I’m amazed by this. It’s drone ambient noise or something like it, with occasional vocal samples. Listening to this EP is really like watching a movie, having a nightmare etc., it’s an insanely immersive and dense, like a soundtrack to your subconscious’ inner workings. The sound experimentation is really interesting and, though deep, never unpleasant and, though constrained by the genre, never boring – not for me at least.

The second track is the most accessible, having vocal samples, rhythm (though irregular) and sound bits with clear emotional meaning – suspense and creepiness, mostly. The other two are more atmospheric, which makes them harder to relate to. I think the interplay of different sound streams in them is actually more interesting and aesthetically pleasing, but nothing beats emotion as a tool for musical attraction – in a broad sense of emotion, including the emotion of “wanting to dance”.

Well, I fail to see how black metal, drone and such are sad, but if you feel sadness in kvlt stuff, then this is probably depressive to you as well.

In general I can say this is really well made and deep, so If you like the genre: 1) you will like this; and 2) this Zalhietzli dude also releases other people’s music of the same general type, check it out here. He releases on tape, with cool homemade album art. If you dig that, you can buy this EP on tape on his bandcamp page.

-Carpeaux

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Although the musical aspect of this is very important for its overall effect, it as also very lyrical driven. The way this manifests the most is by the length of the tracks. They tend to linger on for a bit longer when the musical message has already been delivered. At the same time, there isn’t much musical development, as in extended bridges and instrumental sections, the general idea being to lay down this backdrop against which the singing is placed. The way it is done, though, is very moody, atmospheric, with a clear desire to that “experimental” feel, with different bits and pieces coming up occasionally. That’s pretty much how to describe it: singer-songwriter stuff with a psychedelic/experimental background.

The singing is halfway between more ethereal schools of folk (Tim Buckley and such) and psychedelic (the tracks as a whole wander between these two poles), being the most important contributor to an eerie feel that is on the musical background, but gains much by being boosted by the singing. There is serious musical and recording technique effort to make the tracks sound this eerie though and, when you get the hang of it, this might be the most interesting aspect of this album: checking out the chord progressions, melodies, playing styles and ornamental musical ideas, as well as the effects and techniques applied, with the objective of making it sound eerie and ominous. Most of those musical ideas are very straightforward and classic “psychedelic” stuff – think Syd Barrett, which is one of the actual tags actually used on the bandcamp page.

The lyrical content couldn’t be any different. As far as ominous goes, this is very spot on:

“It’s gonna be a beautiful night
If I can get you away
From your telescopic sight
The targets are already dead
And you’ll save yourself a fight
If you can just let them
Fade away ”

I don’t know about you, but I consider that class A pop music lyrics and it fits really well with everything else. It’s nice to see such effort, thought and care going into music, which makes the experience of listening to it from beginning to end very cohesive and satisfying.

I see no reason why this can’t be released by an independent label as is, but what do I know. Check it out, it’s well worth a listen.

-Carpeaux

“So when I sleep alone tonight
I’ll sober-up and hold you tight
In my mind. ”

Want some more of that with some pretty laid back music on the background, sung by a nice voice with pretty harmonies? Here you have it. I don’t have much else to say, fuck, this is some pretty stuff. Very lyrics-driven filled with confessional real-life stuff. There’s no experimentation or progressiveness or anything, but the musical background is cool enough, with a little bit of Beirut here and there.

I bit whiny at some times maybe? The dude is apparently 17, so I’m letting that slip by as just emotional singing, I know this guy is going to come up with awesome stuff in the future.

-Carpeaux

Post-Drone Ambient maybe? The idea seems to be to create interesting musical landscapes of a dark/drone nature, with little (very subtle) to no development, filled with sound experiments, not really inducing relaxation, but more like trying to emanate an unique experience – as in, instead of relaxing, making you “feel the music”, experiencing not a feeling but the music itself. It grabs you and keeps you paying attention to every detail, uncomfortably waiting for a change that might never come and then it ends, always abruptly.

It’s funny how, since there’s not much of a melody and the same only slightly altered sounds are always repeating, the drumming, which isn’t much more than rhythm keeping, feels like a drum solo, which makes the music sound like someone playing drums on a windy field. It’s cool though.

There’s a little bit, just a very little bit, of post-rock in this, mostly in the percussion style everywhere and some synths that vaguely evoke an eerie guitar in tracks two and three. The percussion uses realist drum sounds, which I think was a smart move and part of what gives this post-rock feel as well as keeps this music down to the ground. Again, this picture of someone playing drums in a windy field is a pretty cool one.

