New Music Friday: 13th Floor New Album Picks: September 29, 2023

New Music Friday is here again and we’ve got plenty of it! Check out The 13th Floor’s top 5 picks out of today’s new albums and EPs. We think you’ll find something you’ll like.

The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda has selected these 5 new releases that he thinks demand your attention:

1. Rodney Fisher and The Response – Art School Dropout (Bigpop) Rodney Fisher (Goodshirt) looks inward. “While making Art School Dropout, we were trying to get a blend of the grounded sounds of acoustic driven music with the more other-worldy electronic embellishments that help create an atmosphere of introspection and nostalgia,” say Victoria and Andy Knopp, the duo who make up The Response. “We knew Rodney wanted to explore a more fragile voice style with this record and we wanted to make sure the instrumentals were the perfect bed for letting that emotive vocal delivery shine.” Watch for a Rodney Fisher single session later today at The 13th Floor.

2. Wilco – Cousin (dBpm) This latest offering from our boys in Chicago was produced by Cate Le Bon, the first time the band has used an outside producer. “The amazing thing about Wilco is they can be anything,” Le Bon said of the collaboration. “They’re so mercurial, and there’s this thread of authenticity that flows through everything they do, whatever the genre, whatever the feel of the record. There aren’t many bands who are able to, this deep into a successful career, successfully change things up.”

3. K M T P – With Love, K M T P (Sunreturn) K M T P is Keria Paterson. Patterson recorded nearly all of the instrumentation over a short week with producer Peter Ruddell (Wax Chattels) “I had never created an album as a solo musician,” says Paterson. “I really wanted to embrace this new challenge as an artist. It felt like something I needed to do at the time in order to properly represent the songs in my desired way. I think of albums as more of a complete story than as a collection of songs; I really wanted to lean into this mentality for With Love, K M T P.”

4. The Mons Whaler – Won’t Let You Go EP (DRM) Hailing from Taranaki, the members of The Mons Whaler themselves are deeply connected to their indigenous Maori roots. They have broken the socialised stereotypes by writing and performing music typically outside their expected genre furthermore bridging the gap between what is expected from what we see and what just works. 

5. The Pink Frosts – Unremarkable Product EP (TPF) This Wellington-based Post Punk/New Wave is inspired by classic acts such as Gang of Four, Joy Division, Public Image Ltd, and The Cure as well as modern groups like Fontaines DC, and Sleaford Mods – The Pink Frosts create contemporary music for troubled times, both in touch with the past and showing a relentless pursuit of challenging, and new ideas.