Download: Sterling Flow's CLEAR EP

a n o t h e r c o u n t y h e a r d was pleased to present the PREMIERE of Sterling Flow's CLEAR EP last Thursday. Known for guitar driven, vocal chillwave & dreampop, CLEAR is a refinement of Gary Ellison's approach, paring down the processing effects and accentuating songwriting and musicianship. It's  authentic, unhyped  chill. The title track is especially well developed and will lodge itself in your head.

I asked Ellison a couple  questions.
ach: CLEAR seems a conscious approach toward pop-rock, song structure, less reliance on production effects --was this a conscious decision? 

sf:The change in sound was definitely a conscious decision; a lot of the music I’ve made previously was me learning how to produce music and figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Rather than focusing on effects and synthesized sounds, I wanted to create a more realistic, simple style for this EP. 

ach: What instruments do you play? 

sf: I played guitar, bass, and synthesizer on every track and also sang the vocals and programmed the drum sequences. But on a couple songs, my brother Andy helped me out. He’s a really talented musician who played banjo and pedal steel on Devotion and lap steel on Between The Two. There are no samples on this release though, even most of drum sounds came from a cheap kit we have at our house. 

ach: What are your influences, what genre do you consider you're working in? 

sf: Everything that happens in my life influences my music one way or another, but musically I’m all over the place. Lately, I’ve really been digging Lana Del Rey’s newest record and Beach Fossils, but I draw inspiration from most genres; rock, rap, pop, indie, folk, electronic, whatever. If I had to classify this EP into a genre, I would say Indie.

Listen below and grab the free download. 
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Bootleg Compilation: LOST IN REVERIE

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"35 BEST TRACKS OF 2014: FUTURE FUNK - VAPORWAVE - DREAMWAVE - CHILLWAVE - RETROWAVE - ELECTRONIC (In no particular order)"
This unlicensed compilation is one of the best I have ever heard. Absolutely the right stuff.

WALKIE TALKIE - Tigerish
Nzca Lines - New Atmosphere
LLLL - You
HELLO AGAIN - All the time
Duett - At Night
Sloslylove - Da Hauntings
SYLLABUS - Look Out
EASTGHOST - Voyeur
ESPRIT 空想 - esprit.wav
Miyagi Pitcher - Whispers (radiowave mix)
Robert Parker - Eight Hour Drive
Who Ha & STARFORCE - My Fantasy
Silent Gloves - Le Cassette - Radio (Silent Gloves Remix)
Vicenzo Salvia - Tramonto dagosto
S l o w w lyfe - Direct Messages
Phoenix #2772 - Beatiful Situation (Edit)
Cineplexx - No futuro (Cielo cover)
CVLTVRΣ - Blue Horizons 寝室企業 .ltd - 01 ░▒▓ 寝室企業 ▓▒░
Surf Club - Until Then
Colourwaves - You Sold Your Life For Pixels
Teeel - You're Mine
Com Truise - Wasat
Choongum - Waves of Data (mus.hiba remix)
Le Cassette - This is all we know
Yumi Zouma - Alena
East Edwards - Breaking it down
Arcade High - Coastline
MAITRO - Vice City
マクロスMACROSS 82-99 x YUNG BAE - 'Selfish High Heels' (Feat. ✿ Harrison ✿)
Chris††† - The way he makes me squirm
Trust In Love - Hyperreal
East Troy - Softerall
Stripmall Architecture - Blue Moon (Big Star cover)
Tuuwa - Dearest
LAKE R▲DIO - Hide

Here's the trick 

EP: Melancholia by X3SR

Album: INFINITY VOL1 by Navigateur

Balearic Baroque // WELCOME BACK SAILORS Bring Back Dream Pop With TOURISMO

 

Danilo and Alessio, Welcome Back Sailors

With  TOURISMO, Italian duo Welcome Back Sailors return with their first album since 2011's YES/SUN. When they first began releasing music in 2010,  WBS and peers like Keep Shelly in Athens  signaled the arrival of chillwave/dream pop on  Mediterranean shores.  YES/SUN  achieved the marriage of '80s inspired vocal synth-pop and contemporary shoegaze/dream pop; one of the seminal albums of the era, easily ranking with Memoryhouse's The Years and Blackbird Blackbird's Summer Heart.   I still listen to it.

TOURISMO finds the pair on familiar Balearic territory, but refining their production and sharpening their song-craft and vocal arrangements.  The songs are well structured and dynamic, and modulating between slow burning yacht rock ballads like "Lonely Boy" and "Love Is A Mirror" and the regal uptempo pop  of "Falling" and "Shining Blue".  The music has rich studio-produced sound,  filled out with horns and female vocals (by Sara Loreni). Old school synths and drum machines accompany real guitar and bass. There's nothing lo-fi or 'bedroom' about their music;  no computers were used.    The instrumentation is stylistically appropriated from mid-'80s Brit-pop. The duo have an unmistakable Pet Shop Boys fetish, with Incerti playing Neil Tennant to Alessio's Chris Lowe. There's also a touch of New Romantic; think Spandau Ballet and George Michael, and the trop-pop of Sade and China Crisis.
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The most distinctive thing about Welcome Back Sailors is Danilo Incerti's  beautiful, plaintive voice, which infuses the songs with  accentuated emotion and intensity.  "Act Like You Are Crazy" and "Something Great" literally explode with emotion. Haunting melodies and  dense, surging synths reach a level of grandeur that few can rival. It  may have been  recorded recently but TOURISMO sounds like three and a half year's work. The collection has the unified production approach and thematic continuity of a classic album, an endangered concept in the age of I-tunes.