Interesting and deep stuff.

-Carpeaux

The key word here may be delicacy. Everything is well-crafted to be delicate and beautiful in a tender, discrete way. Nice gentle emotional singing, a couple of tasteful guitars that play as many different roles as there are songs, showing masterful grasp of this small art of 20th century popular guitar playing. Coming up with simple voice and acoustic guitar songs isn’t as easy as it seems, and you still have to factor in songs that just don’t work., the filler the make up for at least half the length of most mainstream releases, and this alone goes to show how hard it is to actually write a simple song.

There are no fillers here though – and even though the first track might be the most catchy, the very best song is possibly “River Song”, the second to last. None of the tracks have hushed melodies, careless guitars or distracted singing. You can feel the love for the music-making craft in each song. Absolutely none of these songs is progressive, experimental, dabbles with exotic instruments or whatever, but in a discrete way, this album is astonishing in its exuberance, because the setup is always the same, but the songs are so different, and that is, of course, much more impressive than having songs that sound different because one has a a theremin and the other has space rock synths.

But the simplest way to describe this is by simply stating that it’s beautiful. It’s so discrete and simple, you don’t really have to think, you can just relax and dabble in the prettiness. Actually, the best way to listen to this might be to sit back and try to understand the lyrics like he was talking to you. If you are inclined to do so, you have a plate full. Some of the lyrics in this album are great. “Thunder” is my favorite, but I can’t really say it’s the best. “Wings” might get the title. “Fields of Wheat” is the odd one of the bunch, less confessional and more freaked out.

Enough with Winter, moving on to…

Spring sees a growth of grasp and ambition. The first three songs are angrier and thei lyrics are of a completely different nature from the ones in Winter, something like the stream of consciousness of Winter’s “Fields of Wheat” times a thousand (not really, maybe times 3). Dirt goes back to form though, and with a little bit of something new, a country feel in reference to the lyrics of the song, a nice little emotional song about missing a dead person who used to play country tunes. As for new somethings, there’s a piano on the first track as well, and it works perfectly in the song.

Well, this album was sounding more like winter than the previous album, so it closes off with Spring, which is kind of corny in it’s idea of “writing a song about spring” with a 19th century romantic poetry feel, specially in the first verses, but in the end works fairly well and closes the album with dignity.

So, the delicate guitar work on Winter is kind of gone, giving way to other guitar experiments. It’s easy to give too much importance to fingerstyle guitar ways, which are gone in the stronger tracks, and ending up not noticing well thought-of chord progressions, which were there in Winter and are here as well. That and melody-crafting are still difficult arts that are present here in a masterful way.

Moving on.

So, finally Summer, released two days ago. Well, Winter was incredibly beautiful and Spring was something special, but I feel tempted to say Summer is the best one yet. Even if Winter might still be someone’s favorite of the bunch, in Summer the new feel and elements of Spring have matured. The new elements here would be vocal harmonization and, in the guitar work, a middle ground between the gentleness of Winter and the roughness of Spring in a couple of tracks. There’s something like maybe a cello on Trust also, maybe a guitar played with a violin bow or a synth? Well, there’s an organ on Beachwood Coffin as well, but everything is very discrete.

But back to why Summer might just be the best one. The lyrics are still confessional and poetic, but a bit less awkward. Everything that was already great stayed as is. Actually, there was no change in the melodic style since Winter, and that’s a good thing, this stuff is still evolving and is yet to deliver its best tracks, and I’ll tell you why:

Because “Trust” might be the best track in the three albums. It is catchy and deep at the same time, the guitar work is gentle and pretty, the vocal harmonization is hauntingly beautiful (rivaling the first track), but the killer feature is the melody, which shows a natural build-up of meaning that emanates from both music and lyrics (“are you afraid to put your trust on me?”). An album with 6 or 7 of these would easily be my Album of the Year. It makes “Beachwood Coffin” look like a filler, and that’s a great track as well.

Great album, if you like Nick Drake and folk in general, download this right now, it’s free as in beer.

-Carpeaux

Trance inspired by nordic tribal chanting samples, using other similar rough and deep vocal samples – for example, “Church Universal And Triumphant, Inc- Call For Protection (The Sounds Of American Doomsday Cults, 1984)”, as well as other samples invoking being “in the wild” etc. The beats themselves at times sound like traditional drums of some kind of indigenous people. The end result is very powerful and interesting, it really feels like a story, you get pulled into this world this guy created.

