Denver’s 25-year-old bedroom electronic artist James Cooley, better known as Mesita, follows up last year’s excellent The Coyote LP with another promising four-track EP called XYXY, self-released and available at a price of your choosing. Here’s a standout track, “Kingston”, overflowing with percolating instrumental loops and head-spinning vocal entwinements »
Former IGIF hypeworthy babies are teething so hard they pulled a King Kong and said, “Fuck yo airplanez!” when I told ‘em to open wide for the airplane of food, bzzzzzzz! I’m not sure if the tear in my eye is due to almost losing a digit or watching Pure Bathing Culture blossom before my eyes and sign to Partisan Records, for the sake of my manliness I’ll say the latter. New tune “Pendulum” is a catchy track that sounds like what would happen if a less guttural Neko Case booked a one-way ticket on a catamaran to Kokomo with nothing but sunshine and harmonies powering her sails.
Providence’s Tim Woulfe releases his debut 7″ via Apollonian Sound, the light and lovely “Joyce” »
Leonard Cohen vocals and a Microphones simplicity are always going to produce a winning combination for me, and “Joyce”, with Woulfe’s slightly wobbly, unstressed vocal delivery and straightforward three-chord song structure do it all very well. Its lack of complication, with the exception of the song’s well-layered middle and final fifths, put added focus on pretty, familiar lyrics like “I thought I felt the wind but it was only your breath / clutching my skin, finding new depths.”
Also, gotta give credit to a kid who writes a love song with semi-tangible James Joyce references: “The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.” – from Joyce’s Ulysses.
“Joyce” is from Tim Woulfe’s upcoming debut LP, The Uncouth Swain (itself a John Milton reference). Pick yourself up some highly limited, handcrafted vinyl here »
New Zealand’s Glass Vaults absolutely floored us in 2010 and a year later in 2011 with a pair of excellent freely released EPs, Glass and Into Clear, respectively. They’ve been quiet for a couple of years but recently came back with a complete stunner of a track called “Ancient Gates” that takes their brand of ebullient art rock to epic new levels. You don’t want to miss this one:
As much as the true definition might suggest, I’m not sold on the idea of a crescendo being all about volume, or simply filling the empty space with more of what’s already there. To me, great crescendos adapt as they grow. Bass and drums fill the voids above which lighter instruments and sounds simply hover. New sounds add confusion and excitement while those in the first half of the song fade in and out. There must be dozens of sounds in “Ancient Gates”, a masterful patchwork song with secrets ripe for uncovering. Song like this tend to be my favorites– as I learn to pick out the more hidden or whitewashed, the song’s personal meaning changes along with its literal structure. It’s the definition of exciting, interactive music.
If Glass Vaults released an LP filled with songs of this calibre, I’d have my album of the year.
Here’s a newly released single from AZ/LA duo Calvin Markus and Travis Bunn a.k.a. Dead Times. “Centuries” is head-spinning future-r&b of the most original sort, grown organically from earthy percussion as much as sped up vocal samples, and with their first single “Feel” this officially makes Dead Times two-for-two:
Ridiculous.
MP3 Premiere | Natasha Kozaily: “The Tiniest Elephant in the World”MP3 Premiere | Natasha Kozaily: “The Tiniest Elephant in the World”MP3 Premiere | Natasha Kozaily: “The Tiniest Elephant in the World”MP3 Premiere | Natasha Kozaily: “The Tiniest Elephant in the World”MP3 Premiere | Natasha Kozaily: “The Tiniest Elephant in the World”
