VIDEO: Holy Other - We Over

Holy Other is a Berlin based producer combining the eerie atmospheres of witch house and the cold of electronica with the warmer, more shapely tones and soulful elegance of dubstep and R&B. The mix of sounds explores the similarly uncharted environments of Balam Acab, but where the New Yorker's unearthilness is rooted within the biosphere (with references to birds and water and a liquid flow) Holy Other has broken through to an even more graceful realm of freefloating cosmic drag, albeit it, a hauntingly beautiful one hung from a heart swelling emotion balanced between sadness and ecstacy.

London based label Transparent are set to release We Over b/wYr Love in a limited run of 300 7" records on 27th September.  The A-Side chops a sensual vocal into a range of slices, from the dense and opaque to delicate and translucent, all the while being pinned down toward the firmament with a deep bassline, the fabric of which is pulled through onto the flip, which thickens out the tone into a distinct oxygenated cable of bottem end the rolls and glides though a maze of clap beats, effervescing comets of analogue fuzz and a blurred multi-layered mixture of euphoric exclamations and spectral moaning vocals that keeps building up on itself until it shatters into black light fractals.  Listen to both tracks on the Transparent site before preordering what will become one of the most versatile and heavily spun records of the year:

http://www.transparentblog.com/blog/806/tp019-holy-other

He also has a pretty cheeky screwed down remix of Boyz II Men which is worth it - because anything that's turned to sludge is sounding good these ears - and a coupel of other tracks all availabel for free from his Last.FM.

Twitter
Last.FM
Soundcloud

VIDEO: Solar Bears - She Was Coloured In

I'm trying hard to break my run of only posting videos and failing dismally, but OH MAAAN!! if this vid doesn't scream psychedelic kosmiche hypnagogia I don't know what does.  It's like a more amped up technicolour version of the Barn Owl vid I posted the other day.  This is the title track from the debut album from Solar Bears coming out next week, 20th September, on Planet Mu.  Keep your ley lines locked to this groove and you'll be popping out from hyperdrive inside the glittering cosmos before you know it.

VIDEO: Turbowolf - Ancient Snake

Our long time running Best New Band Of Almost Ever have finally put out a full on official video for one of their tracks. Ahead of their forthcoming EP The Big Cut Turbowolf give you a technicolour splatterfest for Ancient Snake. It's wild like the woods!

See them support Korn and Dimmu Borgir in Europe very soon. Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd get to type.

VIDEO: Twin Shadow - Slow & Castles In The Snow

I just listened to Twin Shadow's Forget for the first time and just felt the rush of something totally fresh and exciting. Played the right thing at the right moment and it's totally won me over instantly. The work of one New York based George Lewis Jr. it reminds me of the multi-membered hydra Gayngs, though doesn't exactly sound like it, but it does share a similar lust for radio sleekness, harkening back to a probable/imagined mid-80's (no one say hypnagogic) NorthWest based US radio station beaming out coke-loaded, hi-gloss fm rock, R&B and soul. This album has traces of all those, just enough to make the Pop really shine out, emboldening chorus hooks with a really assertive and addictive quality. Released on Chris Taylor's Terrible Records it also shares a feel for Grizzly Bear's equally ambitious lush orchestrations, with the music being fleshed and filled out with some expansive harmonies, background tone washes and intricate details. The first half of the record comes off like an English Of Montreal - two ides of eccentricity, one pastoral, rural and one freaked out on the tempo of a city and the excesses of it. If Chillwave has been headed anywhere then it is surely as full a sounding place as this. Tracks like Tether Beat have that same lugubrious pulse, that simultaneous sense of propulsion and euphoric tranquility, but the major progression is the scope of ambition, unshackled from the hermetic glow of the bedroom this is a sound that demands a stage full of musicians to fully replicate and do justice to. It is not the sound of complacency or idle satisfaction.
The vocals are richy and expressively nuanced with some absolutely killer phrasing. Some of the vocal's sound like Sparks, some have Morrissey's disassociated baritone. If he and Wild Nothing got together indie blogs would go nuclear. and the lyrics are pretty special too - the final titular Forget has this cold haunted diamond of a line: "when winter sets in it has a way of crystallising the bad times".

Here's two videos for you; the new clip for Slow and the earlier Castles In The Snow. Both embody represent and illustrate all the above better than any more bewildered ramblings from me.

Here's two videos to sink into and see for yourselves:

VIDEO: Barn Owl - Light from the Mesa

Very exciting sneak preview of the new Barn Owl album, Ancestral Star, out in November on Thrill Jockey. The track is geologically paced, crawling from a promordial soup of swampy tones with submerged vocals dragged out of the depths as the sun breaks across the suitably awesome video of snatched half-light naturalism.