The two first tracks, it seems, are more suitable for actual dancing, while the last track is the deepest, apparently crafted to be listened and enjoyed. But everything is so thoughtful and has so much effort that even the other two – specially the first – are very much suitable for quiet listening as well. Do not leave this review without at least listening to the 2:20 of the first track. It’s an incredibly rewarding and well-constructed build-up from the deep vocal samples to the actual finished dancing music.

So, if you are into EDM and feel like something serious and deep, go for it right now, this is a powerful musical journey.

-Carpeaux

Starting off with the most famous one, Pitchfork best new music and all. There’s a nice video for it here. This is a pretty cool song, interesting guitar work and enough reverb to drown an orchestra. The guitar is unpretentious and straightforward but pretty and carries a punch during the chorus. The singing is certainly what stands out the most. Again, unpretentious confessional singing, the voice carries a bit of anger and disdain, the classic “I don’t give a fuck” feel, but also a spoonful of emotion. This is pretty much ready to listen, I’ll move on to the other tracks.

More emotional than out getting ribs. Less catchy but a pretty song as well, again the careful but scratchy, careless-cool guitar work. The singing tries to go straight to the heart, I’m not sure if it really ever gets there, the most memorable thing is the overall “darkwave” feeling which emanates from everything, as well as the shady guitar tone, the deep teenager voice and the broken forced-out melodies that, if you stop to pay attention, show to be really intricate and well constructed. It naturally changes while keeping a loose unity to the track and never gets boring. Very well crafted.

The other tracks he has up are Baby Blue, A Lizard State, Has This Hit, The Wake and Greyscale. You’ll find them in his bandcamp. They don’t deliver as much goodness as the previous two and are very “formative”, his influences are really transparent and there’s plenty of exploration, as it’s only natural. He messes with, at least, rap, strange sounds, melodramatic emotions, electronic beats and a harsher punk/noise sound. They are all very different and what they all have in common is that dark reverb angsty feel that defines the two tracks above. It’s nice to see how fast this guy improved and how effective he was in learning what he was good at and focusing on that.

Nice work from an up and coming guy, good luck with your new recordings dude.

-Carpeaux

What’s this? This is what happens when you listen to a bunch of folk and folk-rock and you start thinking musically inside this folky frame. You pick up a guitar and that’s all that comes out. You sing like this naturally and your lyrics are so insane, you can be sure no one will ever try to understand what it is you are actually talking about, although there are plenty of deep-sounding emotional one-liners. This stuff is addictive, it can consume hundreds of hours of your life listening to people none of your friends ever heard about, listening to sounds produced by these tortured souls of which you either don’t know anything or you know only little bits of quirky information, like “his dog was ran over and his girlfriend turned out to be a dude”.

That might be just a shell though, provided by instrumentation. There is a lot of influence from 90′s alternative rock as well, somehow in the melodies, in the musical structure, but mostly in the electric guitar parts that embellish the acoustic guitar’s simple but effective background. All of us guys who grew up in the 90′s are starting to make music and it shows where we came from. The feeling and the lyrics are folk though, it’s not like I have to rewrite the first paragraph or anything.

So who is this James Lewis Speed guy? Google doesn’t care about him and all his bandcamp says is stuff like “It was recorded with a very crummy acoustic”,  that it was all recorded over 2 days “because of his father” and that some of the lyrics are about his friends. All I have to work with is the music and that’s just golden. This is not the place to grow even more tired of bullshit celebrity dick-riding in your music reviews. Following my folk instincts though, I went look for lyrical clues of a personal tragedy of some kind. So I saw “I am Morals” and I thought, oh, maybe he has morals and that’s the problem. But not really, the song is just as crazy as most of the other ones. When you start thinking you now understand what is going on he says something like “Says the large unfiltered chorus” and you go “lolwut?”.

His strong is emotional vocal harmonies, that’s kind of why you would listen to this. Seems to be him singing with himself by means of the wonders of technology. There can only be so many tricks of emotional harmonizing vocals, so the reason why some of these vocal works don’t sound cliche is because the recording is so crude. Just like most of Brian Jonestown Massacre sounded dated, but not really because it had so much raw power that it ended up sounding retro instead.

So if you really dig folk and home recorded crazy confessional stuff, go on and listen to the whole thing. If you are here just for a quick fix, I’ll tell you what, these are the best tracks: “Call me transcendental” might be the one that sounds more like 90′s rock, followed by “You crack me up” and “Walking really weird”. Oh fuck I have just realized what this guy was remembering me of! Quasi’s album Field Studies, which is one of my favorites ever. Pitchfork gave it 6.3, those fucking maggots, that album is perfect.

