DOWNLOAD: Honeydrum - Pink Lips

New album from the darkbeat pop combo Honeydrum, available from their Bandcamp.  Lovely black romance and dim candle flicker romanticism, juxtaposed against bontempi rhythms and an almost tropical flourish. A little bit Ducktails in Human Stuff, a little bit Ariel Pink in Dream Eyes, these new tracks are beautiful progression from their last releases - all of which are up for d/l from their Bandcamp and one of which gets a new video featured here:

DOWNLOAD: Mpala Garoo / Sunbells Fenimore

Mpala Garoo is another of my top finds from Russia's underground - actually, this one was given to me by Twilight Owls - and is one of the better artists I've come across. Just one man - Ivan - plays a similar kind of summery tropical heat-haze as Ducktails. There's a fifteen minute, four track album available to download from Last.fm track by track, which I've reposted here.

The first track Open Way Up High's reverb soaked chillwave swing feels very much in thrall to Landscapes, which is no complaint at all. It is a beautifully languid shimmer of a track that lasts for an all too short 2.24 - I could easily leave this on repeat for twenty minutes and not tire of it.  The second tracks wheezy little organ flourish adds a wonderful background tone to the similar lithe guitar work shaking it's hips around the foreground while a shuffling conga beat gently harries it. Magic Fiesta has a bit of the spooky jungle groove of High Wolf about it - gurgling drums and a slightly warped focus make it a progression and deviation from the previous two tracks to signify something worthwhile going on out there.

01. Open Way Up High
02. Primitiittii
03. Magic Fiesta
04. Kid Island


Ivan also plays in Sunbells Fenimore; a project that features the same island guitar tone and pace from Mpala, but it's fattened out with some deeper oceanic riffs; thick trancy tendrils of tone that weave around the bubbles of guitar notes, and pushes things that much further away from the safety of the shoreline - things gets pretty turbulent in Paradising, but no less hypnotic as the chaotic crashing and fizzing carries the metaphor of the sea, blistering heat, salty spray and boiling breakers into sonic realisation. I guess there's a Nu-Age flotation element to it, despite the more caustic nature it retains a sense of centred focus that the more musically kinetic Mpala doesn't have. It's a natural deviation; recalling the fiery return to Earth of Oneohtrix Point Never or the tranquility of Dolphins Into The Future, a lucid sky-gazing treatise on sun-soaked mystical spirituality.  Go to his BANDCAMP for three tracks of meditational serenity.

PWIN ▲▲ TEAKS

This is an interesting one, as befits this interesting juncture we find ourselves at as the subgenre eddies of Chillwave and Witch House spin off into different shapes, some remingling and others whirling further from the motherpool that is Hypnogogic Pop. 80's + cognitive dissonance = 2010.  Sharing a similarity in ambience to Ducktails with their languid tropical shimmertone that sits them firmly in the Chillwave camp there is also a malevolence in the way PWIN ▲▲ TEAKS dismember and recast radio hits of the 80's that is one of the gory signatures of Witch House.  That and the geometry in the name. Sympathetic sampling is one of Chillwave's central tenets, but over on the darker side its more about the torturing, like some kind of payback for all those times trapped with the radio tuned to a local Golden Hits.   Their top friends on myspazz are Kria Brekkan, Washed Out, Disaro and How I Quit Crack. There's some kind of coordinates for you there.

Here's two tracks to celebrate and demonstrate the fork in the road that we're getting to chose a route down.

First, take I Will Always Love You - a remix, reworking or ritual sacrifice (whichever way you want to spin it) so profoundly simple, sinister and unnerving the Master Butcher would be proud to hang it in alongside his greatest love songs. Check the way the track gets sucked into a dismal vortex around the 4 minute mark, then pops back out into it's parallel dimensional form of euphoria. Beautiful freaky. Then listen to Beach Bubble and just lay back and relax as it's soporific heatwave fans out over your body slowly brushing across your skin in waves of lilting intensity as the clouds gently shade the colour of its rays.