I've been browsing through my iTunes library lately, desperately trying to get some sort of overview of what I have already listened to and what not (which seemed to be quite the tiresome job, actually), until I finally stumbled upon the 'pop-meets-drummachine' project of Matthew Carefully from upstate NY. His music is indeed a pretty interesting blend of indie-folk with rearranged sounds and heavy reverbs, carefully tailored together with Matthew's honest and carefree vocals.
Head over to his bandcamp to name a price or buy one of his many releases for a mere dollar or two, or order a copy of his second full-lenght Community Balloon via Collar City Records. And while at it, don't forget to download Wish For Night: Music To Fall Asleep To Vol. 1 — a wondrous gem for all you ambient lovers (like myself) out there.
I've been browsing through my iTunes library lately, desperately trying to get some sort of overview of what I have already listened to and what not (which seemed to be quite the tiresome job, actually), until I finally stumbled upon the 'pop-meets-drummachine' project of Matthew Carefully from upstate NY. His music is indeed a pretty interesting blend of indie-folk with rearranged sounds and heavy reverbs, carefully tailored together with Matthew's honest and carefree vocals.
Head over to his bandcamp to name a price or buy one of his many releases for a mere dollar or two, or order a copy of his second full-lenght Community Balloon via Collar City Records. And while at it, don't forget to download Wish For Night: Music To Fall Asleep To Vol. 1 — a wondrous gem for all you ambient lovers (like myself) out there.
Act So Big Forest affiliates The Kevin Costner Suicide Pact from Denver, Colorado have released a new album on cassette this Tuesday. The ambient collective has delivered a stunning assemblage of 13 marvelous sound collages made up of noise, drones and tape loops, music that completely absorbes the listener with its dreamlike soundscapes that will take you away to places far beyond the Rocky Mountains. Buy Decay on tape via Buckingham Pie Group or digitally on the group's bandcamp. As expected, stuff from Colorado never disappoints.
The Kevin Costner Suicide Pact - Eddy SweaterRead more →
Act So Big Forest affiliates The Kevin Costner Suicide Pact from Denver, Colorado have released a new album on cassette this Tuesday. The ambient collective has delivered a stunning assemblage of 13 marvelous sound collages made up of noise, drones and tape loops, music that completely absorbes the listener with its dreamlike soundscapes that will take you away to places far beyond the Rocky Mountains. Buy Decay on tape via Buckingham Pie Group or digitally on the group's bandcamp. As expected, stuff from Colorado never disappoints.
The Kevin Costner Suicide Pact - Eddy Sweater
Coming straight out of some shady garage deep in London Town, Drugg is a duo consisting of Tom Hanley and Max Whatley that makes pretty noisy and gloomy electronica, very much inspired by the sounds of their hometown but also very unique, dark and mesmerizing soundscapes alternate with glitchy passages of outright dance, all quite minimalistic in shape and construction but surely something that will blow away your headphones if it catches you in the right mood. Drugg's debut EP Shackled will be dropped March 7 via the Shackleton-affiliated Less Music, a subdivision of London's This Is Music.
Being good friends with the folks from our other UK electro favorites Visions of Trees (Joni of VoT and Drugg's Tom have a side project named Thanks), the two bands have remixed each other, with simply terrific results. The Drugg remix of Kings has been available via their Soundcloud for quite a while now, but the absolutely infectious VoT version of EP track Crooks, a five and a half minute beat driven, bass heavy trip, kinda terrifying but still going straight to your legs, receives an adequate late night premiere right now, right here. Get moving.
Drugg - Crooks (Visions of Trees Remix) (exclusive)
Visions of Trees - Kings (Drugg Remix)Read more →
Coming straight out of some shady garage deep in London Town, Drugg is a duo consisting of Tom Hanley and Max Whatley that makes pretty noisy and gloomy electronica, very much inspired by the sounds of their hometown but also very unique, dark and mesmerizing soundscapes alternate with glitchy passages of outright dance, all quite minimalistic in shape and construction but surely something that will blow away your headphones if it catches you in the right mood. Drugg's debut EP Shackled will be dropped March 7 via the Shackleton-affiliated Less Music, a subdivision of London's This Is Music.