TOURISMO is record in love with the dusk. There's a melancholic resignation beneath the surface, a desire to experience the  "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings," that touches both Romanticism and the Baroque, by which  I mean an indulgence in emotion, rather than the love of ornamentation which characterizes the Baroque music, or  the noisy abundance of details in the paintings labeled Baroque. It's Baroque in the same sense that Pet Sounds is. It's Romantic in the sense of being divorced from the temporal troubles of a rapidly changing world, choosing to focus of the timeless; love, friendship and trust. And that's why this record will sound as good in 2020 as it does in 2015.

RATING: 10. BEST CHILLWAVE/DREAM POP LP OF 2014

TOURISMO is an album worth paying for, $9 USD, from WE WERE NEVER BEING BORING

 Buy the album here 
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Download: Night Visions by IMMUNE//

Download: Raking The Wind by Body Cheetah

Caught somewhere between indie rock and shoegaze-dream pop, with a dash of punk attitude thrown in, Body Cheetah has been on my radar since contributing a track to the 1st HANUS giveaway comp.  Body Cheetah is the recording project of James Kristofik, who also heads the interesting net-label WOOZY TRIBE. A recent spate of releases finds his sound gaining distinction and definition. Raking The Wind evinces real songwriting talent and a flair for dreamy textures and production, and is a release that grows in appeal with each listen. Sample the standout tracks, "Shone" and "Than You Should Know" and download for free. Check out his other releases on Bandcamp. You can read more about Body Cheetah here.
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Download: Time Tends to Wax and Wane by Pe† Ceme†ery

 

After hearing "Sad Summer Song" and "Untitled",  I got excited about the Pe† Ceme†ery album and avoided subsequent posts to Pet Cemetery's Soundcloud, cos I didn't want to hear it all before it came out. Now that it's finally here I am sooo glad I waited.

It's been a long time coming. Danny "Bunny" Kaye-Traynor spent almost two  years working on the tracks, and it shows in the richly detailed songs. Time Tends To Wax And Wane finds Traynor moving from the post-witch house deep underground to a more accessible mixture of dubstep and garage rhythms and witchy dream pop. The album is a delightful listen, loaded with fresh production techniques -- noise is incorporated into several songs -- and material that is weighty without being heavy; a richly textured soundscape for a very sad world, and sure to be part of the soundtrack for the coming winter.

Time Tends To Wax And Wane is a free download.
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Chillwave Classics: "Good Feelings" by Light Pollution + Memoryhouse CSLSX Remixes

Classic 2010 chillwave / dream pop, with two killer remixes.

Welcome Back Sailors New Song: "Best Friend"

After an almost two year hiatus, Italian dreampop duo Welcome Back Sailors returns with a beautiful  new single "Best Friend",  and album Tourismo coming Nov 24 via We Were Never Being Boring.

Download: Seabright // Forest Moon EP

photo Allison's Adventures

While many trends and memes with their short life spans have come and gone, Californian Justin Morales has been writing and performing his own beautiful DIY surf-gaze dream rock, sharpening and refining his sound but never wavering in his focus; sixties pop-rock infused with  trop, chillwave  and shoegaze influences. His latest is a really sweet listen and a free download--check it out!
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Review: RxGibbs' Luna, A Remix of Snowbird's Moon

Snowbird was a collaboration between  Simon Raymonde, from dream pop pioneers Cocteau Twins,  and singer-songwriter Stephanie Dosen, who has worked with Massive Attack and Chemical Brothers. Some genius had the bright idea of getting the reclusive Michigan new age house/space dub producer RxGibbs (Robert Gibbs) to remix the whole album, and the result is the best album I've heard in 2014.

Gibbs  gives Moon (the original album)  exactly the rhythmic push it needs, giving the ethereal songs downtempo house and dub  settings over which Dosen's vocals and Raymonde's lush but spare instrumentation floats. The remix is superior to an already excellent album.  Luna (the remixed album)  is like a dream come true for lovers of  chillwave, dream pop, shoegaze and dub.

Moon and Luna are both available on itunes.

RxGibbs 2013 album Contact is recommended, available via Cascine, and to stream on Bandcamp.
You can find more RxGibbs on Soundcloud  and  Bandcamp. 

