Track: Dau – ‘The Death Of Smut’: intimate, beautiful pump organ drone introspection for Spirituals
A MEMBER of rather fine instrumental quartet yndi halda alongside James Vella, whose album Sleep Through The Storm under his A Lily persona we received rapturously last October, Phil Self has emerged with a forthcoming mini-album of corresponding beauty and bliss under the moniker Dau, due out this very Friday. Whereas A Lily played with …
See: Michael Cormier gathers the undead at the karaoke bar for one ‘Last Hurrah’; ringing Americana warmth and limbs everywhere
GUITARS glimmer with a melodic, picked loveliness that can only bring a smile, kinda post-folky; the vocals are a blissed whisper, and an occasional flute circles and glides among sun-kissed slide guitar and trilling synth. The whole thing is hammock-lazy beautiful. But … the zombies? The undead at the forlorn, roadside strip karaoke bar, extremities …
See: Helvetia ask ‘Does It Go Backwards’ through your TV screen in gentle, plaintive lo-fi
HELVETIA is the current musical doings of fine lo-fi songsmith Jason Albertini, otherwise known to your American alt.rock-lovin’ ears as precisely 33% of San Jose’s Duster; and time spent wisely as bassist for the glorious Built to Spill for six years from 2012 to 2018. His new lockdown basement album is out just over a fortnight from now on …
Track: Pearl & The Oysters bring the space-age tropicalia of ‘Treasure Island’ to the summer
SUMMER’S really, really goddam here, and in the most deliciously quirky way, as LA’s French-American psych-popsters Pearl & The Oysters drop the first single from their third album, which will be with us right at the end of the highest season. That single, “Treasure Island” is a delight of angelic vocals, modular whoops and whooshes, …
See: Sally Decker incants the learning of detachment on the feedback exploration of ‘The Loss’
BASED in Oakland, California, composer Sally Decker, who’s previously recorded as Multa Nox, is stepping out under her own name with her first solo album for NNA Tapes due later in the summer; and in the moving towards which she has been learning to let go. One of the main sonic strands of her new …
Track: Gabriella Smith and Gabriel Cabezas’ ‘Lost Coast III’ brings the wonder, the awe and the anger at Californian climate change for cello and solo vocals
BOTH a composer whose place in the great American musical annals seems pretty much assured and a passionate environmentalist, Gabriella Smith is set to release an album at the end of this month in tandem with the renowned cellist Gabriel Cabezas, which seeks to capture in fine music the fire-borne destruction which has become a …
Album review: Paul Jacobs – ‘Pink Dogs On The Green Grass’: Pottery man breaks out with a low-slung, psych-boogie blur of brilliance
SPREADING his wings from his excellent mothership, the wiry post-punkers Pottery, Paul Jacobs is shortly to unveil a gently slackercore beauty of a full debut solo album, Pink Dogs On The Green Grass. Which is, y’know, the reason we’re all gathered here today. Stepping away from the dependable sticksman role which is propelled Pottery right …
See: Lightning Bug bring the ‘gazey languor on ‘Song Of The Bell’ and its spacey lyric video
LATE in August 2019 – more innocent days, hey? – Lightning bug singer Audrey Kang could be found hiking along the windy coastline of Washington state. The trip marked a bit of an escape, a reset, following a cyclical conclusion: the end of an affair, and of a job. Time to get away and resdiscover. …
See: The smeary dessert action painting of Blurry the Explorer’s ‘Limited By Jelly’
BLURRY THE EXPLORER is a quirkily beguiling new art-rock project oozing outta Brooklyn with experimental composer, drummer, and photographer Jeremy Gustin, aka The Ah, at the helm. They’ve just released their second shortform missive, the Brothers Grimm-meets-Broadcast hallucination of “Limited By Jelly”, the video for which you can be wholly intrigued by below. It sees …
News: Tangents continue to explore beyond jazz and go double or quits with new album ‘Timeslips & Chimeras’; hear the propulsive electronica fusion of ‘Lilliputian’
WITH their last album release, last year’s Timeslips, finding itself somewhat hobbled by – c’mon, you know, it made us all stay in for months on end – the enigmatic Australian quartet Tangents have decided to go double or quits and are set to rerelease that most recent set in tandem with a new set …