14 Jul 2010 — NFOP
This morning (or last night, depending on the time zone), the international community of bloggers (aka the blogosphere) was suddenly all of a dither when one of the most buzzed-about bands of 2010 Cults bluntly
twittered a rather unexpected message to their followers: "Cults feat. on new Guards EP" - G-u-a-r-d-s? Never heard. A quick click on their
bandcamp brought not a single more detailed information about this mysterious band except for the fact that they had additionally cooperated with
Chairlift's Caroline Polachek on another track of what apparently is their debut self-titled EP, which made the whole thing only more exciting.
I tried hard, I really did. But just like Cults, Guards don't seem to have a myspace, and just try to google their name, it's absolutely futile. So all there is right now is this EP that popped up literally out of nothing, but probably all we need in these way too hot weeks is seven tracks full of late 60s inspired summer breeze, purest sunshine pop not too far away from Cults themselves actually. And honestly, we would have forgotten the rest very soon anyway.
Guards - Trophy Queen (feat. Caroline Polachek)Guards - Sail It Slow (feat. Cults)Guards - Crystal Truth
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13 Jul 2010 — NFOP
Greeley, Colorado is probably the most boring town on Planet Earth. Of course I'd never arrogate to make such judgments, however, this is more or less what Aaron Landgraf suggests when talking about his hometown. Apparently, the best thing about this settlement is its proximity to Fort Collins, home of the
Act So Big Forest collective and Matthew Sage's delightful
Patient Sounds label, so Aaron could at least find a base to channel his musical talent and his longing for his own creative expressions. Under the moniker
Ambassador Engine, he makes beautiful bedroom pop that differs significantly from his many contemporaries in its pretty experimental approach towards the use of computers, which means that in this case, computer-generated sounds may actually sound like exactly what they are and are not merely a means to let the tune appear more nostalgic or, sorry, washed-out. This fact becomes most obvious as regards the computer voice in his latest track
Destroy Everything, something that we haven't heard in this straightforwardness since Radiohead's
Fitter Happier (though we admit that we might have missed something). Also, though Ambassador Engine is all about ambient downtempo soundscapes meandering through your head, there are no chillwaves to be ridden as the tunes' tranquility regularly gets interrupted by rather unwieldy rhythm sections.
Ambassador Engine's
Live Dismally EP (featuring
Live Hopeful) is available for free download
here.
Nowhere Near the Beach has appeared on the before mentioned essential
Patient Sounds Sampler V.1, and
Destroy Everything will probably be one of the tunes on Aaron's first full length, hopefully due later this year.
Ambassador Engine - Destroy EverythingAmbassador Engine - Live HopefulAmbassador Engine - Nowhere Near the Beach
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12 Jul 2010 — NFOP
I really don't know how those folks are doing this, but my infallible mates from
Ashtapes - which is more and more becoming my favourite blog at the moment - have once again come up with an amazing discovery. Sacramento's duo
Tony Bonanza make "lo-fi stoned bedroom pop", which pretty much says it all, and if you think that
Ariel Pink has all 'gone mainstream' now with his sophisticated production on
Before Today, then Andy and Tom might just be the right guys for you. More or less everything on their debut
Rockabilly People reminisces early Ariel Pink's then unique approach to lo-fi ethics in production techniques and the embracing of classic 70s and 80s pop music, which is everything but a bad thing. Tony Bonanza's tunes are brief pieces of pure pop extravaganza, and isn't that all we demand?
Rockabilly People is available for free download via the duo's
bandcamp.
Tony Bonanza - She IsTony Bonanza - TrustTony Bonanza - Just Playin
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12 Jul 2010 — NFOP
From the ever creatively vibrant Bay Area town Oakland hails Heather Fedewa, a pretty busy girl that used to play drums for
Bare Wires and lead guitar for the marvelous
Hunx and His Punx before eventually realising that she isn't at all into playing in other people's bands, so she came up with
Wax Idols, her solo project that only gets a little friends' help when performing live.
Anyway, all this apparently doesn't mean that Heather is shying away from collaborations whatsoever. Besides having started a band named
Blasted Canyons, she recently joined forces with Dresden's finest Oliver Scharf aka
Hanoi Janes who we had on these pages
before to come up with the wonderfully upbeat
Bat Cave, some pretty 80s infused tune complete with hand clapping glory and The Cure-inspired analogue synth happiness.
Wax Idols & Hanoi Janes - Bat Cave
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11 Jul 2010 — NFOP
New York's Alec Feld is
Expensive Looks, and under this moniker he creates quite heavy yet dreamily meandering spaced-out bedroom pop, and his latest
Be My Own is almost eight minutes of synth-leaden late night cruising, slightly dark and mind-boggling but still only intending to let you explore your inner self.
Expensive Looks' debut cassette
Dress to Impress will be out soon on
Mirror Universe.
Expensive Looks - Be My Own
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10 Jul 2010 — NFOP
Allister Izenberg is another young artist living in Los Angeles, and though we know now that California is situated on the best coast and living there is so much easier than, say, living in New York, apparently this fact doesn't prevent every resident from feeling a certain amount of emptiness. Izenberg seems to belong to the latter kind. He has produced an EP bluntly entitled
Lonesome, and loneliness is indeed the prevailing sentiment, dripping out of almost every single note of the four song piece.
Izenberg's fragile voice, the songs' vulnerable intimacy and sparse instrumentation are actually at least a little reminiscent of
Perfume Genius, though eventually not as desperate and more leaning towards an experimental approach.
You can download the whole EP
here and listen to two songs below.
Allister Izenberg - Van Dyke ParksAllister Izenberg - Allodoxaphobia
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10 Jul 2010 — NFOP
We've heard a lot about LA's Andrew Caddick aka
Jeans Wilder, that he's "partly responsible" for Best Coast (don't know what that means actually, but I guess it's a good thing - I hope it doesn't mean being responsible for Bethany thinking that "Do I smell weed? Thumbs up!" could be considered a rad statement by the audience at Barcelona's Primavera Festival), that he's a
more or less hopeless and inveterate stoner, and that he makes lo-fi pop gems so lush and hazy that
"all the worries in the world [are] just washed right up somewhere down at Big Sur". So while we don't really care about the first two, we approve of the latter statement without reservation, and if you want to get introduced into Caddick's creative oeuvre, I'd highly recommend
Relics, the double cassette that's recently been released on
Bathetic Records which compiles most of the stuff that's been put out under the moniker Jeans Wilder so far and is out of print now, be it entirely self-released or on small cassette labels as splits with other artists.
Howsoever, this fall we'll see a proper LP release by Jeans Wilder, and as far as we can tell,
Nice Trash is gonna be a huge leap forward for Caddick. The three album tracks posted below show an amazing amount of pop sensibility, melancholic beauties with an incredible amount of production ambition to come up with an overall fuzzy, almost shoegazey direction accompanied by lush melodies and an increased focus on the rhythm section. The tunes are tropical pop par excellence, low fidelity as a means of honest creativity without overstatement. Of course it's still only early July and we've come across a lot of amazing things so far this year, but if the rest of the album is gonna live up to
Blanket Mountain,
Don't Wanna Live Forever and
Blonde Beach, then we've got a serious candidate here. No kidding, we're overwhelmed.
Jeans Wilder - Blanket MountainJeans Wilder - Don't Wanna Live ForeverJeans Wilder - Blonde Beach
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