Behold! A voyaging quintent from out of time, space and untravelled highways of the mind! Lumerians are a curious bunch (based in San Francisco) who came in wayyyy under the radar near the start of the year and haven't left my digital turntables since then. 2013 is full of groove-laden throwbacks in every genre under the blue sky of planet Earth, but these boys keep the beat so well across The High Frontier that you can't help but feel a bit in awe as you spin it. Every song is a different breed of hypnosis, hallucinations given nuance and purposeful direction even when you have no clue where they're taking you. Hell, some of it is so catchy and interesting that it makes you wonder how well your own favorite dopesmokers would have fared in comparison a few decades back ('Dogon Genesis', the title track).

The prerequisites to sitting back and loving the living shit out of this sophomore release do not necessarily entail being stoned all the way to Jupiter and back before pressing play, but it definitely doesn't hurt. Either way, the level of craft and talent to create a time machine like this was a no-brainer for my own end of the year lineup, so I'd recommend hopping aboard and see what you think.

New Zealand isn't exactly known as one of 2013's rap mecca countries in today's increasingly diverse international hip-hop community. But if you were gonna pluck but one NZ talented fella from the web of rymes and DIY aesthetica, David Dallas would be your boy. Armed to the teeth with a lighter-than-air flow and the beautifully nuanced production of Fire & Ice (who've worked with Freddie Gibbs and a number of other talents), David brings his Auckland experiences into vivid, biting focus over the course of twelve snappy cuts. And like a big cloud all alone in the sky, we're right up in the stratosphere alongside him as he drifts over jazzy mediations ('Gotta Know'), choral, moody explorations of the inner mind ('My Mentality') and even the distance and longing a person experiences when departing to another place away from the people you love ('The Gate').

It's not a stretch to say most hip-hop albums are relatively personal in nature to the MC who orchestrate these LPs, mixtapes and other fare. In fact, the discographies of hip-hop stars, big and small alike, resemble biographies more than collections of purposely diverse songs that tread more obtuse territory. But while the subject matter here won't blow your mind to smithereens, David Dallas has a knack for songwriting, hooks and atmosphere that even some of the top guys at the peak of the game are severely lacking.

A surprising number of hip-hop and rap releases left me cold this year. This one however, like its title, falls exactly where it needs to and leaves you musing even as those jazzy horns fade into the silence.

One day a few years back, three talented museos led by guitar virtuoso / singer-songwriter Petteri Sariola took up residence in a centuries old cabin out in the middle of god forsaken Finland, a locale so remote and ill-kept that even black mold feared to tread its inner architecture. After lighting up a few bongs and torching a couple tequila shots, they pulled out their gear and decided to record an album on the premises over the course of a week despite having no songs written.

That trio was Dead Sirius 3000, and that album is their debut masterpiece Get Sirius, an utterly inspired exercise in fluid popcraft and spontaneity that many a rock band out there these days would kill to have to their credit.

Despite the fact that all twelve songs were literally composed and recorded within hours, sometimes even minutes of setting up camp, they're all sensational. Hell, just the first six songs alone are packed with enough hooks and salient passages to fill up a warehouse meat locker to full capacity and beyond. And some songs in particular, such as the Chick Corea-turned-folk rocker 'She Was A Woman' and the 3-1/2 minutes of pop perfection known as 'The Hole', are good enough to rule the world for at least 15 minutes if someone had the balls to promote these fellas on radio.

But this album wouldn't have made my list if it was merely just an exceptional pop record. No, these guys are chameleons of the absolute best kind. A trippy and aptly-named little number called 'Mushrooms' serves as an interlude into a raw, Southern fried take on modern radio R&B with 'Hands Down', only to shift gears again into a tasty trip-rock fix with 'Bleed Out' and even your fair share of QOTSA atmospheric alt. rock in 'Gimme A Break' and 'Daddy's Bottle'. In other words, there's a LOT of diversity across these songs, which makes this debut both very immediate yet fully warranting multiple spins just to take in the complete scope of what this trio offers.

Modern pop/rock radio may be dead in 2013....but if you have to be dead, you might as well stick with being Dead Sirius.

Hey there boys and girls! Didn't get your melancholic heavy prog-rock rock fix this year? Did Riverside's Shrine Of New Generation Slaves feel a bit too safe to your ears? Do you love Poland? And finally, would you be happy if there was another band out there who could out-prog Riverside at their own game?