Chillwave Classic Summer Picks: WELCOME BACK SAILORS

Quite simply two of my all-time-favorite chillwave dreampop releases that no one should be without. The perfect summer soundtrack; from Italian dreampop duo Welcome Back Sailors, YES/SUN (2011) and Love (That's All) (2012). The individual tracks of Love (That's All) are downloadable for free, just hover your cursor over the track title and a link will appear under "download".  Jump to Crash Symbols Bandcamp.
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Album Review: IDK I'M HAIGH BABYS FIRST MIXTAPE by Mona Lisa

Sometimes when my vision contracts I wonder if this tiny community of hipster internet geeks sharing each others music isn't really just a glorified circle jerk; a self-congratulatory circular feed-back loop, the participants of which imagine is somehow the center of the cultural universe. And then along comes something so legitimate, so underground and fresh, that it completely restores the conviction that this cultural nexus, the DIY-internet-underground-music-scene, really IS the top of the cultural pyramid. It's everything mainstream culture isn't; authentic, organic, innovative and dynamic.

Calling this a 'mixtape'  modestly eschews the pretensions of a 'debut album', but IDK I'M HAIGH is a debut as self-assured and confident as any I've heard.  Mona Lisa is the triple threat; a rapping singer songwriter with a gift for hooks and a flair for production. Think Kitty Pryde meets Panda Bear. Despite each track having its' own producer, they are all indelibly stamped with Mona Lisa's unique vocal tone and fully developed vocal arrangements that elevate them to the status of songs.  IDK is indisputably her album.

While Mona Lisa is a rapper, the songs do not sit comfortably in any established microgenre, and clearly transcending the narrow limits of  cloud rap.  IDK contains elements of trap, witch house and, most interestingly, dream pop, but fused into a coherent synthesis of just about everything going on in net music.

The album flows nicely. The "IDK I'm High" motif is woven into many of the tracks, and the dreamy vocal arrangements reinforce the thematic unity of the set. Three of the songs  deserve special mention. "Nice Boys" is a bona-fide pop hit. Producer Lautlos provides  a spare, shimmering bed over which the three rappers deliver a hypersexy, femmed-out paen to hetero-norm relationships. Guests rappers Babeolf Hitler and Brooklyn White (who also did the cover art) step up with some seriously dope verses. The Shisa-produced "CTRL + ALT"  is instantly addictive, its' cartoonish twee vocal hook sticking in your head like gum to your shoe. "System e r r o r",  with its' basic track by d0lphin sp,  is a  vocal tour-de-force, with beautifully blissful  vocal loops swirling,  as Mona Lisa sings an amazing and emotional song with almost a rock sensibility,  even while rapping some of the verses. The result had me standing on the roof fist-pumping again, which I haven't done in a while; a perfect fusion of dream pop and trap.

Mainstream "artists" like Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus enjoy access to the best songwriters, first class producers, and the best of everything,  but all the money in the world can't  buy the artistic legitimacy or substitute for the authenticity of real teenage street-swag. 

With other great tracks by fellow Florida producers Miles Farewell and ZDG, Houston's SHMX,  4llsouls of the Netherlands and TRAP DANiEL$. 

Download IDK I'M HAIGH BABYS FIRST MIXTAPE and follow Mona Lisa on Soundcloud and Facebook.

EP: Savage Sister & Lykanthea // sundrowned

sundrowned, a collab between Savage Sister and Lykanthea is everything it ought to be. It aims at the right target and hits dead-center bullseye. This is the kind of music  Memoryhouse might  have made if they hadn't gotten signed; perfect dream pop shoegaze. The EP a is a clear '10', and one of the best we're likely to hear this year. 

This, the astonishing remixes they've made, and what I heard of their forthcoming Wild Sleep EP (February 28), Savage Sister has established itself as a major artist. Lykanthea is Lakshmi Ramgopal, an experimental solo musician, also based in Chicago.

"Savage Sister is a kewl-bear dream pop/shoegaze/dreamwave band based in Chicago, made up of Michael Tenzer, Chloe Lundgren and Caitlin Klask."

Track: Savage Sister "Old Orchard Beach" (Magnetic Fields Cover)

                                     Shoegaze dreampop dreamwave Chicago Savage Sister
                                                Wild Sleep EP drops 18 February  2014

Track: Savage Sister "Katy Song" (Red House Painters Cover)

"Savage Sister is a dream pop/shoegaze/dreamwave band based in Chicago." -- from their Soundcloud. My kind of music, and a great re-visioning of the original.Their new  Wild Sleep EP drops on Feb. 18.

Track: GHOST SWITCH "Mute Signal"

Track: Kimbra "Settle Down" KODAK TO GRAPH Remix

Wow - another fantastic remix from Pensacola artist Kodak To Graph, part of Meth Dad's Stay Magical November 2012 mixtape.

Download: WILD by Nomadic Firs

The guitar driven psych-pop songs of Tennessee based musician Ryan Boos' Nomadic Firs are given full de-rangements by a host of talented remix artists. I don't know whether this is just a collection of great (largely) unknown remixers, or  this material just lends itself to remixing really well, but in either case it works wonderfully. The original songs are taken in the right direction; made spacier, accentuating the dreamy aspect of the tunes. There have already been a couple of impressive tracks to break out from this collection, namely Odesza's "Cover Bombs" and Mountain Range's take on "Get The Map", but the surprising thing is the uniformly excellent quality of the other tracks. This is a very well curated collection, and it's free. I consider this an essential download.

If you missed the excellent original, self titled Nomadic Firs album you can check it out here.