Big Blood - Dead Songs (Time Lag)

Big Blood - Dead Songs (Time Lag)

A somewhat chance discovery, stumbled upon by the hype of the good folk on the Avant Sounds of Atease thread on the Radiohead AtEase forum. Not typical of the normal Ambient, noise or nu-jazz that normally surfaces on their, instead a woozy mix of folky-psych goodness that sounds like your soul mate repackaged in the shape of a song or twelve.

The Archivist & The Archeologist particularly blissful, 9 minutes of confusing love delivered in the most delightful manner possible.

Each song so loveable and instant, visions of camp fires and late night sing alongs, heavenly vocals and hooks to die for. Like CocoRosie covering Howlin Rain, Nina Nastasia gonna vegetarian. Beautiful Music.

Tons of Big Blood albums to be downloaded here, i'd recommend buying Dead Songs, next best thing, start with The Grove

Rangers - Suburban Tours (Olde English Spelling Bee)

Dronea Dronea have been banging on about Forest Swords for a very long time, way before people slapped bizarre new genre's on their sound, whether that be "Chillwave" "Hypnagogic Pop" or "Glo Fi", the truth be told Forest Swords owe more to Burial that what I believe the aforementioned terms to mean. As such i steered clear of the genre as I didn't massively love the Swords, though they are finally growing on me.

Label mates Rangers on the other hand hit all the right buttons, the music is chilled, it glows and whilst maybe not quite hit a state of hypnagogia it is certainly early evening, summer music. Everything about it is just fantastic, the bedroom-esque production, the not quite perfect EQ and the ability to stay the right side of both cheese and funk with those oh so rubbery bass lines.

The best way to describe the music would probably be to imagine what people in the late 80's/ early 90's imagined the music of today or even what the future in general would be like, it has a strong nostalgic feel, some would say like peering into someone elses half remembered memories, fuzzy around the edges and missing clarity and complete sense. I can't help but think of Deloreans and Back to the Future 2 for some reason.

Suburban Tours is an album that shouldn't work but strangely does, quite instantly loveable and full of shelf life. Along with the excellent Bear Creak, laid back jazz funk bass to make Howard Moon week at the knees, Out Past Curfew, through Woodland Hills, Ross Downs to the aptly named Bel Air are simply genius, like Ducktails discovering the thumb of the Mighty Boosh's Hitcher. Very Highly Recommended, sure to be battling it out with Four Tet, Frank Bretschneider, Counterspark and hopefully the Fun Years for my album of the year.

What Boomkat Said :

*Another unfathomably great transmission from the mighty Olde English Spelling Bee - compressing a world of hazy 1980's pop edits and television broadcasts on one dense, oddly unsettling LP - so good* Rangers aka Joe Knight sits us in the passenger seat for another incredible cruise around the grey interzone of 1980's suburbia on this, his excellent debut LP release. 'Suburban Tours' was inspired by his move from the outskirts of his native Dallas, Texas, to a rainy San Francisco, where his loneliness grew into eleven tracks of pop-inspired, avant-smudged melancholia. The obvious comparison point is James Ferraro or Ariel Pink and their expressions of white American solitary poplife, but the tape editing processes and drained 80s funk of these tracks gives 'Suburban Tours' it's own autistic aura. Knight draws on the foggy memory of records by Steely Dan, Weather Report and Prefab Sprout, assembling a degraded sheen of 80s funk that's generally not found among many of his fellow Hypnagogic explorers. The uncomforting factor comes to light when his edits bunch into looped cul-de-sacs, like we're exploring the landscaped terrain of some gated community and the road/tape inexplicably folds into itself, we feel like we should be moving forward, wanting to get out of there, but we're were not getting anywhere. Perhaps this is his take on the stultifying nature of American middle-class suburban life? Or English, for that matter. Either way, the effect is oddly moving, blending the neon evening glow of an inner-city night drive with tones of a greyer, and more insipid suburban landscape. Limited copies - not to be missed.

