VIDEO: Maria Minerva - California Scheming

Here's the official - debut I think - video for lo-fi Estonian gauze-pop artist Maria Minerva's track California Scheming, from her Not Not Fun released 12" Noble Savage. NNF also put out her debut cassette Tallinn At Dawn in February too - both still available. The amount of swooshiness floating across the slowly crumbling pop centre is enough to give you the vapours. I also sense that if you weren;t told, you could detect a definite sense of Eastern European pop-scene to it.  File alongside but even further to the left-field of Laurel Halo and LA Vampires.

Here's a couple more tracks to check out from the No Fear of Pop Soundcloud:

VIDEO: GAMES - Strawberry Skies

I love that GAMES' videos look so much like fan-videos in their roughness and dusty archive finish; but they're clearly not, posessed of just a little too much knowing, pefectly imbued with the same sense of nostalgia fetishism as the music, and the same subtle twists of editing and sleight of hand that make them such a compelling band.  This track especially, with Laurel Halo's vocals draped seductively across a song that slinks off into a teasing fade-out, like the girl you had your eye on at the school disco leaving too soon because her dad came to pick her up early. Inspired track and an equally inspired video to go with.

DOWNLOAD: Laurel Halo - King Felix EP

Laurel Halo

King Felix EP

DOWNLOAD

--(OFFICIAL LINK EXPIRED - ORDER THE 12" FROM HIPPOS IN TANKS HERE)--

Laurel Halo is definitely an artist to keep your eyes and ears pinned to, whether you are into this whole Witch House thing or not. The solo Brooklynite has been causing a few ripples across the web with Forkcasts on Pitchfork, contributing sinh (Something I Never Had) to the TriAngle Let Me Shine For Me compilation and an increasing presence across The Blogs - which I am more than happy to boost up with this post.  She is in the habit of giving her tracks away for free via her website or last.fm and now she has put out this whole EP of new material to download for nothing.

Listening to King Felix  puts me in a similar headspace to Oneohtrix Point Never, with multiple layers of tone bubbling and effervescing across each others surfaces, slipping off in differing directions of sound - some pulling out angelic resonance and euphoria, other dragging the tone down into dissonance and noise, then passing back into each other through distorted wormholes to a harmonious communion. Which makes sense considering he described her music as "really intricate, really ornate synth-pop" in an interview with Pitchfork

Beyond simple synth pop, they both mine a seam of deep hypnagogic cosmia, using oscillation to mirror and refract brain waves, sucking listeners into parallel universes, distorting perceptions of time and spatial awareness - a disorienting bubble of shimmering liquid colours, glassy, brittle, fragile, and delicate; hanging like a portal towards the two otherworldy realms of light and dark - Witch House and Hypnogogic Pop.  Laurel Halo straddles both worlds and produces an improbably rich soundworld because of it.

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