Aforementioned “I am morals” is good also, but “A dead animal in my arms” is better, the lyrics go “no need to taste the engine”, “vomit in the sun”, it’s just so likable! Leaving all objectivity aside – like it wasn’t there already – I think my favorite is “All my best friends”, because it sort of freaks out: “Oh look, serendipity crucified the throw out elbow, and it’s still a shock” and then something about robots winning something. Great stuff.

-Carpeaux

Genre: MUTHUHFUCKIN' CHIPTUNE/DANCE, BITCH

Overall Rating: 3.5/5

COOL! a download link!:

A New Way With Old Things by CHANALOG

Chanalog is california producer out of san diego or santa barbera, I cant remember which. He got his start playing bass and keyboards(despite being much better at guitar than the people he was playing with) for various garagebands at his school But that’s not the point. Shit goes down when he touches an 8 bit gameboy sequencer, and it’s not the kind of shit that comes out of your butthole. I would go as far to say that if all shit was this tasty, I would probably be a cocrophiliac.

All the sounds you’ve come to know and love are here(note: if you were born after about 1995, this aspect might not do that much for you) and his composition skills are at maximum. Every track(excluding the I Get Wet cover) sounds like it has been lifted from some kind of adventure game on a gameboy, and it takes me back to when I was ten years old

there I am, under the covers, playing my gameboy with a flash light. I’m sweaty, the screen is fogged up and i’ve just turned the volume up so I can barely hear. The sounds are magical, and they take me away tostrange lands.  koholint island, metroid, and pallet town are not just mere digital conversions of zeroes and ones anymore; they’re real. And while I cant hit on samus or gary’s sister yet(i havent hit puberty, besides there’s no button combo for it) it feels like anything I can do in the real world, I can do in there

but the someone rips the sheets off the bed, shattering the illusion. My eyes are ill adjusted to the light, but I know who it is.

“what time is it?”

I keep as still as I can.

“I said, what time is it”

I lean my neck past him so I can see my digital clock

“suh- seven thirty”

“I thought I fucking told you no gameboy after 6”

“im sorr-”

SMACK

the force of his hand against my face hits with such surprise I drop my gameboy onto the floor

SMACK

I see a flash of green light as my head hits the bunk bed post. My father picks up my dropped gameboy and throws it out the window of our 7^th story apartment

“Dont EVER disobey me again. Now go the FUCK to sleep”

head throbbing and tears streaming down my face I wait until he’s left the room, and then I giggle and muster a smile. Jokes on him, fucker. I just ordered three more gameboys using his credit card number

Anyways where was I? Ah yes, the variety of sounds is enormous given the method of which they were produced. He makes good use of every exploitable aspect of chiptune sequencing and seemingly wanktastic passages are actually upon a closer look quite well thought out and delicious. A good example is Halloween Overdose, which I can see as a dungeon level in a castlevania game or something. On this track especially, he shows an excellent ear for tension build up and release. In fact there’s so much dissonance and “evil” intervals being made going on it sounds like a shitty attempt to make a “spooking sounding” track, trying to cash in on the mall cyber goth crowd or something. But once the release comes, it’s so gradual and well written you almost wont realize it, it just flows so naturally you will swear the release had been playing the whole time, ansd that by the second time around you are not only ok with the dissonance, but you relish it and are begging for more

he’d probably make a good rapist, that CHANALOG. Just sayin’

every one of these tracks is made with a dance pop sensibility, and if these songs got a live analog instrumentation, they would feel at home at any rave/frat party/high school dance. In fact, I want this to happen so much, I think im going to stalk and kidnap CHANALOG until he does this.

Overall, this is a well written and wonderfully listen-able album, especially for the crowd raised on the crunchy electronic low-res sounds of the game boy and the nes. The only pause I have is that the hooks and melodies are not immediately clear(at least not to a pleb like me) they are buried under countless arpeggios, 8 bit crunchy sounds, and bouncy octave passages. It took me a while to really “get” and enjoy every track(and I did end up enjoying every track) it just goes back to the whole accessibility vs. depth of content bullshit I keep talking to myself about probably. If this album had more of a sense of minimalism, I would scored it higher(maybe)

Pros: WELL WRITTEN CRUNCHY 8 BIT NINTENDO DANCE BEAT SOUNDS!? IM SUCKING SOMEONE’S DICK FOR THIS ALREADY

Cons: 2deep4me sometimes(fuck this sounds like a cop out)

