If you put Montréal’s Police des Moeurs’ name through Google Translate, the software suggests 'vice squad' or 'morals/moral police'. "Tu as honte parfois" ('You have guilt sometimes'), from the project's new EP Les Mécanismes de la culpabilité – 'the mechanisms of guilt' – is a dainty song with everything tapping, pittering, and pattering like it should with a Phantom of the Opera/Frankenstein organ built in the middle. See it as a song for darting around to. Police des Moeurs give the francophone perspective on what Black Marble, Lust For Youth, and Cold Showers did in English last year, as well as fitting in with the output of Lescop. This is music we don’t hear coming out of those who speak French very often. But hey, we all have guilt to grapple with, right? It sounds like it should be on the soundtrack to Montréal film director Xavier Dolan's next work, soundtracking a montage depicting an escape.
Les Mécanismes de la culpabilité is out May 20 via Atelier Ciseaux, and, given the title, appropriately arriving on white vinyl. Pre-order here.
At the beginning of March, I hit the road for two weeks with Florida locals Hundred Waters, as they toured their way through North America with UK's Alt-J, kicking it off in Boston with two sold out shows. From there, the road continued to Washington, Carrboro, Atlanta, Birmingham, New Orleans, Houston and finally Austin for SXSW, where my travels with the five-piece ended. Below is a selection from the beginning of their tour, minus select photos from New Orleans and Birmingham, as the tour van got busted in a restaurant mall in Houston's Chinatown just before heading over to SXSW, and a few digital memories got lost.
Hundred Waters are currently on tour in the UK once again with Alt-J, and will support The XX in the US starting May 22nd.
One of Manchester's absolute finest (and a defining NFOP favourite throughout 2012), M O N E Y, have been keeping 'quiet' since we proudly premiered the "SOLONG (GODISDEAD)" video, of course if we look past the amazing live material taken in consideration, including a session with Daytrotter, or more recently the heart-aching session with Amazing Radio. With their brand new single "Bluebells", Bella Union mark their first release with the band (rumors that were obviously on everyone's lips last year), and proves to be a truly ravishing jam driven in a more noctural direction than previously. Now, the contact with the outer world seems to be nearly completely erased from their secretive approach, which at the end of the day only strenghtens their sound to the fullest.
Airbird (Joel Ford from Ford & Lopatin) & Napolian’s (Ian Evans) first song together, “In the Zone” is abounding, with every sound given the maximum expansion and exposure time possible. “In the Zone” is both wafting and bounding, and features guest vocals from Erika Spring of Au Revoir Simone. From the always excellent Cascine, the Airbird & Napolian full-length is scheduled to release this winter — watch out.
In a tumblr post describing the history of “Bugs Don’t Buzz,” Majical Cloudz’s Devon Walsh explains: “I wrote a version of it on piano in 2008 when I was nineteen, but then forgot about it until my friend found it on my computer a few years later. Then for a long while after that I lost confidence in my ability to write songs, and during this time my friend used “Bugs Don’t Buzz” as an example of why I had made beautiful things and shouldn’t be so hard on myself.”
With a track like “Bugs Don’t Buzz,” getting the whole story of its history only adds to the songs already stripped-down and exposed quality. With only a piano loop and Walsh’s clean vocals to carry it forward, the song is a stark contrast from much of the hazy, maximalist R&B that has been popping up in mass across the Internet over the past 2 years. Walsh’s approach to R&B is much more direct than his colleagues, hiding less behind the infinite, glowing layers of the computer screen. The result is something closer to the genre’s predecessors of decades past, where the lone voice on top of everything else is still the primary mouthpiece for the soul, direct and unfiltered.
With the one-two punch of “Childhood’s End” and “Bugs Don’t Buzz” to hype his upcoming Impersonator full-length out May 21 on Matador Records, Walsh’s voice is ringing out clearer than ever.
At some point in time, beat music blared over speakers at dance clubs, while textural ambient music blared through headphones around the world, about as far apart as possible on the spectrum of electronic music. Since that point, there have been a number of artists who have managed to draw out the similarities between the two ends of that spectrum, finding the middle ground which proves the two aren't as different as we thought in the first place, obviously reminding us of Aphex Twin.
However, the production style of London producer AyGeeTee is something entirely different from Aphex Twin. The ease with which he moves between hazy ambience and dance floor vibrations is pretty comparable. Like Aphex Twin, it isn’t a matter of this record being an ambient album or this record being a beat-based album; it’s all just AyGeeTee, as so to speak, is a very distinct sound by its own. On Fools, the producer’s new album on the AMDISCS: Future Reserve label, the lines between genre tags are blurred even further. Beginning with the opener “The End Begins,” thick beds of fog are established for the entirety of the album. What follows are beat-heavy cuts like “Amor Buscador” and “Unit 16 Again”, which just manage to slice through the haze like headlights, fading in to pass you on the wet streets, before disappearing again into the zero-visibility blur of what lies ahead. In the latter part of the album’s sprawling 76-minutes, tracks like “Distant Thorns” and album closer “Pet Vault” begin to lift the veil, rising up with the low-hanging clouds into the infinite sound space where nothing that rises ever falls back down.
Fools is out now as a download from the AMDISCS website, and will receive a proper vinyl release later this year. Stream the entire album below.
If there was one blatantly overlooked and underappreciated artist last year, it surely was Vermont's prime loner Ryan Power, whose delightfully off, subtly forward-looking and above all heartwarming, disarmingly sincere I Don't Want To Die for some reason never really received the amount of praise it clearly would've deserved, at least in the eyes of this humble observer. Good thing is, that guy is of the truly prolific sort, so we only had to wait roughly another year to be blessed with new material. No need, really, to change all that much, so expect more bittersweet melodies on soothing, slightly off-tune e-pianos, snuggling up against Power's worldly-wise yet delightfully naive and gently adamant lyrics. First single "The Prize" is ready for streaming below, so close your eyes and get lost in ageless honesty.
Today sees the release of a new tape from Portland’s Best Available Technology, Excavated Tapes 1992-1999, Vol. 1. Released by Astro:Dynamics, the tape consists of a series of improvised recordings made in the 90s that are just now seeing their release. The songs, with titles that seem to obliquely refer to electronic equipment (“Trvlr TDK SA-X100”, for instance), are appropriately foggy and industrial. Pairing ambient drones with stabs of static noise, the tape exudes a dark and moody atmosphere. Though the underlying percussion might allude to techno beats, these soundscapes, alternately dreamy and menacing, are anything but danceable. The most exciting track, however, might just be the cassette's final one, “Wt Drms Cso Maxell 94”. Here, a delicately beautiful synth line brings just a touch of light and prettiness to this excellent tape.
Excavated Tapes 1992-1999, Vol. 1 is currently available for purchase as cassette or digital download from Astro:Dynamics.
