For Brooklyn-based sound sculptor Walrus Ghost, everything is fair game. Tracks like ‘Bent’ and ‘Seventwentyone’ take crashing waves and chilling voices caught in suspended animation, re-making them as aural landscapes dense as a rainforest. Latest record ‘uplifting themes for the naysayer’ takes some of the picturesque destinations you can find on Walrus Ghost’s Instagram, and juxtaposes these journeys together in ways a camera could never capture. Listen to the haunting ‘PCM126’ below and make sure to wear a good pair of hiking boots along with a great pair of headphones. Mike Levine (@Goldnuggets)

This band submitted their music for coverage here.

Yo NYC folks!

There’s no anniversary without one (or three) parties!

Please join us to celebrate The Deli’s Ten Year Anniversary – FULL POSTER HERE. 

RSVP via FB! 

AUGUST 02 – FREE – 18+
Folk and Pop Night at Brooklyn Bazaar

12.00 DIANCE BIRCH
11.00 Secret Someones
10.00 5j Barrow
9.00 The Prettiots
8.00 Poor Remy

The Deli’s Staff

With the release of her sophomore full-length album “Blood Ballet,” 20 year old singer/songwriter Maggie Rogers crafts an impeccable collection of folk songs that convey an elementary charm. Opening track “Resonant Body” is built around banjo accompaniment, giving it an Americana feel that takes us back to Neil Young’s more rural tracks. Her voice is seductive, drawing the listener into a world of lyrical imagery with a clear gentle delivery. “James” takes the storytelling further with a three-quarter time waltz progression and heartfelt sentiment. “Drift” adds synth strings and soft percussion to the mix, underscoring strong-yet-tender vocals. Contemporary artists like The Pierces, Wilsen and Courtney Barnett all come to mind as kindred souls. – Dave Cromwell

We added this song to The Deli’s playlist of Best rootsy songs by emerging NYC artists – check it out!

In a city that moves as fast as ours, it’s nice to know there’s musicians out there like King Holiday that are able to show us how important it is to not forget the simple things in life: like breathing for instance. With a near-mystical blend of astro-soul and funk groove, the Bedstuy, Brooklyn 10-piece construct soaring melodies in tracks like ‘Dub of Love’ and ‘Breathe’ that bring home an aura of peace and nostalgia that ties together disparate influences with a tightly wound bow. Hear blazing track ‘Breathe’ below and see the band when they play at Baby’s All Right on Friday, July 18th. – Mike Levine (@Goldnuggets)

This band submitted their music for coverage here.

Sun Looks Down, a band made up of recent Columbia grads Diana Flanagan, Spencer Horstman, Jacob Sunshine, and David Su, writes songs both incandescent and swoon-worthy. The tracks on “Sungaze,” the band’s latest EP (and an appropriate genre name for the band), are hazy, feverish, and entirely unafraid of dissonance or experimentation. Take, for example “Wash Out the Red” (streaming). The song begins sparsly, built upon Horstman’s subtle keyboard arrangement and Flanagan’s ethereal vocal passages, while a transcendent distorted guitar, shimmering and racing light years ahead, cuts through the softness like a bloody knife, gradually taking the track to a louder place. “Sungaze” is all the more impressive for being the band’s debut. The EP captures a sense of tense balance and dynamic awareness of a band at their prime. Make sure to catch Sun Looks Down and The Graveyard Kids at The Mercury Lounge on July 5. – Emilio Herce

Tonight, the three piece blusey thrash-rock outfit STRNGRS start a July residency at Pianos, with featured shows on the 3rd, 10th, 17th and 24th. Their 2013 release “5 Dynamic New Tunes!” emphasized a hyper blues energy that drew comparisons to the White Stripes/Black Keys axis. Stand-out tracks like “Subtle Reminder” channeled Jack’s vocal inflections, while “Settle Me Down” went heavier with an angular start/stop progression that leaned more towards early Led Zepplin. 2014’s “Magic Boy” showed the band dialing down its frantic pace on the slow burn intensity of “Running Dry.” While that track emphasizes a bluesman’s harrowing wail, “17 Letters” (streaming) finds the band streamlining their sound into a pop-friendly two and a half minutes. “Never Can Tell” smolders with a “Voodoo Child” vibe, while “Outta My Mind” bursts out on a harmonica enhanced rave up over a rabid psychotic beat. – Dave Cromwell

