SEVEN NOISES

Eternal Summers surprised us with a magnificent 10" EP and a 7 inch single earlier this year with a bunch of fresh pop songs and now they already have a LP ready that will come out ironically at the end of Summer on Kanine. But to make the wait a bit less harsh they will put out a new 7" with one of the songs of the album on the A side called Pogo that will be on the shops from August 31, just ready for the last summer parties and to say goodbye to these warmish days we'll soon miss when we listen to the whole shinny LP in cool October.

Anyway, as Eternal Summers try to infect us with their sunny melodies it will always seem it's warm outside when we play the record at home with the heater on.

I was very happy to find out that an American band I've been listening to non-stop for the last weeks were about to publish a new 7" exclusively for the UK. The Seasons EP will be released next Friday 29th on Meal Deal Records, limited to 300 copies, including 5 great songs and for only £3.99. Although only one song here is new, the title track Seasons, it includes two of the best songs of their self-released CDR, soon to be re-released as a 10" on Chimney Sweep Records , Fall Straight Back and Able To, and the two tracks from the Split EP with Reading Rainbow, Secret Language and Electric Blue. The duo from Virginia, Nicole Yun and Daniel Cundiff, practice a kind of guitar pop that can remind you of Heavenly or The Pastels, simple and perfect pop melodies that never pass the 3 minutes of duration. Check as well the beautiful digital single for Beko and wait for the already recorded 14 songs first LP that they describe as a collection of longer and shorter songs and still doesn't have a release date or a label assigned. Here you have Secret Language which has a video from yesterday at the Eternal Summers blog: http://eternalsummerseternal.blogspot.com/

It's been out on the news this week that 2009 was the year that more singles have been sold in the UK ever. Album sales have been down again though. And when they refer to singles they obviously include digital downloads, as well. Taking into account that nowadays there are websites where you can get a song for as little as 29 pence, this probably doesn't translate to money. Anyway, the purchase and release of vinyl single has gone up considerably as well and many people like to get both formats of the release, the digital for the I-Pod and the physical for home.
All these news reflect the change of consumption by the society and we could even contextualize this fact with the idea of fast consuming and wasting, with no time for the details, with the overexposing of information. Although I still love the album format and consider it the best form of recorded musical expression but always thought the single had more registers; it works as a presentation, it condenses ideas and it can even work as a dichotomy of genres between the two tracks that normally are included.
And as another celebration of this format, a really interesting website was born some weeks ago. Beko, a new online only single label, puts out every Monday a free download single. They specialized on new bands, specially the ones oriented to shoegaze and dream pop, but also covering many other genres. They are already on their 23rd release (they put out more than one a week during the Christmas weeks) and some of the bands who have put out free singles there are Memoryhouse, Moscow Olympics, Sore Eros, Tan Dollar, Million Young or Nude Beach and future releases from Idiot Glee, Sundae or Weird Era are confirmed. Mondays are always hard but thanks to Beko they are becoming a bit more pleasant as it always nice receiving things for free.
I particularly consider this initiative a great way for bands to be discovered and stand out from all the possibilities you have on the web and can sometimes get you lost between link and link.
Check them out here:
http://www.beko-dsl.com/