Dr. Nittler’s Elastic Soultastic Planet – Faux Patina
Outputmessage – Try Again
DC Improvisers Collective – Unified Conspiracy Theory
Mbandi – Fairy Tale
The Grit Pushers – Song 5
True Womanhood – The Monk
David Marc Alterman (performed by Astrid Walschott Stapp) – Octagon
Luke Denton – Montana Sky
Nancy Joie Wilkie – Which Way To Go
Judah – Drums Don’t Lie
Brian Wilbur Grundstrom – For Whom the Bell Tolls Opera – Act 1 Scene 3
Strange Times People Band – Aye Tu
Urban Verbs – Subways
WonderChurch – A Head In a Lion’s Mouth
Western Affairs – Iowa
Gordon Withers – 2.9
Tomás Pagán Motta – I Need a Woman
Blacksage – Make Out Interlude
Sansyou – Let It Expand
Miyazaki – Apparition

Urban Verbs – The Only One Of You
Strange Times People Band – Andion
Luke Denton – Light & Happy
Dirdy Redzz – Hidden leaf village
Diggs Duke – Crazy Like A Fox
Brian Forehand – 5:01 p.m. (Dusk Moves)
America Hearts – Race Car Driver
The Grit Pushers – Moonshine
Jon Miller – Toll Booth Blues
Dammit Eugene – We Often
Terrill Mast – Venetian Corridors
Dmerit – Audobons
Kindlewood – Where Tales Are Told
DC Improvisers Collective – Rosslyn Suite
The Basement Tapes – Ubermensch
Young Summer – Waves That Rolled You Under
Bliss – Angel
Big Sky Conspiracy – Puzzle Palace Prophet
Letzkus Lanou – Ted n Lindsay
Sansyou – Docking Fish

Ken & Brad Kolodner – Skipping Rocks
Wildhoney – My Disguise
Otis Infrastructure – Oxbow
Will Spelker – He Was Mensa
Roger Aldridge – Samba Da Aguia Pescadora
Sonnet Cottage – A Million Voices
Sansyou – Let It Expand
Kingsley Flood – Cavalry
Eva Cassidy – Fields of Gold
Dupont Brass – Slow Jamz
Zenon Slawinski – Zango Revisited
Dawit Eklund – Psycho Animus
MILK$ – Wonder Woman
Beautiful Swimmers – Swimmers Groove
Brian Forehand – Moonroof
Wylder – Swells
Damu the Fudgemunk – Supply For Demand – Instrumental
Empresarios – No Vamos A Parar
WonderChurch – A Head In a Lion’s Mouth
Power Pirate – Infecting Us

HD Sunrise – Plein Air
DC Improvisers Collective – Rosslyn Suite
Vandaveer – Poor Edward
Nerftoss – Virtue Walk
Matt Rippetoe – Teen Dracula
Champ de Mars – American Static
Sherwood Gainer – Action Item X
Night Streets – Night Streets
Brian Forehand – 5:01 p.m. (Dusk Moves)
Clif Hardin – Gigue from Suite for Piano
The Scotch Bonnets – Pim Pim Pim
Sansyou – Docking Fish
Western Affairs – Laura
Mark Haag – Spanish Chant
Aaron Agre – Time Window
Brûlée – The Wagon I’m On
Lookout Gang – Shack-It
Mark Sylvester – Dance of the Misfits
Tone – PLSKN
Warren Wolf – Montara

Flash Frequency – Vibration
Incredible Change – Ecce Mono
Sansyou – The Enthusiast
The Universal Friend Rays – Side A
Throw Me A Rope – Punk Theory/No Theory
Fields Burning – At The Break Of Day
Jonny Grave – The Rebel in the Herringbone
Dissonance – Picnic at the Disco
Nice Breeze – Transparency
Shannon Gunn and the Bullettes – Blue Moo
David King – Solar Impulse
Astronaut Jones – Game Theory (ft. Frank Mitchell Jr.)
Jau Ocean – Foolish Games
Jeremy Padow – Rising Chords, 6/8
Language of Sleep – Act II
Wild Coast – Stare Scared
We Were Pirates – The Cheapening
Pilesar – Balaphobic
Timmy Sells His Soul – Hallways
Brûlée – Begging Bowl

Jonny Grave – After the Wake
Machine Drift – Sensory Fiction
Q and Not U – Soft Pyramids
The Orchid – You Cannot Pave The Warpath
Exit Vehicles – Face Behind
Sansyou – The Dilettante
The Mind Set – Head Times II
Near Northeast – This Old Head
The Buzz – Sweet Manitoba
Dela Sante – Crumpets
Curse Words – Sunk Rock
Double Tie – Diameter #7
Sleeves Off a Vest – Home Made
Pupils – It’s Good To Have Met You
Disc Image – Icheb
Mooks – Song For Bella
Terrill Mast – Voyd (feat. Jed Lingat)
Matt Tarka – Very Little
The Funk Ark – Headband
Rob Shaw – Un Manatial

Logikbomb – The Heights (aka: Her Lips)
Suzanne Brindamour – The Arrival
Den-Mate – For Free
Lungfish – Constellations
Wye Oak – Dogs Eyes
Screen Vinyl Image – Edge of Forever
Jonny Grave – Afraid of the Dark
Brûlée – Driftin’
Fat Kneel – Solaris
Marvin Gaye – What’s Happening Brother
Oddisee – In Your Eyes
Sansyou – Best Ones Choose You
AXB – Flea Markets
The Sea Life – Prozac & Merlot
Lance Neptune – Umbrella Girl.
Beautiful Swimmers – The Zoo
G-Flux – Cumbia Cosmica
Bucky’s Fatal Mistake – Hello
Aaron Gage – Vinayaka
They’ll Have Dreams – Walk to Freedom

“It was a real challenge, and I had no idea if it was going to work,” says David Nicholas, one of Sansyou’s two guitarists. Nicholas and his friend Hewson Chen — vocalist for The New Lines — were hanging out in New York when Nicholas decided he wanted to visit the Gowanus Canal, a famously polluted waterway in Brooklyn. A few days later, Nicholas got a first draft of lyrics and music from Hewson, and the virtual collaboration began.

Hewson, Nicholas and Sansyou’s Matt McGarraghy and Davis White (of Lorelei) worked separately, emailing their music and ideas to each other starting in early November. “It’s surprising how fast it came together,” Nicholas says — and no one quit the band in the process. Email gave everyone an opportunity to fully express their ideas, so he says the songwriting process went down “without a whole lot of bloodshed.”

The final product is a soothing little song, recorded with a peppy, surfy guitar and Chen’s melancholy vocals, adding up to something like a lost tune from Stephin Merritt’s Magnetic Fields or The 6ths. Lyrically, it goes an unexpected route, dodging references to, say, the unnatural creatures that could be dwelling in the canal. To Nicholson, hopelessness is not the Gowanus’ defining feature.

The canal is “never going to be a pristine natural environment,” Nicholas says. “But it’s part of a real sense of industrial history in the Brooklyn area.” And that, he says, is worth commemorating.