Best Track: Dot Matrix Heart

The perfect mix is interesting 8 bit tones and whimsical melody, I was fuckin’ rockin to this jam from day 1

Worst Track: You not listening to this album

seriously, the quality is fairly homogeneous throughout the album, plus i totally pussied out on deciding what my least favorite track was

Grower: Halloween Overdose

for reasons I have already explained. The whole rapist innuendo and stuff

Best Andrew W.K. Cover: I Get Wet

-Love Doctor

A concept album can be a hard feat to pull off. On one hand you must make sure that the music you create is consistent enough to be relevant to the concept. On the other hand, there must be enough variety over each track to ensure that the listener remains interested. Coherence, above all, is essential. With these factors in mind, here is 2002 – a sci-fi concept album by solo artist New Dark Age.

Before I get into the bulk of the review, I must make it clear that this album takes to the sci-fi concept completely, right up to the song titles and album cover. Although I can understand that this may put some people off, if you pass this one up you would seriously be missing out. The care that has gone into this album is clear, and the breadth of genres and almost impeccable mixing highlights this. If you are having any doubts about giving this album a go, just give the first five tracks a listen and try to appreciate the work that has gone into them and the atmosphere they are trying to portray. Personally, I’m not a huge sci-fi fan, but that didn’t stop me from listening to much of this album with a guilty nerd-induced smile on my face. And whilst it is hard to find a defined storyline within the album (apart from perhaps departure, travel and return), each track is in itself a clearly described situation.

Moving on from the concept, let’s talk about the music. 2002 is an instrumental album which draws from a wide range of genres to create a fantastic mix of sounds and feelings. Throughout the album you can expect to hear hip-hop beats, groove-heavy bass, delicate keyboard tones, hazy and discordant guitars, whining synths, and ambient soundscapes. These all flow seamlessly in and out to create tracks that are, occasionally, nothing short of epic. Despite this collage of sounds, it never feels like New Dark Age is trying his hand at too much at once. The diversity in 2002 never oversteps its bounds and always remains defined and controlled. Whilst one or two of the shorter tracks can feel a little like filler, most are excellent interludes between some fantastic songs, with Frequent New Worlds being a dirty, synth heavy highlight.

Perhaps the only serious issue I had with this album are the drums. More often than not they are too dominant and overbearing, and become a distraction from what else is happening in the song. This is a real shame when the rest of the instrumentation is so well put together, because there are some genuinely brilliant moments that could be so much more with just a little less volume on the drum track. I also found that the drums could often sound a bit too synthetic. I realise this is often a problem when using a drum machine, but some subtlety would go a long way. However, like any high quality independent release, to make such a great album without huge financial backing is a sure success story.

So, as a group of instrumental sci-fi themed songs, 2002 certainly works. You shouldn’t expect a coherent story, but the quality of this album more than makes up for it. All in all, New Dark Age has managed to create a selection of tracks with enough variety and breadth to keep you listening for every detail.

Standout tracks: Cyberpunk Club, VY Canis Majoris (Close Call), Where One Journey Ends

-Arran

Feels like ambient, but always changing. There is a little bit of sampled spoken vocals, but mostly instrumental. Pretty stuff, messing around with synths, you know the type. Shows good taste and effort. The “shoegaze” shows in some tracks, but mostly as a “feeling”. Sometimes a laid-back guitar shows up, and they are always very pretty, but it’s mostly synth music, specially because that is where the constant changes are coming from, the guitar parts repeat a lot. Nice sense of dynamics also, always coming up or down, but tied together – most frequently by the guitar. Very well recorded and produced, It doesn’t sound amateuristic at all.

Very relaxing, fans of ambient music will like this.

-Carpeaux

I don’t have much to say about this. The two first songs sound a lot like the Arctic Monkeys’ first album. The third, a little bit less. The fourth is already something different. The following track is an instrumental which is actually the most interesting track until then. The final track is the best and the one that sounds less like the Arctic Monkeys – the similarity between the singers’ voices never quite goes away, but the music does make a dramatic turn. Trying to be less specific, the whole thing sounds like Post-Punk, but starting from Arctic Monkeys and going all the way back to the early 80′s.

So this album could be called something like “rapidly emerging from overwhelming influences”. The way it stands now, it’s just upside down: the album get’s better as it approaches the end. All I have to say about the first tracks is that they are bass-driven in a cool way, but uninteresting – doesn’t make me want to revisit the tracks. After 5 or so listens though, I have become a little bit fonded to them, like I could listen to bonus tracks from “Whatever people say I am, that I’m not” that I had never heard of.

