It's all about the music…
Previously Kera & The Lesbians, KERA have joined up with folk musician Devendra Banhart for this beautiful slice of cosmic folk music that encourages and touts the joy and importance of communal support and resilience. It’s dreamy, heartfelt and gently soul-stirring stuff.
Blissed out hypo-indie sounds from New York drummer Alex Beckmann who records under the name MMBLR. ‘That Breeze’ is a nice mix of studio nous and songwriting. There’s a warm, bucolic mood to the song which possesses a stylistic blend of folky/trip-hop influences.
Almanacs is the work of Honduran sound artist Wilmer Murillo. ‘Love Peak’ is the title track from his album that came out a few weeks ago and its a beautifully aqueous piece of music that drifts on a warm sonic current of synths, conjuring up all kinds of constantly morphing images that form and dissipate into the aether.
Cass McCombs
Tip Of The Sphere
Anti- / Cooking Vinyl Australia
For a number of years, across seven albums, Cass McCombs flew under the radar for the most part. He was recognised for his work but it wasn’t until the critical acclaim and success of Mangy Love in 2016 that he went overground and found himself the talk of the indie world. That album was a fairly direct affair with a smooth veneer and darker themes lurking beneath the surface. Now, on Tip Of The Sphere, McCombs has taken a more circuitous route with a more cohesive, hypnotic and searching sound.
There’s a bucolic feel to much of the album, ‘Estrella’ being a typical example of the way McCombs weaves a 70s folk aesthetic into dreamy indie rock. There’s a fair amount of repeated phrases and insistent bass rhythms that add to the heady, aqueous and meditative vibe. ‘Real Life’ is like Tim Buckley jamming with Porno For Pyros with its percussion, strummed guitars and new age mysticism. The album centrepiece ‘Sleeping Volcanoes’ is a real highlight with cascading guitars, primitive yet pulsating bass and McCombs’ way with constantly renegotiated vocal melodies forging a gentle path through the song. ‘Prayer For Another Day’ is a more intellectually astute cousin to Kurt Vile, heading closer to the newer work of Steve Gunn.
Perhaps sensing a need to inject some aural unease into proceedings, ‘American Canyon Sutra’ is a queasy trip through spoken word over a minimal drum machine that distracts rather than provide an engaging contrast. It’s only a momentarily blip before the cosmic psych folk resumes and the album closes out with the ten minute countrified jazz-fusion noodling of ‘Rounder’, a glowing reverie of sun kissed guitars that embarks, mid-song, on a psychedelic journey that sounds like it could wind on endlessly into the cosmos.
All in all this feels like an intimate set of creative and explorative musical expositions. Eloquent, contemplative and for the most part intriguing and absorbing.
Chris Familton
Primer is the work of Michigan vocalist/producer Alyssa Midcalf who is also one half of Parts. The melancholic yet uplifting synth sound of TVI comes from her debut solo album Novelty, out March 1st on the Detroit label Young Heavy Souls.
The song works so well in the way that it doesn’t rely on the synths as a retro/nostalgic tool, they’re emotive and essential to the tone and resonance of the song.
Kick off the week with a dose of shoegaze courtesy of North American group Sungaze. It’s the warm season in this part of the world and this track, ‘New Familiar’, suits the weather perfectly with its warm, bucolic strum, hazy and blissed-out vocal and the light-tripping rhythm section. There are touches of Ride and The Charlatans in the dreaminess of the band’s sound.
Here’s a soaring, brisk slice of indie guitar pop courtesy of UK band FUR. ‘Him & Her’ channels The Beatles, The Kinks and The Las with a light psych touch and without ever getting too coy or knowing in their references. Infectious stuff.
Their self-titled EP will be released on February 14th via Nice Swan Records.
Courtesy of Greenland and producer Opeamp, here’s a nice piece of glitchy, industrial techno that inhabits some nice dark and dubbed out soundscapes. Think a less gauzy and smeared Burial and reminiscent of some of Photek’s work.
