SEVEN NOISES

Alesandre Jong is Obsidian Pond, a one-man-project from Manchester who just released a 3" CDR on Deathbomb Arc Records. This is all the information you can basically find on the net about it. And some posts talking about the magic of Sundog Sinners, his most commented track, thanks in part to the kaleidoscopic video you can watch on his Myspace site. This track, although follows the characteristic hypnotic loop repetitive sounds of all his tracks is particularly warmer thanks to a Calipso-tropical sample that forms the chore of the track. But if you check his other tracks everything gets chillier and slowed down like if you were in a K-hole. Most of the songs are just based in a short loop repeated over and over; they could last 10 seconds or 10 minutes and it wouldn't be any drastic change. Some of them are heavier in sound like Flooded With Light or chillwave ambient floating loops like Swamp but probably Sundog Sinners is his freshest track mixing cold and warm like a Carnival in Siberia.

Emily Reo is a girl from Orlando who plays organ keys, vibe keys, guitars, wooden flutes etc etc, floor tom, fake drums and kitchen utensils according to her Myspace. I'll just add that is one of those acts that thinks that less is more, that simplicity is the way to go and you don't need superfluous arrangements if you can communicate what you want with your voice, two organ keys and a drumstick. Her songs are closer to melancholy than sadness and her sound could remind you of a lo-fi Beach House although even more minimal. She's just released her first compilation of songs via A Dracula Records called Minha Gathinha that you can get either on tape or CDr (again not vinyl...) and you can listen to covers of Beach House, St Vincent and Built To Spill on her Myspace.

Emily Reo - Metal On Your Skin.mp3

Zola Jesus has been keeping herself busy for the last couple of years. After the release of two LPs, an EP and a couple of singles, touring with the help of her cousin Dead Luke and forming part of Former Ghosts (where Xiu Xiu's Jamie Steward also collaborates) she's coming back with a new 6 tracks EP to be out the 6th of March on Sacred Bones. The EP is not available for pre-order yet and there's no information on the name of the tracks but she's sent one of the tracks to be included called Night to a couple of blogs and I have to say it's my favourite ZJ track yet. Although is her most accessible track so far as the fuzz, noises and lo-fi sound have mainly disappeared, the main characteristics and influences are still there. The track is a dense and mysterious song where she strengthens her voice and stops hiding it behind all the electronic noises she normally uses and has never sound as good. The people who have heard the whole EP says it's the closest she's been to sound Hi-Fi but the EP is still a dense exercise full of pounding drums, strings and choral sounds. And it has one of the best covers I've seen lately. Can't wait to hear it.

If you've been following this blog for a while you could probably be surprised about my inclusion of this 10" EP on here. Don't worry, I am too. Sometimes, you don't know why, what in theory is supposed to have all the elements for you to massively detest one track works pretty well when they are combined together and you don't know why it drags you into it like glue or caramel and you cannot stop listening to it. It happened two years ago with T2's Heartbroken, a song I hated the first time I heard but grew on me little by little in an evil way and actually Kingdom's song reminds me very much of that track.
So the evil forces took me to listen to Kingdom's first release as it was out on Acephale Records, home of CFCF, Salem or Memory Tapes and my surprise was that this track combines the worst elements of Trance sytnths and crescendos, UK Garage bass lines and voice tricks and cheesy vocals and the mix, although in theory sounds terrible, works amazingly well, believe me or not. The limited to 500 10" vinyl comes with You as the B side, another trance track that is too much for me and makes me realise that maybe I totally lost it if I like Mind Reader.

I blogged about Esben and the Witch a couple of months ago and as has happened before in many occasions, they've upgraded their status some points up thanks to a couple of mentions on Pitchfork, one of them being the news about this single, Lucia At The Precipice, the last of the incursions of the always exciting Too Pure singles club, which means is a limited edition of 500 that will never be repressed. This song and the B side They Use Smiles To Bury You, follow the same patterns as the songs that appeared on their first EP 33, although Lucia is even more atmospheric and abstract that any of the songs they've done before and by the end of the song you can even think about the XX with those programmed rhythms although less minimal and more tragic. They are currently touring opening for them, Big Pink or Efterklang so maybe you will have the chance to see them live.

Esben And The Witch - Lucia At The Precipice.mp3

I blogged about Veronica Falls and the main song on this single back in September last year so when they finally released it as a single three weeks ago I didn't think I had to post about it again. What has changed? Well, apart from releasing it on Captured Tracks, the coolest label on earth, with the great cover of Starry Eyes on the B side they are going to re-released it on a British label, Trouble Records, in a couple of weeks with a new cover art and a new B side, the still unheard (if you haven't seen them live) Stephen. And this is not strange taking into account they are from London and getting a lot of coverage in the media here, even the evil NME has put them on their bands to watch and mentioned them in many occasions. Whats more, when they received 70 copies of this single at Rough Trade they sold out in a couple of days!!! If you missed it though, you can still get a copy online in many places or just wait for the new version of the single to come out. And don't miss them live in one of the many dates they are performing in London, nest Tuesday opening for Dum Dum Girls at White Heat, for example.


Veronica Falls - Found Love in a Graveyard.mp3

Starting to say I was not a fan of the first Lemonade album my approach to this new EP, which has not been released yet but have offered a free mp3 of the main track Lifted, is not the one who has any positive expectations. That said, when I heard the first notes of the song I felt it sounded fresh and interesting. The incorporation of African and Caribbean sounds (although very overused these days) and a much less chaotic use of the rhythm and all the organic sounds work on their favour. The way the establish all the different sounds and rhythm changes is perfect throughout the song and awakens curiosity towards listening to the rest of the songs of the EP where they supposedly play with West Indian and Balearic sounds.
But in my opinion there's still a big turn off on the song: I'm not a big fan of the vocals on the song that sometimes feel misplaced and forced and I particularly hate the lyrics. An instrumental version would be much better.

