Banana Cream Dream {Wyatt Blair}

a0403873662_10Banana Cream Dream by Wyatt Blair   (Los Angeles, CA)

 
 
 
 

Los Angeles rock n’ roll with a New York City tude. Wyatt Blair is catchy like fly paper, neighbor. Those of us who are die hard music collectors will always be on the lifelong search for the progressive and abnormal, but it’s bands like this that keep us grounded and strike a common nerve that will always get you high. 70s punk rock revival with bleeding melodies that sound like Billy Corgan fronting the Stones. Welcome the city heat on either coast with this FREE download of Banana Cream Dream courtesty of Wyatt Blair and Burger Records. [Free Download] @thinknotsleep

 

 

D.I.Y.M.V.P. [Alex Cowles: Stand-Down-Eclectic]

mvpheader-tempACROSS THE POND IS A TERRIBLE EXPRESSION.  IT’S NOT A POND.  IF IT WAS, IT WOULDN’T COST ME $1.3K TO GET THERE- I’D JUST SWIM.  BUT OVER IN EDINBURGH, A CITY ON OUR LONG LIST OF TO-DO SPOTS FOR OUR UPCOMING WEBSERIES, ALEX COWLES IS FOLLOWING HIS ELECTRONIC DREAMS CARVING A UNIQUE PATH WITH HIS NETLABEL, CUT MUSIC AND HIS PERSONAL PRODUCTION UNDER THE MONIKER, DFRNT.  FOR A LONG TIME WE’VE COVERED THESE DIY RELEASES AND WONDERED IF THE LABEL IS ENTIRELY HIM (AN ACCUSATION HE STRONGLY DISPUTES), PARTAKING IN AN ANONYMOUS GAME OF CAT AND MOUSE.

STAND-DOWN-ECLECTIC:  SINCE APRIL, 2011, CUT MUSIC HAS BEEN PUMPING OUT EPS FROM DIFFERENT ARTISTS.  ALEX, HIMSELF, WRITES ELECTRONIC MUSIC THAT SEEMS TO BE THE BASIS FOR QUALITY ON HIS LABELS AS WELL AS AN AESTHETIC CONTROL THAT PINPOINTS THE ATMOSPHERIC FEEL.  IT’S THIS COMBINATION THAT EARNS HIM A SEAT IN OUR DIYMVP COLUMN; AN ABSOLUTE DEDICATION TO FORM AND FUNCTION, AN AUDITORY MUSEUM CHRONICLING A DEFINITIVE SOUND.

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Cut Vol. 1 was an introduction.  This is the sound.  This is the mood.  And from there we saw flight.  As the months clicked by and the EPs piled up, it was instantaneously clear that Cowles has a vision bouncing around his head, a vision for electronic perfection that tied minimal house influences to the modern dub dynamic.  One of its most appreciated traits: patience.  Give the listener everything in the first 30 seconds, and well, you’ve lost them in 30 seconds.

Alex makes the cut by devoting his time to the electronic arts.  Everything he does revolves around an uncompromised ideology of personal taste.  His contribution to the UK scene touches all those who roll themselves over to the club to catch a DFRNT set.  It’s not a sound that one can claim for themselves until they’ve achieved a level of curatorial perfection that is in direct response to the outside pressures that homogenize the genre (unfortunately).

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Genre labels be damned, what Cowles has is the golden thumb; a taste and opinion that allows for structural differentiation among an environmental agreement.  Those who land on Cut Music count themselves lucky and as the group promotes a Pay-What-You-Want style of download, the music has planted its roots internationally.  It’s stoney eyed, drool dripping, reverb laced crack for the ears.  Every bubble of melodic complacency is popped in favor of a more enigmatic approach, leveling brainwaves and creating a nostalgic affect that might, might just bring you back to groups like Everything but the Girl.

What the future has in store is a mystery.  When asked to comment on the break that’s been taken by the group- we were told to expect new releases in the upcoming months.  But, we’re used to this as Alex has eluded our radar for sometime as he pushes ahead with personal standards that rise above the average label owner never bothering to “please his consumer” but rather remaining true to his spirit.

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Cut Music isn’t a label that’s looking for your cash- and that certainly isn’t how it’s artists are chosen, or represented.  Cut Music is particularly fond of being looked at as a digital museum that tells the story of an emerging culture in the UK- a culture that looks back to the earliest days of electronic music and re-appropriates elements as needed to create a whirlpool of nostalgia and an undeniable grooviness.

Those who seek to curate would take notice, take notes and understand this fine point, as demonstrated throughout Alex Cowles work.  Aesthetic control is everything.  Without authenticity and personal touch, a labels brand is worthless.

DFRNT might be a personal outlet.  But Cut Music is the family that let’s it flourish. @Dingusonmusic

Fox Tales {Creature Comfort}

a1413404313_10Fox Tales by Creature Comfort   (Nashville, Tennessee)

 

This is a little sweeter than the stuff I’m used to but everyone can do with a little sweet every now and then. There is a calm cool about Fox Tales that draws you in. Perhaps it’s the use of tambourines or indulgent guitars but whatever it is, its there and its beautiful. Maybe we don’t always need garage rock and Creature Comfort have given us an example of what else we should be listening to. @LeahLovecat

Float! {Music for People}

a3261117997_2Float! by Music For People   (Atlanta, Georgia)

 
 

This is one of those albums I would love to post every track from, it is truly stellar. Unique, immersive, experiential, experimental, strange, lovely. Stumbled across this one during a frustrating hunt about, then I smiled. Some may have noticed this album is quite dated, 2006 to be specific, but I couldn’t help myself, if nobodies heard it yet, it ain’t old so hush now. Contacted producer Mikey Johnson, will keep ya’ll posted. @dingusrecords

