VIDEO// Christine Leakey: My Heart Has Been Broken...

 
Everything about 'My Heart Has Been Broken By One Unfit To Name' is unsettling. Leakey's voice is deep and dark, possessed by the same demon that hung from the chords of Scott Walker's throat on his 2006 album 'The Drift'. She wets and parts her lips, crawling breathy and choked and tortured across a draped cloth of extended notes and Lovecraftian metaphor. The track creeps and saunters and sidles, the floorboards dry and brittle beneath fingers that stroke and scratch in equal measure. She sings, her tongue rolling across each word, savouring a venomousness lexicon 'fore letting them drip, agonised and malicious upon the ground. It is wholly, and grotesquely troubling.

However, the single's also strangely captivating, so pre-order it from Christine Leakey's Bandcamp.

EP// Hanetration: Timelapse

   
Hanetration's latest EP opens with 'Moon', the cold light of malign indifference rising over the crimson sludge of yesterday's dawn. The industrial landscape does not falter. Drills hum and hammers fall, clipping away at some primordial quarry-face, faces pressed against the virtually vertical staircase of smooth and staggered stone. A violin interjects, and rain falls. The tape rolls on. A clock starts to tick, faster than you can remember. Crushing treads roar by, falling away from the mocking whistle of metal on metal and the silent glitches of countless wired-in brains. "We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death..."

Download the EP for free from Hanetration's Bandcamp.

VIDEO// Oceania: Wires

   
Surreal are the images painted here. A boy hanging as a bat might hang, his yellow overcoat shimmering beneath a light, light as a feather yet weightless not. Periods of intermittent darkness dilute murky film, rewound tape fast-forwarded and nervous frames put under. Water. Smoke. And phone-lines racing to deliver fruitless talk to fruitless trees. "Wires in your eyes" caught in shallow lashes, the inside of an eyelid the gloomy palette of an overcast sky. The soundtrack is electronic, beats lonely in their abundance and choral synths a dreamy respite from the dream-like banality of life. 'Wires' is all these things and more, yet all these things and nothing. Our zenith and our nadir.

Oceania's EP 'Eyes of Glass' will drop later this summer, but check out his Soundcloud for now!

TRACK// Haim: The Wire

The latest single from Los Angeles trio Haim is one of the few 'pop' songs that has turned my head recently. Classy eighties vibes slip off the dappled guitar lines, shaken free by an airy rhythm and the refreshing rhythmic awareness of the lead singer. The hooky vocal scales and inspired lyricism drip with a summery nonchalance, and it all results in a number that doesn't take life too seriously!

ALBUM// M. Lockwood Porter: Judah's Gone

I'm a huge fan of Conor Oberst and Bright Eyes, which is perhaps why I was drawn to M. Lockwood Porter's latest release. The instrumentation is the embodiment of Americana, the tired acoustic drawl of a harmonica offset by a tumbling rhythm and the hopefully despondent story of a man who needed to tell it. The lyrical imagery is delightfully whimsical ("the pond was full of rain"), and Porter's occasional outbreaks of frustration resonate with rare believability. Some songs are duds, but the title track is a lesson in real life and resignation. The cover art however, is reason enough to grab a download from the Bandcamp!

ALBUM// Delphine Dora: Multitudes II

 
This isn't Delphine Dora's latest release. That can be found here, and is far better produced. It's better mixed and better recorded, but I find the spontaneous improvisation on display here far more intriguing. Based on the poetry of Walt Whitman, Dora's piano playing and strained vocals retain a certain child-like imperfection. Ofttimes they bounce and skip along long passages of lawn, and at others they seem to age, sighing and struggling to recite unsettled lines of constructed verse. They echo at points and seem swamped at others, overwhelmed by the Satie-inspired minimalism of her piano. Like a poem the tracks twist and change, exploring avenues of darkness and dappled light. It's a wonderfully thoughtful probing of both Whitman's poetry, and the uncertain fickleness of man.

Download the whole thing from Delphine Dora's Bandcamp.

VIDEO// Angel Olsen: Some Things Cosmic

 
Angel Olsen sings like no-one else. Her voice quivers with emotion like she's about to cry, and it honesty brings a tear to my eye. Her performance is perfect, from that wry mid-track smile to her beautiful middle-distance stare. The audience at her feet is quiet, the final shuddering notes leaving her lips and floating up into the warm summer air. This moment is strange and full and fleeting.

EP// Mild Eyes: Summer '13 One

   
Robert Frost was stuck. For months upon months he had been trying to write the greatest epic poem of his generation. The words flowed like a flood, no sooner hitting the page than falling off it under his stressed and haughty breath. The lines he accepted seemed the next day crushed, their beauty obscured by clumsy construction. Then one day Frost awoke, and he wrote a twenty-line poem that has since become his most loved. 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood', and he took the one less travelled by. For me, Mild Eye's latest EP seems to mirror Frost's journey. Somehow the music's scope is far greater than could be expressed. I imagine Steven Hodson struggling to articulate this transcendence, but in succumbing to such futility, crafting something truly inspired. The ambient landscapes are rife with yearning and grace and the sad acknowledgement of human limitation. It's a wonderful effort by a promising project.

