dream pop
Say Psych: Album Review: Saccades – Flowing Fades
Flowing Fades is the second Saccades album from The KVB’s Nicholas Wood and is out this week via Fuzz Club Records. Where Wood’s work in The KVB (Invada Records) trades in minimalist post-punk/coldwave, the Manchester-based artist’s solo material under the Saccades moniker is an exercise in escapist psychedelic pop. On Flowing Fades we find a …
Album Review: Brisbane’s dreamy pop exponent Cloud Tangle returns with the gloriously ambient ‘Swells’
Last year’s debut album ‘Kinds of Sadness’ by Brisbane solo artist Cloud Tangle was a sign of something special brewing in the home studios of Amber Ramsay – it was one of our favourite Australian/New Zealand releases for 2020 and indicative of a prodigious talent. Cloud Tangle is back with the album ‘Swells’ – another …
Say Psych: Album Review: MØAA – Euphoric Recall
Exploring dark memories embedded in nostalgia, MØAA present their debut LP Euphoric Recall out now on WWNBB (We Were Never Being Boring). MØAA was first conceived by Jancy Rae when she began writing and recording demos while living in the forest near Seattle. Serving as an outlet to process a troubled past, MØAA was named after …
EP Review: Garsa unveils debut EP ‘The Unfairity’ – a collection of intimate and sparkling jewels
It was around this time last year, plunging into the uncertainty of lockdown and without a full realisation of the horrors 2020 was about to unleash, that I came across a debut single by Garsa called ‘Jimmy Sour Highs’ – a singular ray of sunshine at the time. Martin Garside is Garsa – a solo …
Premiere: Italy’s shoegaze maestros Clustersun reveal visually stunning video for the brilliant track ‘All Your Pain’, and announce new album ‘Avalanche’ for May
We are very honoured to premiere today the visually stunning new video from Italian shoegaze band CLUSTERSUN for their dreamy single ‘All Your Pain’. And to add to the lustre, Backseat Mafia can reveal that CLUSTERSUN will be releasing their third album ‘Avalanche’ on 20 May 2021 through Icy Cold Records (Europe) and Little Cloud …
Track: Melbourne’s Tim Ayre launches low-fi dream pop delight ‘Mexican Holiday’ and announces news of EP
The story behind the new single, ‘Mexican Holiday’, from Tim Ayre has all the hallmarks of a Hunter S Thompson fable involving unhinged characters, consumption of illicit substances, wild journeys and all manners of excess. Appropriate, then, that the song and accompanying video has a bright effervescent indie pop low-fi vibe that exudes a whiff …
Track and Album News: Lightning Bug offers up stunning, dreamy, lead single ahead of third album release
Purveyors of dreamy, transportative musicscapes, Lightning Bug, have just announced the release of their third album – ‘A Color of the Sky’ – which is out on their new label, Fat Possum on 25th June; you can pre-order the album here. Lightning Bug is the brainchild of musicians and friends Audrey Kang, Kevin Copeland and Logan …
Album Review: The Ghost of Helags unveil the shimmering and impressingly beautiful album ‘We Came From the Stars’
Here at Backseat Mafia HQ we have been following synth pop duo The Ghost of Helags for a while – covering a series of extraordinary beautiful dreamy singles and even capturing a live session of single ‘Chemistry’. The Berlin-based Swedish duo have collected all the singles together and added more tracks to release an exquisite …
Track: Graywave – ‘Swallow’: a darker final drop from her forthcoming EP
WE’VE fallen pretty damn hard for Graywave, the self-styled “dreampop from the West Midz” project of Jess Webberley, on a couple of occasions in recent times; there was her previous single “Before”, from the beginning of the year, which we noted as being “full of that thrill and dusky elegance you get from the Cocteau …
Track: Offshore Projects’ new single ‘The Way I Fear’ is a mesmerising indie pop delight.
Sydney singer-songwriter Jonas Nicholls, formerly of indie pop outfit SURES, has continued down this path with the release of the shimmering track ‘The Way I Fear’, under the name Offshore Projects. The chiming, bubbling guitars form a lovely circular and chunky base up on which Nicholl’s voice soars – melancholic and heavenly harmonies form a …