Single Release: The Butterfly Girl {The Balcony Stars}

a4127662570_10‘The Butterfly Girl’ by The Balcony Stars   (Liverpool, England)

 

This is something beautifully alluring about The Balcony Stars’ single, ‘The Butterfly Girl‘. The name alone leaves you with a little sense of wonder and the visual aspect, the cover, makes your imagination run even more wild. Shoegazy rock and roll is what we have here and its laced with some late night starlight and early morning haze. It’s a song you lay in bed listening to until the moment you have to force yourself to star your day and its there for you when you need to unwind. The Balcony Stars have something special on their hands, something very special. @LeahLovecat

Single Release: Apgetaryong {Cora Kim}

a0800846745_10‘Apgetaryong’ by Cora Kim   (Montreal)

 
 

This is a single that represents Cora Kim quite well in my opinion; a tasteful mix of all the reoccurring elements in her music from synth pop to Korean folk to trip hop and r&b. Sonically, this song leaves a lot of open space for the eclectic instruments involved to breath and groove, leaving us feeling like we are being lifted out of our moment in time and cast into the realm she has prepared. Her delicate vocals dance around the beat and are equal parts rhythmic and melodic. The instrumental is comprised of high tuned drums and bright synths, among other percussive elements, that make for a very colorful and light landscape. All around a great production and developed sound. @thinknotsleep

Single Release: Away {Julia Losfelt}

artworks-000048451753-gi0jpc-t500x500‘Away’ by Julia Losfelt   (Paris, France) *

Singer, Julia Losfelt, enjoys the extreme luxury of being partners, in multiple ways, with Parisian producer Andrea.  However, her latest track, ‘Away‘, is a product composed all her own.  You can sense that their minds share some intrinsic audio link, though now that Losfelt has put her stamp on something pure, it’s only upon examination that you begin to take note of the crucial differences, most prophetically, a more patient resolve for climactic restraint.  Regardless of this comparison, the track is amazing.  There’s no fancy way to say it, it’s so wonderfully saturated. [Free Download@Dingusonmusic

Ghost Overseas [Egypt]

 

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A collective of tape-makers somewhere in Egypt go by Thinis. They press eerie experimental washes to tape in extremely limited batches. One album, a split between These Myths and Jabpir + the Void, was released only on the cassette it was originally recorded on. It sold. The rip is all that’s left of it.

sijssometimes i just sits by youth   (Egypt)

 

Youth’s sometimes i just sits, one of Thinis’s new offerings, moans, cries, and hiccups in space. The voice’s only companions are some cotton-swaddled synthesizers, just barely dotting the landscape. The record is frightening not because we’re not sure what will happen, but because we can’t tell how long the limbo will stretch on. The ennui simmers. We wait for it to break; it never does. Like the opposite of hypnotherapy, sometimes i just sits entrances with its anxiety.

 

Sometimes it folds into beautiful forms, like at the tail end of ’222′ as it revolves into ’333′. Something like a beat—a single, repeating chime—adds the record’s first hint of architecture. But when drums finally creep in on track four, they just come to stir more chaos. The album might grow more concrete, but it never shakes its restlessness.

 faultFault by Oedipus   (Egypt)

 

A similar tension ripples throughout Oedipus’s music, though the producer draws upon more concrete points of sound to realize it. Fault fills with glassy arpeggios, itchy beats, and clipped vocals, each song a shifting, colorful terrarium — alive, but boxed in. The title draws a line between personal guilt and geological unrest, between cracks in the earth and the mind.

 

‘Morse’ stands out as the centerpiece of the four-track EP, its wordless voices buzzing around a buried dance rhythm as if in search of some obscure destination. The track ripples like a detuned television; waves of static streak across the frame. It’s artificial, but it breathes. It’s empty of language, but trods mutely toward unspoken desires. The motion of wanting is bigger than words.

 Like the artist’s pseudonym implies, Fault evokes wandering around in a pained blindness. The EP’s cover complicates the metaphor; is the masked figure, impossibly tall, having his eyes pierced out? Or is he firing projectiles from them at some target out of the frame? A tag beneath the record reads “void-gaze”; this is the sound of staring into nothing, of letting the horrors of former sight dance where the eyes used to be.

@sashageffen

Single Release: Dreaming {Smallpools}

964451_583761844989291_489612004_o‘Dreaming’ by Smallpools   (Los Angeles, CA)

 
 

There are many different levels of being turned onto a song and why it should be appreciated in the blogosphere and abroad. Today upon discovering what will quite possibly become the most hyped song of the summer, I am all ears for that very reason. The potential for Smallpools new synth-pop, dance track ‘Dreaming‘ to take off and be heard at parties and clubs all over the world this warm season is mind blowing. The main keyboard line and Passion Pit inspired vocals are enough to grab your attention for a good 5 plays in a row and be assured that posting this track on your social media pages will make you the coolest person your followers know that day. Hard-hitting production and intelligent pop arrangement will surely bring this group to international recognition and I’m glad to have caught on in these early stages. Oh, and download that shit for free you fools! [Free Download] @thinknotsleep

Single Release: Sock It To Me {A Lost People}

a1640014374_2Sock It To Me by A Lost People   (Baldwin, New York)

 

Smile, laugh even, but have some gosh darn fun in your times here friends. Everyone should get laid to a track like this some time in their life, the world would be a much better place. Chill out peoples. Flows reminiscent of Tech N9ne, ‘Candy‘ by The Pack, and all that hyphy b.s. from the bay. Apparently DJs in Korea rock A Lost People, pretty cool. @dingusrecords