You may also like: The Weeknd
You’re up for something really, really smooth, luring and indulging into all the sexiness electronic beats can offer (and, well, a bit kitsch too)?
Then you should definitely check out Melbourne-based artist Oscar Key Sung. Really, definitely. There are two songs of him on his bandcamp by now, It’s coming and Sure Thing. Both sound quite promising, more of Key Song is also promised to come along soon. Stay tuned.
You may also like: Beach Fossils, the Drums
Finnland is not really known for its bright weather, sunny beaches with endless sand and foamy waves to take a great surf on - the more we have to value the musical work of one of its greatest indie exports: French Films.
Highly anticipated, a few days ago the five lads just came around with a new album. Echoing, retroish sounds, taking a bit of a distance from their slightly post-punk-influenced firstling, White Orchid definitely rather finds its places on top of one of those foamy waves, riding it with joy and enthusiasm - until Into Thousand Years brings in the calm, the time when you’re done with your day of surfing, you’re out of the water, your heart still bumps from the exhausting yet enthusing time in the water - and you watch the last bits of the sun caressing the ocean’s horizon. Too much kitsch? The album isn’t, it just doesn’t take things too serious, it has its bit turns and odds here and there, still having a nicely continuous, constantly wonderful flow. And who would seriously mind to spend a magnificent, peaceful day at the beach? Exactly. Well, here you have your soundtrack.
ps: If you’re in Europe, don’t miss out on the band as they’re touring now. Berlin’s Postbahnhof it is tomorrow on Saturday 11th May, more venues and cities to follow!
You may also like: The xx, James Blake, Astronauts etc.
London-based singer/songwriter and electronic producer William Arcane dropped another quite magnificent song: Want Somebody combines some slight hints of the subtle yet magnetic attraction of James Blake’s tunes with a beat which somehow would perfectly fit in the consortium of the xx. Yet, he adds his quite personal note.
Do you need anything else to be convinced that this man is doing quite excellent music? I wonder if you would.
Keep up your ears as Arcane’s full length album Permanence is dropping on 10th June.
Here it is already: The 3rd round of THE CIRCUMFLEX:INTRODUCING. And also this time, a quite promising assembly of artists enters the stage. Heading from Toronto, the Canadians of Grounders combine Arcade Fire-esque melancholy and barockesque musical grace with the brilliant impulsivity of (then) WU LYF. Definitely a group to be checked out, as otherwise you will miss out on the euphoria Grounders’ sound may give to your acoustic nervous system.
The Circumflex: Tell us some introductory bits and bobs about yourselves. How did Grounders start?
Grounders (Andrew): About three years ago, while I was in my last year of music studies at York University, I made a bunch of instrumental demos on my laptop, pretty weird but catchy stuff. I had already been playing in a band with our drummer Rob, and had also played a bit with Dan and Mike so I knew we would make a good team. We were juggling instruments at that point we brought Evan on board. At first the band was just an excuse to play shows around Toronto, but then we got accepted to play our first POP Montreal in 2010. We got to open for Bear in Heaven, Twin Sister, and The Luyas, and it was the first validating moment for us.
The Circumflex: Your EP ‘Wreck of a Smile’ contains so many good things of last decade’s indie music, bringing along the genius-weirdo attitude of WU LYF but also the almost tragical beauty of the tunes of Arcade Fire. Would those be artists you would’ve liked to cooperate with?
Grounders (Andrew): Truthfully I’d never heard of WU LYF until you suggested the similarity, but Arcade Fire, that’s a very flattering comparison. I really admire how big and cohesive their entire project is in every aspect. There’s definitely a lot that I’d love to learn from them, like how they build and arrange songs.
The Circumflex: Who else would be your dream catch for a musical team-up?
Grounders (Andrew): Randy Newman, he’s an expert arranger. And I’d really love work with Dave Friedman, he’s an amazing producer and has some great sounds. But right now it’s hard to think about collaborating with people hypothetically, because we’re still learning how to work with each other.
The Circumflex: What was, for each of you, the most influential record during the writing process of your EP?
