Album de la Semaine : Yeti - Amidst

Yeti
Amidst

Chronique de Amidst, par Tracy Killz de Metal Oddities

Vous avez déjà chassé le Dahu ? Non pas Etienne, l’autre, la bestiole qui selon la légende vit dans les montagnes mais que personne n’a jamais vue. A part ceux qui vous demandent d’aller la chasser. C’est simple, il vous suffit d’un sac et des bâtons, et c’est parti. 

Plus beaucoup de patience certes. 

Mais avez-vous déjà chassé le Yeti ?

Ce truc immense qui lui aussi vit dans les montagnes, que les Ricains appellent le Bigfoot, en nous ressortant de vieilles photos trafiquées pour nous prouver son existence…Chasser le Yeti demande aussi beaucoup d’abnégation, et puis admettons. Vous le trouvez. Qu’allez-vous lui dire ? Que la vie est belle lorsqu’on s’assume en tant que masse de poils ambulante ? Pas sûr qu’il soit convaincu par l’argument…

Moi, je suis plus fort que tout le monde, mais vous le savez déjà. Je l’ai trouvé le Yeti. Mais je n’ai ramené aucune photo pour que vous puissiez voir à quoi il ressemble. J’ai ramené beaucoup plus que ça. Un témoignage audio de son quotidien. Parce qu’aussi hirsute et asociale soit la bête, elle s’exprime par un vecteur musical tout à fait valide et surprenant. 

Amidst.

C’est comme ça qu’elle a appelé son enregistrement. Et aujourd’hui, par le biais des trappeurs Send The Wood Music, vous pouvez tous découvrir sa voix, son talent, et son monde à part. Sauf que la surprise risque d’être de taille. Car il n’y a pas qu’un seul YETI. Il y en a deux en fait. Aussi velu l’un que l’autre. D’où, plus de créativité et de liberté.

Alors, lancez le disque. Et bienvenue dans la grotte du fantasmagorique bestiaire de l’improbable.

Vous n’aurez donc pas besoin de traquer la fourrure dans les cols enneigés, puisque « Yeti vient se caler au coin du feu pour raconter ses histoires de brouillard électrique dans une ambiance intimiste et noise. ». Petits veinards, les bêtes s’invitent chez vous…Vous n’avez pas de cheminée ? Faites brûler quelques palettes dans le jardin, ça marchera aussi. La procédure est simple, et expliquée qui plus est. Car « Yeti fait du Sonfle : une musique parasitée, ambient, parfois éthérée, parfois pesante, toujours sincère et mouvante, un poil caractérielle et qui, malgré tout, trouve sa place parce qu'il y a toujours un coin dans ton coeur pour un Yeti. ». Exposé sous ces termes, l’affaire se présente opaque. Mais une fois les pistes s’évaporant dans l’air, elle devient lumineuse et profondément apaisante, tout en gardant ce caractère un peu chafouin qui a permis à la créature de rester cachée aussi longtemps.

Et cette bestiole, velue, est plutôt du genre paisible en fait, et n’incarne pas du tout la menace que le Folklore local a bien voulu lui attribuer.

A dire vrai, elle est même très stable et posée. Presque introspective. Donc…

…loin de l’énervement Metal auquel vous êtes habitués. Faites la donc entrer sans crainte, elle n’abimera pas le mobilier.

Tout ceci n’a en effet que peu de rapport avec le genre de trip que nous faisons religieusement à intervalles réguliers. Il est même difficile de parler de pèlerinage Rock en évoquant le voyage de la bête, qui préfère les chemins de traverse Folk, les haltes dans des gîtes Ambient, et les longues marches électroniques presque Dream Pop. Elle est aussi capable de se poser quelques minutes, et d’évoquer le vent glacial qui balaie sa fourrure, en prenant une guitare acoustique, pour vous chanter sa solitude à deux très paisiblement. « Assis Là », c’est comme ça que l’hydre à deux manteaux appelle son ressenti, et c’est très pur, très beau, ça ressemble même un peu à MONO, THE OCEAN, mais c’est très personnel, comme une vieille comptine qu’on se refile de grand-mère à petite fille.