Read full review of Suburban Tours - RANGERS on Boomkat.com ©

Taylor Deupree - Snow (Dusk, Dawn) (12k)

Last years Weather and Worn was a key record in shaping my musical year, irresitable droney experimentalism in bite size pieces, impossible not to listen to again and again. And although he boasts a large back catalogue and impeccable taste as head of 12k and Line i've yet to find anything by him that's quite matched up to Weather and Worn's magical warmth, until ironically now with the coldly entitled "Snow (Dusk, Dawn)".

Another masterpiece much in the same manner as the aforementioned, inspired by the late winter snow of 2009 and part of a multimedia project that you can read about below.

The way he combines surface noise with dreamy rotating drones is near perfect as the track rotates and swells gently never straying too far from the early sounds but developing enough to keep the interest whlist still not forcing its way to the forefront, perfect music to relax or read to. The kind of outcome you'd expect should Jana Winderen have bumped into either Collin Olan or Rutger Zuydervelt during their respective experiments with ice but ten times better.

What The Label Said :

please note: Snow (Dusk, Dawn) will only be available during the opening night of Taylor Deupree's Unseen photography show in Tokyo on April 15th. Any copies remaining from this night will then be available in 12k's online shop on a first-come-first-serve basis. About a month following the opening of Unseen the musical portion of this edition will be made available through our digital distribution network.

Transience, ephemerality. There is beauty in things that don’t last. Taylor Deupree’s Snow (Dusk, Dawn), a multimedia project incorporating sound and photography, is based around 63 photographs taken with expired polaroid film. This particular film produces images cast with other-worldly blueish hues and almost immediately begin to fade; losing color, to deep browns, and then finally, within 24 hours after being shot, to complete black.

Deupree’s work is often inspired by nature, particularly the winterscapes near his home and studio in rural New York. With the polaroid film in hand, which he knew would capture only a fleeting image, he shot images during the first heavy snowfall of the winter of 2009, at dusk, in the setting sun; nothing was to last, the snow, the image, the day. The next morning, barely at sunrise, he set out again to finish the film, in a dawn that wasn’t going to last.

As quickly as he could, following each photo session, Deupree scanned the polaroid prints, capturing the first white snow in ghostly blue before the pictures faded to black. Each of these scanned images is printed and displayed next to its original, black polaroid counterpart in the package along with the cd. Each copy of this edition of 63 is thus rendered unique, each with a different print and polaroid.

For the music portion of the project there is also contrast, transience, and decay. A fragile melodic loop, distressed by surface noise, struggles to keep its repetitive flow over a quiet and languid 18 minutes as it subtly, but constantly, loses ground and eventually becomes fragmented and falls away amongst the elements that surrounded it.

Snow (Dusk, Dawn) captures the essence of what much of Deupree’s work is about: imperfection, time, and memory. He uses both high- and low-tech means of creating rich works that scrape away at the surface of digital sterility. Avoiding the con- trolled manipulation offered by computers he prefers natural and unpredictable processes to add depth and texture to this work. Outdated film, cheap cameras, dust and leaking light effect his photographs while guitars, found percussion, old analog synthesizers and recordings of falling snow provide the soundtrack to a moment in time that comes and goes like dawn.

This edition is being presented at the NADiff Gallery in Tokyo, Japan on April 15th as part of Deupree's Polaroid photography show, Unseen.

The edition contains: 3" CD - Original Polaroid print - Color print of pre-faded Polaroid image - Letterpress card.

A PDF file of the entire edition can be viewed HERE.

Frank Bretschneider - EXP (Raster Noton)

Frank Bretschneider, a chance discovery following a return to the wonderful Raster Noton Unun Series,(the name of the series derives from the greek atomic numbers of the chemical elements 111–119 in the periodic table)care of Aoki Takamasa.

The music of Frank Bretschneider would probably have not been too appreciated by myself maybe even 9 months ago but as i find myself more and more drawn to the experimental side and ambient dub the deep, thudding glitchy beats are a delight to the ears. Very much like label mates SND's Atavism, their is little melody as such, at least in a conventional manner, instead electronic stabs, skitters of interference and wasp like hums and zips.

