As the first release on Stratosfear, our recently founded 7" label with Splendour, Montreal/New York duo Solar Year has enchanted us with two brand new singles to be featured on the 7"; the mythical A-side 'Night & Day', and the stellar, slightly more emotional B-side 'Magic Idea', that recently premiered via Dazed & Confused. Recorded back in October, Ben Borden and David Ertel give us the 15th edition of our NFOP Sessions series, performing an altering version of 'Night & Day' in their rehearsal space in Montreal.
Don't forget to pre-order your copy of the 7" here, shipping from Berlin on January 7th.
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Bass wunderkind du jour Happa wants to wish y'all a Merry Christmas with banging free track "Freak", which might also provide a good excuse to stop eating for a sec and start moving. And if you fear someone might accuse you of ruining the festive spirit, we suggest you just dance around the christmas tree to this one. Now how festive is that? Stream and download below.
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I have very fond memories of Ela Orleans. I heard her music playing in the record store I helped out at in Paris, Les Balades Sonores, this past spring. And now here she is with a new album through Clan Destine Records, Tumult In Clouds. The label describes the album as "a journey over four sides taking inspiration from literary sources. Something like a book." And indeed, Ela has come up with the coolest literary essay I’ve ever encountered. It’s an album that lives up to its title "tumult", with songs that have named like "Diving into the Wreck", "Risky Trip to the Underworld", "Dark Wood", "Clangers in the Night", and "Where Are You?". Clouds are not often thought of as places of "tumult", but for this artist, even the fluffiest, most lithe entities are hefty. Her sources are a veritable treasure trove, but the good thing is that you may also listen to the album without caring about the context. Emily Dickinson, Alestair Crowley, Lord Byron, Thomas Hardy, Arthur Rimbaud, Jacques Derrida, and Tennessee Williams – Ela Orleans takes the academic-cum-musician concept we've seen prominently in quite a few places this year to a different level here.
Tumult In Clouds is an album filled with styles and stories too, with almost every track getting a different genre tag when loaded onto your computer's music library: "Pranks", "Booty Bass", "Dance Hall", or "Polka", though this might ultimately have the sole purpose to tease the reviewer, as Clan Destine operates as a analogue-only imprint. Then there’s "Where Are You?", aptly described by the label as "a swirling dervish of an instrumental", and of course there can't possibly ever be anything wrong with a swirling dervish. The title track has this amazing, things-are-looking-up violin its way through seven minutes of Yeats verse. Apparently the song is "about a friend of the Yeats family who was shot down over Italy whilst serving in the First World War". And for some reason, you can just picture the plane in black and white, making its way through Italian clouds. Unsurprisingly, this is the 'swirling dervish', the plane going down in slow motion over seven minutes. Instrumental track "Dark Wood" on the other hand darts forward like a tadpole. In fact, it's a song that would sound like the soundtrack to the most dry day of your life if it weren’t for this stressed darting. we highly recommend you give this whole double LP a thorough listen. Despite being dark and bleak on the edges, Tumult In Clouds isn’t a record to fear, it’s one to trust. Embrace the 'tumult in clouds'. Ela has.
Tumult In Clouds is out now. Listen to "Dark Wood" exclusively below and order the LP over here.
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Christmas music has always been hit or completely miss with me. I love choirs and gospel music, but I hate, say, Wham!'s "Last Christmas" or pretty much any holiday music Harry Connick Jr. has ever recorded. It makes trying to listen to Christmas music on the radio or Pandora rather unbearable. Well, Vancouver, BC’s Crystal Dorval aka White Poppy (of NNF fame) has provided a solution in the form of a 16-track compilation of holiday classics performed by some of the cassette/blog world’s favorite noise and experimental artists including Virgin Blood, Golden Donna, and others. The whole album can be streamed for free below and downloaded for free here. Check it out! I think you’ll be surprised how eerie some of the most joyful songs ever composed can sound.
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Last night, this track exploded all over both my RSS reader and my social media feeds. Disregarding possible faux pre-apocalypse wariness, it's probably not the worst sign for the general state of underground music if something as fragile and delicate as Liz Harris' work is still deemed buzzworthy to such a heavy extent. I don't know. In any case personally it's rather fitting that this track would surface now, as the incomprehensible glimpse that was 2012 comes to a close, as for me Grouper had already effectively started the year in terms of music with her literally enchanting seven-hour performance at Kreuzberg's HAU during CTM festival in early February. Grouper's work is withdrawn music for cold and dark days, and of course "Vital" is no exception, despite possible connotations of its name that might suggest otherwise. In fact, it's quite likely that it's only the ubiquitous pre-christmas madness that keeps us from realising that right at this very moment in time, we are anything but. The song will be part of Harris' forthcoming and sublimely beautiful full-length The Man Who Died in His Boat.
The Man Who Died in His Boat, out February 4 via Kranky, is a collection of songs Harris had recorded alongside her classic Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, which will see a re-release on the same day.
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Label-of-the-amazing-logo and R&S affiliate, Apollo, will put out Sam Ricketts and Tom Clarke aka Cloud Boat’s first album in the new year. Listen to the first single taken from that record, "I Left For a Reason (It Escapes Me Now)". The track has nicks of ominously shy guitar and moments of quiet, all recalling a song by The xx. The whole song is expanding slowly and every time you think it’s over when it bubbles to the top, it comes back in like the boat of the band’s name, wafting in through the clouds. It’s how you do an allocation of musical space, like has been said about Holly Herndon, The xx, Dev Hynes, Sky Ferreira, Solange, and a lot of others on publications such as Pitchfork, Fader, or FACT. Halfway through the track you think it’s all done and the tide has gone out, taking the cloud boat, but once again it comes back with vocals leading and slow motion guitar descending (“The river fell away / The river fell away and washed me down”). It’s like Tom Clarke is near figuring out the reason why he had left, the song ready to make the big recollection the moment he does, but each time he’s almost there, the song and his memory escape him.
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Boston's finest ambient craftsman Little Spoon is, if you happen to follow Cameron Potter's adventures on facebook, likely to be on tour 4/5 times his updates pop up in your feed, and several people (me included) keep wondering how he makes it all go around and still be able to produce such a large amount of excellent gems. Nowadays a new project under the name Cry Guy has been raised to life, featuring Cameron's shallow, texturous production meeting the bewitching vocals of his friend Virginia. We're very excited to see what's next up for the duo, promising to release a full-lenght together this coming spring. Watch this space.
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Marie Davidson is a ubiquitous figure in the Montréal scene, playing with Essaie Pas (who released an incredible EP in August), Les Momies de Palerme , and Hotel Monochrome. Marie Davidson, a six-song EP that she recorded herself, is her first solo work, and it does not disappoint.
The first track, "Ma vie sans toi", is the poppiest song on the record, but it's a bleak and sparse piece. Recalling Nico, Marie sings a detached melody with a harmonium vaguely following along. The highlight of the EP, however, might be the menacing drone of "L'Unique". Overall the minimal electronics and tense Lynchian atmospheres make for a compelling listen - it's an exceptional debut for an already prolific artist, and hopefully this is only the beginning of her solo career.
Stream the whole EP below and get it for pay-what-you-want over at her bandcamp.
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