Time for Video Sunday, which you honestly shouldn't take notice of, at least not if you live in Berlin - spring seems to be here, finally, so go to some park or whatever and enjoy. As regards those new or slightly new pieces for music by Adventure, James Blake, DJ Rashad, Postiljonen, The Cyclist, and Implodes - all excellent stuff, sure, but really, you can watch that later.
Like the lost son of Ariel Pink and, say, Anne Grete, Danish artist Anders Rhedin, who's at the heart of new project Dinner, sounds exactly like the hyprid between Southern California's weirdo underground pop scene and the bright and shiny tones of Scandinavian glory that you've always been waiting for. Appropriately enough, the video for the title track of his debut EP Girl, premiered below, was recently shot in LA. And even more aptly, the visuals are just as filthy and dusty as the song, which sports Rhedin's very recognizable dark and rusty crooning over sprinkling, glittery guitar phrases that thankfully straighten out that besides all obvious talent and craft, we're dealing with someone who doesn't aim at being taken all too seriously.
Together with our friends at Nordic By Nature, we present Dinner's EP release show at Our/Berlin Vodka on April 26. And yes, that apparently also means free vodka. RSVP here.
About a week ago, LA local Habits shared this new video below for "Haacksaw" — severely chopped and reformed from VHS and digital fodder, sourced and curated by artist Dustin M. Krapes. Habits uses a Bruce Haack sample as the springboard for the record, where every element is tied together by an array of kitsch visuals (mirrors, swipes; everything a girl could ask for), with percussion courtesy of Bobby Vega.
We previously reported that synth master Dylan Ettinger has released a follow-up to last year's fabulous Lifetime of Romance, the five-song cassette EP Crucify Your Love. After unveiling the 'hypnotically danceable' closer "Dawn", here's the grittier, distinctly murky title track, accompanied by an appropriately bizarre and deranged video courtesy of Molly Soda. Watch it below.
There is so much that can be said about our dearest Canadian friends Majical Cloudz: from the very moment when Devon Welsh embraces the audience with his loving puissance, tears start to uncontrollably fall around me. Moreover, it's probably Devon as a songwriter that more accurately emphasizes the growth of their current success, as his lyrics evoke an emotional extension — a subconscious pain, that somehow feels very close and sacred to the individual listener. Myself included, of course.
Montreal local Emily Kai Bock (who previously also directed Solar Year's "Brotherhood") decided to bring visual content to Majical Cloudz' most recent pop gem "Childhood's End", featuring Devon's father and Twin Peaks actor Kenneth Welsh as the main character. Below is a rather long, but loveingly written blog post in curtesy of Devon.
"Emily and I have known each other for a long time, going back to the days of Lab.Synthese, which was the venue she lived in and ran with Sebastian Cowan, Alex Cowan and others. I have been a fan of her video work for a long time so I was thrilled that she was interested in collaborating with myself and Matt. I have been present at two of her other video shoots (for Grimes’ “Oblivion” and Solar Year’s “Brotherhood”) so it was an unfortunate but ironic twist of fate that we were on tour during the filming of this video. As a result, some of the details of its production are a mystery to me, but it makes it all the more fascinating for me to watch. My sincere gratitude goes out to Emily, Bobby Shore and everyone else involved in the production. It’s a truly cinematic video and we are honoured to have our song as the soundtrack.
I’m also very grateful to have a video that features my father Kenneth Welsh, who is a very accomplished actor and who has spent decades acting for the stage, film & television. His career has been a long one but you may know him best from the television show Twin Peaks. His performance in the video is very moving and I’m mostly just really happy to be able to collaborate with him in some way (this is not the first time he has collaborated with Majical Cloudz, as he played the flute and trumpet on two early recordings back in 2010)."
More exciting, Young Echo-related news this afternoon, details are finally out on their highly anticipated first collaborative offering, the 13-track LP Nexus. The Bristol collective, which stands for pretty much everything that NFOP loves about the contemporary UK electronic music scene and that incorporates long-standing favourites such as Vessel, El Kid, Kahn, and Zhou, attempts to showcase a representative cross section of the musicians' impressive work so far, a collection of individual tracks that emphasize the unifying aesthetic without negating the differences, an approach that is, we can only assume at this point, not totally different from London collective Old Apparatus' concept. for the time being, watch the video for "Jupiter Rise" below.
On top of that, stream another track of the LP below, Seb Gainsborough aka Vessel featuring Lily Fannon's "My Child My Chain", a track that I believe we've mentioned already a couple of times before – a truly haunting piece of pop music, and in our humble opinion one of Vessel's finest productions. As far as we're informed, the track itself is about two years old, and as it's likely to be taken down from Soundcloud as soon as the Ramp people realise that it's still up there, we'd suggest you enjoy it while it lasts.
Remember Greatest Hits? Yes, we're talking about those Greatest Hits, the deranged post-urban proto funk project by Brooklyn transplants Zak Mering and Tyler Thacker, whose mad and infinitely crowd-pleasing material never received a proper LP treatment, despite acclaim from pretty mucheverywhere, or at least alltherelevantinstitutions. For reasons unknown to us, the duo's debut album got 'lost' last year, but now Zak and Tyler decided to eventually drop it for free for the world to listen and marvel. Breakdown includes some cuts already familiar to those who followed Brooklyn's surge of insane pop magic from a few years back, tunes like "Funky Dame" or the already classic MTA anthem "L Train Girl", but most tracks still sound so fresh they'll make you want to party like it's, well, 2010. I guess. The album features contributions by Sam Mehran's Outer Limitz, Samantha Urbani of Friends, Chrome Canyon, and Ryan Howe of Punks on Mars, among others. On top of all that, and to make up for the wait, Greatest Hits have collaborated with a bunch of filmmakers to produce a visual accompaniment for every single track of the album, to be unveiled over the next weeks. Below, you may enjoy the first two. "In the Jungle" was directed by Micah Welner, while "Fun Girls" was made by Chris Slater. Get ready.
Welcome to another edition of Video Sunday, this time finally back on Sunday, and with an extra-special selection with awesome visual cuts by Woman's Hour, Joanna Newsom (for LA-based clothing label Wren), Banks, Fryars, Mister Lies, and Rare Times. Start with the brand new video for "Broken Bridge" by Gainesville, Florida's Peace Arrow, the new project by Hear Hums member Mitch Myers.
Peace Arrow - Broken Bridge
Woman's Hour - To the End (Directed by Oliver Chanarin and Laurence Hamburger; performed by Siphiwe Mosoang and Xolani Nxumalo)
