Listen: Eastern Shift - "Somewhere (demo)"

31 December 2014, 10:15 | Written by Laurence Day

(Tracks)

(Eastern Shift)

Passion Pit have been keeping their lips zipped tight during 2014, but a recent flurry of activity seems to suggest that frontman Michael Angelakos won't be following suit in the near future.

Over the past couple of days he's been upping a few choice sounds to his Soundcloud account, including a few Passion Pit instrumentals, a OneRepublic remix, and, most interestingly, a pair of demos for a side project called Eastern Shift. One, titled "But Will He Love Me Like Calvin Loves Alice?", is a measly 48 seconds in length (it's actually a fragment of a larger track), but another - called "Somewhere" is an impressive (albeit still only 93 seconds) of electro-fizz.

It's a rework/cover of Barry Manilow's "Somewhere Down The Road", and although it's under a new moniker, it could easily be mistaken for the output of Passion Pit.

Twinkling synths merge with jagged keys, and the sample-heavy tact oft utilised by the pop-saboteurs is in full swing. Angelakos' vox are saccharine and octave-shifted, and despite the track only being a brief minute-and-a-half, it's still an illuminating cut. It may not even be the full version, judging by Angelakos haphazard approach to his Soundcloud account lately, but it's certainly galvanised a lust for more Passion Pit, Eastern Shift, Michael Angelakos or any combination of the three.

Check it out below.