Tracks of the Week: 13 November [Double Bill]

Matthew Britton is our human blog-music aggregator, kind of like Hype Machine but with feelings and shit. Every week he goes, puts on his rubber gloves and trawls the darkest sewers of Soundcloud, reporting back to TLOBF with his findings. Sometimes he strikes gold, sometimes just faeces, but one day, maybe, just maybe, a band covered here will play an actual gig in front of human people. We continue to live in hope.

It finally feels like we’ve reached that point in autumn that everyone likes: where it allows you to layer up and keep warm, but not quite at the tipping point where everyone is sneezing at you on buses and the world feels like a distant, puss filled mess that wants you to freeze to death. It’s also the time of year that every music publication the world over starts compiling its album of the year list, fully aware that there’s still about a sixth of calendar yet to fulfill (if not a sixth of the years releases), and PR companies go into overdrive pushing their clients new big artists for the forthcoming 12 months. It’s true: the mechanisms of the music industry can even taint the simple pleasure of kicking up damp leaves and having miscreants throw fireworks at you. Here’s a soundtrack for you as you run away from a banger, screaming.

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Wild Heron – American Bodies

Made by someone up in the vicious hills of Sheffield, ‘American Bodies’ is a 2k11 version of disco, stripped of the funk and bass and turned into something that makes you want to get incredibly sweaty, almost bringing on a craving for a comedown. Tagged as ‘hipster house’ on soundcloud, you kind of get the feeling that none of those movember bastards would have the moves to get down to this.

Wild Heron – American Bodies

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Shaky Snakes – yr in the sky (feat. Andreanna)

Bethany Consentino hasn’t been in the news for quite a while, all things considered – maybe the marketing budget of the various low-rent brands she’s been asked to sing for in the past no longer stretch to covering her fees, or maybe she got bored of being on the Taco Bell payroll. Whatever – Shaky Snakes bring back memories of those early days where she could still sing ‘The Sun Was High (and So Was I)’ without people worrying about her drug dependency.

Shaky Snakes – yr in the sky (feat. Andreanna)

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Izes – Purgatorys Gate

Truly weird stuff made by a girl (perhaps) from Poland (possibly) called Izabella (maybe) under the name Izes (definitely). There are echoes of Bjork, as there always is when you’ve got someone wailing over some vaguely experimental electronic beats, but you get the sense that the list of influences are deeper and less obvious than that. It’s a beauty either way, and what’s not to love about an artist that uses the following as an introductory email to their work:

I’m giving my music
as a mirror of your emotions
your inside
your master…
meet your owner, meet yourself…

Izes – Purgatorys Gate

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Imaginary Friend – Sleepwalking

There’s a soundcloud link for this song as well, but it doesn’t quite work as well without the visuals. Of course, to say that is more than churlish when the video chosen to accompany ‘Sleepwalking’ steals one of the most iconic scenes in cinema history, nicking Jean Luc Godard’s Weekend to lend few vibes. The music itself feels acts like a blanket – the lyrics kind of blur into the background, as Imaginary Friend make writers do that clichéd thing and ask the reader to let a track wash over them. Please do.

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Embers – Tunnel Vision

A new love affair to intoxicate you, coming straight out of the rain worn streets of Manchester. Embers were supposedly around for a while under a different name, but ‘Tunnel Vision’ represents a stunning new vista for them to explore – the opening minute or so of this is particularly immersive. Expect big things.

Embers – Tunnel Vision

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MYSTYRYS – Normals

New stuff from a new band from London that, unsurprisingly, people know nothing about. Classic trash op, this is lo-fi in it’s purest, most exciting form, where the band concentrate on making some melodies and a bit of a racket and try to make sure that the hiss doesn’t get in the way too much.

MYSTYRYS – Normals

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Neon Cloud – △ (Sun Glitters remix)

If you imagine Washed Out x Toro y Moi as the A-list of chillwave remixes and Memory Tapes x Com Truise as the B-list equivalent, then perhaps Neon Cloud x Sun Glitters is the next step down the ladder on that. Cursed only by the fact that both acts have been pretty late on jumping on the glo-fi bandwagon, both are the brightest new hopes of the genre, and this rework of ‘△’ does nothing to dispel the hype so furiously laden upon them by the likes of… erm… this column.

Neon Cloud – △ (Sun Glitters remix)

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Slow Magic – Feel Flows

Meanwhile, Slow Magic seem to be trying to classify themselves on a different genre celebrity rating system altogether, moving away from the sun-bleached beats that first defined them and moving towards a sound that feels like an amalgamation of future garage and something altogether more cuddly. It’s a testament to this shift that ‘Feel Flows’ is perhaps their strongest work so far, steering away from the boring self gratification that curses most acts that try it – which, on current estimates, is half of all the people who use soundcloud. Truly a class act.

Slow Magic – Feel Flows

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Pinemarten – Don’t Let Me Be Denied

As it is common to mention whenever anyone is based outside the classic hotbeds of musical talent, Pinemarten lives in Chesterfield. It also seems that young P also wants to be a pop star, with Don’t let me be denied being his application to set himself apart from the scores of decent-enough producers and step into the realm of people who could actually do a decent live show.

Pinemarten – Don’t Let Me Be Denied

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The Whendays - Untru Love II

There’s little point saying much here when it can all be said with a pretty simple statement: this is a song taken from The Whendays latest EP, which is being put out by Cascine. Prose can only do so much, but when something has been given the Cascine seal of approval, you know it’s going to be irreproachably good.

The Whendays – Untru Love II