La narration est fluide, mais souvent heurtée de sons bizarres, de samples, de bruitages saccadés, et surtout, prend son temps pour planter le décor. « The Path », qui décrit le périple à travers les neiges est aussi long que l’effort fourni pour rejoindre la civilisation, mais se suit avec ferveur et émotion. Une voix pas très assurée mais « vraie », une mélodie simple et habitée, presque hantée par les larmes, et quelques stries grondantes en arrière-plan qui incarnent la difficulté de quitter son habitat naturel. C’est raconté en huit minutes, mais ça passe comme dans un songe. A vous d’ouvrir les yeux pour vérifier ce que vos oreilles entendent vraiment. Les deux bestioles prennent parfois leur temps pour dévoiler leur vraie nature, et les non-dits sont importants pour elles. « Singing Grass » par exemple, utilise le silence pendant de longs instants, avant de laisser un banjo subtil se superposer à la narration atone.

C’est touchant, glacial, hivernal, mais ça réchauffe le cœur.

Même lorsque les dangers de la vie sauvage s’incarnent dans un « Wolves » dont le titre aurait pu suggérer une emphase Rock, ils se trouvent finalement dans un pardon harmonique qui suggère plus l’amertume que la violence ou la crainte. Les saisons sont abordées évidemment, presque comme des interludes Ambient (« Fall Is At Dawn »), tout comme la découverte de l’urbanisme (« Buildings »), qui suscite des réactions mitigées, un peu Drone ou Noise.

Cette créature existe donc, et il était difficile de savoir à l’avance qu’elle avait un jumeau. Mais la symbiose entre les deux parties est telle qu’on peut continuer de ne la concevoir que comme un tout. Et la musique qu’elle nous offre est un océan de tranquillité et de beauté, qui dépeint à merveille les grandes étendues de neige et de glace des montagnes refuge. Pas Rock du tout, encore moins Métal mais pas Indie non plus, juste des harmonies, des mélodies, et des arrangements sonores en textures de brise. Une initiation au merveilleux.

Un trip hallucinatoire qui marque. 

Des pas dans la neige qu’on suit sans se retourner, au risque de perdre tous ses repères.

Line Up :

Vincent Bouillet

Label :

Send the Woods Music

Tracklist :

01 – Ph•s
02 – Buildings
03 – Amy
04 – Fall Is at Dawn
05 – Farewell
06 – Wolves
07 – Assis l…
08 – The Path
09 – The Scene
10 – Monowl
11 – Singing Grass

Album de la Semaine : Eagulls - Ullages

Eagulls
Ullages

Interview de Eagulls, par Skiddle

How do you feel the band have evolved from your first album? What do you think separates the new material from earlier stuff and at the same time what would you say connects it? 

I feel we have evolved our overall song craftsmanship in comparison to album one. The first album was all about stating an emotion in its full complexities without taking our feet off the accelerator.

It was about creating a record that was a mirror-image of our live show at that exact period in our lives - non-stop and very full on. The new material differs from the first album in a number of ways with pace being one of them, as the first album was strictly 4/4 beats we wanted the second album to venture into different time signatures.

Sonically on ULLAGES we were more fixated on the idea of creating beauty in our music more than the speed-ridden, harsh forces of album number one.

Lyrically, ULLAGES is more advanced exploring varied subjects inspired by various themes like social mentalities to contemporary artists. I feel the connection between these records is our ability to capture and marriage melody and energy into one.

How much of a focus/discussion point was texture on this record? It feels like a very rich and dense record - what were some of the desires, sonically speaking, on this record?  

We were extremely focussed on portraying arrays of textures from the word go on this record. The last album had some great qualities to it, but was always leaning towards the heavier, brash side of the spectrum.

We felt we should display all ends of the spectrum on this record, harsh to soft, thick and thin, and I feel we have achieved that. We wanted the textures to represent emotions in a see-saw effect, enabling the listener to be up and down throughout the album.

The first album openly dealt with some issues around things like anxiety, has a steady period of touring and being on stage aided this at all? Do you feel more confident or comfortable now?  

Suffering from anxiety is something that I will have to live with for the rest of my days. A lot of the first albums lyrics were about the complexities of the common mental health issue and also an exploration into trying to understand why it was occurring not only to me, but also my generation.

It’s an on-going issue that isn’t really resolved by going on tour or putting a plaster on it, as you say. But, I do feel I have more clarity on the issue now than in 2013.

It's likely the new record is going to draw some comparisons to some big hitters from the 80s: The Smiths, The Cure, Cocteau Twins etc - are these bands you feel comfortable being associated and compared with? Is there also any link between a fascination with or desire to explore sounds particularly from that decade?

As much as it’s great being compared to those bands that we were lucky to have to listen to growing up, it also can become quite a burden of a label on us. I hope some people can put aside the comparisons and listen to our songs as new, original material.

Surely by now everybody knows that art is always inspired by the art that comes beforehand. And also how post can post-punk get, now it's 2016?