Grounders (Andrew): Honestly it was the first time we were recording properly, and we were mostly just wrapped up in getting a sound that was nuanced and weird and accessible by our own standards. I’m sure we’ll be able to think more about other records when we’re making our full length, which we’re just beginning to do now.
The Circumflex: What were the best and the worst moments of your recording process?
Grounders (Andrew): The first day we saw the studio was really exciting. It’s a small space in downtown Toronto called Boom Box Sound - Born Ruffians just made their new record there. There’s tons of cool new and vintage gear – synths and pedals and guitars - so we really loved playing and recording with those. And the process of recording and layering tons of sounds was really fun.
The hardest part was that we were all rookies, even our producer Marcel was new to the process as well – Wreck of a Smile is the first official release he’s ever produced. So we didn’t have anyone guiding us on where to start or what to do.
The Circumflex: Where in your everyday’s environment do you find inspiration for your songwriting?
Grounders (Andrew): Most of my inspiration comes from listening to music and watching other bands play, and identifying the most compelling aspects of their sound – big sounds, strange sounds. Sounds have always been really important for me, even when I was making the first Grounders demos I was building songs around sounds.
The Circumflex: It often happens that the musical backgrounds of band members totally differ from one to another. Sometimes people who banged their heads heavy to metal during their youth start to write dream pop in their twenties. Does that also accord to you?
You may also like: Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear
Deerhunter are back - with their already 5th record, now on pre-stream via NPR. From what I heard until now, Monomania, as they named their new work, sounds much rougher, intense, unexpected and volatile than its predecessors - which may not be too bad, on the contrary: it is a pretty good record! Which is going to be published physically on 7th May.
Listen to Deerhunter’s Monomania on NPR here!
You may also like: Twin Shadow, Real Estate, Future Islands
Wild Nothing has released a new song called A Dancing Shell which is accompanied by a quite fancy, artsy and well - colourful video. The sound is kept 80-esque and reverberating as usual, nonetheless I have the impression that the amount of ‘eightiness’ has risen even more.
But never releasing a new song without a purpose, Wild Nothing also announced an upcoming 7-track-EP called Empty Estate, to be published on 14th May via Captured Tracks/Bella Union.
After the first INTRODUCING celebrated its upcoming with Wickerbird, the second one strolls around the corner with GRMLN, an artist from the sunny and wavy coasts of California. Whereas the first does spherical, dreamy and distant sounds, GRMLN is an expert of the quite vintage-y, lo-fi surfpop sounds which will accompany you when (imagining) you drive your oldschool car with the surfboard on top to the beach. Yeah, quite cliché. But apparently, GRMLN wants to make a difference with his new record. How he does that, and why even the soap-choice of your next door’s hypermarket can be inspirational when writing music - read about that below. Enjoy!
GRMLN: Well, my name is Yoodoo Park, and I am GRMLN.
The Circumflex: How did you start to make music? Was there any..initial event? Thought?
GRMLN: I started playing music during my middle school years but I started recording and messing around with sounds during high school. But it was mostly playing music because I was bored a lot at that time.
The Circumflex: would you thus say that music was kind of an escape from a high school caused boredom?
GRMLN: I guess that in high school, music was more of a hobby for me to do to keep me occupied when I was at home doing nothing. But now playing and writing music for me has a way different meaning for me now than I had back then.
The Circumflex: So what does it mean now? do you do anything besides music or is it your life’s focus point?
GRMLN: I go to college now so just graduating would be nice. But I use writing music as a way of ranting about life I guess.
The Circumflex: Thus your own life experiences the pivot of your songwriting, or is there anything else which is inspiring you?
GRMLN: It honestly depends but I’ve definitely been inspired to write when I’m really amped up from random things like getting ready to go to [huge supermarket, for all those Europeans who do not know it], or something really stupid. But inspiration wise, I feel like my surrounding is the biggest part of what I make.
The Circumflex:…planning to buy some chips, cola and popcorn and cleaning towels is deeply and creativly inspiring?
GRMLN (laughs): Well I mean it was the fact that I would be hyped and stoked on small random things in life I guess, I just really like the vibes at Costco. Not necessarily saying that its the only thing that inspires me though!