Being good friends with the folks from our other UK electro favorites Visions of Trees (Joni of VoT and Drugg's Tom have a side project named Thanks), the two bands have remixed each other, with simply terrific results. The Drugg remix of Kings has been available via their Soundcloud for quite a while now, but the absolutely infectious VoT version of EP track Crooks, a five and a half minute beat driven, bass heavy trip, kinda terrifying but still going straight to your legs, receives an adequate late night premiere right now, right here. Get moving.
Drugg - Crooks (Visions of Trees Remix) (exclusive)
Visions of Trees - Kings (Drugg Remix)
In December, we premiered the stellar remix of Keep Shelly In Athens' principal dance anthem Running Out of You by Athens, Ohio resident John Jagos aka Brothertiger, and now the favor has been returned with the re-imagination of Brothertiger's beautifully blissed-out Evening Glow, kindly sent over to me last night. The tune is slightly less chill and more to straight to the floor now, with loads of gentle distortion and KSIA's more and more signifying gritty synth work, a concept that turns out delightfully captivating.
(Photo)
Brothertiger - Evening Glow (Keep Shelly In Athens Remix)Brothertiger - Evening GlowRead more →
In December, we premiered the stellar remix of Keep Shelly In Athens' principal dance anthem Running Out of You by Athens, Ohio resident John Jagos aka Brothertiger, and now the favor has been returned with the re-imagination of Brothertiger's beautifully blissed-out Evening Glow, kindly sent over to me last night. The tune is slightly less chill and more to straight to the floor now, with loads of gentle distortion and KSIA's more and more signifying gritty synth work, a concept that turns out delightfully captivating.
(Photo)
Brothertiger - Evening Glow (Keep Shelly In Athens Remix)Brothertiger - Evening Glow
When Amanda and Britt Brown got interviewed by Samantha Cornwell back in early November for a profile of their label Not Not Fun for Altered Zones, Amanda was pretty eager to point out the couple's rather different tastes in music, saying that if she ran NNF by herself it would probably be a label exclusively dropping hip-hop and dance records, while Britt was the more "esoteric" one of them. Of course primarily knowing her from the now defunct band Pocahaunted, the psyched-out project that surely wouldn't be misdescribed using the attribution "esoteric", and that probably was most responsible for building the label's stellar reputation among America's contemporary underground music scene, that blunt statement kinda surprised me back then. Sure, Amanda exemplified her passion for deranged synthesizer dance pop when she collaborated with Sam Meringue's Matrix Metals under her new LA Vampires moniker on the stunning NNF release So Unreal, put out later that month, but it was not until word spread in early December that she had just launched her own label that I eventually understood what her statement ultimately had been about.
100% Silk. According to the imprint's mission statement, it "makes 45 rpm 12 inch singles of diamond-life dance & bliss-disco & basement luxury grooves by friends and lovers from all over the world". Until yesterday, we could only guess what this would really mean in the end (apart from a few video snippets Amanda had put up on Vimeo), but now the first two releases have been made available for order, Ital's Theme by Ital and The Deeep's Muddy Tracks, and Amanda kindly sent over one track of each 12 inch for me to put up on Soundcloud.
Ital is the new recording project by San Francisco's Daniel Martin-McCormick of Mi Ami and Sex Worker, and here he finds the space to live out his secret dance obsession. The single's b-side Queens is a straightforward yet very ambitious floor filler, based on a minimal house beat, heavily filtered congas, a more than captivating, classic bass line and some soothing synth parts to keep your head up. Party like it's 1999, with delicious hints of two decades of disco before that date.