I feel comfortable being associated and compared with those great bands though, as they were the last flock of bands to really explore rock and pop music in a contemporary and tasteful manner.

Our fascination with sounds from that period has much more to do with the equipment those bands were using at the time, as for us an analogue sound is by far more interesting than these poor quality digital sounds modern bands are constantly using in a throw away manner. Effects were so much lusher and open back then compared to nowadays digital sounds.

Eagulls have always struck me as being a quintessentially British band. Which I know sounds daft given you are of course British but given how many young British bands seem locked into pretending they are from mid-nineties America, it feels refreshing. I wonder if you consider yourselves to have a strong British musical identity and if so, what that means to you? 

It’s kind of daft as yes, we are all British! You see when we started our band the whole nineties American thing was in full swing in the English underground, just like the whole neo-psychedelia movement is in full swing in the underground today.

Personally I just couldn't associate myself with it. I feel lost in my own country, so why get myself lost inside an imaginary other land? I guess those bands just try to escape our dreary UK in some deranged idea of the expat California dream. The thing is with us is that we are not actors. We are who we are and that’s what comes across in our music and words. We don’t try to be British, we just are I suppose.

When you listen to ULLAGES yourself, what feelings, images and emotions does it bring up for you? Where does ULLAGES take Eagulls when they listen to it or play it? 

Listening to the record places me into the mind frames I was in at the times when writing the songs. I think about all the surroundings that I somehow absorbed and all the art and writings I’d read around those times that helped me put my subconscious thoughts down onto paper.

The record makes me feel all kinds of feelings, but the main emotion is a sense of pride that we got it completed as it was quite a battle this time round.

I'm aware you have quite a hardcore fanbase from the DIY/punk scene, do you think they will follow the slower and more melodic direction happily and do you care if they do or don't? 

I feel like most people will take our new direction happily and will enjoy our progression. I feel our previous fans music tastes will have matured along with our song craftsmanship and they’ll happily accept what we’ve made.

Of course we care about our fans, but at the end of the day music is like public art, we display it for anyone to engross in and if they don’t like it they’re very free to walk on to the next artist’s piece.

What are you plans for 2016? Anything beyond the usual touring and festivals circuit? 

We’re trying to play the more interesting independent venues around the UK when we can as we want to keep the live act and overall experience a little more interesting than the usual mundanities.

Other than the UK we have a bunch of EU dates planned, including festivals and headline slots. A US tour is being planned etc, etc. We missed out on some big festivals this year as our album came out too late so, hopefully more of them next year.  We have a new website that we promise we’ll update too! So head to that to see our future plans.

Line Up :

• Mark 'Goldy' Goldsworthy
• Henry Ruddel
• Liam Matthews
• Tom Kelly
• George Mitchell

Label :

Partisan

Tracklist :

01 – Head Or Tails
02 – Euphoria
03 – My Life In Rewind
04 – Harpstrings
05 – Velvet
06 – Psalms
07 – Blume
08 – Skipping
09 – Lemontrees
10 – Aisles
11 – White Lie Lullabies

Album de la Semaine : Future of the Left - The Peace and Truce of Future of the Left

Future of the Left
The Peace and Truce of Future of the Left

Interview de Future of the Left, par Will Fitzpatrick de The Skinny

Andrew Falkous is a reformed character. “I’m really doing my best not to slag off other bands,” he explains, following a sixteen-year career as one of the premier agent provocateurs of UK rock music, first with Mclusky and now with the remarkable Future of the Left. “I’ve done interviews where I’ve made one disparaging remark about a band, and that’s always the headline. It’s always ‘MATT BELLAMY A GOBLIN, SAYS FALCO’. I didn’t say he was a goblin!”

This newly-placid Falco certainly echoes the title of his band’s new album. The Peace and Truce of Future of The Left is suggestive of a much more sedate affair than their usual serrated riffola. It’s a relief, then, to discover that FOTL remain as brutal and noisy as ever, with their frontman’s barbed lyricism on devilishly hilarious form as he tears strips from themes such as bourgeois self-entitlement and cultural complacency alongside a host of additional topics, all ripe for ridicule. With cosier concepts such as ‘peace’ and ‘truce’ seeming pretty far from the record’s true essence, we have to ask: what’s with that title?

“It actually comes from a movement in the early middle ages called The Peace and Truce of God,” he says, “which was kind of a version 1.0 of chivalry – a code placed on knights to try and formalise their behaviour, to stop them from attacking strangers and taking all their stuff. It sounds far more worthy and mighty than it was – a bunch of rules for a gang of bullies, a formal reaction to misbehaviour. Basically, ‘God is with you, but don’t be too much of a bastard. There are limits to how much of a bastard you can be.’”