The Circumflex: So what else except cleaning towels and salty popcorn is inspiring? What about the place you life? A lot of artists get inspired by their urban environment and California may be quite inspiring i guess.
You may also like: Youth Lagoon, Astronauts etc., Brolin
How beautiful to start a morning with a discovery of a magnificent new artist. Thanks to Alabama-based artist Henry Armbrecht aka Beach Weather, I had the pleasure just a few minutes ago. And it pleased me so much that I could not resist to write about it immediately.
Well, probably already the artists’ ‘line-up’ above at the article’s start tells a very lot about why Beach Weather’s music makes such an impression on me, as it combines at least some of my favourite artists. Once more, it is no impression which ‘wow!’s me away, it is one of a rather gentle, yet so pure and beautiful nature that makes it hard to escape from.
On his 5-track EP Cascadia, Beach Weather manages to form a dulcet musical whole, filled with details which yet are so choiceful arranged that each of them gets its distinctive place, no overload of sound constructions happening here. Even if it seems to be cliché-ful, in this case, the cover art was wisely chosen as indeed, the music sounds as the image its cover is transporting: Fluffy and echoing, but with a certain, yet very flexible structure. The end of Still Life reminds me undoubtly a lot on Youth Lagoon’s first LP, whereas Small Voices definitely brings along the cool, urban yet still dreamy atmosphere of London-based Brolin.
You see, it is quite a grand mix.
Thus: Highly recommended!
You may also like: Rhye, Solange, Kindness
Birmingham-based singer Laura Mvula has just published her debut LP Sing to the Moon these days, and well, her soulful voice is just a gem.
So are many of the remixes which have been made of her music recently, yet the one of She made by Robin Hannibal, one half of our beloved duo Rhye, definitely is of outstanding quality. Thus, enjoy it here!
Highly recommended!
Since almost a year now, THE CIRCUMFLEX is writing to you about music(ians), discusses songs or just puts up the random yet magnificent bits and bops of musical joy you can stumble upon on the internet.
It is nice to hear and to read about new music and new artists, still: Isn’t it even more interesting to read about the artist’s creative background, where they find their inspiration and how they actually make their music - when they talk about it themselves?
Thus THE CIRCUMFLEX decided to start a new series, called INTRODUCING. A simple name for something which we think of being quite important and essential when wanting to be a good music blog: Letting up and coming artists introduce themselves to their potential listeners and followers, maybe provide them with a bigger audience than they had before - and just because interviews do something which an article can hardly provide: the spontaneous unforeseen, things you cannot google or find on an artist’s bandcamp or homepage.
Thus: Fanfares, confetti and spring-induced joy: Here it is, the first INTRODUCING!
As for the premiere, I did an interview with the quite promising and tremendously talented Black Cowan aka Wickerbird, a Washington-State-based artist who already found his way on the blog once.
But enough talk from my side - enjoy the interview!
The Circumflex: Hey Blake, nice to have you with us. Please, introduce yourself to our readers!
Wickerbird: My name’s Blake Cowan, I’m a 22 year old college student about to graduate at Columbia in NYC. I have absolutely no idea where my life’s going at this point, but for the time-being, I’m playing music under the name Wickerbird.
The Circumflex:Washington state is known for its fascinating nature and its magnificent forests – how much does that influence your music?
Wickerbird:Immensely. It is absolutely one of, if not the largest influence on what Wickerbird is to me and how I’ve gone about crafting songs lately. The whole scope of the project has really just stemmed from this central idea of trying to meticulously whittle my way through the aspects of my life and find some irreducible core of truth. I struggled to find that understanding in society, and even in the simple society of company, so I went to the woods alone to try and find it. It was there, with that ancient nature all around me, that I thought I might piece together something worth piecing. The emotional backlog from that experience—taking long hikes and fishing excursions alone in the hills, ruminating all the time—all of it amounted to what Wickerbird was. It was a release.
“I always felt that lyrics that were too prominent or to obvious robbed the listener of their chance to really get the raw emotion in the melody.”
