World's End Girlfriend & Sparky's Magic Piano Reviewed

World's End Girlfriend - Hurtbreak Wonderland (Human Highway)

Where this time last year I was being seriously blown away by Johann Johansson’s delightful Ibm 1401 - a User’s Manual this year there is a new album in my life that touches on every beautiful note given to man, a musical vision steeped both in classical and electronic music yet never sounding (despite its brilliance) as harsh as Venetian Snares Rossz Csillag Allat Szuletett, instead in bathes itself with lush sweeps of field noises, birds singing and ever so occasionally blasts of jazz like discordance.

The echoes of piano that pass through Birthday Resistance are sublime but these are soon forgotten as Katsuhiko Maeda begins the 13 minute trip through 100 Years of Choke, a song as life affirming as the video for We Are The Massacre is brutal. This is truly something special, a gentle comedown for the fans of Mono whose interest in World's End Girlfriend must have been triggered by his recent Palmless Prayer collaboration. That was good, this is ten times better. If you need some inspiration in your life then you couldn't do much better than this.

World's End Girlfriend - 100 Years of Choke mp3
World's End Girlfriend - Ghost Of A Horse Under The Chandelier mp3

Myspace

Sparky's Magic Piano - Feel The Beat and Do It Anyway (MelodyFactory)
An album of sweet and naive pop songs, the opening four of which would've made for a fantastic EP. Yet this is not to say that the rest is throwaway, far from it. Instead simply that the openers Like Falling in L*ve, Mend, the staccato robo pop of Coffee Song & Something Somewhere are near perfect pop much in the vein of all things Amelia Fletcher, i.e. Heavenly, Talulah Gosh, Tender Trap etc, perhaps Tender Trap particularly as the sound is more electronic than you'd expect from the aforementioned.

Sparky and You Like Her are more sparse, losing the electronics and falling somewhere between Whistler and the Englishness of Black Box Recorders Sarah Nixey or The Pines Pam Berry.

Kaliedoscope is lovely in the way that Kenickie's Acetone was lovely, in the way that sometimes when you really want to say something you just can't get those exact thoughts out and so some of the notes strived for aren't quite reached but you know exactly what she means and respect it more for not being afraid to show she's not perfect.

A lovely sweet album of synth pop that worth your attention if initially only for those four great opening tracks.

www.melodyfactory.com/shop
www.myspace.com/sparkysmagicpiano

Sources

Shameless Complacency

Bosques De Mi Mente & Serafina Steer Reviewed

Bosques De Mi Mente & Serafina Steer Reviewed

Posted on 2007.09.18 at 22:18

Current Music: Talkdemonic - Beat Romantic

Tags: bat for lashes, bosques de mi mente, cat power, cocorosie, eluvium, joanna newsom, kate bush, meg baird, serafina steer, sparklehorse, the finches, whistler

Bosques De Mi Mente – LoFi
With the first signs of the winter bearing down us, they bring with them a terrible feeling of loneliness and a bleak reminder of the harsh weather set to follow in the steps of what has yet again been a poor summer. Yet the winter also brings with it a tragic beauty, one that can pull you from the deepest of setbacks and sprinkle you with hope.

The music of Bosques De Mi Mente is your perfect partner to such feelings of melancholy and despair, like the scene from Far & Away when Nicole Kidman gets shot and Tom Cruise hands her back to her former lover and takes the slow walk through the snow, brutal and unforgiving it beats against your bare face, its gets in through any means possible and bites at your defenceless skin. Yet against the odds it’s hard to deny the beauty of snow and its icy mischievousness, its ability to hold a moment in time, the way you sometimes feel the need and occasionally elongate a time and period of sadness, finding comfort from your sorrows and wallowing in your misery, its unhealthy yes but sometimes it serves a purpose yet eventually like Tom you just have to let her go, just walk away from the situation. You try not to look back yet when you do all you see is footsteps slowly disappearing in the snow as the fresh snow covers them up and severs all former ties.

Bosques De Mi Mente is the music to soundtrack your latest tragedy, the music that will bring beauty to the most tragic of happening, solo piano has rarely captured such feeling, this was last done so well by Eluvium and if that’s not a recommendation then I don’t know what is.

Bosques De Mi Mente LoFi - MP3 Album Zip File

MySpace

Serafina Steer – Cheap Demo Bad Science (Static Caravan)
You may have guessed that I have a little more than an appreciation for the female vocal and more than a chip on my shoulder about how highly rated Cat Power is and yet again I find myself stumbling over a stupidly talented female that far exceeds anything that I’ve heard from Chan Marshall.

Serafina Steer will appeal to anyone who has been wowed by the likes of Bat for Lashes, Whistler, The Finches, Meg Baird, Cocorosie or Kate Bush and yes I hate lame comparisons but it’s not just because she owns a harp that I find myself thinking of Joanna Newsom, however it’s not that simple, this is Joanna Newsom gone back in time, a medieval Joanna who at the same time mixes her folk styling’s with modern technology and electronics, as if she’s half stuck in the past and half in the future, maybe the common, poor servant girl who creeps into her mistresses room and jumps grubby handed onto the harp at every opportunity, bashing out beautiful songs that no one will ever hear until now. As creative and original as Cocorosie, as lyrically weird as Sparklehorse, yet as accessible as the girl next door, the girl living on a council estate fighting to hear her harp over the arguments that overpower her playing

Catch now before you regret having to stand at the back of a packed out crowd, next to burger king at next year’s ATP, Serafina is a delightful discovery.

MySpace
Static Caravan

Sadly I can’t find any MP3’s so give her Myspace a try