Category: song embed

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Three Songs From: Oiseaux-Tempête

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Photo by Michael Ackerman, Agence Vu

Photo by Michael Ackerman, Agence Vu

Oiseaux-Tempête, formed in Paris in 2012, is Frédéric D. Oberland (guitar, dark energy, keyboards, alto sax, field recordings, voice), Stéphane Pigneul (bass VI, sampler, analog delay, voice), Ben McConnell (drums, percussion) and Stéphane C. (field recordings, videos, photographs).

Their first, self-titled release is a multimedia (music and images) project that is a reaction to the recent, ongoing political and economical unrest in Greece. Their songs are not protest songs, but rather a dark ambient soundtrack for a revolution. In some instances, also a live recording of the revolution, as some of the tracks include field recordings made in Greence in 2012 and 2013. The images that form the other half of the project are included with the liner notes, and there is also a short film in the works.

Here are three songs – two long, one short – to serve as examples and enticement:


 

 

 

Oiseaux-Tempête Official Facebook

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Two Songs From: Passenger Peru

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Passenger Peru (formerly Pet Ghost Project) is: Justin Stivers (vocals, guitar, bass, synth, drums, drum machines) and Justin Gonzales (vocals, guitar, synth, piano, samples) and their latest self-titled release, due out next week, was recorded in Brooklyn and Alaska.

According to their bandcamp their genre is neo-psychedelia mixed with garage rock and noise pop, which I’d say is about right. There’s certain amount of dreamy noodling but it’s dreamy noodling with weight and discernible structure.

Here are two songs from the record:

Heavy Drugs: Because you can only escape for just so long; sooner or later reality will force itself to your attention. Here is a song you can listen to in the last few golden moments before the hammer comes down.
 

Dirt Nap: It is what it says on the tin – a meditation on death – but an oddly soothing one.
 

Passenger Peru is available on tape and digitally; the digital version comes with two additional songs, including cover of My Bloody Valentine’s Don’t Ask Why as well as four (!) free Pet Ghost Project records.

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The Paraffins, Subhuman

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The Paraffins are from Glasgow and Subhuman is their second record.

It’s also a dramatic change of pace from their previous work. Created during and partially inspired by a long Ayrshire winter, Subhuman is dense, gloomy, and maybe a little bit claustrophobic. Like being snowed in, in an old house that creaks at random times and maybe has a ghost or two rattling crankily in the attic.

Hippopotamized is not the first song on the record, but it is the first one I listened to. Continuing the house metaphor: this would be playing when the door to the front parlor banged open of its own accord and you got a good look at some of the things on the walls.
 

Deep Space: for when you have put the kettle on and settled down to read the old journals you found in one of the bedrooms, while the wind whips the snow around outside.
 

Intrigued? You can listen to the rest of it at their bandcamp page.

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Rural Savage, I Fell In The Bog And Saw God

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I put I Fell in the Bog and Saw God (2012) by Rural Savage on after a very long day and it was exactly what I needed to clean my circuits.

It’s punk rock that is kind of fuzzy, a little bit rude, leads me to suspect that being in their pit may include mandatory participation in drunken shout-sing-alongs, and ends on a unexpectedly solemn note. There is also a companion EP called I Fell in the Ditch & Saw the Divil.

The first two songs, College Drop Out and Alcohol, show off their punkabilly chops. But it is the third song, Donegal Acid, that cemented their place in my affections.
 

 
I don’t know for sure but I think Dada Taranta might be a meditation about finding God in the pub in a very literal sense. Or else it’s about the little old men you always find propped up at the end of the bar (any bar) everywhere in the world. Perhaps both? In any case you can mosh to it:
 

 
And the startlingly solemn finale, Irish Childhood Hex:
 

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Milan Jay, How Well Do You Remember Dying

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Milan Jay (John Millane and Joseph Kenny) have spent the better part of the last year and a half (or so) holed up in a small town in the west of Ireland working on a new record. How Well Do You Remember Dying is the first single; the full record is expected in 2014.

Despite the name, the song is not about literal death or actual resurrection; rather, it is a hard-edged meditation on burning your life down and starting over. It might not be the life you expected, or the life you had planned. It is the life you chose.

 

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Introducing: Grounds for Invasion

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Grounds for Invasion is a collaboration between Willow Sea (Willy O’Connor; music) and newcomer Tracy Friel (lyrics, vocals), of Galway, Ireland.

They initially met through college radio – he was helping her record live sessions – but their musical partnership didn’t really blossom until he heard her sing a Bo Diddley song at an open mic night, and thought it might be fun to have her add some vocals to some tracks he had been working on.

The results of that experiment are the five songs on Grounds for Invasion’s self-titled EP.

Willow Sea, left to his own devices, makes mellow, contemplative music. Grounds For Invasion, while still pretty chill, falls further down both the darker and poppier ends of the musical spectrum.

For example: Dance Alone, which is a wistful memoir of clubbing that you could do a swirly-girly-gothy interpretive dance to, if you wanted.
 

 
And also True Romance, which I am posting because it is my favorite. It’s poetry – bold, hilarious, profane poetry – recited over a hypnotic beat. Sample line: You appeared like a drunken Gabriel, all talk and Buckfast and legs that just went on and on.
 

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Three Songs From: Wax Fang

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True confession: The first time I listened to Wax Fang’s tunes, it was totally because I had to find out what kind of noises a band called “Wax Fang” was going to make. I was expecting them to be either gothy and overwrought or possibly gothy and making-sly-commentary-on-subcultural-ridiculousness.

What I found is that they are neither of those things. The best way I can think of to describe it, after listening to their three new stand-alone singles, is to say they are masters of building tiny rock ‘n roll universes.

Here are the songs. Each one contains a fully formed world, built out of bold guitars and augmented by piano, strings and steady drums.

The Blonde Leading the Blonde: The opening riff is the one that hooked me and drew me in, but the whole song serves as an introduction to the depth and verve of their sound.
 

 
Hearts Are Made for Beating: A meditation on how sometimes love is a bomb that goes off in your chest. Goes well with walking around the city alone on a dark, cold night.
 

 
King of the Kingdom of Man: One minute you’re rolling along, doing the grocery shopping, thinking casual thoughts about how many eggs you might need for poundcake, and the next you have been caught in an undertow of feelings and are on your way out to sea where “out to sea” means “suddenly verklempt in the dairy section because of a fictional character.” It’s also the one where every time it starts up I think Ziggy Stardust? Is that you?
 

 

For their next trick, they’re making a space opera. I am not making this up. It’s called The Astronaut and if you’re an American Dad! viewer you heard a big chunk of it during the 150th episode. For the rest of you, be prepared to appreciate the complete work when it arrives in mid-January.