Compared to 2007's almighty Rythym, EXP takes a slow start not really kicking in until half way through track 4, namely, b.l.u.e., polylog, node, from there on in it's nothing short of exceptional, tracks 6 through 9 in particular, sure to appeal to fans of Raster Noton, SND and Atom TM.

What Boomkat Said :

Raster Noton's rhythmic auteur, Frank Bretschneider, presents his first album in three years, a "music-visual project based on the idea that fine art should attain the abstract purity of music". 'EXP' is an attempt to assimilate the qualities of music, namely rhythm, movement, tempo, mood, intensity and compositional structure within the visual aspect. The music for the project is arranged from an array of generated and selected waveforms sourced from pure electricity, magnetism, light and other radiation. These sounds inform the visual animations, paralleling their changes in frequency, intensity and shape, attempting to exactly reproduce the audible occurences. Of course, that's pretty hard to grasp without seeing the animation so we'll just concentrate on the music. The album is divided between 35 tracks, each ranging between 13 seconds and nearly 3 minutes. Living up to his reputation as a master digital craftsman, Bretschneider uses his abilities to sculpt cochlea engulfing bass tones and ultra-visceral hi's, occasinally arriving at moments where he creates the illusion of 3D electro-acoustic environments with spectacular depth perceptions. Between these hyperreal scapes and his avant B-boy beats this is a special album that should warrant repeat listens for those who really want to explore every nook and cranny of his artificial spaces. Very highly recommended

Read full review of EXP - FRANK BRETSCHNEIDER on Boomkat.com ©

Counterspark – The Halpern Experiment (Resting Bell)

Much like previous Resting Bell release, Herzogs "First Summer and the Running Dream" Countersparks The Halpern Experiment is a truly encapsulating listen.


Cooked up from a series of Cassettes purchased second hand Counterspark has manged to transform these pieces into a dreamy brilliance. The kind of drone that demands to be listened to with headphones, turned up loud, melting your brain into a dreamy rapture. Amazing stuff.

Counterspark - The Halpern Experiment Full Album Download

What Resting Bell Said :

Counterspark is the solo project of Johnny Utterback of Richmond, Virginia. A visual artist by trade, Johnny began experimenting in sound in 2006. From that point on, Counterspark has been a project of experimentation in the world electronic music. Rich textures and lush soundscapes with an underlying tone of optimism are all intertwined into the melancholy compositions that are Counterspark.

The sounds of The Halpern Experiment were sourced from a “healing sounds” cassette, found in a thrift store amongst the piles of one hit wonders. Not finding any value in the cassette’s listening experience, the tape was cut into loops and abstracted. With the focus on the textural elements of the tape and relationships of the melodies, the project became a healing method in itself. Providing refuge from reality in a swirling world of analog color and warmth, The Halpern Experiment was two years in the making.

With mastering by Tanner Menard, the eight movements truly come to life.

TU M' - Monochromes Vol. 1 (Line)

Line being a sister label to the marvelous and ever reliable 12k records to quote "has continued to publish documents of compositional and installation work by international sound artists and composers exploring the aesthetics of contemporary and digital minimalism as limited edition Compact Discs and DVDs."

To some 12k may be experimental in its own right, Line however takes it to the next level being specifically for ultra-minimal stuff and art installations. As such at times I've tended to keep a distance. For this release though nothing could be more instant to the ears of an appreciator of long swelling drones.


TU M’ are an Italian multimedia duo formed by Rossano Polidoro and Emiliano Romanelli in 1998. In their own words "Through a personal use of digital and analog instruments, the TU M' reveal a complex universe made up of present and past, closeness and distance, where seeing and listening become a meditative contemplation. " I couldn't agree more.

At times it veers towards the epic soundscapes of ambient dub master BvDub, allowing the pieces to flow and billow into an endless sea of tranquility. The only fault here would be Monochrome #04's length, straying into 29 minutes whereas twelve would quite happily have sufficed. The other three tracks however are exemplary both in length and content.

