It's all about the music…
The wonderfully named Hail!Maggiedacat is a London producer and visual artist and this track, ‘Gemini Moon’, comes from her new EP Impossible Woman. It’s got a great, woozy 80s vibe about it like a lost video game or a soundtrack to a melancholic sci-fi TV series. The rest of the EP has a similarly dream-psych analog synth vibe to it too. Highly recommended.
Body Type
EP2
Inertia Music / Partisan
The Sydney quartet are releasing this, their second EP, on the eve of a UK tour, another sign of the band’s rising star status on the international stage. Of course, they’ve been the local talk of the town for a couple of years, building a solid following via their own shows and some fine support slots.
If EP was their calling card, their first real statement of intent beyond a couple of earlier singles, then EP2 is another step forward. It solidifies their reputation as incisive songwriters and fine players. They’ve got an ear to the ground but a widescreen songwriting vision.
Opener and first single ”Stingray bursts from the gates with a spray of guitar notes, sparkling and cascading over the nimble rhythm section. It’s a great example of the rush of energy they can invest in their songs, the retention of the rough edges to the music and the economy of their songs. Pop in structure but noisy and damn catchy by nature.
‘Free To Air’ initially dials things back to a wistful and melancholic slice of dream pop before choppy drums and their swirling jangly guitars take flight. It’s a song apparently inspired by an old neighbour of Annabel Blackman’s and his life as witnessed remotely from her bedroom. Musically the song captures that mood of both intimacy and disassociated observation. ‘Insomnia’ inhabits a similar atmospheric place, the highlight being Blackman’s vocal melody which is heavy-lidded and drowsy yet still irresistibly catchy.
‘Sad Wax’ weaves more of the same snake charmer guitar lines into the song’s DNA but it lacks the same impact and physicality of the other songs on the EP. It’s a pleasant enough track but it sounds under-formed as it repeatedly circles the same musical idea without building or elaborating on it. The final track ‘UMA’ gets things back on track with a different sonic palette. The bass comes to the fore, leading the song into grungier territory akin to Pixies with a dash of Hole. It works wonderfully, all tension and quirks courtesy of shrieks and sneered, gang vocals, capping off an impressive batch of songs from a band that just keep getting better and better.
Chris Familton
New music this morning from the country of Greece, courtesy of gothic post-rock outfit τεφλόν (teflon) and their track ‘επίσκεψη’ (Episkepsi), the Greek word for visit.
This track snakes along with just the right balance of gloomy melody and agile, detailed playing, building with orchestral urgency to a briskly curtailed climax. You can pick up the track as part of the Athens band’s two song EP over on their Bandcamp page.
Anonymous Friends – straight outta Somerville, Massachusetts with their debut EP Anonymous Friends Start A Band. Great sound too – shades of Fugazi, Polvo , Girls Against Boys, Bailter Space and the like. ‘Amos’ does the loud quiet loud thing well with a tight rhythm section and some noisy Pixies six-string racket smeared across the top of it all.
We love metal – the chug and the thrash, the pure adrenalin and clinical precision of it. These days we don’t come across nearly enough new metal that hits our demonic sweet spot but Panic Room out of Dallas, Texas caught our ear with this hammering track that ticks all the boxes of aggressive and dynamic playing.
Some wonderfully weird-pop here courtesy of Wine Flies, the solo project of Swedish musician Henrik Lennartsson. It hits that same spaced-out, fever dream vibe of John Maus and Ariel Pink with a warped, lo-fi production aesthetic that accentuates the haunted feel of the music.
“Business was the result of me, merely improvising keys over a beat. I never know what I’m gonna get, since I don’t write the songs beforehand. I’m not at all classically trained in any form, I always just play whatever chords or notes I know until I get something that sounds alright (at least to me). My biggest inspiration is all the bad/boring music I’ve ever heard, because it makes me feel absolutely no pressure what so ever. I simply aim to create something listenable, preferably a hit, but mostly just barely okay. I’m basically just trying to have fun with it, because why not?
I’d say that my fuel/drive in all of this comes down to the concept of irony. It completely destroyed me as a person, when it first hit me as a younger man, but it is also now the thing that makes me sane and keeps me going, because life is ridiculous, and so am I.“
Some new sounds from teenage band Coyote Jungle from the South Coast of the UK. Nothing new here but the singer has a certain grit and edge to his voice that stands out. It’s a commercial rough and raw pop/rock sound but there’s something going on that singles them out as a band to keep an eye on. 60s riffs mixed with anthemic indie rock.
It’s the tension and mood of this piece that caught our ear when we came across it online. The way that John Beltran sonically suspends the mood before introducing the tentative snippets of piano that flutter and suggest, like a butterfly unfurling wet wings. The back half emerges with greater weight on the back of swells of synthetic drift that rise and fall with heavy emotion.
This piece comes from Pure Sounds of Michigan an ambient album that invites listeners to take a sunrise-to-sunset tour of Michigan, from coast to coast. The album is set for a May 22nd release on Detroit-based Assemble Sound, and was imagined, created, and released by Michigan’s tourism arm, Travel Michigan as a part of the Pure Michigan campaign, in conjunction with the label.
The music was executive produced and mixed by composer Blair French, mastered by Eddie Logix, and features songs composed by the likes of Michigan-based heavy hitters John Beltran, Waajeed, and Windy & Carl, along with up and coming names such as Greater Alexander, Dave Graw, Todd Modes, and more.