If my inquisition begets even a single yes, then guess what? You need to dive into Votum and their 3rd LP Harvest Moon IMMEDIATELY! Because it is a MONSTER.

I had my fair share of pickings this year as far as heavier, alt-rock tinged prog goes this year, but none of them are quite as muscular, and dare I say it - haunting - as this release is. The first half of the album in particular, which runs from 'Vicious Circle' through 'Numb', is all killer and no filler. Every element at fore, whether it's Maciej Kosinski and his rich, strangely pure vocal delivery or the insidious bass of Bartek Turkowski, is mixed and mastered to such a sharp degree of clarity that these already excellent songs take on unnatural lives of their own. And if that isn't the mark of a truly special album in this day and age...I don't know what is.

And speaking of the songs, we're taken to a number of dark places lyrically, with death being quite a prevalent destination in many of 'em. Take 'Cobwebs' for instance - "A kiss, the last she'd ever give / Ain't it just as if we said goodbye? / The smile on her lips / As she melted into darkness...

Still, when every song is an earworm and the record in question has such excellent pacing that its over before you know it, perhaps we can afford to let some shadow in.

Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away, the great Carl Jung said that the pendulum of the mind alternates not between right and wrong, but between sense and nonsense. A rather fiendish perspective of our psychological habitations to be sure, but one that seems more and more true whenever the bong-ripping rhythms of duo Shpongle happen to shamble their way into my virtual nightly turntable, which is what happened quite often in the second half of 2013.

Despite how fresh & modern their take on World Music/Trance hybridization has remained since their formation in 1998, the kings of psybient have an elusive primordial quality to the musical tapestry they've assembled on each LP that pulls you back to eras long past, those lost years where man danced naked under the light of the moon and the winds and rains were gods that needed to be communed with even as you struggled to appease their whims.

So fifteen years into their career and many good albums later, how does Museum Of Consciousness fare? Sense and nonsense certainly abound in equal measure, with some songs coalescing into a clear direction early on ('Brain In A Fishtank') whilst others feel fit to have your brainwaves wander a plethora of astral planes before crashing you back down to Earth ('The Aquatic Garden Of Extra-Celestial Delights'). The flutes, the skull-reverberating synthesizers and all the insidious grooves and texturing you expect reappear in full and glorious prominence...and, if anything, they sound better than they ever have before.

Like all iconic bands & projects in their respective spheres of influence these days, Shpongle would have been hard pressed to reinvent the wheel without alienating their audience under even the most ideal of circumstances. But if the music is this engrossing despite its familiarity...do you really need to? Rave on!! \m/

It's been a long, long journey to get to 2013 for the world's oldest progressive metal band: 31 freakin' years in fact. After cementing the genre alongside Iron Maiden, Queensrÿche and a couple of others, the 90's and 00's brought countless imitators and competitors, and since 2004 the band that started it all has remained in a state of uncertain hermitage until Darkness Of A Different Light emerged a month or so ago out of a 10 year abyss. That's a pretty damn long gap between albums...so how good could it really be?

In one word, I'll go ahead and say phenomenal. Anyone with a passing interest in heavy metal at all is probably familiar with the guitar prowess of Jim Matheos and the distinctive tenor of long time Texan vocalist Ray Alder, but even if you've never heard a Fates Warning album before, you'd be quite impressed with this one. Its crushingly heavy, very melodic and despite being primarily guitar driven, the songs are superb and rank among the most distinct they've ever laid to the recording pasture.

This sucker is simply a winner through and through. Looking for a thrash-oriented number to add to your DJ Plug queue? Opening song 'One Thousand Fires' is your new best friend. Into the more modern groove of bands like Tool & Karnivool? Take 'Firefly' and 'I Am' on for size and let Alder's voice pull you into the sky. And for anyone who wants to hear an example of how to do a 14-minute epic right, there's closing cut 'And Yet It Moves' to satisfy your hankerin' for a deep-dish progger.

There are many bands out there who certainly qualify as "progressive" metal...but there's only one Fates Warning. And if there was ever an album to give you that segue into their fascinating dimension, 2013 just delivered it on a shiny silver platter.

A little disclaimer going into this: forget CHVRCHES. Forget Lorde. Forget Haim or whatever half-baked "retro" 80's synth-pop acts topped your list this year. They all suck compared to the uncanny brilliance illustrated by St. Lucia's magnificent debut When The Night, sax and all. I mean, seriously dudes...go ahead, try to find a better indie-pop album this year, cause it ain't The 1975 or whatever Pitchfork-endorsed poseurs pass for pop sensationalists in this corner o' the century.

Honestly, I've heard my fair share of indie-pop and "chillwave" and everything in between over what feels like a decade or more at this point. For every decent album with actual hooks and some nuance there's 50 more records of disposable garbage without any real personality or staying power. So you can imagine how surprised I was when the single best indie-anything album I've heard since Wincing The Night Away back in 2007 happens to get recommended to me out of the blue by a band I was already following.

What struck me like a thunderbolt was this act's strange yet entrancing tropical vibe, an atmosphere conjured from some nether realm between The Flaming Lips, Wild Nothing and Lionel Ritchie. I spun the album's lead single 'Elevate' over and over again for the following 24 hours like my life depended on it: I subsequently learned that the damn thing is auditory crack-cocaine with gated drums.

Flash forward a month or so later, and I get to hear the whole record. Lo' and behold, I learn that the rest of the album is just as good yet nothing like it in some respects...and that's just more to this debut record's credit methinks: it changes things up enough from song to song to keep you invested, yet it never sheds its festive mood. A real record with a raison d'etre to match, conceived and produced from the ground up by the sort of trendy Brooklyn act that wouldn't survive 5 seconds in a mosh pit...who woulda ever thunk it.

Vocalist and band mastermind Jean-Philip Grobler is a strange creature: his voice isn't particularly strong or unique on its own, but his songcrafting prowess rivals some of the best pop acts of the 80's. For example, a tune like 'Closer Than This' starts off with synthesizer line straight out of a Survivor album before morphing into a lilting, call-and-response slice of pop nirvana...and the song isn't even half over yet by this point!

But enough rambling: I can't think of a more crowded musical arena outside of metal in 2013 than the mainstream oriented, ADD-riddled landscape of pop music, but if there was some kind of race to see who could put together the end-all to end-all of "nu-80's" pop albums before Xmas came and went, I'd say St. Lucia is the clear winner by a landslide of sunshine, coconuts and tiki dancers.

So, I'll be the first to admit it: the phrase "one of the best kept secrets in ____"is a bonafide cliche. Say two different people pick two completely different obscure records nobody's ever heard of: I'd bet you $50 and a three day old pizza that each will say their respective record is a best kept secret even if neither actually is. xD

Yet every so often, you WILL find albums that turn cliches on their head: for me, the album that falls into the previously mentioned cliche category would be this latest one from Austin, TX power-pop favorites Blue Cartoon. Five albums into their career since the 90's, why these guys never got huge in that heyday alongside groups like Guster, Jellyfish, Foo Fighters, the New Radicals, etc. has always been a mystery to me. They're gorgeously guitar driven, catchy to an unprecedented degree and seem capable of pretty much doing anything they set their mind to musically. They're a camaraderie equipped with musical magic in all the right places, that one-in-a-million outfit capable of taking over the planet if someone could simply get their existence across to all those Beatles and Badfinger fanclubs who waste their time searching for rare F-sides on vinyl of said bands.

Still, I'm not much for nostalgia or speculation: Are You Getting On? is a spectacular album whatever your parameters, one that could have topped my list in any year. The fact it happens to be 2013 is of no consequence whatsoever, and might be something of a plus depending on your own tastes.

Expect a very 70's styled album in any case though. Unlike their last few albums, they're drawing upon a very unique crossover bent which incorporates psychedelia and more experimental ideas into their core West Coast power pop signature blend, and the results are sublime to say the least. Whether they're cruising down a fuzz-lined highway with their sitar/guitar/keyboard interplay on 'Remission' or even throwing a flute into the mix on 'Pity Party', these guys pull no punches. And when you take a moment to consider the skintight drumming talents of powerhouse Mike Reynolds and the slick, knotty basswork of Lee Elliott that levitate the group's already stellar sound right off the ground...hell, I'm simply sad that the majority of people this year missed the boat on this one, because its a killer ride in the biggest, baddest 70's-sounding muscle car I've heard in over a decade.

So, who likes any of the bands I mentioned so far in this review? If you don't fall in love with Blue Cartoon like I did after going through this LP based on what I've said so far, I will serve you my left arm (and armpit) in mustard sauce with a slice of pineapple. Such is a small price to pay to get an album this good into the collections of people who are looking for something truly special in 2013.