Hot on the heels of her quirky, Youtube banned spring single “Ronald Reagan,” NYC electro-nymph Melody Joy unleashes another politically-fierce number with “Murica.” Don’t tell anybody, but she’s also The Deli’s summer issue mystery cover girl. Never easy to pin down, Joy goes hip-hop for the second release in a row. This time around, the beats are more extreme, bordering on industrial. Lyrically, things plunge the stars and stripes into sexually provocative territory. It’s obtuse and dark, but never didactic. American corruption is experienced without the least hint of moralizing. And therein lies Joy’s gift as an artist. She doesn’t want your brain, when she’s already got your body. Now make it move by seeing her live at the Hotel Chantelle on Thursday, 7/3/2014, 11pm. – Brian Chidester

Despite their vibrant name, and the fact that thier new single ‘Pseudocide’ sways like one who has overdosed on cherryade and blue smarties, NYC’s The Colorines can be dark – although in quirky ways. ‘Everybody said I was gay, and everyone thinks I’m retarded’ they croon, telling a tale full of glorious gallows humour at the freedom that might come from faking your own death. With a merry-go-round lucky bounce to it, the track bounds along, meditatively looping with a circus style psychedelic feel that would have made John Lennon (circa 1967) very happy indeed. Luminous acoustic guitars and smokey melodica arpeggios, a fluffy tickling drum beat, and a weary vocal comprise the arsenal of intoxicating sounds that Robosco, Dwreck, Ozkr and Grim, who formed earlier this year, demonstrated on their recent ‘Paleontology‘ EP. ‘Pseudocide’ continues on the same trajectory. Fans of foxes should look away now. See them live at Glasslands on July 18. – Francesca Baker

On a Friday night of December 2004, at Manhattan venue Sin-e’ in Attorney Street, an emerging NYC band with a home recorded debut album played The Deli‘s launch party. It was a packed crowd and everyone was holding the first issue of The Deli, whose cover these upstarts were gracing. That band was Grizzly Bear. It remains one of the most exciting nights of my life, the night I understood that this magazine had a shot at being here to stay.

Now, this ten-year anniversary issue hopes to be a(nother) celebration of this great scene, in a less cluttered, more narratorial and visually appealing form thanks to art critic Brian Chidester’s work as a guest editor. This issue also comes with my deep hope for NYC to keep churning out exceptional music of all kinds for the foreseeable future.

FIND THE PAPER ISSUE OF THE DELI IN MANHATTAN AND BROOKLYN, READ IT IN PDF HERE, OR BUY IT HERE FOR JUST $5.

Paolo De Gregorio,
Editor-in-Chief and Publisher

The cover of the 1st Issue of The Deli (December 2004)

We blogged about 5J Barrow (Deli chart ranking here) a few months ago, as they released their debut full-length album, ‘From the Dim, Sweet Light.’ Fronted by Broadway’s Spring Awakening star Eryn Murman, the sextet has just won WNYC’s Battle of the Boroughs. Their upbeat, dramatic music mixes folk roots with contemporary influences, and strong, soulful vocals. One particular favorite off the album is “Circus” for its uplifting tone and powerful voices. “Wildwood” features the same effervescent spirit, with a catchy beat. See them live at Rockwood on both 7/11 and 7/12. The first performance will be a special acoustic set. – Sammie Spektor

South Side Brooklyn The Spix have license to feel chagrined by the explosion of hipsterdom and their once peaceful home of Williamsburg becoming the de facto capital of the world. MCs Zeps and Eternal Suarez bring their discontent to the face with the new track and video, “THC” [The Hipsters Came] that let’s says "addresses" the changes in their neighborhood. Their old school style flows over the beats like traffic over the Billyburg bridge. It’s one of those slow summer jams for hot days and cold drinks and offers a fresh perspective about the ever changing landscape of NYC and Brooklyn. – BrokeMC

Brooklyn based Inland Traveler sew together gorgeously layered, future-facing folk songs. On their recent single "Paths Are Frozen" (streaming) Gerald Edward, Katie Locke, and Lucas Madrazo share vocals, creating valleys of sound which rise to crescendo with every chorus, each as infectious as the last. The song harbors an alt-country lilt, not just in tone and instrumentation, but also in its narrative inclination. The song is about time itself, measured in summers, transient in the present, and cemented in the past. "Paths Are Frozen," like its subject, is melancholy in retrospect, but worthy of repeated listens. – @emilioherce