Listen and buy the EP for pennies over at Mild Eye's Bandcamp.

TRACK// Molly Drake: I Remember

Last night I revisited one of my favourite radio documentaries 'Three Records from Sundown'. In it, record producer Joe Boyd remembers his time working with the infinitely enigmatic Nick Drake, and the result is a heartbreaking story of self-doubt and unappreciated genius. What caught my ear this time however, were the minutes recalling Molly Drake, Nick's relatively unknown mother. Her voice is described as very English, as though drifting down the street from a Sunday afternoon music hall. Nick's own guitar tone can be heard in her piano chords, and in her voice the sad and almost whimsical quality of his. Her music is humbling, and the adulation of Mr Drake caught at the end of 'I Remember' evokes a forgotten era of simple pleasure and the simple summer breeze.

TRACK// By Toutatis: Rebecca

 
Something about this track is quietly menacing. Perhaps it's the vocals, deep and seductive as they are. Perhaps it's the velvet piano's organ-like drawl, or perhaps it's the shimmering layer of refined manipulation which hangs over 'Rebecca' like a Victorian smog. Shadowy and ambiguous, every lyric seems calculated and ominous and motivated. Even the bouts of violin-backed sorrow appear planned, their authenticity altered by some curious emotional engineering. It's a strikingly dark number, and one whose antiquated setting captivates from the off. A teaser for By Toutatis' debut LP 'The Songs We Sang to Death', 'Rebecca' has most certainly got my stomach rumbling!

Tiny Lights will drop the album September 2nd, but until then, download 'Rebecca' for free.

VIDEO// Frog J. Michigan: Hello! Ma Baby

Frog J. Michigan's deviously catchy take on Howard and Emerson's 1899 ditty 'Hello! Ma Baby".

SOUNDTRACK// Chu Ishikawa: Tetsuo The Iron Man

Testsuo: The Iron Man is not the sort of movie that you stumble upon. Shinya Tsukamoto's cult 1989 horror film follows a Japanese businessman turned accidental killer, as the one they call the Metal Fetishist slowly transforms his body into a living pile of metal and tubes and wires. Despite this off-putting premise and scenes that might seem laughable on paper (a gargantuan power drill of a penis), the film is a surrealist body-horror masterpiece. Industrial to the core, the sets provide gloriously complex mechanical backdrops, while imaginative camera angles show them off with a harsh modernist flair. Often music is omitted in favour of horrifying scratching or breathless quiet, but when it is used, it bangs and grinds and pops like some hellish factory. Synths drag themselves from countless iron smokestacks, raining nuts and bolt down on sweating hammers and vicious, spark-fuelled saws. It's the monstrous soundtrack to a monstrously engrossing film.
 
Listen to the opening credits on Youtube after the break.

TRACK// Elizabeth Veldon: A Repeated Phrase

   

Somewhere in my consciousness, there's a metaphor pertaining to a train. The steady motion of the wheels is a simple repeated phrase, echoing and reverberating and shifting slightly every time the carriage rolls over a warped sleeper or dislodged Highland pebble. Frost and rain crawl slowly across your window, compelled by the silent wind to etch a quietly mountainous landscape upon the glass. Your breath is an early morning fog, and your thoughts the deep and brooding clouds of a deep and brooding sky. It's a magnificent fifteen minute journey that lasts a mere moment.

Listen and download the track from Elizabeth Veldon's Bandcamp.

PROJECT// Vincent Moon: Collection Petites Planetes

 

Western music is entirely paradoxical, in that it is both infinitely huge and infinitesimally small. We know of thousands upon thousands of artists and bands, and yet they are all huddled between the staunch bookends of public convention. Pop and rock are accepted staples of this isolated musical expanse, interspersed with volumes of alternative indie electronica and the rare, leather-bound jazz standard. The far more interesting tomes are left outside the barricading bookends, and talk of free-jazz atonality and primal metal aggression. They whisper of the avant-garde and point towards the far-off lands of world music, where religion and ritual are of the utmost importance.

Vincent Moon's project Petites Planetes roots out this enchanting world music and places it neatly back upon the cultural shelf. Best known for his guerilla film-making style, Moon collaborated with the likes of REM and Arcade Fire before deciding to embark on his search for tradition and folklore. From the singing women of Croatia's Carpathian Mountains to the shamanistic rituals of Java, he has painted intimate portraits of distant cultures. He has preserved the dying Glagolitic mass and recorded the tribal songs of Southern Ethiopia. The Yiddish traditions and the HudHud chants of the Filipino Cordillera have all be committed to film and to tape, each a beautiful expression of the boundless delights of human existence. These musical explorations defy convention. The voices are not perfect, and neither are the instruments. But in each note there is a passion. They retain a truth and a meaning and a spirituality, that has all but seeped through our sad, staunch bookends.

Listen to a wonderful Ukrainian folk song above and then check out Petites Planetes here.