So yeah, I actually feel like the real album is the two last tracks. The instrumental is an ambient messy noisy track, which later gains a bit of a beat, seemingly electronic, but which is mostly (laid-back) guitar driven. I like it specially because it comes as a surprise in the progression of the album, but also because it’s just plain cool to see that in this track this guy just lets it go and does whatever he wants, with nice sort of relaxing results. At some point it becomes more straightforward and pretty and even though it comes out of the blue, it also feels logic and natural. It feels detached fromthe album, but fitting nicely there at the same time.

The last track itself has a nice mysterious, dramatic vibe in the main riff. The guitar interplay has taken the place of the bass, even though at some points the guitar are off and you get that bass feel back. It’s the best of both worlds I guess. I can’t say this is golden, an unrecognized classic or anything, but for once it’s nice to see a dude – apparently this one guy played everything – grow by the leaps in an album, it’s the kind of thing you don’t get in a normal mainstream release because everything is tightly planned to focus on what works, maybe it get’s less human. I like this album, it’s a human being’s best effort at making music and that is interesting.

-Carpeaux

Oh wow, I like this. No, it’s not genius, it won’t change music forever and, even though I like it a lot right now and can’t stop listening to “All My Best”, in a few years I will probably forget about this. I almost wish it was already 10 years from now and I could listen to this with a deep nostalgic feel for the time I lived in the Philippines and started a blog about independent music. That song does make you kind of emotional, it’s very pretty, the voice is velvety and, shit, it’s a sad love song with a happy touch, you know the type? Yeah, like they tell you to be sad because she is gone or whatever, but happy because you are alive and at least you have feelings.

The other songs are cool as well, some might be better, like Shavasana (not really, just less goofy), but that’s definitely my favorite. Car Lighters is great as well. I really dig the vocal experimentation in a bunch of the tracks. No, the vocals are not “progressive”, operatic, original or trying to be those things, but, just like the guitars, there’s an unpretentious, freak-folk feel to them that is just nice musical material. A side note on the voice: it sounds a lot like Dan Bejar.

So no, this is not the most original music reviewed in this blog, it’s not pushing the limits between pop and classical, rock and jazz, alternative rock and rap, guitar music and electronic, post-jazz funkcore and proto-electro 80′s 60′s revival, any of that shit. It’s just a guy with a guitar, but sometimes that’s just what you want, because it’s pretty and cool and music fuck yeah!

-Carpeaux

This is not for everyone. It’s somewhere between noise, ambient electronic, experimental electronic, dark space in some tracks, and downright creepy Asian horror movie soundtrack. Do not listen to this in any given normal mood, you have to get into it purposefully. If you are disposed to do this, though, I can tell you this will be a nice musical experience, and here’s why:

This guy does not make this kind of music because he is slightly insane, with no musical skills and desiring to play with sounds like some kind of pass time. His music shows skill, serious effort and, specially, a really fine-tuned taste. This is elegant music, pending to minimalist, though always creepy. Along your listen you will find some very interesting moments, like the simple but disturbing beat in “July’s Light is In The Wind ”. This guy has a talent to make you uncomfortable, but that’s without simply hammering unpleasant noise in your ears. It’s really ghostly and extremely creepy, like for example, “My face in clay”. Listen to that and come back for a moment. Who the fuck is this guy, right?

tl;dr: this is the soundtrack to the scariest horror movie you have ever seen and listening to it is a rare musical experience like most people will never have.

Also, the most normal would be “Lovely Romans”. It`s certainly worth your time to listen to this one and “My face in clay”.

One more thing, listen to this with headphones, there’s a handful of messing around with stereo.

-Carpeaux

This is what post-rock is supposed to be. You have your rock sensibilities, you can go with some riffs if you want to. Not catchy enough? You can write a chorus. Go back to the key note, finish the song. You can do a dozen of these and there you have it, a rock album. Add one thing or another, you have your indie, ska, punk, metal or whatever. But if you want to do something beautiful that goes outside the scope of rock and all you have is your rock background, there you have your post-rock. This is what happens with this guy, and he really has done something beautiful, but keeping the rock feel that makes it endearing to people who aren’t really into classical, jazz etc. The beauty and power of the music this guy makes is so intense, he just might be the best bandcamp/soundcloud act right now. But let’s go by parts.