Last.Fm

back off holiday

i knew noone would pick up the mega early thread i did last week. too mega early. Here's my French forest holiday, in last.fm stats form:

1 Burl Ives 41
2 Gonjasufi 36
3 Tame Impala 30
4 Gorky's Zygotic Mynci 29
5 Rudi Arapahoe 24
6 Blackbird Blackbird 23
7 Women 22
7 Forest Swords 22
9 Gayngs 21
10 Mogwai 20
11 Ducktails 19
11 Thee Oh Sees 19
13 WHITE FENCE 16
14 Sing and Sign 15
14 Wild Nothing 15
16 Ikonika 14
17 Yo La Tengo 13
17 Oneida 13
17 Six Organs of Admittance 13
17 Engineers 13
17 Sian Alice Group 13
22 Awesome Wells 12
23 The Donkeys 11
23 Silver Bullets 11
25 Wild Beasts 10
25 Julian Lynch 10
25 High Places 10
25 Lotus Plaza 10
25 Guilty Ghosts 10
30 Bon Iver 9

supremely early LAST.FM thread

this weeks DiS/Blog Last.fm post:


I'm getting up really early to get on a boat to France and travelling all day tomorrow - so no more scrobbling from hearon out. Not that I'll care - HOLIDAYS!!!

I'll be surprised if this is picked up for the actual thread tomorrow. Not that I'll care - HOLIDAYS!!!

Last.fm. Not that I'll care - HOLIDAYS!!!


01. Sing and Sign - 42
02. Women - 35
03. Black Mountain - 31
03. Wild Nothing - 31
05. Burl Ives - 31
06. Loscil - 24
07. Emeralds - 23
07. White Medal - 23
9. A Forest of Stars - 22
10. Indian Jewelry - 15
11. Roald Dahl - 14
12. Oneida - 13
12. Falls of Rauros - 13
12. Mountain Man - 13
15. Gammal Sed - 12
15. C0ld L▲k3 - 12

FFFF: Zeitgeister Records Sampler

For today's Fast and Furious Friday Feature I'm giving you not one, not two but a whole sampler full of high velocity mayhem to contend with!! 

German Black Metal distro/label Zeitgeister Records has a Soundcloud sampler up and running showcasing a whole range of blackened sounds, from the kinetic Klabautamann, to the more doomy lumberings of Woburn House.  Black metal is having a bit of a renaissance at the moment I feel; It;s kicking off again over in the US, the UK is going back to its Pagan roots and these German artists all have a lot going on for them, especially the Owl track, which is as infectious and addictive as it is mysterious - no web presence for them at all.

HORNS UP MOTHER FUCKERS!!!!!!

MASSIVE worriedaboutsatan POST

Not content with releasing my 12th top album of 2009 and resting on that accolade for too many moons Leeds duo worriedaboutsatan have been pretty busy recently, so here's a bit of a round up of what they've been up to of late.

Earlier this week they put out a beautiful, elegantly haunted reshaping of White Hinterland's Icarus, backing Casey Dienel's disturbingly ephemeral imagery of knives through water with their cosmic minimalism, a shimmering liquid tapestry threaded with glitched beats and wordless vocalisations.  Listen to it here:

White Hinterland - Icarus remix

  Icarus (worriedaboutsatan remix) by worriedaboutsatan

They also posted three rough/demo/experiment tracks on their Soundcloud a month or so ago, one of which is this astonishing remix of Blackstreet's No Diggety. Yes, astonishing, because in reducing the original to it's intro shuffle and a few minimal vocals they've kept the edginess and tension and ratcheted it up further with their own creeped out drone and shadow boxed beat.  Check this and be wowed:

Blackstreet - No Diggety remix

   jam 2 by worriedaboutsatan


Making Of Video:

GoldFlakePaint blog posted an entertaining, informative and illuminating video of teamsatan's guide to making Heart Monitor yesterday, but you can also watch it here:




Heart Monitor single:

I missed out on posting about Heart Monitor when they released it back in March, so here's the full Heart Monitor track from a you tube vid thing for you.  The addition of vocals is a major addition to their sound, and like the vocals of Eluvium's Similies album earlier this year, really add a subtle embellishment which contrast with the previous instrumental only aesthetic whilst enhancing the human feel of the music.




The bands live show listings are as sparse as their music, with only a couple lined up for the rest of the year so far (although they did just support Pantha Du Prince which must have been a pretty awesome night).  They play London with our Brighton's inspirational post-rock experimentalists Esben & The Witch and Wrexham's Gallops who sound like a clubbed up glitter-wave rescrub of Foals - that's pretty good thing.  Gig's at Elektrowerkz on November 10th. Londoners, be there.

AND FINALLY! whew - Their Twitter is worth a follow too - www.twitter.com/teamsatan. They also devote far more time than is probably healthy to their other less serious hipster-baiting side project, but I'll leave you to find out what that is for yourselves.....

in thrall to the slowness of summer

No, not some new chillwave album title; simply a quick post to acknowledge my slackness at posting on here the last couple of weeks, and the news that I will be going on holiday next week so expect practically nothing from me over the next 10 days or so! I have not been idling though - been working on some pretty massive things for the blog which are getting better the deeper into them I get, so stay tapped for that.

In the meantime, check this shit out. I'm going to stay here, near Dieppe. They have a donkey called Pepito.