"A poet always has too many words in his vocabulary,
a painter too many colors on his palette,
a musician too many notes on his keyboard."
- Jean Cocteau

Tu' M - Monochrome # 03 - excerpt
Tu' M - Monochrome # 00 - excerpt

2008/2009 | Monochrome # 09+V06 | 20' | excerpt.mov
2008/2009 | Monochrome # 08+V03 | 30' | excerpt.mov
2008/2009 | Monochrome # 06+V05 | 20' | excerpt.mov

What Boomkat Said: This disc represents the auditory component of a mixed media project from Italian duo Tu M', who describe Monochromes as "a collection of modular audio and video compositions" which create sound and light vibrations that reverberate around the performance space, resulting in "an atmosphere to be contemplated". This being an audio-only CD, Tu M' have in a sense shifted the goalposts somewhat, and the only clue to the visual element you have is the album sleeve, which lifts a still image from the project. Having listened through the disc, it's actually pretty difficult to imagine how any sort of corresponding video might enhance the experience. These compact, finely worked pieces construct an enveloping ambience in their own right. 'Monochrome 01' immediately provokes comparisons to William Basinski with its looped, heavily enshrouded loops and ghostly piano gestures, but there's a more digital, less gritty feel to this album that sets it apart from that oft-copied sound. Next comes 'Monochrome 02' (unsurprisingly enough), which is far less concerned with constructing any explicit melodic presence, instead content to cast sonic shadows for twelve minutes or so - it's all characterised by a disconcerting intangibility, vaporous and strangely... absent in tone. More overtly musical is the shortest entry here, 'Monochrome 03', which unfurls chords that gently swell and fall away like a distant orchestra, only for the final piece to present a more solid block of sound, casting a veil of digital smudges over your ears for a hypnotic half-hour. Abstract and immersive listening from the reassuringly challenging Line stable.

Transmittens - We Disappear (WeePop!)

Weepop! is a label that I've sadly not written enough about, be assured they are a label that I adore, a portal back to the pop world that I sometimes forget about when I let myself get so wrapped up in all the wonderful drone out there. Transmittens are a wonderful reminder of everything I love about the whole indie pop, twee scene that I grew up amongst.

Having known nothing about them before pressing play I was quite surprised and somehow excited by the squealing feedback that opens Marfa Texas, within 3 seconds though all is restored to wonderful drum machines, handclaps and moog lines to die for. Each song lulling you in with guitar or keyboard lines less than subtly imprinting the chorus melody in your mind before its even arrived, so much so that you can almost instantaneously sing along.

Hardly a breath is taken in between tracks, each one fighting for your attention, each one succeeding. This is one of the best simple "lo-fi" indie pop albums I've heard in some time, very much reminiscent of one of my old favourites, the Pipas with touches of the Icicles, such a wonderful knack for keeping it catchy and yet still being capable of writing more subdued numbers such as Something Else.


Places I'm Dreaming reminds me of Lily Allens LDN (this is meant to be a COMPLIMENT, i love that song!)given bedroom pop treatment with it's infectious repetitive hook. But no doubt it'll be the wonderful Hot Dog Suit that leaves you with the biggest smile of the day "somebody told me/ they know where Peter's at.../He in a Hot Dog Suit/ Dancing in Front of You/ Oh Yeah!" somewhere close to genius, a wonderful pop album that will be played again and again this summer.

Transmittens - Marfa Texas mp3
Transmittens - Hot Dog Suit mp3

What WeePop! Said :

Wow, it’s been a while since we last had a new cd up on our little pre-order shelves. It was good to have some time to catch up with all our previous releases, but I was really starting to miss that excitment you get when you hear a perfect collection of songs by a band you love for the first time, so I couldn’t be any happier to announce that we’re starting the year with a very welcome return by Kansas’ Transmittens.

In their new mini-album, We Disappear, Danny and Jen bring us ten catchy synth-pop songs laced with jangly guitars and some very clever lyrics. If that doesn’t give you a good enough idea of what to expect, get a little taste of it here.