VIDEO// The Preatures: Is This How You Feel?

   

Jimmy over at Head Underwater named this song one of his favourites of the year, and it's hard not to share in his opinion. The latest single from Australian band The Preatures is a pop gem, dusted in seventies rock and roll appeal and chiselled by the lead singer's enchanting, punctuated voice. The fabric of the track is permeated by a wonderfully suggestive dance beat, and everything feels breathy and hopeful and curiously immediate. If you don't feel like moving, you are just not human.

EP// Braveyoung: Will the Dust Praise You

   

Something about that missing question mark fascinates me, and I can't put my finger on just why. It is, I think, the open-endedness of it all. Do the words form a question if there is no punctuation? Is there some vast cosmic truth in the sub-text that couldn't possibly be surmised in a lonely swirl of ink? Perhaps the question is unanswerable, but perhaps the omission is simply Braveyoung's subtle rebellion against convention. The Portland-based project is, after all, "a punk band, kind of."

The four tracks are a strange orchestral triumph, all things said and done. Enigmatic strings form the foundations for a minimalist tower, delicate and vulnerable but undeniably steady. 'No Cure's ambient surroundings ripple and shudder with each stroke of a piano's ivory keys, ascending and swelling through a perfectly demonstrative reverb. The following track is introspection epitomised, fragile notes sent out to probe a haunting static fog. A dark key change creeps up on you, and an oddly human groan leads effortlessly into the final number. Here, strings and piano accumulate in an incalculable expanse of neoclassical awe, distant and pained and tear-jerkingly well-composed.

Stream and buy 'Will the Dust Praise You' from Braveyoung's Bandcamp.

TRACK// Aperture: #11

   
This is why I blog about music. For those rare moments when you stumble across something that has fallen fresh from the womb of it's creator, unknown and unassuming. This track's fall wasn't cushioned by a well-penned email, nor pushed into view by well-meaning PR. There is no Twitter account or Facebook page to follow, and the information on the Bandcamp consists entirely of an auspicious lower face and a few genre tags. But does it even matter? The music is played over a backdrop of warm summer rain, water sliding down the wooden cheek of a lonely cello. It's the ambient love-child of classical and electronica, and it's both melancholic and life-affirming in equal measure. What I want to know now is where the ten tracks leading up to '#11' are hiding!

Stream '#11' above and then buy it from Aperture's Bandcamp.

EP// Bad Kisser: Loss

     
There is something so evocative and emotional about Bad Kisser's music that I find myself lost for words. The whole thing runs for just under five minutes, but in such a short time San Francisco's Folie Gras manages to relate the idea of loss like no-one else. Each track rises and envelopes and impresses itself upon your soul, before ripping itself from your chest and leaving you lacking. They are beautifully, painfully insubstantial, long drones and clear reverberation the only constants in a constantly shifting landscape. At times the vocals are sacred and solemn and choral, echoing off the walls of a vast and vaulted church. At others they flutter between moss-covered gravestones, the lyrics as timeless and indecipherable as the words etched upon the rock.

Listen and download the EP for free from Bad Kisser's Bandcamp.

VIDEO// Snowmine: Silver Sieve

   
Snowmine's music video for 'Silver Sieve' is fascinating to watch. Stitched together using scenes from 'Senestrorsum', an enthralling short film by Martin Francis Shields, the characters move with careful deliberation and a jerky hand-drawn charm. The pace of the song is at once both a perfect contrast to this surreal, drowsy motion, and the perfect accompaniment to it's galloping action. It's a well-crafted piece of pop, but even if that isn't your thing, the video is well worth checking out.

ALBUM// Denison Witmer: Denison Witmer

A little breeze blew over recently from our friends at Songs:Illinois, in the form of Denison Witmer's new album. Apart from having a pretty awesome cover, the eponymous release is full of a strange sort of sadness. These soft-spoken modern ballads have all but relinquished themselves to the futility of the 21st century. They scream with yearning and folk-tinged nostalgia, but acknowledge that in truth their voice is merely a whisper among many. This album is a work of rare, understated beauty. It was made for Denison, and your listening seems, not invasive, but rather incredibly humbling. The guest vocals from Sufjan Stevens are also an extremely enjoyably bonus!
   
Listen and download the album from Denison's Bandcamp and then visit his website.
Witmer is also playing at a few places throughout Western American in September!

Sept 9 – San Francisco @ Cafe Du Nord
Sept 10 – Los Angeles @ Bootleg Bar
Sept 12 – Ventura, CA @ Zooey’s Cafe
Sept 13 – San Diego, CA @ Music Thing Festival
Sept 14 – Tempe, AZ @ Last Exit
Sept 16 – Colorado Springs, CO @ TBA
Sept 17 – Ft. Collins, CO @ Everyday Joe’s
Sept 18 – Denver, CO @ Soiled Dove
Sept 21 – Wenatchee, WA @ Cafe Mela
Sept 22 – Seattle, WA @ Tractor Tavern
Sept 23 – Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Lounge