It’s rainy, grey, and unseasonably cold over here in Toronto today. And so it’s turned into a clean the house, do the laundry kind of afternoon. Of course, all that really means is listening to music way too loud. To coincide with the murk and drear out my window, I’ve been listening to FRKTL‘s dark debut album, Atom. FRKTL is the music project of the multi-talented Sarah Badr, and while her first album does have some missteps, it also has some absolutely brilliant moments. The strongest tracks on Atom are the quiet ones…when the songs veers off into glitch, noise, and Autechresque abstraction they tend to lose me, but the more ambient tracks are emotive, brooding, and amazing. I’d love a whole album of this type of thing. Regardless, FRKTL’s music is worth a listen. Great stuff happening well below the radar. Check it.
I’ve been absolutely loving this new track from Mayer Hawthorne for a while now, and the recently released video is just brilliant. I was raised on Detroit TV, so this video immediately found a special place in my heart. Amazing nostalgia courtesy of The New Dance Show, and quite possibly Mayer’s strongest track yet. It’s a song with a vital message about Detroit’s past and future and respect to Mayer for his continual rep of the D.
I cannot wait for his sophomore album, “How Do You Do?” dropping on October 11. Check it!
Philadelphia singer/songwriter, Kurt Vile released the excellent Smoke Ring For My Halo in the spring of this year courtesy of Matador Records, and it’s been on constant rotation in my living room ever since. He first popped on my aural radar when he played at The Great Hall in Toronto as part of Canadian Music Week, opening up for J. Mascis. I caught the last song of his set and quickly realized his music was not to be ignored, Vile was not an artist to simply be left as a name constantly seen hyped and reviewed on music sites, but instead one to get immersed in.
And his fourth album, Smoke Ring For My Halo is definitely an immersive experience, offering up the best of Americana, reminiscent of Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, and the finest folk and lo-fi rock and roll. The beauty is in the subtlety and strength of his songwriting. Vile’s lyrics are dark and lonesome, delivered in a laconic style that’s all his own. He tends to drag out words or syllables providing the perfect counterpart to his skilled finger-plucking or guitar strums. Vile also seems to be working with the idea of restraint here, as many of the songs could easily blow up into full out jams, yet he and his backing band The Violators rarely let this happen. There is however a great fuzzy climax to “On Tour”, but even here the distortion never gets carried away — the listener is able to feel the closing kick, yet still be privy to the swirling combination of keyboard, harp, slide guitar, and mellotron orbiting Vile’s guitar. It’s truly great stuff.
Tracks like “Runner Up”, “Peeping Tomboy”, “Baby’s Arms”, and “Ghost Town” are slow, sparse, and poignant, and reveal Vile’s adeptness at being one of the best songwriters out there. He creates more than just mood here, he’s created a listening experience in the classic sense, one in which you put the album on and languidly float off for 45 minutes in Vile’s sonic yet relaxed musical realm.
Smoke Ring is buoyed by a pervasive lightness, it ambles along easily, sneers at you, shrugs, and yearns all in equal measure. The refrains and hooks will keep you coming back to the album time and again, and with each listen Vile seems to pull you a bit deeper into his slightly slanted yet inherently enchanted world. There ain’t a throwaway track on the album and the result, Smoke Ring For My Halo is one of the finest records of 2011.
I slept on this one for a few months, but am glad I finally checked it out because masked beat-maker SBTRKT’s eponymous long player is an absolute grower, and features emotional vocals courtesy of collaborators Sampha, Roses Gabor, Jessie Ware, and Little Dragon. Even after first listen it’s obvious SBTRKT (real name Aaron Jones) spent a lot of time working with his talented vocalists, as the production is meticulous. It’s a soulful affair, working with elements of dubstep, drum and bass, garage, and bass music. Definitely one to check out before the summer’s through.
Araabmuzik – Electronic Dream (Duke Records)
I don’t even know how to classify this shit. Dirty trance electro hip-pop? All I can tell you is, Araabmuzik’s Electronic Dream offers up some of the most exciting tracks of the year. Does it border on cheesy at times? Hell yes, but that’s part of its charm, and the snare pops, dirty hip-hop drum programming, nods to AFX, and uber-crisp production completely make up for any weird trance-pop transgressions. For this listener, it’s one of the few albums that have really hit hard and kept its appeal after many listens. Worth checking out, no doubt!
For those of you in TORONTO, these two producers are playing a show together in November at The Hoxton. Check out the details of this not to be missed show right HERE! Cheers.