What you have with this album is this pure beauty that many try to create and can’t really pull off. Working with vague melodies and loose, open chord progressions isn’t as easy as it seems.

The recurring style is that of the slow build-up, some dramatic stops or slow-downs, and then a slow build-down. In the first few tracks there is singing, but I can’t really tell what he is saying, which comes out as a bit of a Sigur Rós influence. The perils here are: adding bits and pieces that don’t really work well, either for excess or for not delivering a good progression, and taking too much time between one variation and the other. I never sensed any of the two happening. New stuff comes and goes, either gentle or distorted and dramatic, but never misplaced, never distasteful. You need to have a very sharp ear and very well-tuned taste to keep your game up for so long, and the tracks last from 6 minutes upward.

It does feel like ambient at some points, but don’t worry, it’s not really boring, though it’s for people who want to lean back and appreciate music. As a rule of thumb, if you can digest Sigur Rós, you can digest this as well.

A passing mention to the apparent fact that it’s a concept album. Maybe I am not imaginative enough to sense the “loss & inheritance” in an instrumental song, but I think the titles are there to guide the emotional sense of the music, not necessarily to be conveyed by the melody, which is between very difficult and arguably impossible. Just reading the titles one by one though, that’s so pretty and thoughtful. The best would be “beauty & adornment”, “loss & inheritance” and “distance & circumstance”, and then the last title is a killer. What I mean is, the title progression itself is flawless and conveys a thought and emotion quite similar to the album itself. It’s all crafted with art, I feel grateful to have been freely offered this by this person I have never met.

I can’t recommend this album enough and I will certainly review some of his other stuff soon (not so soon that this might feel like an Álfheimr fanclub though), slowly coming to the point when I can listen to his new soundcloud songs on the acoustic guitar, which gain from his experience with post-rock and brings it back to common people alternative rock, hopefully carrying along all this beauty.

-Carpeaux

http://soundcloud.com/fockstrot/the-great-derek-scott

http://soundcloud.com/fockstrot/shirley

http://soundcloud.com/fockstrot/love-song

http://soundcloud.com/fockstrot/aquatic-activity

At the time of writing, there are 4 songs on this guy’s soundcloud. I want more, and that’s why I’m writing this. Even though it’s nothing that special (the musical aspect of it) this is worth 5 minutes of your time because of the cool, unpretentious but kind of well crafted, cute lyrics.

I’m disabling the soundcloud applet on this one and instead posting the four links because otherwise people wouldn’t read the lyrics. They are ordered below from best to hateful to absolutely pothead and they are all worth a listen. If you have time and disposition for only one, “Love Song” is not a love song and makes reference to nazi zombies, Zelda, Mario, Star Wars and Harry Potter. Just saying.

This guy is not a genius or anything, but he has a nice voice and plays guitar and piano competently.

>implying that’s not enough

-Carpeaux

http://ven-wede.bandcamp.com/

The musical aspect to this is really nice. It has a good atmosphere, nice changes throughout, cool different sounds. I’ll tell you what’s the problem with it: the vocals are annoying and the album art is dreadful. With a bit of patience, you get used to the vocals though and they carry good feeling and the musical ideas behind the awful voices fit well into the music and give it a post-punk feeling with a bit of Interpol.

I see the different singing is a way of trying to be innovative, not playing safe etc. I don’t think it works. I like the music and I feel it deserves more competent singing. A bit of atonal singing with weird pitches might even work well in some cases (see Joanna Newsom, Talking Heads, shit, even Dylan),  but this is just ridiculous.

There’s quite a bit of “dark psychedelic/going insane with synths” to keep it always interesting and the dancing beat brings a nice upbeat feeling. I do believe people could dance to this if they wanted to… It wouldn’t be much of a karaoke hit though.

That’s all. In general, don’t let the singing turn you away, this is some good stuff if you give it a chance.

-Carpeaux

This is a bit exotic and different. The vocals are spoken and the lyrics are insane, sometimes about philosophy or just analyzing relationships, emotions etc. in a bit of a crazy manner. In general, everything here is a bit fixed-idea crazy. The music itself goes on and on but doesn’t get boring because it’s so strange and fitting to the vocals that you get hooked.

Dude sounds like a lady. The singer is not the blonde on the cover, that’s his ex-girlfriend. Sounding like a girl is probably bad for him, but isn’t really bad for the music. Knowing it’s a dude adds to the Woody Allen-esque feel that you are listening to a strange guy going on and on about stuff he’s probably the only one who cares about (see “On Subjectivity”).