That almost makes it sound like the album itself is a manifesto, we suggest. This meets a skeptical response.

“Perhaps… That’s unconscious though. It’s one of my least favourite things about bands, when they have a manifesto. Maybe they grew up during the heyday of the music press, when you had to say a succession of really stupid things in order to hide the fact that your band sounded like Guns n’Roses. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very nice to have things to say, but a rock band’s main function is to make rock music, I would think. Unfortunately, we have a lot of artists – and I use that term loosely – who say controversial things in order to cover up the fact that they make incredibly bland music.”

Clinging firmly to his resolution, he offers no examples to support the point – this older, wiser Falco seems comfortably resigned to armistace: “If a band has an audience, that justifies the band and its actions, I suppose. Can’t blame people for being themselves. And the people that go out and support it… that’s their business.” He chuckles to himself. “I don’t have controversial opinions – it’s the fans who are at fault!  It reminds me of that Bill Hicks line about being in the unusual position of being for the war, but against the troops.”

The antagonism hasn’t entirely gone away then, we note.

“Yeah,” he replies. “The people I admire are prepared to grow on… well, not on a dailybasis, who can be arsed? Fuck that. But even for somebody who enjoys speaking my mind, I’m genuinely horrified if I really offend somebody. Sometimes that’s a good thing, ‘cause if you’re gonna offend somebody with something you might say, maybe you should look at why. And then, after you’ve looked at it, maybe you can go, ‘nah, fuck those people.’ But at least you’ve thought about it, rather than accepting everything about yourself uncritically.”

Falco's sense of humour

The whole Future of the Left experience seems to ride on their mordant sense of humour, which meshes seamlessly with a penchant for pulverising riffs. The joke often seems lost on listeners, however, much to Falco’s exasperation:

“I think humour is generally lost on people in music unless it’s of the Bloodhound Gang variety, the kind which screams, ‘I’m being funny now!’ In some cases it’s used to disregard [FOTL], I think, to make it sound as if it’s some kind of comedy band, which it definitely is not. I guess you’ve got to be quite serious about being funny to get it across properly. You’ll have heard popular comedy music, stuff like Tenacious D or whatever, where I’m assuming the prime reason is to make people laugh, as opposed to actually being this great rock band. If you want real hilarious comedy in your music you could always – no! I was gonna slag off a band! I’m not gonna do it!”

Songs like new effort Miner’s Gruel, or Singing of the Bonesaws (from 2013’s How to Stop your Brain in an Accident) even see Falco driving the point home by adopting exaggerated, caricature-esque voices, adding an extra layer to his already performative delivery. It’s almost like character acting.

“It’s never really planned,” he says after a few seconds’ thought. “I just reach a stage where I get sick of hearing the sound of my own voice. I know I need a break when everything I write, I play it back and think, ‘who’s this fucking idiot singing?’”

In keeping with Falco’s muse since his time in Mclusky, current musical trends get quite a kicking on The Peace and Truce. This time it’s the turn of ‘serious’ musicians striving for pop music’s singular most worthless fallacy: authenticity, as depicted on The Proper Music. Its author seems to have expanded his thoughts on the subject since writing the album, however.

“It’s a bit of a weird one – at this moment in time, I’m as bored by the opponents of ‘proper music’ as I am by the proponents. In their desire to write brilliant thinkpieces on pop, they have fundamentally misunderstood the main calling of pop music, which is certainly not to have fucking thinkpieces written about it. It’s to jump around like a twat!” 

(Continues below)

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More from Music:

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"I have a problem," he continues, "in that I am completely contrarian. If you put me anywhere I’m going to end up disagreeing with everybody fundamentally. [Politically] I lie on the left, but I find a lot of people on the left incredibly fucking smug. There’s even some comedians or political thinkers where I agree with everything they say, but the condescending way they put it across makes me want to disagree with them.”

Again, he offers no specific names (“I’ve just had so many problems over the years”), but continues the thought with a different kind of example.

“I don’t believe you stop anybody being racist by leaning over and screaming ‘racist!’ at them for 20 minutes. I just don’t think that works. Do you honestly want to solve the problems in the world, or do you just want to scream ‘racist’?’ I’m not saying that’s not a valid way to spend your time, but don’t be surprised when nobody ever fucking changes their mind. It’s one of the things with the world: everybody thinks they’re right. Nobody’s deliberately being wrong. Apart from…  nope! I’m not gonna say it! It’s tough for me, I’ve punched myself in the balls four times during this interview.”