Graham Van Pelt has been making waves across the pond in Montreal, Quebec for half a decade now, first in the much loved dance pop band Think About Life, and currently in his solo project, Miracle Fortress. His 2007 debut album Five Roses earned him a Polaris Prize nomination (the Canadian equivalent of the Mercury Prize), and found him channelling the pop sensibility of Brian Wilson. Four years on, and Van Pelt has returned with Was I The Wave?, earning him a second nod from the Polaris judges, and showcasing a refined ear for production and his love for 80’s inspired electro pop.
Van Pelt wears all hats on his new album (composer, arranger, producer, and engineer), and proves quite adept at soaring melodies — the perfect hook and infectious chorus seem to come naturally to him — matched with an assured display of vocals. Unlike his debut, which relied mainly on indie-rock guitars, Was I the Wave? is essentially an electronic offering, using big synths as the through line, with guitars working as the secondary rhythm.
“Tracers” is an excellent example of this compositional shift, starting with a guitar lick and simple drum machine loop for the first thirty seconds, until Van Pelt drops an 808 synth line that sounds almost like late 90’s Detroit techno, before he swings it back with his voice. “Tracers” sets the mood and groove quite nicely for following track “Raw Spectacle”, which sounds a lot like Cut Copy circa In Ghost Colours, with its stabbing synth, processed vocals, and brilliant build up to a pulsing and exciting chorus. “Everything Works” follows, and seems to be where the album starts to become more buoyant and warm, using an enjoyable bass hook to get your head bobbing, with vocals so contagious you’ll be humming along before you even know the words.
The mid-point of the album features two brief ambient pieces that offer a nice respite before Van Pelt amps it back up with album highlight “Miscalculations”, a guitar based track that is reminiscent of Toto, Men at Work, and Depeche Mode. Van Pelt’s melodies throughout are undeniable — they’re catchy but subtle, and his formulaic switch up from 60’s beach pop to 80’s new wave is refreshing, it shows he’s an artist still growing and one who gets stronger with each release. There’s an intimate feel to “Was I the Wave?” that reveals itself slowly, and with great production and impossibly catchy hooks, once revealed, only makes the album all that much enjoyable.
Miracle Fortress’s Was I The Wave? is the perfect album for the last days of summer and the coming autumn. Check it.
Hello friends. I am back. And ready to start writing about music again forthwith. My apologies for lack of posts as of late. It’s been a busy 2011. I graduated from teacher’s college at the University of Toronto in April and then went to India for six weeks and then British Columbia for two. India was the greatest experience of my life and BC wasn’t too shabby either. Now I’m back in Toronto enjoying the summer heat and all the fun the season brings. Here’s a couple of photos for ya.
Cliche snake charmer in Varanasi
Kolkata at 5 in the morning (the first picture i took in India)
Rickshaw driver taking an afternooner in Pushkar
The amazing village of Lolay in the Himalayan foothills
After a trio of rich and varied EP’s in 2010, which were all lumped under the banner of dubstep, the young and talented James Blake has released his debut full-length on a big major label. For those who had their hopes pinned on Blake producing the definitive instrumental dubstep masterpiece of the year, you may want to stop reading this right now, because what Blake has created instead is a soulful and strange collection of emotional almost-pop songs. Hints at dubstep and techno and darkness swirl along the edges of this album, but at its heart Blake’s debut attempts to go much further than just making you want to shake your booty in a dark club, it attempts to tap into your own emotions and make you reflect.
Simply put the album is an exercise in restraint, and a new avenue for Blake to explore emotions not just through rhythm but also through his own voice. We were given a taste of this late last fall as Blake’s cover of “Limit to your Love” began to pop up on blogs and music sites, and damn the kid could sing! And what sparse piano! And wow that bass wobble! Blake has truly reworked the song in his own style, while still sticking very close to Feist’s original, and the result is beautiful.
Every track on the album features Blake’s voice in the front of the mix, either clean or digitally enhanced by vocoder. Second track “Wilhelm’s Scream” is the song that will catch the listener first, as Blake uses a minimal beat and synth line to pull you in. He uses the word “falling” over and over in the track, and what’s interesting is the production creates the sensation of falling, as it slowly builds and layers itself into a wall of distortion and sensation. It’s a brilliant song that had me floored upon first listen.
The following tracks “I Never Learnt to Share” and “Lindesfarne I/II” are a bit more of a slow burn, yet once they seep into your consciousness, you’ll be craving the off-time bassline drops in “I Never Learnt to Share” and the guitar/vocal melody of “Lindesfarne II”. The opening section of “Lindesfarne I”, recalls Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek” and builds into a gentle folk song. The stripped down piano-based tracks “Give me my Month” and “Why Don’t You Call Me” bring to mind both Coldplay and Bon Iver.