Simon James French - Anthem (Hibernate)

Another hugely impressive release from the Hibernate label and perhaps my favourite on the label so far. Five tracks of drones that border on ethereal, each one lovely and slow. Listen hard enough on opener Serfdom and you can hear the faint sound of children playing against the windy drones and Ian Hawgood like crumples.


It's one of those releases that doesn't overdo it time wise, like Tom White's and Taylor Deupree's releases of last year, you don't feel that you have to take an afternoon off to listen to it, instead, instant, to the point and seemingly tireless.

Simon James French - Anthem - Stream Here

Hibernate Label



What The Domestic Soundscape Said :

I met Simon James French at Middlesex University when I was working on the Cut and Splice Domestic Soundscape podcast series. Along with several other artists he came to the informal workshops/classes I gave there about Sonic Wallpaper and contributed to the discussions on that topic which ended up in podcast #2 of the series, Rooms and Chambers.

I have kept in touch with SJF through following his blog Plundr Tumblr which I really enjoy reading, and was recently interested to read of his EP release, Anthem, which can be heard and downloaded here.

Serfdom - the first track - opens with generously rich and sonorous drones, the rustle of jeans and a distant patina of joyous voices. These drones continue over the subtly-changing soundscape beneath and there is a delicate, fragmentary quality to the snatches of environmental sound-recordings which move in your peripheral hearing as you listen. Is that a dog’s collar jingling? A tractor or other trundling, slow-engined vehicle?

Plunder is distinctly more ominous with more obscure and difficult-to-identify sounds lurking inside one another, ringed by dull, bell-like sounds. The tone darkens in the opening sections of Misery. Somewhere around here environmental sounds begin to rise out of the drone-soup and up to the fore, and there are some lovely sonic elements which remind me of my electronic cooker with its tap-tap-tapping sound, the bubbling hiss of onions frying or perhaps even the sound of rain pattering intensely on a surface. I love how the material qualities of sound are used here; how it somehow suggests wetness or dryness, scratchy or smooth, soft or hard, and how this materiality fleshes out the relative purity of the drones. The ethereal dronescape re-emerges towards the end of Misery and, surrounded by rustling sounds, there is an almost choral atmosphere to this section - like someone singing inside electronic wires - before the ponderous and slowly moving sequences of Falsehood open. Metallic, resonant and restless, this track pans about like an animal trying to get comfortable in its hole and fades to emptiness so that the last track - Shame - can round up the whole EP, which it does, in a rapturous crescendo of tremelo-rich drones, backdropped by what I think is the sound of cars passing.

At times in its gentleness I find this release to be very remeniscent of Greg Davis’s release, Somnia, but where Davis uses very pure drones and melodies which make it feel as though Somnia has been composed in a vacuum-sealed box, SJF allows his music to rub shoulders with a bit more environmental texture and I like this difference between the two. I enjoy the use of sounds throughout, and the pacing of each track, and the sense of Anthem as a complete work with discrete sections. My only criticism of this release is that the epic quality to the track titles and the release title itself - Anthem - do not necessarily, at least to my ears, reflect the delicacy and subtlety of the sounds contained throughout. There is something intimate and mellow about Anthem with its evocations of interior or familiar environs that I find more like vespers and less like an anthem, but I think this is a small point, and the overall sense of choral religiosity in the music makes those giant track titles forgiveable.

Airport Girl - The Foolishness That We Create Through Love Is The Closest We Come To Greatness (Fortuna Pop!)

Another free download from Fortuna Pop! and this time a real blast from the past, Airport Girls, Honey I'm An Artist is one of my favourite pop albums from a very important part in my life musically, I remember discovering Airport Girl supporting Cinerama and playing alongside Solar Plexus (who became Saint Joan and now Ellen Mary McGee) at the now rarely used venue, The Boat Club in Nottingham.

The monstrously long titled track The Foolishness That We Create Through Love Is The Closest We Come To Greatness was always one of the highlights, starting off with an Idlewild esque riff before full on exploding into Dexys style pop and not sounding a second too long despite its length of just over 6 minutes.