The politics of Future of the Left

Future of the Left are often pegged as being a political band, although in keeping with Falco’s own irritations, this is an observational tendency rather than a means of hectoring or addressing subjects head-on.

“I admire anybody who holds political viewpoints which are contrary to their own interests. For example, the selfishness of a lot of people on the right – ‘I have this money and I’d like to keep it,’ you know? Even though I don’t agree with that, I can understand it. Whereas it’s very easy to be on the left: to earn not much money and to want more for yourself and the people you know. It’s voting essentially with self-interest. So I’m very aware that, with the economic position that I’m in, by default I’m on the left, unless I’m a crazy person. But let’s face it: 98% of the people who come to our shows are gonna be… if not Labour supporters, then certainly not Conservative. That’s true the whole milieu of indie rock.

“I remember we [Mclusky] were on tour during the US elections in 2004, and saying a little joke about George W Bush on stage every night. After 22 shows, we finally had one dissenting voice in LA, in all that time. But it’s not that America is 98% behind us, it’s that indie rock clubs are 98% behind us. I mean, it’s unusual, isn’t it, when you see Conservative musicians? I read an interview with Phil Collins which made me feel a little bit sorry [laughs] about things I’ve said onstage about him over the years. I wasn’t even necessarily singling him out; Phil Collins is just a funny collection of words. I could probably think of a more deserving target like Andrew Lloyd Webber; somebody fiercely Tory.

"But yeah, talking about politics would feel patronizing, like engaging in an echo chamber. A three-minute pop song isn’t an incredibly discursive medium, I suppose. It tends to fall one way or the other, and emphatically. It’s very difficult to write songs saying, ‘I passionately believe in this, however there’s a caveat.’ It doesn’t make for a great rock song. ‘I believe political correctness is a good thing; however the movement can have its excesses.’ – that isn’t the way papers or concert tickets get sold. ‘This guy has a nuanced opinion on social justice, they rock!’”

The really dangerous figures like Trump and Johnson are already beyond parody.

“Well, this is it. How do you parody trump? Johnson’s bloody had a go at doing it himself; let’s face it, that man is far cleverer than he puts across. His bumbling fuckwittery is a tactic to disarm, whereas Trump is amoral. I feel anybody who has an ideology like it’s a religion, or dogma, who only accepts information that confirms what they already know, it’s a sad position to be in.

“If I had a choice between Jeremy Corbyn and David Cameron, I don’t need to tell you which one I would save; it would be the real person rather than the android construct. But on Facebook the other week somebody said, ‘How dare Cameron insult the way Corbyn looks? The ham-faced twat.’ And you’re like, ‘Don’t you see the irony in what you’ve just said?’ Apparently people don’t, and they gravitate towards what they know and what they like.” He laughs bitterly. “Good on them, that’s what I say! Let’s have a big fucking war. Like a colonic cleanse of the planet. Let’s reduce the overcrowding issue; let’s take that one off the table by eliminating 50% of the population of the earth.”

The Skinny makes a thoroughly cheap gag about mandatory conscription for a certain type of listless, landfill indie band, which gets a more generous laugh than it deserves: “What would you call it though? And who would be the instructor at rock boot camp? The possibilities literally have an end. Let’s not think about that.”

Of course. After all, we’d be wandering dangerously close to singling out individuals if we went down that route. Falco laughs once more.

“Yeah, we don’t want to single out individuals! Unless it’s for praise.”

Is that a hint of sarcasm we detect? Surely not. With the peace and truce of God on his side, provided he keeps his levels of bastardry within reason, who could doubt the sincerity of a changed man?

Line Up :

Andy "Falco" Falkous
Jack Egglestone
Julia Ruzicka

Label :

Prescriptions

Tracklist :

01 – If AT&T Drank Tea What Would BP Do
02 – In a Former Life
03 – Running All Over the Wicket
04 – Miner’s Gruel
05 – Grass Parade
06 – The Limits of Battleships
07 – Back When I Was Brilliant
08 – Eating for None
09 – Reference Point Zero
10 – White Privilege Blues
11 – 50 Days Before the Hun
12 – Proper Music
13 – No Son Will Ease Their Solitude

Album de la Semaine : Tales of Murder and Dust - The Flow In Between

Tales of Murder and Dust
The Flow In Between

Interview de Tales of Murder and Dust, par Tomatrax

When and how did the band form?

Four of us met in high-school in the North of Denmark in 2003 and started playing together in different constellations. After high-school we relocated the band to Aarhus and in 2007 Kasper and Kathrine joined and completed our current constellation.

Where did the name Tales of Murder and Dust come from?