Toronto's The Deeep have reworked Mudd, the dark, bass-heavy masterpiece from their Life Light cassette on NNF (listen to the original over at RSTB) and turned it into a light-colored, slowly burning dub, almost completely abandoning Isla Craig's amazing vocal work but adding all kinds of synth chirps, flutes and chimes to get your body on the jungle of the dancefloor. Absolutely intriguing.
Both 12 inches come in an edition of 350, so don't hesitate and get your hands on a copy now.
Read more →
When Amanda and Britt Brown got interviewed by Samantha Cornwell back in early November for a profile of their label Not Not Fun for Altered Zones, Amanda was pretty eager to point out the couple's rather different tastes in music, saying that if she ran NNF by herself it would probably be a label exclusively dropping hip-hop and dance records, while Britt was the more "esoteric" one of them. Of course primarily knowing her from the now defunct band Pocahaunted, the psyched-out project that surely wouldn't be misdescribed using the attribution "esoteric", and that probably was most responsible for building the label's stellar reputation among America's contemporary underground music scene, that blunt statement kinda surprised me back then. Sure, Amanda exemplified her passion for deranged synthesizer dance pop when she collaborated with Sam Meringue's Matrix Metals under her new LA Vampires moniker on the stunning NNF release So Unreal, put out later that month, but it was not until word spread in early December that she had just launched her own label that I eventually understood what her statement ultimately had been about.
100% Silk. According to the imprint's mission statement, it "makes 45 rpm 12 inch singles of diamond-life dance & bliss-disco & basement luxury grooves by friends and lovers from all over the world". Until yesterday, we could only guess what this would really mean in the end (apart from a few video snippets Amanda had put up on Vimeo), but now the first two releases have been made available for order, Ital's Theme by Ital and The Deeep's Muddy Tracks, and Amanda kindly sent over one track of each 12 inch for me to put up on Soundcloud.
Ital is the new recording project by San Francisco's Daniel Martin-McCormick of Mi Ami and Sex Worker, and here he finds the space to live out his secret dance obsession. The single's b-side Queens is a straightforward yet very ambitious floor filler, based on a minimal house beat, heavily filtered congas, a more than captivating, classic bass line and some soothing synth parts to keep your head up. Party like it's 1999, with delicious hints of two decades of disco before that date.
Toronto's The Deeep have reworked Mudd, the dark, bass-heavy masterpiece from their Life Light cassette on NNF (listen to the original over at RSTB) and turned it into a light-colored, slowly burning dub, almost completely abandoning Isla Craig's amazing vocal work but adding all kinds of synth chirps, flutes and chimes to get your body on the jungle of the dancefloor. Absolutely intriguing.
Both 12 inches come in an edition of 350, so don't hesitate and get your hands on a copy now.
Ludwigshafen is a town somewhere in the southwest of Germany (so I've been told) that looks exactly like in the picture above. The most significant feature apart from BASF are two detectives of a homicide unit in a Sunday evening prime time TV series that used to be way better back in the days, at least in my memory. So now you know. Anyway, before metropolitan arrogance carries me away even further (you may hate me for that), suffice it to add that Ludwigshafen apparently has more to say to us now as it has bred some guy named Gabriel who has started making some fine, mellow and dubstep-informed electronica under the moniker CutOff!CutOff! that kinda caught me off guard last night with its captivating beat, incredible sampling and vocal manipulation built around a lonely, heavily reverberated piano chord. Gabriel has spent the last couple of years in London, New York and Berlin (see?), and indeed there's a good deal of late night, big city melancholia to be found in T Is To N.
CutOff!CutOff!'s debut EP Sing is now out on the Gateshead, England label Spontaneous Rhythm.
(Photo)
CutOff!CutOff! - T Is To NRead more →
Ludwigshafen is a town somewhere in the southwest of Germany (so I've been told) that looks exactly like in the picture above. The most significant feature apart from BASF are two detectives of a homicide unit in a Sunday evening prime time TV series that used to be way better back in the days, at least in my memory. So now you know. Anyway, before metropolitan arrogance carries me away even further (you may hate me for that), suffice it to add that Ludwigshafen apparently has more to say to us now as it has bred some guy named Gabriel who has started making some fine, mellow and dubstep-informed electronica under the moniker CutOff!CutOff! that kinda caught me off guard last night with its captivating beat, incredible sampling and vocal manipulation built around a lonely, heavily reverberated piano chord. Gabriel has spent the last couple of years in London, New York and Berlin (see?), and indeed there's a good deal of late night, big city melancholia to be found in T Is To N.