The only sad thing is that my actual favourite Airport Girl song, and the original Bside to this single is not included, that of Striking Out On Your Own. Still it appears that the singles still available to buy on the website, it would indeed be money well spent. A welcome reminder of my indiepop past.

Airport Girl - The Foolishness That We Create Through Love Is The Closest We Come to Greatness mp3


What they said way back when :

REVIEWS:

"Like Belle & Sebastian meet Denim, which is the stuff of genius"

(Melody Maker)

"Indiepop doesn’t come up with many epics. The three-minute perfect pop song ideal still seems to be held in high regard, long after commercial producers have padded the norm out to four and a half with reprises, extra choruses, key change, instrumental parts and longer intros (or it seems to be anyway, there’s probably an interesting graph waiting to be made of song length on number one albums over time)

And rightly so! Brevity is important in music, so explaining the brilliance of The Foolishness that We Create Through Love Is The Closest We Come To Greatness is tricky, as it clocks in at just over six minutes. I suppose part of it is the spontaneity in the lyrics that seems to force you onto the dance floor. “Just when I thought the chance was missed… well that’s when we kissed” being the moment that the song is hinged around. It just demands you dance to it.

The Foolishness… is also important for other reasons. It was unashamedly indiepop at a time when the genre was scattered all over the place and hard to find. For someone in the early days of discovering the genre at the time, this song seemed to say that it wasn’t all over. Dancing to Airport Girl at Indietracks in 2008 was proof of that.
So, um, I suppose if I have to explain it using the three-minute perfect pop song ideal, this is two perfect popsongs. Back to back. In the same song.

It saves you the bother of having to get up to put the stylus back to the start every other time too."

(Sweeping The Nation)

Allo Darlin - Polaroid Song (Fortuna Pop!)

Fortuna Pop have kindly decided to periodically release a free downloadable single from the cream of their wonderful pop roster. This time it's Allo Darlin, a band that you'll have heard me rave about previously, and one that I'm absolutely kicking myself about not including in my end of year pop list. Easily my favourite gig of the year seeing them support the Lucksmiths at the Scala, previous weePop! single Henry Rollins Don't Dance was as good as it got last year popwise, certainly up their with The Loves, Fergus and Geronimo, God Help the Girl and The Magic Kids.

Polaroid Song picks up where Henry Rollins left off, wonderfully catchy pop with dreamy lyrics 'I Feel like dancing on my own / To a record that I do not know / In a place I've never seen before" speckles of flute and Camera Obscura-esque guitars. This one WILL MAKE my 2010 list for sure.


BSide Will You Please Spend New Years With Me? coincidentally picks up where Heart Beat Chilli left off, showing a more melancholy and yet still deeply romantic and cutesy lovableness, all Kimya Dawson if she had a more perfect voice and was much much cuter, "I've been trying to think positively/ about taking up new activities/ I'll do yoga and learn Chinese/ play accordion/ and eat my peas/ But will you spend/ new years eve/ with me/ we can hide in my bedroom/ and watch cartoons all night" all followed by a whistled refrain that will no doubt be compared to the Moldy Peaches Anyone Else But You, but who cares, this is the sweetest song I've heard this side of the new year.

Allo' Darlin - Polaroid Song EP

What Fortuna Pop! Said:

The Polaroid Song is the first fruit from Allo Darlin’s soon to be released debut album. A breezy, bouncy, eighties-style pop song that could have come straight from the soundtrack of a John Hughes movie, it was inspired by Polaroid’s decision to stop manufacturing the iconic film, a move that prompted Elizabeth of Allo Darlin’s photography-obsessed boyfriend to start his own stockpile. B-side Will You Please Spend New Year’s With Me? possesses a childlike naivety and emotional directness that conjures up the anti-folk lullabies of Kimya Dawson. As an added incentive to buy the record 100 of the 7” singles will contain a unique, individually-taken Polaroid which entitles the lucky finder to enter a competition to win a special Allo Darlin’ gig live in their own living room!