PREVIEW: Railcars - Big Sky (Pre-Order Hounds Of Love LP)

The mighty AmDiscs is set to release a new album from the even mightier Railcars in June and I've been listening to a preview track from it titled Big Sky. It's a Kate Bush song. All the tracks on the album are Kate Bush covers. It's going to blow your tiny mind into a glittering chandelier of smithereens that you'll blissfully lie back gaze at, your entire mental being twinkling in refracting light patterns above your transfixed physical shell.

Railcars are one of those bands that hit you right upside the head the moment you clap ears on them.  Formed in 2007, the band is the sole creation of Aria Jalali but he is joined by others for live shows.  This track is a sleeker departure from the fiery aural ambushes of the two LPs he has put out Cities Vs Submarines and Cathedral With No Eyes - both those were awesomely loud digitised rock productions, but this has a smoother, leaner sensibility, reigning in some of the spikier chaos, but leaving chaos there nonetheless. The garbled vocals spiralling around the climax of glitching keys and stuttering beats is a little vortex to suck your third eye into. An excellent omen for the impending full length.

Preorder the album from HERE.

Felt Drawings

Felt Drawings is the electronic/experimental/pop project of Los Angeles based Dominic Tiberio. The borderline twee name belies a darker sound behind it. Similar to other subterranean ~wavers like Cold Cave, Xiu Xiu, Blank Dogs or a downtempoed Railcars - by way of skittery beats, overloaded circuitry, guitar fuzz and blown out production it also shares a cleaner more serene claustrophobic atmosphere along the lines of the XX or Mount Kimbie. It's a combination of sounds that can trace a chilly path down your spine whilst keeping your synapses peaked - straddling current music memes like chillwave and witch house whilst cutting a bit of an individual road away from anything easily definable.

Here's a youtube of him at his most ambient, with In My Room that bears a strong resemblance to Basic Space, but ramps up the darker noisy elements, like the creepy cousin that never really opens it's mouth when it talks.




You can download three more songs for free courtesy of him here:

Forming
Momo
Walk

Another track Barriers can be heard kicking off Former Ghosts man Freddy Ruppert's SkinnyWolves mix We Stood That Chance. Download that from his Soundcloud HERE

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Railcars

We were tipped off about this band by GingerJohn over at Dark Party (Andy at The Freebutt!), and we have to say it's probably the best tip we've had all year!

Railcars is a San Fransisco based one man experimental psychedelic noise-pop band from the mind of Aria Jalali. Live he plays with more people (as you can see in the photo above), but the band and albums are his solo creations. His first 7" Cities vs. Submarines was produced by Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart while his second self-produced record was released at the end of 2009, the 12" Cathedral With No Eyes - insane artwork below.

It's pretty hard to fully describe this sound - it shifts real fast from explosive fragments of sound, through ephemeral ambience to cohesive beats and streamlined gamma rock - as this live video of Cathedral... should ably demonstrate. Amongst loads of things blasting through our frazzled neurons, it reminds us a bit of The Hospitals take on punk, grinding it down to base sound elements and building it back into song form. Pretty exciting, visceral stuff.