28 May 2014 — Kelsie Brown
Out of Croatia, producer Marko Vuković makes music as Kimekai. Under this name, he makes the sort of dreamy, nostalgia-ladden music that sounds especially fitting this time of year when the air outside begins to brighten. "Chinese Live in Caves" is a short, concise piece brushed with a hint of psychedelia over the strummed background beat. Vaguely tropical, vaguely upbeat, and definitely addictive.
Kimekai's debut full-length album Coral Dreams is out June 23 via Hush Hush Records digitally and with a limited release cassette run (including a bonus track). Listen to "Chinese Live in Caves" below:
Read more →
28 May 2014 — Kelsie Brown
Los Angeles-based Carol Rhyu, aka White Blush, makes some of the best synth pop nowadays. Her reverb-drenched vocals and dreamy synths have a certain intoxication to them, something that makes her music so addictive and emotional. The aptly-titled "Ether" follows this even more so than usual, creating an even more haunting mood, reminiscing at points the best shoegaze bands. It's one for headphones and hiding under the covers.
The new White Blush EP is called Loves Park, and it's available as a free/name-your price download on bandcamp. Stream "Ether" and other recommended track "Summer" below:
Read more →
27 May 2014 — Henning Lahmann
Parisian artist Sebastien Forrester aka Holy Strays' nocturnal soundscapes have been haunting us for a good while, yet he still surprises us with his curiosity that allows him to ever develop his style, pushing previously invisible boundaries. Release after release, Forrester further carves out his very own style, refining his unique knack for unsettling arrangements that may soundtrack your own personal nightmare, without however insincerely hiding his influences. The video for the latest Holy Strays single "Pathless March" – surely one of Forrester's most elaborate compositions yet, built around unobtrusive sax samples and bleary vocal snippets (there's more to be told about the track, found over here) – seamlessly melds into the music's theme. Created by Lliesse, who had already been responsible for the superb visualisation of "Chasm", the piece is as puzzling and inconclusive as it is strangely captivating despite its incoherent array of images. Watch the premiere of the video below.
Get the digital single via Atelier Ciseaux over on bandcamp.
Read more →
26 May 2014 — Parker Bruce
Around this time last year, we premiered a song by Montreal band Police Des Moeurs called "Tu As Honte Parfois," and now they are back, doing a split 12" with another Montreal band, Essaie pas (a duo that features Marie Davidson who put out the "Perte d'identité" song not long ago that was played on the No Fear of Pop radio show). The two groups are a match made in heaven. Both songs sound pointedly macabre and are very talky (in the vein of "Perte d'identité"). "Je Te Montrerai" (meaning "I will show you," thank you Google Translate) buzzes and fuzzes kinetically about in a bobbing manner while "Retox" jostles, undulates, flinches, volleys, lollygags, and fidgets ever so slightly along like a Trust song (perhaps most specifically the also talky "This Ready Flesh"). Both songs remind me of Vive la Fête's "Exactement" and "Noir Désir".
The split is available June 17th on the always good Atelier Ciseaux. Pre-order now here! Bring on the cruel summer.
Read more →
23 May 2014 — Kelsie Brown
Yet another outstanding release via our favorite Vancouver experimental electronic label 1080p. Madison, WI's Joel Shanahan (whom we also know as Golden Donna) is at it once again with a new project, this one called Auscultation. We're excited to share the first dreamy sounds. "Laces" follows a funk-heavy rhythm, overlaid with glittery synth arpeggiation at times, and other times drifting closer to minimal techno. The overall sound is quite contemporary, expecting no less considering the artist and label.
"Laces" is taken from Auscultation's 7-track self-titled release, out June 3 on cassette and digitally via 1080p.
Read more →
22 May 2014 — Henry Schiller
M.E.S.H. is a dancehall mystic, channeling the friendly spirits of warm urban nights and weekends into tangible rhythmic heaps. Brief and dazzling as well as enveloping; thumping, dungeonous drums link into parsed segments of lazy summers and late evenings buying Gatorade and deciding whether to stay out or go back home. We could go either way, and M.E.S.H. would provide the requisite soundtrack. On “Imperial Sewers” the Berlin producer seems to relax listeners into the throes a technological frenzy, infusing rhythmic club music with tidal washes of R&B and electronica.
M.E.S.H. has an ear pressed firmly to the fixtures of global dance music, and is able to make even the most remote and obscure of influences sound local. “Imperial Sewers” carries its accomplishments in its title: far below street level, the untouchable splendor of a distant class finds itself mixing, ultimately and magnificently, into the familiar, the comfortable, the immediate.
The Scythians EP is out June 6 on PAN.
Read more →
20 May 2014 — Richard Greenan
Brighton producer The Nag's Head (aka Stephen Maskell) returns after the brutal kaleidoscope of 2013's Live From Concrete Island, with a new EP of "metallic cloud voodoo". While Maskell's deep affection for jungle and blues is still on show, Luxury Slime Vortex is certainly a colder, more foreboding proposition than last year's tape. The title track goes off like a grenade in a biscuit tin, all buckling metal and half-submerged Miami Bass chants, before eating itself in a tangle of nitrate film. Awesome stuff!
You can download the whole EP here.
Read more →
20 May 2014 — Parker Bruce
Last year, London duo Yola Fatoush released a charismatic album, Up Out Of It, on Time No Place with that amazing twirl of a track, "Vibrant," on it. Later in the year, they put out more: "Secret" and "Skeleton" with giddy and pumping A.G. Cook and Divoli S'vere iterations. And now they have put out a JoJo-referencing (in title at least) track, the teetering to-and-fro, "Get Out (Leave)." Sounding like Kelis' equally urgent 2006 track, "Blindfold Me," as well as M.I.A.'s stop-and-start, herky jerk "Pull Up The People," "Get Out (Leave)" is a combination of posh singing with rough and tumble beats which is the zone Yola Fatoush like to operate in (as evidenced in their recent mix for Berlin party Creamcake). Really can't wait for what these two will give us next.
Read more →
