"Luminous"

1. Horace Andy, “Midnight Rocker”
2. Mizmor & Thou, “Myopia”
3. Golden Brown, “Luminous”

Bandcamp is an online music platform used largely by independent artists and record labels to stream songs and sell merchandise. It’s also a vibrant virtual community teeming with interesting sounds waiting to be discovered. Each week, I’ll highlight three releases available on the site that are worth your time and attention. If you find something you dig, please consider supporting the artist with a purchase.

Horace Andy, “Midnight Rocker”

Horace Andy is a multi-generational giant: He cemented his legacy as a reggae artist in the 1970s with landmark albums like his debut, “Skylarking,” then scored some deserved mainstream success in the 1990s via his collaborations with English trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack. Now, at age 71, Andy is back with a new solo album called “Midnight Rockers” that features heaping helpings of the man’s distinctively beautiful voice and production by famed dub producer Adrian Sherwood. The combination of the two makes for a wonderful late-career highlight with deep roots and space-age vision.

Mizmor & Thou, “Myopia”

What happens when two of the heaviest bands in the American underground get together in secret, write some songs and then perform and record them? In this case, you get “Myopia,” an eight-track, 74-minute behemoth of an album that crawls along at a snail’s pace, pulverizing everything in its path. Mizmor is a spine-tingling one-man black metal act from Portland. Thou is a prolific and progressive doom band from Louisiana. And their work here together feels like a harrowing game of tug o’ war played in knee-deep sludge, which makes the moments of triumph and catharsis feel all the more real.

Golden Brown, “Luminous”

After you endure (in a good way) the Thou-meets-Mizmor album detailed above, put on the music of Golden Brown, aka Stefan Beck of Colorado. “Luminous” is a transmission from another world, one not yet touched by pandemics and politics and the rush and the noise of everyday life in 2022. Indeed, Beck has a talent for producing music that stays tranquil and calming for minutes on end without dissolving into a new-age nothingburger. His gentle, rippling guitar licks, soft keyboard drones and other musical murmurs should be required listening for anyone who has lived through the past few years.