Jim O'Rourke
The Visitor
(Drag City)

Several years ago Jim O'Rourke left Sonic Youth, moved to Japan and announced he was quitting music. Unsurprisingly, the esteemed producer, mixer, and player barely stayed retired as long as Jay-Z. Enter his fascinating new solo album, The Visitor. This 38-minute instrumental suite is sequenced as a single track, largely composed of guitar, drums and woodwinds. It effortlessly segues between meditative ambiance, knotty drones and propulsive grooves. You can hear echoes of John Fahey, classic minimalism, and the expressive melancholy of George Winston. The periodic bursts of banjo even recall Sufjan Stevens. Despite being created solely by O'Rourke in his Tokyo apartment, the piece has an expansive feel that immediately captivates with its mesh of pleasantly shifting textures. It's an immersive experience, which is why O'Rourke has refused to make the album available digitally and advises listening to it on speakers. The Visitor richly repays these demands.   —Jeff Jackson

The Hidden Cameras
Origin: Orphan
(Arts & Crafts)

Origin: Orphan begins with a buzzing insistence that slowly invades; it's like being awakened by a neighbor's noisy vacuum. It's hard not to bend closer to the speaker to try to make out the elements of the growing rumble of sounds. When at last the trembly tenor vocals arrive, the atmosphere has built to a strange pitch. It's tough to say even what the instrumentation is. Before long, the textures coalesce into a weird echo of pop, complete with guitar chords and melodic hooks. Playfulness abounds—track two is called "In the NA" (which is pronounced "nah") and that weird word crops up over and over while wobbly synth directs the proceedings. The tracks unfold with insistence, none necessarily compelling on its own, but the album, taken as a whole, is a suspenseful listen. This is pop music with alien elements, surprising and strange.  —James Heflin

Fool's Gold
Fool's Gold
(I Am Sound Records)

Starting as a side project for two Los Angeles musicians, Fool's Gold has since mutated into a full-blown collective. Consisting of a core group of 10 to 12 musicians, the music is as varied as the personnel. The music incorporates mostly African melodies and rhythms; many of the instruments used are hand-made and include banana bells, goat-toe rattles and shell gourds. The vocals, often reflective in nature, alternate between English and Hebrew. However, there is also evidence of '80s pop influence and shades of dance music, particularly in the heavy use of bass. Upon first listen, the songs on this self-titled debut show very few signs of the way in which they were recorded: mostly live in a two-day session before final completion in an assortment of living rooms and closets.  —Michael Cimaomo