Out on June 24th, the fine folks at Mexican Summer are set to release the debut LP of Atlanta dreamgazers Mood Rings, a record we've been respectively spinning at our (ahem) 'offices' for a few weeks already. VPI Harmony has already managed to leave me in a glaring headspace, and those chills running down your spine on a cool, but humid Scandinavian summer night magically compones to "The Line", as Will Fussell's androgyne vocals float over ice cold, flourishing synthesizers. "The Line" (especially) has a Cascine quality to it, unveiling obvious balearic influences throughout its buildup. Listen and gaze down at your shoes below.
Singer-songwriter Chiara Angelicola and producer Bryan Senti are Bird Call are a synth pop project releasing dewy tracks full of Gothic romanticism. The duo's "Phantom Limbs" track receives two remix treatments on the EP; the first out being by NFOP regulars The-Drum from Chicago, as they take the bass out of the original intro, replacing it with bird calls, and bringing the bass back in by deepening Chiara's opening vocals. My Great Ghost emphasizes the ghostly, lo-fi quality of their subject, just before closing up the EP with the hautning "When the Fires Roam," a reminder of the come-hither vocals and eerie murder story backdrop that characterize the duo's originals.
Phantom Limbs (Remix EP) is available for purchase on iTunes.
The mix below was posted yesterday by long-standing and excellent fellow blogger and Istanbul radio DJ undomondo, who's actually done this much longer than we have, and who has always been one of the most reliable sources of weird and exciting music on the web. He's been with us ever since we started, so by posting his mix and his brief explanation, we just want to show that we're with him, too, and with everyone else who's fighting for their rights and against oppression in Turkey these days. Take care and be safe, all of you.
"This mixtape was originally conceived thanks to a request from geziradyo.org, a radio hastily founded by activists after the civil uprising in Istanbul, which started at the end of May and continues on. I did this mix first and foremost for the people who have been occupying and living at the park for the last 15 days and I intended it to be a peaceful and cosmic one which would have been aired yesterday around 11PM. But the events took another violent turn yesterday, so I don't really know if this does mean anything to those people now. Nevertheless I'm still putting it online, may it give inspiration to all the brave activists everywhere around the world. Peace."
Doug Carn - God is one
Yatha Bhuta Jazz Combo - The Muse Inside
Lumumba - Sing with the Birds
Toolshed - Love in outer space
Ali Farka Toure - Cherie
Black Truth Rhythm Band - Imo
Fela Kuti - Viva Nigeria
Kazumi Watanabe - Walk Don't Run
Inga Copeland - So Far So Clean
Muslimgauze - Imam Ali
Modern Folk Üçlüsü - Bir dünya bırakın biz çocuklara
Fahir Atakoğlu, Horacio El Negro Hernandez, Anthony Jackson - Yana Yana
Senem Diyici - Dere geliyor dere
Tigran Hamasyan - Tragicomédie
Porest - Hoyda
Googoosh - Mano Tou
Orhan Gencebay - Hayat Kavgasi
Samla Mammas Manna - Svackorpoängen
Kornet - Musik Ur Filmen Adams Fodelse
Piotr Kurek - Untitled
Mort Garson - Rhapsody in Green
Eddie Gale - Ghetto Love Night
The Waitikis - Quiet Village
Akron/Family - Love, Love, Love (Everyone)
Kuusumun Profeetta - Kellonsoittaja
Colin Stetson - All the days I've missed you
Julia Holter - Marienbad
You might be familiar with London's Joanne Robertson from her gorgeous collaborations with Dean Blunt on his recent LP The Redeemer, so it sort of makes sense that Blunt's and Inga Copeland's still fairly new imprint World Music would put out Robertson's full-length, apparently due sometime this summer, even this is so much less weird than the founders' own art. Nothing more is known at this moment, so just listen to the fragile and quiet, wonderful "Heat", a song very much in the same vein as The Redeemer's "Imperial Gold", only, if we might add this, more beautiful and lonely and sad. The whole piece reminds us a bit of Tiny Viper's most devastating songs, which is of course never a bad thing.