The name emerged in a period when we were playing a lot of Ennio Morricone and surf-inspired music. We wanted to find a name reflecting our filmic soundscapes and after sitting down talking back and forth the name just sort of appeared.
Your album combines a number of styles and sounds, was it hard to get the different sounds to work together?

We have definitely put a lot of work into this aspect of our music. Giving we are a 6-piece band and everyone has different inspirations it’s only natural that the music pulls in different directions. Our approach to building up the sound has been to try out a lot of different things on each song. Some things work better than others and these are the things that have survived in the three year long process of making the album.
You named the album Hallucination of beauty, was it the intention for listeners to hallucinate when listening to the album?
This was not originally the intention but as the album has come out it does offer the opportunity to do so. We believe the title encapsulates the songs and the feeling of the album very well. The word “Hallucination” holds a certain negative quality, which is elaborated in the title of the first song on the album – “The Disillusion”. But also a positive aspect, in the sense of freedom that comes with not being under the same illusions anymore.

What was the inspiration behind the video for Hypnotized Narcissist?

Actually all the videos you can find on the web have been made by fans. Our fans have been a great help in communicating the music around and it’s because of this viral spread people all over the world know of our music. All we’ve done is to put the music out there.

A six-piece is quite a large size for a band, is it hard for everyone to work together?

The biggest problem with being a large band is the practical things like transport to gigs and finding time where we are all available to rehearse, since we all study or work on the side. We have developed a good way of working together without any major problems. The two songwriters take a sketch of a song, more or less finished, to the rehearsal space and we all give inputs and ideas to the shape and the sound.

Given you’re from Denmark, why do you sing in English?
Just about all the bands we are inspired by sing in English, so this was just what felt most natural.

When writing what comes first, the lyrics or the music?
It depends on who has written the song. With Kristoffer it can be either way and with Christian it is always the music. It mostly starts with an idea of a mood or a feeling, then the music develops and then the words adapt to the ambience of the song.

We don’t get to hear much music from Denmark in Australia, what is the music scene like over there?
The most dominant genre in the Danish scene is indie/synth-rock/pop and right now Dance-hall for some strange reason. The biggest export successes of Danish music that holds some quality would be Raveonettes and Efterklang. There are a lot of genres represented in the underground, but the psychedelic scene in Denmark is pretty much non-existent. Although there are a few great bands like “Get Your Gun” and “The Woken Trees”.

Do you ever listen to your own music?Occasionally, but it is hard to listen to it and enjoy it, without thinking about what we could have done better or coming across details we would like to have changed.

What music do you listen to?
The bands that have had the most influence on our sound and songwriting are The Velvet Underground, Blue Angel Lounge and The Black Angels. Every one in the band has different preferences but we can all agree on listening to anything Neo-pscyhedelic and Shoegaze.

What does Tales of Murder and Dust have planned for 2013?

We have just come out of the studio recording what will become an EP set to be released in the spring of 2013. We’ve made an EP instead of full album to try out different genres and directions for our sound. Also the Vinyl edition of “HOB” will be released mid-January and is available for pre-sale now. Other than that we have a small tour in Greece on February 7-9and other gigs in Denmark during Spring and Summer. And of course we will also be writing material for the second full-length album.

Line Up :

Christian Sinding Søndergaard 

Kristoffer Vilsgaard 

Simon Toftdahl Olesen 

Jacob Korsgaard Jensen 

Stine Kloster

Label :

Fuzz Club

Tracklist :

01 – Tidal Waves
02 – Black Reflections
03 – The Devil Is A Poet
04 – Mirror
05 – Sisters
06 – Distored Ways
07 – Endless Repetition

Album de la Semaine : Explosions In the Sky - The Wilderness

Explosions In the Sky
The Wilderness

Interview d'Explosions In the Sky, par Sonaluna de One Small Window

With your music – as a listener – one can go from 0 to 100 in a few minutes in terms of emotion. Having played these songs so many times now, what is the experience like for you as a band? 
Michael: When you’re on a tour and you’re playing 30 shows in a row or something like that sometimes it becomes a challenge to find the emotion that was in the song the first time you played it, when you wrote it. The hundredth time or the five hundredth time, you have to work at it a little bit but that’s what being an artist I think is all about. Finding that special feeling even on the five hundredth time because it can be found. You have to look for it and find it but you know, playing the song can just be a way for me to work through my emotional life that I’m living that particular day. So there’s always something to be found in the music I think.

Munaf: Absolutely, it is very emotional stuff that we write and Michael just said it quite nicely – even if we’ve played it ten thousand times there is still great meaning in the song to us, it’s just how do we kind of relay that, on that millionth go around. But yeah, it’s there every time, it’s just working towards how we feel it.