CutOff!CutOff!'s debut EP Sing is now out on the Gateshead, England label Spontaneous Rhythm.
(Photo)
CutOff!CutOff! - T Is To N
Pretty stoked by the pure and raw energy of this garage outfit from my second favorite English city Leicester (seriously, don't ask), Thee Ludds make gritty short songs, palatably straightforward somewhere between late 60s psych pop, early punk and 2009 no-fi, and I guess the thing that really keeps me going here is that amazingly impulsive organ that kinda puts the whole thing to a different level.
Thee Ludds' debut cassette Fez Bowl is now available via my dear friends over at Sheffield's Tye Die Tapes, a tiny imprint that's really worth being supported.
Thee Ludds - I Told You I WouldThee Ludds - Shy GuyRead more →
Pretty stoked by the pure and raw energy of this garage outfit from my second favorite English city Leicester (seriously, don't ask), Thee Ludds make gritty short songs, palatably straightforward somewhere between late 60s psych pop, early punk and 2009 no-fi, and I guess the thing that really keeps me going here is that amazingly impulsive organ that kinda puts the whole thing to a different level.
Thee Ludds' debut cassette Fez Bowl is now available via my dear friends over at Sheffield's Tye Die Tapes, a tiny imprint that's really worth being supported.
Thee Ludds - I Told You I WouldThee Ludds - Shy Guy
A bit of the noisy bedroom pop, a bit of the atmospheric ambient and finally a tiny bit of shoegaze mixed in: "There's a little bit of something for everyone here", Arrangedescribes his newest piece Quiet State. I assume many of you might be somehow unfamiliar with the moniker behind it; the 18 year old Malcom Lacey hailing from sunny Florida, but in fact he has been uploading EP-s on his bandcamp since as early as back in June last year. It remains to me a mystery why we haven't heard more about him already, considering the fact that I was literally blown away by the blooming and honest beauty of his newestmini-LP. In fact, I find the album sounding a lot more 'Nordic' than anything that has been coming out of the US lately, with the second track Staring At The Ceiling (below), even has that cold, Scandinavian feel to it that I love oh so much.
Click the beautiful album artwork for Quiet State above to download.
A bit of the noisy bedroom pop, a bit of the atmospheric ambient and finally a tiny bit of shoegaze mixed in: "There's a little bit of something for everyone here", Arrangedescribes his newest piece Quiet State. I assume many of you might be somehow unfamiliar with the moniker behind it; the 18 year old Malcom Lacey hailing from sunny Florida, but in fact he has been uploading EP-s on his bandcamp since as early as back in June last year. It remains to me a mystery why we haven't heard more about him already, considering the fact that I was literally blown away by the blooming and honest beauty of his newestmini-LP. In fact, I find the album sounding a lot more 'Nordic' than anything that has been coming out of the US lately, with the second track Staring At The Ceiling (below), even has that cold, Scandinavian feel to it that I love oh so much.
Click the beautiful album artwork for Quiet State above to download.
Act So Big Forest affiliates The Kevin Costner Suicide Pact from Denver, Colorado have released a new album on cassette this Tuesday. The ambient collective has delivered a stunning assemblage of 13 marvelous sound collages made up of noise, drones and tape loops, music that completely absorbes the listener with its dreamlike soundscapes that will take you away to places far beyond the Rocky Mountains. Buy Decay on tape via Buckingham Pie Group or digitally on the group's bandcamp. As expected, stuff from Colorado never disappoints.
The Kevin Costner Suicide Pact - Eddy Sweater
Read more →