Most spoken vocal music has a bit of theatrics to it, but there’s a different drama on this one, like the singer is annoyed by something and still has to keep on singing because it is his last chance to. Than out of the blue, again, on “On Subjectivity”, he starts to scream at you about something you never did and you don’t fully understand. Others feel like he is telling you something intimate that you should keep a secret, like “Security Windows”. Since he isn’t talking to anyone other than you, you feel in on the drama and compelled to tell him something, maybe “calm down man, have a cigar”.

Now back to the music. I’ve read him say he didn’t really know how to play the bunch of instrument he used, but kind of managed to join the sounds together to turn into actual music. This is not ipsis litteris, I don’t really remember exactly what he did say. So, considering that, it’s kind of impressive and makes sense once you listen to the music. Dis-considering that, just for the hell of it, it sounds like a surrealist experiment. Some of the songs end up sounding a little bit the same, but there are plenty of build-ups, dramatic stops and little bits of decoration to make the music always pretty and interesting.

He is apparently recording a new album with professional musicians. I’ll surely be interested in listening to that, this is some of the most distinctive music I have found in this here web. Good luck with whatever kind of success this kind of music can achieve man!

-Carpeaux

http://retreatfromoscow.bandcamp.com/

Retreat From Moscow – In Search of Home

Release June 19 2011, this guy says he spent 2 years recording it. This is interesting because (specially the first track) it sounds a lot like Bon Iver. Even though I think Bon Iver is insanely overrated, boring and pointless, the first track is probably the best of the album as well. Maybe because, although it has Bon Iver’s prettiness, it is also more upbeat, like Belle and Sebastian maybe.

The melodies on this thing are pretty, well varied and match well with his voice into a quite emotional sound – meaning most of the songs are quite melancholic. The rhythm guitar does its job well and discreetly. Every now and then there’s an organ which is even more subtle. The occasional guitar solo is subtle and decorative as well. The drums keep the beat competently. In the end, everything points toward the singing and the overall atmosphere of the whole album, which is quite cohesive and rewarding.

Cohesive as it can be, the songs are different enough so that listening to the whole album is not a boring experience. Most of the time I don’t see much reason why this couldn’t be properly released. It’s not perfect though. The singing in both “Safety Net” and “Outside Colorado” fits in kind of strangely. But then “Orange Glow” comes out, one of the best songs in the bunch, and you realize you didn’t get to the fillers and are now supposed to go back to the first tracks. Seriously, stop doing your stuff and just listen to “Orange glow”, this is a pretty good song that keeps always changing and always beautiful.

This is some of the best completely independent music I have found in the web. I hope this guy gets a lucky break, that’s all I can say.

-Carpeaux

Starting with this guy:

Victor Florence

It’s fairly simple music, but pretty and quite emotional. Not the kind of thing you look after when you want a purely musical experience, it’s more like the spirit you have when you want to listen to Dylan’s first albums.

This guy has a nice and expressive voice, but not really really distinguished in any way. I could say the same thing about the guitar. The chord progressions throughout are well thought-of and give the overall structure of the songs a good solid feeling.

The songs are quite distinctive one from the other, which is always a good thing and a reason to listen to the whole demo. This change of style is quite refreshing, since the voice/couple of guitars triplet never quite goes away. Having “Lightning” and “Thunder”, which have a distinct, more anxious feel, come up near the end, setting the ground for Epilogue, which ties the whole demo well, makes it a worthwhile experience to listen to it all from beginning to end.

Good job man! Hope this demo lands on good hands.

-Carpeaux

When you’re at the club there’s the butt grabber who thinks the nauseating smell of Molson Canadian breath is attractive, or the lip licker at the grocery store gawking at you in the pasta aisle, who thinks his meatballs are on the menu with tonight’s spaghetti.

No matter where we ladies are, it’s almost impossible to find one nice guy.

I was out for a friend’s birthday the other night and found myself in shock. One guy actually asked her to dance. She said no, but at least he asked.

When you approach us staggering at the bar with a lazy eye, or come up from behind and grab us like salad tongs that’s a definite no-no. And don’t even think about smacking our apple bottoms because you might lose one of the two hanging from your own tree.

Guys – help us women out. We want to have hope that some day we’ll meet a well dressed, nice smelling, polite man whom we’ve dreamt about because we often open reality’s doors to the opposite. I’m not bashing all fellas out there because many of you are quite charming.

All I’m saying is play that old game of telephone the right way this time and pass it on to your fellow beer-chuggers and nut-scratchers, so that one day they’ll be just as charming too.