News: claire rousay launches a new imprint through American Dreams; hear ‘Twin Bed’
WITH HER acclaimed album a softer focus only just in the rear-view mirror, San Antonio sound experimentalist claire rousay has announced a new imprint, Mended Dreams, in partnership with American Dreams Records; which she intends as an outlet for highly limited editions of both solo and collaborative work that will be available ony by subscription or through the …
See: Hyunhye Seo of Xiu Xiu announces her debut solo album, ‘Strands’; watch the video for the amniotic dronespace of the title track
HYUNHYE SEO is an artist you may know better in a slightly different nomenclatural iteration as Angela Seo, one half of hypnogogic techno experimentalists Xiu Xiu. But she’s branched out with her first, forthcoming solo release for Lawrence English’s excellent Room40 imprint, in which she keeps the wash and blur of her parent band’s dreamscape …
See: The surreally beautiful Arctic visuals for Matt Evans’ ‘Arcto 2’: an exploration of loss and grief in drone and piano evocation
THE LOSS of a life partner, an intimate; for many of us an unimaginable experience, and one that words would fail to convey, either in the expression of or the condolences to the mourning. Multi-instrumentalist and composer Matt Evans was left devastated by the death of his partner, Devra Freelander; and as the composer of the …
Album review: KMRU – ‘Logue’: expansive ambient electronica with intelligence and a found-sound bliss
KMRU’s Logue is a window into the mind of a young African musician who really, truly gets this musical form, has crafted some astonishing little gems herein; if this is, to all intents and purposes almost a juvenilia, then we have so much to look forward to. At once old-skool and nu-skool ambient, with bookends of purer, generative analogue electronica admitting you to a more organic, blissful core. This is a bloody lovely record; blissful, thoughtful, deeper than it first appears; buy
Album review: Tomas Nordmark – ‘Exit Ghosts’: electronic landscapes that move from the amniotic to the apocalyptic
LIVING these days in London, but hailing originally from the small Swedish coastal town of Västervik, some 280km further down the coast from Stockholm, Tomas Nordmark is a electronica producer and soundscaper with a very complex and organic musical vision. His interest in the sonic avant-garde was brooked by the 1960s’ art scene in New …
Track: Masayoshi Fujita – ‘Morocco’: audiophile, jazzy, ambient brilliance on Erased Tapes
A MUSICIAN who deals with a nuanced ambient beauty that audiophiles should surely treasure, and to my mind lining up alongside fellow countrymen Ryuichi Sakamato and Chihei Hatekeyama in making music not only of a bewitching delicacy, but with a really empathetic understanding of sound in space, Masayoshi Fujita is set to release a new …
Track: Paris Youth Foundation – ‘Tired Of Loving You’: a post-heartbreak indie stomper
AH, MAN – you’ve gotta feel sorry for Kevin Potter, frontman of Liverpool’s Paris Youth Foundation. a band with a way with a bittersweet, pint aloft, indie tune. They’ve followed last month’s “Tomorrow”, the soundtrack to a night on the tiles after a break-up, confidence brittle and booze-bolstered couched in big, BIG, indie melody, with …
See: Blood Wine or Honey feat. Zoe Brewster – ‘Testing Time’: popping with colour, welcome this hypno-Afro-tropicalia funk into your world
THEY call their particular thang hypno-tropicalia, and it certainly is that; and whoah! so much more. Much more. They paint their irresistible, off-the-wall, deliciously weird groove styles in the brightest colours, and it’s kinda, hmmm, hypno-Afro-tropicalia-jazz-funk-disco, strongly declamatory, punk-funk-jazz, all the compounds and inversions of that. It’s out there on an underlit dancefloor in the …
See: Thala – ‘weep’: a lovely study in dreampop bliss from Berlin riser
A BERLINER born and raised, THALA took her first steps into the world of music as a street musician and attending open mic nights, since when it’s completely been an upward curve; and a listen to her new single, “weep”, and you’ll see why her rise has been so effortless so far. She brings together …
Track: Lizzie Loveless – ‘Loveless’: former TEEN sister embraces a cleaner, dreamy synthpop aesthetic
BROOKLYN’s three-sister indie rock band TEEN were much loved by those in the know, and rightfully so, with slow-burn, atmospheric altpop numbers such as “Raggedy Andy” to offer the world. It was with sadness that that same cognoscenti received the news that sisters Lizzie, Katherine and Kristina Lieberson were calling it a day after two …