Who woulda thunk that James Blake would be compared to Bon Iver? And yet, overall the album totally works. Penultimate track “I Mind” finds Blake showing up his pals Mount Kimbie at their own game, and making it seem effortless. If there was one thing that was a bit disappointing about Mount Kimbie’s own debut full-length last year, was that it was simply more of the same, and arguably not as exciting as their earlier attempts at post-dubstep grandeur. Yet, one will never be able to say this about Blake who has been evolving and tweaking and growing exponentially with each release. And he’s only 22(!) Expect much more from this young producer, and check out this album, because it’s the year’s most interesting release to date.
INAUDIBLE recently had the pleasure of conducting an interview with Michigan-based artist Michael Cottone aka The Green Kingdom, and we discussed his new album Prismatic, his varied artistic pursuits, the Motor City, and the wonders of nature and spirituality. Check it out right HERE on Headphone Commute! Cheers.
Michael Cottone has been quietly making music under The Green Kingdom moniker since 2006, and with each release he further refines his brand of introspective ambient bliss. His latest album Prismatic was released in September by Home Assembly Music and was mastered by Taylor Deupree. Cottone skillfully uses digitally enhanced acoustic guitar, strings, bells, and a myriad of samples and field recordings to create his compositions.
Within his arrangements, melody and space work in tandem in an attempt to manifest what Cottone has called an “optimistic nostalgia” for the listener — an aural experience that can provide a momentary reprieve from the frenetic, fast-paced world that surrounds us. And indeed his music is perfect for contemplative mornings and quiet evenings, where the vibe is to “slow down” and to “reflect”, and while listening this comes about quite naturally, as the familiarity of his work launches you back into memories of warm summer evenings past and gone, while at the same time, makes your heart beat ever faster for the future.
There’s a strong sense of optimism in Cottone’s music that is useless to attempt to describe in words, the expressive rhythms and melodies he creates speak for themselves. With tracks like “Wetlands” and “The Largest Creature That Has Ever Existed”, Cottone works with guitar, piano, and bells and establishes incredible mood and subjective wonder, while with “Radiance Reflected” and “Bonfire (tec)”, he adds a subtle 4/4 beat underneath it all, simulating your heart beating buoyantly for the future you envision for yourself. There is also a strong underlying sense of being connected to nature — to the woods that border our cities and towns, to the birds that fly unseen above our heads, and to the sun-drenched afternoons we take for granted until the bleak days of winter have surrounded us.
Prismatic is one of the finest ambient albums of 2010, and a prime example of electronic and organic sounds working together so effortlessly. Fans of Helios, Nest, The Boats, Kiln, and Susumu Yokota should check out The Green Kingdom immediately. The album also comes with a bonus disc of remixes from the likes of Insecto, Fieldhead, The Declining Winter, The Boats, and bvdub, and is an excellent addendum to the subtle beauty of Prismatic.
James Young and Aiden Whalley take a bold leap forward and backward with their debut album North, and help their label Hyperdub diversify in the process. Darkstar’s earlier singles like “Squeeze My Lime” and “Need You” saw the duo firmly entrenched in Kode 9 inspired dub-step and grime, so the music on North may take listeners by surprise upon first spin. Why you ask? Because the two-step beats and funky grime you’ve come to expect from Darkstar, have been replaced with cold synth lines and dark pop vocals courtesy of James Buttery.
Essentially what we have here is a synth-pop album in the style of Junior Boys, yet where Junior Boys have worn their formula ragged, hackneyed, and thin, Darkstar add new life in the genre. Early standout track “Deadness” illuminates this quite well, with smooth synth, gently processed vocals, and an amazing darkwave guitar-line coda that evokes plenty of emotion and rainy day pathos. The following track is the already revered “Aidy’s Girl is a Computer”, and it fits in snugly on the playlist even though it stands in stark contrast to the mood on the rest of the album.
“Under One Roof” brings the emotion right back, with woozy synth lines and Buttery’s voice stitched cleverly within the mix of synths and rhythm section. The overall feel of the album is one made for the cold rainy days of autumn — where it’s still not yet cold enough to snow, but starts to get dark in mid-afternoon, creating a bleak liminal state between seasons.
Penultimate track “Dear Heartbeat” is perhaps the most traditionally pop number on the album, with a twinkling piano backdrop and steady drumbeat, yet it still retains the cold autumn motif throughout. Closing track “When it’s Gone” sounds like a new, slowed down version of “Squeeze My Lime” and is a dreamy track that sort of drifts in and out and seems to hint at further transformations of Young and Whalley’s sound. Buttery closes the album singing: “I won’t forget you…” and with North, Darkstar have created a creeper of an album, one that will subtly seduce with each successive listen, and soon transform into one of the year’s most unforgettable albums for you.
INAUDIBLE 