In an old interview, you said ‘It’s not easy to write a good song’ which is absolutely true. It also often takes time. How do you stay true to that ideal in the present environment where music has become about quantity and putting as much as you can out quickly? 
Munaf: I think that people appreciate quality over quantity, absolutely. Many others might think ‘You need to do it now, you need to go go go!’ but as quickly as it took you to write a song like that, is how quickly, more often than not, it is forgotten. So somebody who sits and crafts anything, there’s not a guarantee that that is going to be great either but in my opinion there is a better chance it will have a lasting impression. So yeah, I don’t think we’ve ever worried about getting a song written by next week or having an album out by next year. This is why we take as much time as we do because we are comfortable in who we are, we are comfortable in what we’re trying to achieve and some of these marks that we’ve placed on ourselves take a little while to get to.

Michael: I think we’d rather not put out an album than put out an album that we weren’t completely happy with and that for us takes time. I think we’d be willing to not be a band anymore as opposed to crank out an album every year.

Do the demands of the music business allow for that?
Munaf: Not for everybody! Somehow – it’s not exclusively for us that it is allowed that, others try this too – but we weren’t even concerned with what it would be that the music industry allowed or now. We are very lucky we are on indie labels throughout the world. We’ve made well by our previous records that we have bought a little bit of… what’s the word I’m looking for? It’s not ‘time’…

Michael: ‘Goodwill’?

Munaf: Yeah, goodwill, from those who are kind of supporting us in those regards. It’s like ‘Okay, they’ve done it before let’s see if they can get there again’. And we’ve met the mark for the five records that we’ve written so I feel very lucky for that because it’s not that way for everybody and that’s the mentality when they take on ‘Go go go, your record has to be out by fall, you need to be on the road by spring…’ Some others have to really abide by these rules to play the game. It’s just since day one we didn’t adhere to any rule and very luckily we made it far. We could have quite easily been forgotten about but then that ties back to the previous question. If you write something good there’s no expiration date on it. There is no time frame on that because quality will outdo quantity nine times out of ten.

I hope that stays the case for a long time.
Munaf: [Laughs] I hope so too!

Over the years I’ve found myself drawn to music by bands that come from various parts of Texas and also from Nashville. I have now decided that there is something special about those places and you can hear it in the music. That’s probably not a fair assessment, right?
Munaf: No, that’s very fair and it does [impact the music] in ways that we’re probably not even aware of because I think every one of us is a product of our environments so if we were coming from say Washington State or California, I think we would sound a little different than we do. Even if we were playing the same music it would have a variation on it you know? If we were coming from New York it would have this other feel to it but because we come from Texas, when we were starting to write music and coming from a place at that time molded this sound. For us, growing up in west Texas – Michael and I have known each other almost all of our lives. We grew up in a place that was quite desolate you know… well, ‘desolate’ is maybe not the right word but it was a bit off on its own in west Texas, ‘deserty’ is too strong of a word, but flatlands and not much happening… those I think subconsciously have placed an impression in our minds that when we write melodies this is what we were calling on, these are the pictures that we saw. So the pictures that we saw made this sound and absolutely, coming from Texas has an effect.

Michael: I think that’s absolutely true. As Munaf said, west Texas life can be kind of maybe slow and contemplative and there are definitely elements of that in our music as well but there’s also like say the sunsets in west Texas are still the most spectacular sunsets I’ve ever seen because the sky is very wide open, there’s nothing, it’s very flat. And there’s a lot of clouds and so there can be these beautiful sunsets where the sky looks like it’s on fire and that sort of coupled with this kind of slow lifestyle… I think it really relates to the music itself a little bit. That kind of change from very slow to very grand, I think it can be attributed to growing up in Texas.

Your music has been used in a lot of films and TV shows – what’s it like hearing your songs in that context?
Munaf: It’s quite remarkable every time because it’s different every time. So the song that we wrote and the pictures that we had are very different from whoever heard the music and said ‘You know what, this goes with this’. That always kind of blew my mind and made me appreciate the song that much more because it allowed it to have more layers than the ones that we saw. It’s a bit strange but then I think it’s all strange because we never dreamed that people would listen to our music the way they do and then apply it to the things in their life the way they do.