With a name that refers to the potentials of spiritual transcendence, Stellar Om Source (aka Christelle Gualdi) may be best known for her explorations of an ambient synth and quasi-new age sound on a stream of late-2000s CDRs. Albums like her 2010 LP Trilogy Select placed her amongst the ranks of like-minded experimental synth acts Oneohtrix Point Never, Emeralds, and Dolphins Into the Future. Though mostly silent since then, Gualdi’s new release, Joy One Mile, sees her turning away from the psychedelic realms of space and towards the dancefloor, in-the-process crafting a mesmerizing album of techno cuts and finding a different sort of beat-driven spiritual transcendence.
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The best music is often that which carves out and creates its own little universe, and despite the many references to Detroit techno, Joy One Mile is an album with a sonic world that feels distinctly its own. All of the songs on Joy One Mile are remarkably complex affairs. These are tracks that don't so much as build in the conventional sense as much as they relentlessly push forward, accumulating a complex array of synth lines and drum beats that would be near impenetrable if not for the masterful arrangement (provided by Kassem Mosse). Joy One Mile’s stunning density is perhaps best exemplified by track “The Range”, in which the joys are to be found not in any sort of melody but in the song’s array of polyrhythms, the ways in which Gualdi’s many layers of beats work both with and against each other. The intensity never lets up, and in turn, “The Range” is an enticing song that consumes you, surrounding you with rich, syrupy synths and squelching bass lines.
For all of its structural experimentation and complexity, Joy One Mile is an absolute pleasure to listen to throughout. Gualdi herself notes in the press release that this is an album that somehow embraces “both the misery and the ecstasy” and nowhere is this more clear than in standout track “Par Amour”. Here, Gualdi adds a (seemingly genderless) vocal sample that, apart from a few choice phrases (“the truth lies within your heart”) is nearly unintelligible. Gualdi treats the vocals as just another instrument, with the beats often threatening to overtake the vocals, and the results are invigorating. The song at once seems to both question and fulfill the vocal promises of finding a sort of all-consuming love. Elsewhere, lead single “Elite Excel” takes its time exploring various beat grooves before erupting midway with a dizzying burst of arpeggiated synths. And, on “Natives / Most Answers Never Unveiled”, one can hear just a hint of Stellar Om Source’s former sound in its opening ambient waves, before the song gives way to a near-frantic section of beats, only to return once again to ambience.
Throughout, Joy One Mile is an album whose driving force may be an embrace of chaos, existing at the high levels of intensity where seemingly disparate emotions (the misery, the ecstasy) meld together and become one. Its pleasures unfolding after each subsequent listen, Joy One Mile is an undoubtedly bold record, one whose grasp you won’t want (or be able) to leave for long.
A few days ago, NFOP's Henning Lahmann pointed out: "that is exactly the kind of material that makes you turn towards pop music in the first place", and honestly, it totally applies here as well. Nothing in Lovelier Other's "Wonderkind" is clamoring or shoving for attention: the strings and guitars are in tandem, in veins of (yes, I am just about to make that comparison) -- Grizzly Bear. Guitars climb quietly in the background as we're told "It's no wonder you're unhappy, all you see is yourself, all you see is you", and for some reason, hearing "Wonderkind" makes me think of Caroline Polacheck referring to "Frigid Spring" as "a pastoral".
"Wonderkind" is patient, and that's a quality we all need more of. The duo's debut EP Effortis out later this summer, release date still TBA.
Listen. I know this is the Internet and that your time can be spent doing an infinite amount of other things, but you have to give this video at least a minute-and-a-half of your attention. And you can’t just skip ahead, because you have to get there, ya know? The video is for a song called “Crying Shame” by LOL, a side project of the Internet's very own Jono Mi Lo from Daytime Television (and obviously, the imprint Amdiscs). Camera quality limitations used to their finest. Check it out. I’m serious.
Here's another track taken from the hotly anticipated collaborative debut by Bristol's finest crew of young and forward-thinking musicians, rightly praised Young Echo. The short, noise-infiltrated "Slow Jam" is a paradigmatic example of the collective's sound, featuring unobtrusive yet sophisticated background textures, a dub-infested groove and a stream of consciousness on top of it all, here delivered by (I think but might be wrong) Jabu's Alex Rendall. In any case, it's brilliant.
