The NME's most decent figure Jaimie Hodgson already knew back in April that Cleveland's Nick Tolar aka Herzog is one of those artists in contemporary North American music that give the term "alternative" new credibility. Don't know if that matters, but in any case, Tolar makes wonderfully lo-fi jangly garage pop that still manages to sound at no point outdated or irrelevant. So I'm happy to announce that this morning, with the help of the infallible Delicious Scopitone I've found out that my favourite Londoners at Transparent (who were the first to rave about Herzog in January) are gonna put out Herzog's first full length Search on August 2, which is even more exciting given the fact that it's gonna be their first proper LP release, which kinda takes this wonderful little label to the next level.
You can pre-order the record now via Pure Groove and already purchase the digital version of this overly amazing effort via Herzog's bandcamp site, or first listen to two songs below.
Distant childhood memories, blurred pictures of carefree days in the sunshine, long gone smiling faces. Brooklyn's Patrick McIntyre, who usually plays drums for The Stoned Ambassadors, has a side project oddly named HOUNDds (he's got another, guitar-oriented one called The Joy of Painting), which unavoidably evokes such recollections, but in contrast to those hypnagogic pop/glo-fi artists, McIntyre remains truthful to original 80s synth pop, dreamy textures, discreet drum machine patterns and reverb-laden vocals that take the listener immediately 25 years back.
Hailing from the mellow shores of Monterey Bay, Antarctica Takes It! are six incredibly young and sparkling people (though apparently it started more or less as a one man project by some guy called Dylan, ) devoted to joyful and harmonizing pop that still carries a subtle amount of delightful melancholia, somehow reminiscent of Belle and Sebastian and pretty close to what their transatlantic soul mates of Fanfarlo are doing at the moment. Antarctica Takes It! are getting very warm reception in the whole Bay Area right now, and listening to Constellations, the title track of their sophomore effort, it's not hard to see why.
Don't miss this wonderfully bright and cheerful new song by Memphis' up and coming Magic Kids, taken from their debut album Memphis, out August 24 on True Panther. Sunny pop for late summer evenings in the park. Go out, have a barbecue.
The biweekly NFOP Radio Show gets a little reboot this week. From today, it's not called "Radio Show" anymore - first, because of ongoing confusion about the designation (indeed, it never was a proper radio show, it's a playlist; I kinda liked the idea though), and second because now that posting has gone up a bit (a few of you have noticed), the concept with comments/liner notes for roughly twelve tracks is just too demanding considering the time I have available for writing this blog.
But there's still gonna be a new playlist on 8tracks.com every two weeks, but I'll limit myself to ten tracks that I haven't posted regularly because I was too slow or too lazy so that by now everyone else has written about them, and with tracks by artists I may have written about but think that you still don't listen to them enough (like Pearly Gate Music, for instance). Hence, The Fallout. As usual, I recommend listening via the player embedded above, but you're of course free to head over to the the amazing site 8tracks.com. Moreover, for some tracks there will be additional download links.
And lest I forget, please don't miss that awesome track by Porcelain Raft.
Listening note: The playlist is streamed via 8tracks. Their license requires a mix to be shuffled the second time someone listens to it. Moreover, the number of tracks the user can skip while listening to a mix is limited.
Brooklyn outfit Translations has started making music to "bridge the gap between Manhattan bands like Velvet Underground, Suicide and Pussy Galore and the new, weird era in Brooklyn". Hence the above picture, I suppose. Apart from obvious symbolism, judge for yourself if they're successful. For what it's worth, Translations make fine, new wavey pop with indeed some rather experimental elements, and yes, the rhythm section and the vocals do have a certain Manhattan feel attached to them while the overall direction is very much contemporary Brooklyn, in particular considering The MO. The band did all the recording on their own, with some mixing help by their pal Jeff Curtin from NFOP favouritesSmall Black. Without doubt a band to watch.
Last night, this certain dude befriended me on all possible social networking platforms, probably including those where I don't even have an account, to guide my undivided attention to CVLTS, a project of which he apparently is one half. Their origin remains blurry, only their bandcamp site might give us a hint that the duo is based out of Kansas City.
What we do know though is that CVLTS produces high quality haunted psychedelia, oppressively distorted guitars with frantically humming voices in the background. Obviously, there's no hope in Kansas.
You can purchase their debut mini album LVST via their bandcamp, and make sure you get yourself hypnotized by watching the video for their nearly ten-minute opus Luck Surf.
Reverb-laced guitars and blurred synth patterns playing subtle melodies over hushed and distant drum machine beats, a sad voice singing slowly about the burdens of being in love and being alive: In an east Bohemian town somewhere beyond Prague, Tomas Kopacek makes achingly beautiful bedroom dream pop under the moniker Mon Insomnie. As yet, there are only five songs available via his bandcamp site, but these are pieces promising a lot for his first full-length which is about to be released by the marvelous Wonder Beard Tapes this summer.
Mon Insomnie will be in Berlin this month for a couple of shows, supporting his hero Ariel Pink at Lovelite on June 20, and playing three consecutive nights at the Future Gallery as a part of an art exhibition from June 25 to 27.
Update: I've just been informed by Martin Kohout, the artist at whose exhibition Tomas will perform at the Future Galaxy, that he is not going to play as Mon Insomnie there. What's really gonna happen is still a secret - according to Martin, Tomas "will be playing music, but it will not be a concert and the name Mon Insomnie will not participate in the whole". Anyway, still sounds worth attending.
Below, there are three songs available for download, along with the video for Barbed Wires which is for sure the simplest, saddest and loveliest piece of film in 2010. Mon Insomnie is desperate loneliness expressed in the most beautiful and intriguing way I've heard in a long time - with lines like "Kill me/I've no will to fight", the songs leave you alone, barely reassuring you that after all, happiness is a place somewhere else.