You also create score for films. How do you walk the fine line between big, sweeping & cinematic, and noisy when it comes to background score?
Michael: I think a lot of it has to do with instrumentation, like how much is going on at any one time. Particularly when you’re writing for a movie, that’s sort of something that you take into consideration the entire time. Like how many instruments are playing versus how many things are going on onscreen, how much dialogue is being spoken. You can’t overwhelm the dialogue. For a film the dialogue is the melody and that’s what you have to hear first, that’s the most important thing. A lot of times it’s like ‘We can’t have three guitars going right here, we have to pull it back to one guitar and maybe a bass or something else’. It is a very fine line you have to walk because you want to add something to what’s happening but you cannot overwhelm. It’s a fine line, it’s a challenge and it’s such a big collaboration with a director that you are constantly working with them and trying to figure it out. It’s fun, it’s really fun.

Last question, is there a set of chords or a pedal that you have that you know will guarantee an emotional response when you use it?
Michael and Munaf: No! No way! [Laugh]

Michael: I think there is something very sort of simple about that and that is something we probably actively try not to do because it becomes a very by-the-numbers thing to do and it can be effective and it can be like ‘Oh this is how we can finish the song, finish it up big with a bang’ but we try not to do that, we really don’t because we don’t like hearing that music. It’s just too easy. As an artist you always want to push yourself.

Line Up :

Chris Hrasky
Michael James
Munaf Rayani
Mark Smith

Label :

Temporary Residence

Tracklist :

01 – Wilderness
02 – The Ecstatics
03 – Tangle Formations
04 – Logic of a Dream
05 – Disintegration Anxiety
06 – Losing the Light
07 – Infinite Orbit
08 – Colors in Space
09 – Landing Cliffs

Album de la Semaine : Jealousy - Paid For It

Jealousy
Paid For It

Chronique de Jealousy, par Sam Lefebvre de Pitchfork

Paid For It is Mark Treise's second album as Jealousy. The San Francisco songwriter—who also plays bass in the leaden, woozy rock outfit CCR Headcleaner—issued Vilesin 2011, which featured similarly elliptical lyricism and oblong, idiosyncratic grooves. Paid For It, which was recorded in Los Angeles, features Don Bolles, best known as drummer of The Germs, behind the kit on some songs. Otherwise, Treise is responsible for the sounds, including power drill, broken bottle, gurgling electronics, and field recordings, but principally bass guitar, which he’d loop live in the studio and ply with effects until sufficiently forbidding.   

The emphasis on overlaid bass lines rather than chord patterns lends Jealousy songs strange, shifty shapes. "Doin’ a Little Time" is typical of the strongest tracks on account of its consistent, pulsing bass motif, which anchors an ebb and flow of hiss and noise. There are deceivingly few sonic components to Paid For It, but their nightmarish dub reflections swell to fill what feel like massive chambers. The six-minute highlight "Fresh Kill," for instance, features little more than rhythmic pitter-patter augmented by two-or-three note melodic gestures. Like Paid For It overall, the song eschews conventional structure and development in favor of cyclical, rippling bass beneath Treise’s eerily enchanting voice.  

On Paid For It, Treise yearns for visceral, elemental experiences. The title track, which invokes goddesses and autoeroticism alike, seems like a fraught meditation on personal identity. Florid mythical imagery recurs throughout, but passion most often dovetails with destruction: "And I loved hard like iron," goes "Fresh Kill." "And bent the word ‘love’ into a crescent moon / terminal swoon." He's a glutton for self-loathing: In one song, Treise is "sucked up and fucked up" and a "sleazebag scumbag scumfuck" whose face is a "wretched cliché." And yet, the track is called, "I Want It." If indulgence is paramount to Paid For It, the next most important theme is guilt. 

Generous reverb and delay tends to render vocals soothing or spooky but indistinct. Not for Jealousy. The effects warp Treise’s weary incantations, moisten his lisp, and lend his leering murmur a sense of bleary, opiated oblivion. That means Paid For It is a druggy album, but few druggy albums capture the balance between blissful stupor and nausea so well. And while dull gloom is often peddled under the pretenses of chic austerity, Paid For It evades the trappings of stylish-but-innocuous miserablism. A couple songs feel impenetrable to a fault (including the vertiginous opener "Been Wrong"), but the album's overall pleasures—in the terms of Treise’s spiritually conflicted lyrics—are akin to a rewarding séance: shock and awe before the medium’s ritual flair, followed by an uneasy, lingering sense of connection.

Line Up :

Mark Treise

Don Bolles

Label :

Moniker Records

Tracklist :

01 – Been Wrong
02 – Sentenced to Life
03 – I Want It
04 – Doin’ a Little Time
05 – Fresh Kill
06 – E
07 – The Eyes of My Love
08 – Give Me My Money
09 – Svengali Sins
10 – Go Away