The Circumflex: What are your other influences when writing new songs?
Wickerbird: It’s hard to say. Musically they’re innumerable. My music is sort of inextricable amalgam of what I’ve grown up listening to my entire life. Obviously, my sound has been chiseled down into the genre I most preferred but I’m influenced by everything I’ve heard, so it’s difficult to spot individual influences. I took classes in high school and some in college that had us listening to Gregorian chant type music and other ancient sort of droning monastic hymnals and it sort of vibed deeply and intrinsically with what I felt music was intended for: providing this unembellished and unguided manifestation of pure emotion allowing man to share and be moved by something as immaterial and elusive as human experiences. I always felt that lyrics that were too prominent or to obvious robbed the listener of their chance to really get the raw emotion in the melody. They’re told what to feel and that inevitably dampens the experience of feeling it.
” A lot of my initial inspiration was drawn from that innocence and naivety of embarking on a sort of fantasized expedition. The catharsis of dreaming about escape.”
The Circumflex: What was your main inspiration when writing the songs of your latest album The Westering? It sounds quite gloomy, secretly, yet so hallow…
You may also like: James Blake, Bon Iver, How to Dress Well, Gang Colours
Cloud Boat - Youthern
Cloud Boat - Dréan
You may also like: Phantogram, Florence and the Machine, Bat For Lashes
One of my favourite bands since a while – MS MR. Starting in New York the Indie-Pop Duo got discovered by some blogs and became “a thing” in the web. One fact which might have influenced their rising at the beginning was the silence and anonymity about the people behind MS MR (pronounced Miss and Mister). Just a few days ago they announced their first US-Headline Tour. And since their song “Bones” was used for the trailer of the much loved 3rd Sesion of “Game of Thrones” they are a certain tip for 2013 (album out in May).
Beside this front woman Lizzy Plapinger and her partner Max Hershenow aren’t that new to music business. Lizzy published with her (by the way amazing) music label Neon Gold bands like Gotye, Marina and the Diamonds or Passion Pit. Max studied Modern Dance and so it came that they decided in December 2010 to start a band together. First result of the work was the stunning cover of Patrick Wolfs “Time of my Life”. With the dark but powerful setting of their songs they may be compared or been seen as a mix of Florence and the Machine, Phantogram and Bat for Lashes.
But this band is not about vinyls only. Seeing them live is a real joy. Just from the second they enter the stage you feel the lust of them performing. The whole appearance of front woman Lizzy seems to fill the stage and the room, delivering the power from their songs direct to your ears.
We are exited about their next songs.
As German winter is still pressing spring to a involuntary sleep, you should use everything which makes and keeps you warm. Our advice to you: Sweatshirt with their most amazingly, warming song “In a Distance Light”.
“There is always music in me”. Just the first sentence of the song made me fall in love with them without thinking twice. The whole title gives you back the memory of warm days with friends, some beer and nothing to worry about but the joy of life.
So let’s hope there is more to come from the Berlin based duo who know how to convince with their own warm and charming 80s synthie-pop.
It has been quiet around the old members of WU LYF, a combo which back then delighted our hearts and musical muscles with their power- and heartful sound. Always at the limit of an ever so husky voice, whizzing and rushing drums and eploding rhythms and song structures - well, what can I say, they have been quite brilliant.
Los Porcos - Jesus Luvs U Baby
Rarely live-recordings in front of the stage have such a good quality like this one. Hence, enjoy another smooth piece of James Blake’s new album Overgrown, to be dropping down into the joyful awaiting hands of music lovers on April 8 (thus soon!).
From all what I heard so far, Our Love Comes Back seems to be the closest to Blake’s old recordings: A tender, slow-beat melody, a latenight’s classy bar atmosphere created by the musical composition as a whole - et voilà, there is Our Love Comes Back - truly the case concerning Blake’s new songs. Nevermind that it was never gone though.
The song was recorded at the SÓNAR Reykjavik, Iceland.