Lemonade - Lifted.mp3

Here we have a band that strangely has not exploded into a more mainstream success although has the same parameters as other bands that have cross that frontier from mostly followed by a small group of people to perform in front of large groups, festivals and sold an important amount of records.
Their songs are post Arcade Fire and post Sufjan Stevens, which I mean, they share the ability of transforming simple songs into hymns and mass chants, sometimes coming from acoustic folk songs but always incorporating festive arrangements, lots of instruments, from pianos to xylophones, changes of tempo and lots of wah wah wahs and la la las.
The thing is that the release of their 5 songs EP last year didn't awaken a lot of interest or cause any fuzz and the reasons could be many: It's still difficult to get to a lot of people without an LP, they are from Australia and their music would have been much more popular four years ago when Hi-Fi hymn songs was the thing and before Lo-Fi was back. Anyway, their songs, and in particular Blood, are worth a listen.

The Middle East - Blood.mp3

This split single on Tough Love Records to be released the 22nd of March (one month in advance if you buy it online) contains two songs by two British bands very talked about last year: Fair Ohs and Spectrals. While Fair Ohs have been linked with other British bands like Pens, Male Bonding or Graffitti Island, Spectrals has always been more associated to American bands thanks to his connection with Captured Tracks whom he released his first single with and is going to put his first album out at some point this year.
Fair Ohs music, as described by themselves on their Myspace page, is Paul Simon meets Punk, which probably they want it to mean punk-rock music with Afrobeat influences as seen and performed by some other contemporaries these days.
Spectrals, on his side, hands in two more tracks of delicious 60s fuzz pop with views to VU and, although not particularly original, keeps on promising to be one of the best things that can happen to British music this year thanks to the his effective and simple melodies.

Spectrals - Keep Your Magic Out Of My House.mp3

This Pearl Harbor EP has been out for a while and after all the Internet fuzz thanks in part to the fact that it was released by the every time more famous and relevant Mexican Summer. Anything they release, although they have extremely high prices, even more if you live in the UK, is sold out within days. That's the case of this four songs EP and this and also the fact that you could see information all around the web, made me think it was not worth to make a post about these two blonde sisters. But after seeing you can still get some copies on Rough Trade (although for £18) made me want to inform you you can still get a copy if you haven't yet. The songs of these two sisters, being one just 15 years old, are silky pop tracks with spacey guitars, voices and synths, nothing particularly new but good songs like Sunburn and specially Luv Goon, that sounds like an instrumental lost The Cure demo from 1980 with their voices on top, makes it worth enough to get this EP, the self-released CDR Wish We Were Here, and keep track of future 7 inches for Big Love, Gloriette and PPM and a 12" for Art Fag.

I've been lately posting about many free EPs available for download on-line. Free is great, everybody loves free. Free is as well a new way of promotion on-line. The saturation of the market since new technologies made possible for everybody without technology / music background become a musician and the difficulty of reaching to people caused by this saturation has made artists try to reach new ways to get their music out for people. The music industry crisis caused mainly by all the different ways of getting free music on-line, legally and illegally, (and the economic crisis in general) has also helped for this situation to happen.
Anyway it's great that new artists have the possibility of introducing themselves this way. The problem would start when sometimes is the only way they have to get known and is not a possibility but the only option. But when artists who are already known give stuff for free on their blogs or websites I want to think that they do it because they feel the necessity of sharing their music with as much people as they can reach.
This could be the case of Montag, an electronic pop Frech Canadian artist who is already known for many releases during the noughties and that a month ago uploaded a new free EP of great cover versions on his website. Low, Breeders, Bronski Beat, P.M. Dawn and Unrest are the artists covered and transformed into songs that would fit perfectly on the Morr Records or Darla back catalogue. You can get it at:

http://montag.bandcamp.com/

or buy it on CD or Tape if you prefer. No vinyl again, sorry...

After some instrumental tracks in their EP New Flowers and in a Kitsune compilation Tanlines went into incorporating lyrics on their split single with Salem and they carry on doing it on their new EP to be released on March on True Panther Sounds. This is not the only new thing; at least on the main track on the EP, Real Life, already available as a download single with two remixes by Memory Tapes and Basic Needs, they are trying new sounds. Together with their trademark synths they sound more African than before (even they have a strange African accent when they sing, really...). The other track available for listening at their Myspace, Three Trees, is classic Tanlines, an instrumental track that could have perfectly fit with any of their previous stuff. And the EP will be completed with four more tracks including a collaboration with Glasser (whom they have remixed before) I'm pretty curious to listen. You'll wish it was already summer when listening to this.

Again from Seattle and put together in the same sack as U.S.F., Alaskas and all the supposedly new Chillwave scene, here we have the first EP of Big Spider's Back (Yair Rubinstein), a guy that performs music with samples, synths, laptop and guitar. Already commented in many blogs around, his music it's more pluridirectional than some other artists he's been compared with and his approach to pop music is more palpable in some of his songs. The fact that he uses vocals in many of his tracks is also a difference from those more ambient based artists.
On this EP, we can see these two variants very segregated. Although on tracks like Again Agent or Spooked the reference to ambient, loop music and cold repetitive sounds takes him close to artists like Fennesz, Boneless or U.S.F., Perfect Machine sounds like a Dan Deacon track that never explodes into multi-beats craziness, Warped drinks from Animal Collective's synth based psychedelia and Don't Make Me Laugh reminds of an up-to-date version of Soft Bulletin's Flaming Lips.
This EP is only available as a download on I-tunes or Amazon or you can buy it as a limited CDR at Circle Into Square. We want it on vinyl!!!!