🐣 JOHNNY JEWEL — RED DOOR

Just about two minutes of blissful-abrasive noise, of arching plumes of synth that seem to wash across your mind like clouds careening across a curdled sky; thinner more modulated chords raising the tone, raising the mood just slightly, but with thinner tracts of sound spelling out some sort of indefinite threat, and scratchy nanobot insectoid chirrupings like malicious electronic signals. Yes, this is ominously titled 'Red Door' by Johnny Jewel, a maelstrom of seemingly innocuousness, like the beautiful azure tide of the sea receding as it laps a beach to reveal a carpet of shattered bones; a paradise lost, bountiful beauty at crippling cost.

Of course, Johnny Jewel has had a hand in the soundtracking of much anticipated Twin Peaks: The Return (albeit with Chromatics in one of its episode's musical endings) so it may explain the dual-minded mood of 'Red Curtain' - as well as its name - so much of the Twin Peaks atmosphere is an uncomfortably close juxtaposition of terror and humour, safety and danger, and thus this track soothes but it also scathes somewhat—it is a comfortable haunting.

"I was about a year deep into recording what would become Windswept when I heard that David [Lynch] was making Season 3 [of Twin Peaks]," he explained. "It's been a year since Chromatics performed at the Roadhouse. With disintegrated memory through the haze of television snow, I wanted to share a glimpse behind the red curtain." And here it is captured: the eternity and mortality in those anxious pre-show moments, the mystery of backstage ritual.

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• 🔔 The haunting/comforting 'Red Curtain' is taken from new Johnny Jewel album, Themes for Television. Released back in late May, the project began "as a sonic exploration of the sounds I was hearing in my nightmares," said Jewel in a press release. "I wanted to find my way out of the maze by focusing on beauty over fear — like the way the fractured sunrise looks in a dream."

  You can grab it on vinyl

• 🔔 The atmospherically relevant video for 'Red Door' was directed by Radka Leitmeritz; with its slow-motion and lingering fades, its enigmatic steely-eyed star Czech model Eva Klimkova and the monochrome-except-for-red colour scheme, it's a spiritual cousin to the track itself.

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🐣 MEN I TRUST — YOU DESERVE THIS

It's the atmosphere here, the atmosphere whipped up with the warm synth chords, their heavenly modulation, the uncomplicated simplicity of it, the watery refrain of the guitar thin and tactile above the thick haze of the track, and then there's the swaying motion of it, the slow oscillation as the sharp clipped snares and hi-hats tick-tocking finely against the amorphous bed of velvet sounds and the aching slow-slow jwang of the bass. There is a feeling of the comfort, detached but comfortable. Alone and a part. The vocals linger with their layers languid and lost in dislocated dreamlike longing.

Created by Montreal-based three-person musical unit ("Jessy, Dragos and Emma") Men I Trust, 'You Deserve This' contains within it something very akin to the insta-nostalgia conjured by the homely wilderness of the Twin Peaks theme by Angelo Badalamenti, rich but not extravagant, universal but not cold, not meant for you but nor for anyone in particular. It is a wandering feeling, formless, a freefall into this cyclical formula, the feeling of going around and around without realising it, the seamless repetition of sound, the sparse groove, the ascending-descending melody, slowly softly slowly softly up and down the stairs, head full of chill, heart full of warmth.

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• 🔔 'You Deserve This' can be downloaded for free from Men I Trust's Bandcamp.

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☟ Men I Trust Internet Presence ☟
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SUBURBAN LIVING ALWAYS EYES // COOPER'S DREAM EP

Ah yeah I like these vibes a lot. Perfect name. Now here's something I can seriously get on board with - Suburban Living. My my, if there's anybody who knows about suburban living it's a man from the suburbs (still IN the damn suburbs). But I can imagine that an all-American, apple-pie, movie-soundtrack suburb is rather different from this English suburb by the Thames. This music actually doesn't really fit here. Round here it's garage. That's the soundtrack for this place. Pretend-you're-urban kind of thing you know. But ENOUGH. This ain't about me.

This is about, as I said, Suburban Living - the musical moniker for the real world person, Wesley Bunch (pictured above). So yeah maybe it's all the American culture that we absorb absent-mindedly over here, but there seems to be this borrowed nostalgia around the sun-drenched American suburbs of yesteryear, a lived-in feeling that makes us yearn for a dream that we never had about an ephemeral place to which we've never been. Ah yes. All those yesterdays we never had. Ahem.

It's that kind of feeling that this song, 'Always Eyes', evokes. Yeah with its jangle-echoing guitars that seem lighter than air and the thin reverbed vocals, it's pretty and ambient, driven along by brash 80s-style drums. Delicate synths clothe the verse of the song like water on oil. But it's synths that make the chorus fun. It's down to these that give the chorus its catchy vocal hook that belies its touching lyrical content, such as, "Why did I wait, why did I wait for you, why did I waste my time?" The breakdown at like the start of the last quarter of the song is great - joyful - complete with epic drum rolls.

Lovely isn't it? Well nice. This song comes as Mr Bunch's latest release off the back off the tantalisingly named Cooper's Dream EP. And yes, it was inspired - in part at least - by the indefatigable cult TV series Twin Peaks. Ah Cooper, you and your zany ways.

From first song - honest, light-diatribe of 'I Don't Fit In' - it's an outing that, if you like 'Always Eyes', you'll enjoy quite a lot I can imagine. Stop-start hi-hats and acrobatic bass in 'Give Up' lead up to its climax washed with guitar distortion, whilst 'Prom' is a synth-fest of 80s proportions, punchy drum machines below simmering synths. 'Float In Clouds' gallops along, stopping for the verse where space in the sound and occasional guitar strums do float on air, then gallops onward. The ballad of title track 'Cooper's Dream' is spookily reminiscent of Twin Peaks in its sound; slower than the others and somewhat more emotive because of this reason, it could be the best track. Maybe I'm biased. Have a listen.

Dream pop, thy name is Suburban Living.

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