You may also like: Fleet Foxes, Father John Misty, Y La Bamba
As here in middle/northern Europe you’re still forced to wear a warm jacket and at least one beanie to protect your brain from a constant freeze, we’re always happy to find music which at least keeps us emotionally and acoustically warm. Like sipping from a warm cup of creamy hot chocolate while sitting in a comfy arm chair, looking out of the window into some (preferably) endless, snowy landscape - that is how the tunes of Wickerbird’s EP The Westering sound like. Or, in a rather musical jargon: Tender guitar picking, echoing vocals and a sound which in its whole seems to later vanish somewhere in the middle of a delicate nowhere.
Wickerbird is the one-man solo folk-project of Blake Cowan. Originally heading from Washington State, his music offers one of the currently most magnificent escapes from the turbulent urban life as such of grey, snowy Berlin (oh, wait, there is some sun today). But in all our comfort and snuggling mood, we tend to oversee what these melodies are all about, which, according to Cowan are the “haunting, deathless questions of life”. And yes, his music may invite you to rest in your armchair, still it doesn’t sound all sweet and joyful. It definitely brings along this certain portion of gloom and solitude which gives the songs a certain kind of restless graveness. It is probably this multidimensional layering of seemingly paradox attributes which gives Cowan’s dream-folk its unique note.
Highly recommended!
You may also like: The xx, Twin Shadow, Brolin
Anthony Ferraro aka Astronauts, etc. was one of my “secure banks” when hoping for good music - as everytime he brought out a new tune, I pressed the play button and well, what came out of my speakers or headphones was just pretty much swell. Anthony just published a new song called Coldboy and once more he hits the button of smooth, echoing beat-percussions, woven through by his soft chants.
If you are in favour of categorisations, you may put this song’s sound somewhere between the slower moments of Twin Shadow’s first (and great!) 2010s debut album Forget, with a heavy dose of the smooth dreaminess of up and coming London-based artist Brolin, not to forget about what we love most about the xx: Simplicity.
Sometimes you don’t need much, sometimes a synth, a keyboard, a few buttons and your voice is enough to produce amazing music. Lissom and supple, yet gentle and nonchalant. Apparently Anthony is planning to put out a LP this August and well - THE CIRCUMFLEX is looking forward to it. Until then, you can check out his 2012s EP Supermelodic Pulp.
Highly recommended!
You may also like: Jamie xx, James Blake, Cat Power
It doesn’t happen often, actually it is really rare to say that, but there are a very few musicians who apparently never do anything wrong. Who touch something and make it to gold.
Yeah, we all hyped the xx, but we did it because of a reason: We all got excited and amazed and stupefied by their ability of using as less sound as possible and still form such a dense yet so subtle experience of musical sexiness and shiver.
Which may also be a result of the fact that the band is giving each other space to develop each’s speciality and musical passion as far as possible, just to come back and to form it to a harmonious whole. The xx never add too much glitter and sparks, they find their greatness in the small details and especially in the space between. It is the breaks and the sudden restarts which make their music what it is. It is the subtle love triangle of electronic drum beats, easified guitar loops and a never-quiescent bass which forms the perfect bed for those two voices of Romy and Oliver to play with.
Enough of the laudatio, but if you listen to their cover of Kings of Tomorrow’s Finally, they did at Radio 1 you may understand why. I guess it is kind of a swell start into the weekend.
You may also like: Florence and the Machine
Now, Austra is coming around the corner with a new album named Olympia which is going to be published on June 14th, as a pretaste you can already listen to Home which, according to singer Katie, deals with the fears and eagerness before your (i.e. her) beloved person comes home at night. How it sounds like? It starts off with a drama-esque piano, which are even predominated (once more) by Katie’s opera-educated voice. Ah, the old ambivalence?
Not really. The song develops into a lively melody formed by bubbly beats and organs in the back while Katie is surfing with her voice on top of this great musical bed. Even if temperatures outside (at least in Berlin) cannot really decide whether we have spring or not, this song is already a neat pretaste of the warmer season.
Beach House are back with a new video for their song Wishes off their latest album Bloom. The video was directed by Eric Wareheim and starring Ray Wise of Twin Peaks/Mad Men.
