Author: Doubtful Sounds

multi-genre music journalism in the form of interviews, reviews, news and video from around the world...

NEW MUSIC: JARV IS… – House Music All Night Long

On By Doubtful SoundsIn Electronica, Indie Rock, New Music, New Release, VideoLeave a comment

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Jarvis Cocker returns with his first album since Further Complications in 2009.

JARV IS… is a band and the album is called Beyond the Pale, out on Rough Trade Records on May 1, 2020.

JARV IS… features Jarvis Cocker (vocals, guitar, percussion), Serafina Steer (harp, keyboards, vocals), Emma Smith (violin, guitar vocals), Andrew McKinney (bass, vocals), Jason Buckle(synthesiser & electronic treatments) & Adam Betts (drums, percussion, vocals).

JARV IS… formed to play a show at the Sigur Ros “Norður og Niður” festival in Iceland at the very end of 2017.

JARV IS… was conceived as a way of writing songs in collaboration with an audience. As the material they were playing was in a state of flux the band decided to record their live shows so that they could monitor how the songs were developing. After an appearance at the Desert Daze festival in California, Geoff Barrow (Portishead, Beak) suggested that these recordings could be used as the basis for an album.

Overdubs & vocals were added at Narcissus Studios in Neasden, London. Post-production work took place at Jason Buckle’s Place du Big Boss studio in Raynes Park, London. The album was mixed by Craig Silvey at Toast Studios in West London.

JARV IS… – Beyond The Pale
SIDE 1
1: Save the Whale
2: Must I Evolve?
3: Am I Missing Something?

SIDE 2
1: House Music All Night Long
2: Sometimes I am Pharaoh
3: Swanky Modes
4: Children of the Echo

NEW MUSIC: Tan Cologne – Alien

On By Doubtful SoundsIn New Music, Post-Rock / Instrumental, Psych, shoegaze, VideoLeave a comment

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Tan Cologne are the American duo of Lauren Green (formerly Mirror Travel) and interdisciplinary artist Marissa Macias who began collaborating in Taos, NM.

Their debut album Cave Vaults On The Moon In New Mexico came out last week and ‘Alien’ is a shimmering, atmospheric and gently propulsive example of the cosmic psychedelia that the pair have created.

You can hear the desert, the stars, the shimmering heat of the day and the cool twilight breeze as they blend their vocals and drape the sound in reverb and delay. Everything drifts lightly via the billowing and swirling guitars. Think Mazzy Star, Warpaint at the most ethereal and CAN suspended in a dream-state.

Cave Vaults On The Moon In New Mexico is out now via Labrador Records

NEW MUSIC: Dante Mazzetti – Cold Rain

On By Doubtful SoundsIn New Music, StreamLeave a comment

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The spirit of Tom Waits is strong on this song from New York songwriter Dante Mazzetti. The skeletal jazz bones and intimate, smoky vocal delivery bring to mind Waits but as the song progresses you can also hear a bluesy Bad Seeds-styled rousing delivery gradually encroach on the pared back sound of the song.

‘Cold Rain’ comes from his recently released new EP Hotel Vol. 2. Of the EP, Mazzetti says “The music on this EP is a mixture of accessibility and wild imagery. I’ve always enjoyed making music that goes off on a tangent but doesn’t fall off the cliff. The songs are doors that open easily into bizarre worlds rather than places of comfort.”

Born and raised in New York City, Dante Mazzetti started playing the fiddle at the age of three. By five, he was learning guitar and writing his own songs. By the time he was a teen, he was playing on New York City subway platforms and performing in music clubs. Mazzetti was accepted to the Professional Performing Arts High School in Manhattan where he studied voice. He then went to Purchase College Music Conservatory to study Studio Engineering before moving to Austin, TX (for 6 months) to write his first album.

NEW MUSIC: Pure Moods – Backwards World

On By Doubtful SoundsIn Album Covers, Indie Rock, New Music, Psych, StreamLeave a comment

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Melbourne trio Pure Moods released their new album Upward Spiral late last year and this is one of the feature tracks from it, ‘Backwards World’. The song has that familiar lackadaisical Australian indie jangle and strum while also drawing a line back to Trans-Tasman bands such as The Chills. The rest of the album operates in similarly pleasing territory, ambling along in its own mellow and melodic world.

Pure Moods is the recording moniker of Adam Madric who has played in various Melbourne outfits (Bad Family, Closet Straights, Pearl Bay) before creating this name for his solo material. Upward Spiral is a selection of home recordings put together between 2016-2019.

LIVE REVIEW: Moon Duo @ OAF, Sydney

On By Doubtful SoundsIn Electronica, Experimental, Live Reviews, Psych, shoegazeLeave a comment

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MOON DUO 
OXFORD ART FACTORY
13/02/20

The evolution of Moon Duo has been a slow and steady one over the last decade. Originally starting as a duo of Wooden Shjips guitarist Ripley Johnson and Sanae Yamada, the pair have retained their minimal aesthetic and core personnel but expanded their live performance to include a drummer and most recently, a stunning light show, by Manchester-based visual projection artist Emmanuel Biard, comprised of projections onto transparent material surrounding the band on three sides, creating a 3D prismatic effect.

After a DJ set from Angus Andrews of Liars that travelled through all kinds of psychedelic dimensions before curtains parted and the band emerged in their triangular realm, silhouettes magnified large above the audience’s heads. Any Moon Duo show is a journey that doesn’t necessarily have peaks, instead there are sonic waves, carrying the crowd on stratospheric journeys through thin atmosphere, twinkling synth lines and winding, searching guitar filigrees or dragging them down into subterranean head trips to the centre of the earth. The Krautrock drive and relentless rhythms were like a superhighway – sleek and endless, the motorik bass and melodies of Yamada the perfect balanced foil to Johnson’s more traditional psych rock soloing – heavy on effects and open-ended explorations of the outer limits.

Tracks from most of their albums peppered the set and they finished off with their recent cover of Alan Vega’s ‘Jukebox Babe’, a perfect homage to one of their strongest influences. The combination of the visuals and the consistent and cohesive adherence to their musical parameters made the set a wholly immersive and transportive experience for the audience and no doubt the band as well.

Chris Familton

NEW MUSIC: Quivers – When It Breaks

On By Doubtful SoundsIn Indie Rock, New Music, VideoLeave a comment

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We’ve dug everything we’ve heard from Quivers and this single, released toward the end of 2019 is no exception. That blend of jangly/chiming guitars, melancholy and effortless momentum. It’s like a road trip soundtracked by The Byrds and The Bats. Lovely stuff.

Quivers is the lyric-driven guitar-pop project of Tasmanian Sam J Nicholson. Having moved to Melbourne, the band is rounded-out by Bella Quinlan (bass), Holly Thomas (drums) and Michael Panton (lead guitar).

NEW MUSIC: Mazeppa – The Way In

On By Doubtful SoundsIn Guitar Rock, New Music, Psych, shoegaze, VideoLeave a comment

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Mazeppa are an Israeli psychedelic rock band who have recently released the video clip for their second single from their upcoming album.

Michal Perez Noy, a Haifa musician and composer, initiated in 2017 a project to compose songs by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke. She was soon joined by Asaf Koren (guitar), Elad Bardes (bass) and Amir Noy (drums) and what started as the Rilke project became Mazeppa.

‘The Way In’ finds the band conjuring up some mystical spirits of fire and forest and twisting them into hypnotic shapes and phrases. It’s a hallucinogenic experience of the sonic variety and they tread a perfect line between the euphoric baggy vibe of the 90s and a tougher rock sound, more in the realm of The Doors and Velvet Underground.