Every once in a while you stumble upon an album that really grabs you, even if for the life of you you can’t figure out why– and for me, The World Without Parking Lots’ Five Songs About Power Lines is that album. It’s a marbled swirl of quiet instrumentation and sparse sampling, resulting in five intangibly beautiful tracks that make you realize the meaning of music comes just as much from what you hear as what you don’t. Noise melds seamlessly into musical sound, pulling you into the subconscious of Ethan T. Parcell, The World Without Parking Lots’ mastermind. (Who happens to reside right here in Boston, MA, where you also might know him as part of Cowboy Band.)

Check it on Bandcamp, and also be sure to check out equally intriguing releases from the group’s labelmates over at Lungbasket Recordings. All of the tracks from Five Songs are good, though I do recommend “Moss / Hold / High / Acre” for its adept use of weather radio sampling-it reminds me of the multiple times I’ve had ambient music on as weather.com inexplicably begins talking to me and wish I’d recorded it.