Ross Edman is out of Dallas, Tx (not Austin as one might assume), and just like our beloved and right now much-hyped Stockholm fellow Christian Niva, he marks another example of an artist abandoning his former musical pastimes in favour of unwound and dreamy electronica. Edman used to perform as hip hop artist Objektiv One, but now he prefers the moniker Datahowler for his smooth and nice 80s synth-infused tunes that give us a welcome timeout from our daily schedule.
Datahowler's premiere single Estate b/w Black Swans has just been released. Listen to the beauties below.
A deep blue ocean, long, white beaches encompassed by endless dunes, rolling hills covered with splendid vineyards, and an ever shining sun blessing the realms with never vanishing warmth. The three guys that form Alba Lua hail from the beautiful city of Bordeaux, and this fact gives us a hint to what their music sounds like: mellow and hazy dream pop with just the right amount of summery psychedelica, heavily relying on reverb and hushed vocals, and still, unless so many other bands right now, not keeping the tempi even, but rather showing a surprising deal of spontaneity in their songs. Inspired amongst others by Sergio Leone's 70s Spaghetti Western movies and equipped with a name that means "the moon of the dawn", Alba Lua are separating themselves from the bulk of emerging dream pop artists by means of creativity and imagination, thus in the best possible way.
Alba Lua's debut EP Ballad of Joseph Merrick, comprising three songs all equally worth adoring, will be released by Satellite of Love Records on June 28. A full length album is scheduled for early 2011.
Watch the psychedelic and wonderfully shot video for EP closer Valley of Abra, and download the song below:
Sometimes, you don't even know what you've been missing. Only recently a dear friend from Florida called my attention to the wonderful Seattle band Carissa's Wierd which turned out to be the long split up predecessor of the all too well known Band Of Horses, and in fact I can't help but thinking about this as a creative step backwards. On the other hand, we don't know the probably dirty details, right?
Anyway, there must've been more folks like me, as Seattle label Hardly Art has decided to reissue Carissa's Wierd's three studio albums this year, accompanied by the compilation They'll Only Miss You When You Leave: Songs 1996-2003, to be released July 13. The song Die, posted below, will be on it and gives an excellent first impression of the band's quiet and melancholic oeuvre. Actually, I wanted you to have the opportunity to get another song, but the label asked me not to make it available for download. But if you should stumble across So You Wanna Be a Superhero by any chance, give it a listen, it might be the saddest yet most beautiful song ever written.
Yesterday, this exquisite little tune dropped into my inbox after it had circled half the globe. Responsible for these four minutes of sundrenched laid-back electronica are Collarbones, an Australian duo consisting of Travis Cook and Marcus Whale who live in Adelaide and Sydney, respectively, and in fact decided to start this project after they'd met on the internet. Oh, these modern times. At least the above photograph proves (correction: appears to prove - mind Photoshop!) that the two must've seen each other in person at some point of the creative process.
Anyway, Beaman Park is the first single of a forthcoming album named Iconography, due later this year. The track is an excellent teaser and an admirable soundtrack for these sunny days, actually pretty reminiscent of that certain music that people use to call chillwave these days, think Toro Y Moi in particular (before that dude went acoustic). Absolutely delicious.
You can download the whole single via Collarbones' Bandcamp site, and it would be nice if you paid at least a bit, though you don't have to.
These two demure looking folks with that plastic (I hope) deer in between call themselves The Band In Heaven, which underscores our imagination of that place as cold and abrasive. Nonetheless, despite all its gritty fuzz, their demo tune A Tunnel Into Your Dreams indeed reveals some heavenly dream pop that's candidly retro, summoning the ghosts of Black Tambourine or My Bloody Valentine to gather in your room the very moment you listen to it. Haunting.
Uh, this one's kinda amazing. Moscow Youth Cult left me baffled and thrilled today with tunes straying somewhere between New Order's synth pop affinity, formalistic noise reminiscent of Fuck Buttons, These New Puritans' experimental streak and not least Salem's harsh darkness, splendidly exploring the frontiers of erstwhile electronic music without ever leaving the present tense. Inspired by "obscure 70s sci-fi films", these two guys of course do not hail from that certain Russian metropolis but from the depths of the English Midlands, and where else than in Nottingham and Leicester could you come up with something so sublime fallen out of time.
Our beloved Ernest Greene aka Washed Out, with backing vocals by Chairlift's Caroline Polachek. A lot of thanks to both of you, and of course again to GvB for guiding the way to this little dream.
Ariel Pink's album Before Today is finally out, and without any doubt it's one of the best in 2010, though our notorious German critics were quite overstrained by the record, as expected.
Thanks to GvB, today we were also blessed with the brilliant video for Bright Lit Blue Skies:
