, think solar sails). The name is more than a geekily poetic moniker, though. As their four-song debut EP reveals, it’s a fairly accurate description for what occurs within the quintet’s music.

The Lightfoils EP is as light (npi) and effervescent as anything in Lush’s catalog, and yet it’s propulsive and dynamic thanks to the rhythm section of Cory Osborne (bass) and John Rungger (drums). The result is a gently cathartic listen, an album that floats and flows in the finest shoegazer tradition and yet nevertheless careens madly and recklessly through its four songs.

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A fascinating paradox has been at work in the heart of lovesliescrushing’s music for two decades now. On the one hand, their music is loud, overwhelming, and crushing (npi) with its nigh-infinite layers of overdriven and effects-laden guitars. At times, it’s almost painful to listen to on Ghost Colored Halo, particularly on such songs as “Tiger Hunts Alone” with its dulcimer-like tones and feverish swirls of sound, or “Darklit and Crow” and its gloomy, subterranean guitar pulses.

On the other hand, the music, for all of its intensity and density, is never as harsh and eardrum-rupturing as it feels like it should be. Perhaps Melissa Arpin-Duimstra’s wordless vocals, though airy and disembodied, still have enough mass to somehow blunt Scott Cortez‘ guitar avalanches. Or perhaps there’s some sort of mutual annhilation going on in the midst of those guitar layers that sets off a chain reaction, softening their edge.

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As was the case with 2010’s Memories Fade Under A Shallow Autumn Snow, The Immensity Of Unstained Light is a lovely and emotional piece of atmospherica, a truly graceful swansong permeated with finality and resignation — which makes sense given that it’s Language of Landscape’s final release. But while certainly melancholy, it’s not depressing per se. There's finality, but also closure, relief, and even triumph in its twenty minutes.

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There was a time during the early ’90s when The Prayer Chain was the Christian alternative band. Indeed, they — along with Mortal and The Violet Burning — were among the first Christian alternative artists I listened to with any regularity, and they opened my eyes to the fact that Christians could make music that avoided the clichés and pitfalls of CCM.

The band broke up in 1995 shortly after releasing their third album, Mercury. Unfortunately, the band’s original version of Mercury was deemed unsellable by their record label, and they were told to return to the studio and record something more commercially viable. That original version, now called Humb, basically sat on the shelves for years… until now.

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Jay Tholen has been a pretty busy guy in 2011. In February, he released his Blood Fete EP and then followed that in August with Mud Pies or Bread and Wine?, a “loose, crusty, and fun” release inspired by Brian Eno's “oblique strategies” that I reviewed over on Christ and Pop Culture. (And just for the record, “Secret Name”, is almost certain to appear on my year-end mix). And earlier this month, he released Vainglory, a five-song EP that features his unique, characteristic take on chiptune.

Chiptune as an aesthetic can be fun and entertaining, but to be honest, I often find it rather cheesy in practice, focused more on 8-bit nostalgia and kitsch for their own sakes, and on little else. But listening to the one-two punch of “Ancient Feast, Specially Prepared” and “The Call of Abaddon”, it's clear that Tholen is using chiptune as a jumping off point for something deeper and more intriguing.

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Earlier this week, I had Domino Records’ SoundCloud page streaming in the background innocuously enough when a song came over that I could feel working its way into my consciousness. It didn’t impress me immediately, such was its understated nature, but by its end I was scrambling to find out everything I could about it. That song was “Catherine Wheel” by Wild Beasts, the first time I'd ever heard the English group. It was the voice that got to me, a sensual falsetto croon existing somewhere between Erasure’s Andy Bell and Junior Boys’ Jeremy Greenspan, and the group masterfully warped and layered it in affecting ways. Suffice to say, I became rather obsessed and quickly tracked down their latest album, Smother.

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Last year, I wrote about A Word of Encouragement, a delightful little Christmas album from Sam Billen and Josh Atkinson. But somehow, I had completely missed that the year before, in 2009, Billen had released an equally delightful solo album titled Headphones & Cellphones. Fortunately, the good people at The Record Machine were able to help me fix that oversight, and as a result, the album has been in pretty constant rotation over the last few weeks.

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