PRECOCIOUS NEOPHYTE — MY ELECTRONIC IDOL

⌾ LISTEN TO MY ELECTRONIC IDOL BY PRECOCIOUS NEOPHYTE ⌾

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A shining candy floss sky, the sun merely a white blinding circle behind hefty clouds. It's the scene conjured by the warped scuzzy chill of 'My Electronic Idol' by South Korean, Chicago-based aritst Precocious Neophyte, aka Jeehye Ham. Imbued with shoegaze aesthetic, all fuzz and delay pedal, waves of guitar provide a soothing wash of noise while the chorus jostles with riffy muscle for an exercise in deftly dynamic balance.

In the tossed salad of it all there is a mingling of genres, the shoegaze sensibilities centre stage, while Ham's vocals summon the ethereality of dreampop, floating cirrus-like and carefree amid the din of distortion. The bass hums with laid-back psychedelic flair, wandering with the drums to create an effortless groove, a stoned-by-the-lake kind of feel that feels at once feels as awesomely aimless as it does pointed and present.

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• 🔔 'My Electronic Idol' is fresh, new music. It's the first track taken from Precocious Neophyte's upcoming album Home in the Desert, scheduled for release on 1st September on Graveface Records. You may pre-order it on Bandcamp, if you like.

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🐣 LIPTICISM — WELLINGTON

⌾ LISTEN TO LIPTICISM, WELLINGTON ⌾ At first ‘Wellington’ is like a dream where you wake up floating in space: the cascading chimes, the reverberating plasma bass, modulated chords like the PS2 startup, the lances of synth soaring into an unseen distance. But there’s something super grounded about Lipticism’s track, owing to the earthbound first line and refrain: “That girl from Wellington, she says she never wants to see me again.”

The vocal, equally imploring and detached, spins a story with this stark statement: What girl? Why? What happened? Instant connection and intrigue.

And in its never-the-same-twice choruses, ‘Wellington’ is a swirl of glitter, sludgy sub kicks, hissing percussion, the voice of Lipticism herself rising in a nebulous stream; a shredded melodic line, lamenting coolly, overlaps into the next section - something this song does well, a constantly morphing dynamic.

More lyrics half heard in this jostling milky way of sound present the realness, the semisadness and frustration in simple terms: “That’s how it used to be…” and “I can’t read your mind” standing out beacon-like. And always it is cosmic, it is star-flung, sparklingly offbeat, visions of a void—the actual self, alone but catapulted above earthly troubles.

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• 🔔 Listen to more Lipticism over on her SoundCloud.
• 🔔 'Wellington' is taken from Lipticism's album emergency released via CRY LIKE DONNA which is where you can also stream and purchase it should you wish to.

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🐣 MEN I TRUST — I HOPE TO BE AROUND

Much like the wispy incense smoke of the last time we heard from the Montreal trio, Men I Trust have created a delicate soundtrack to daydreaming in 'I hope to be around'. Key to its success as wonderful song are the four elements that comprise it: the bass plays plasma-textured, deep and modulating, this what is essentially a rock bassline, brooding in pentatonics; its string sister the guitar is an occasional ripple on the surface of a glassy pond, wobbly, cold and clear all at the same time.

The drums tick throughout toeing a line between meticulous drum machine and '60s minimal, thin and precise. And the vocals – wide and whispering and wistful; the Three W's of Wonderful – send this wraith of swirling around your head, the lack of variegation and the lack of range, as well as the repetition, make this a haunting mantra, its gaseous nature slipping into your ears and turning your thoughts to tomorrow and yesterday and nowhere ever all at once—"I dream of my future / Remote from time bounds / Becoming myself / Without any end."

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• 🔔 You may download Men I Trust's lovely, thoughtful track from their bandcamp.
• 🔔 The video for 'I hope to be around' was conceived and directed by the band themselves. "We filmed the music video in Montreal’s beautiful neighbourhoods and landmarks," they explain, "of which many seem to be frozen in time around the end of the 60’s."

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🐣 MOON MASK — TWENTY MINUTES DREAM RUNNER

Like a heavy heart this track shifts its way into your perception, that sinking stomach feeling, emptiness, beginning with a slow ominous luscious clopping clock and insectoid ticking and slumbering breaths and then we fall into the urgent synthpop of it all, and the vocals of Manila's moon mask opens up a deep croon: "Met you asleep in a dream…" Big thumping drums create a driving energy – a gotta-do-something '80s filmic montage of an atmosphere – with simple kick-snare alternation with stomping gloopy bass that cuts a basic booming groove beneath the miasma of electronics that glide and soar and punctuated by sparkling starlit melodies twinkling beneath it, bright neon chords electrify the heavenward introspective gloom of it, shocking strobes in the murksmoke.

But the dreamy atmosphere that dwells in 'twenty minutes dream runner' arises because, moon mask explained on Twitter, it's "based off a short story I wrote once about a decaying man reliving dream." There is indeed an aroma of decay that whirls around in this synth-laden dreamscape, the cardinal reverb that the drums are soaked in so they crack and roar in the song's verses, and in the literally decayed melody that twists and turns fizzing abrasive in the bridge, overdriven and piercing. The chorus is catchy, deliciously so, with rapid pogoing vocals: "20 minutes better run baby ah, 20 minutes left before they take you away…" A fantasy lovesong, an electronic pop elegy, this is the idealised grip of nostalgia manifested in the hazy hangover of something distantly dreamt.

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• 🔔 You may purchase 'twenty minutes dream runner' digitally via Bandcamp if you like. It arrives ahead of moon mask's EP scheduled for release early next year; "I've been trying to take a bit of a new direction in my sound," says our boy in the track's description, and the new EP will probably mirror that sentiment.

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🐣 NSAY MADA — UNDER COVER

The vocals here are so softly done so falling over everything mistily like a veil, the long curls of its silken tones unfurling, whispers into the night air, the nocturnal desire effusing as from a smoke machine at an otherdimensional disco, how it is slowly serpentine like this, how it coils with the leisure and languor of looming lust, the low tones of Nsay Mada and her fluttering highs rich with feeling and focus, fragranced by its textures, pastel spray paint above the neon crunch of the throwback synth that frames this track perpetually in another realm of time where midnight is dark yet chequered with colours and promise of something more.

'Under Cover' keeps to this juddering syncopation, the clang of its electro mainstay providing the foundation, the simple alternating beat with the trebly kick and the shhff shaker shifting sand spray can snare (allegedly Joy Division achieved a similar drum quality in 'She's Lost Control' by spraying an aerosol can into a microphone), the sparse hi-hat chit-chat with the open sharpness echoing blissfully, drum machine tom tumbling occasionally, augmenting the sparse feel of the track, with the modulating synth, the hazy nebulous chords, the icy pings, all decorating and helping to augment that late night feeling with starlight apartment block window twinkles and slow hum of traffic taillights extending into night. Still, that voice, "under cover, under cover," this refrain unusual and fragmented, satin sheen on this sparkling bed of sounds.

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• 🔔 'Under Cover' was produced by Cyenna Bay. You can catch more from Nsay Mada on SoundCloud.

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🐣 NEBULAMIGO — DISTANCE

The ripples on the surface of a body of water glittering crystalline sheen more like molten metal than water, the guitar arpeggio that bounces with a misty pallor summoning these gleaming scenes gurgling with reverb each string glinting with indie jangle into a traversable rip tide of thudding uptempo kicks, and caught in the momentum tumble somersault into the wash of haze and hallowed heavenly harmonies that fly and fall with far-off warmth, heavily effected later in the track bubblesome and wobbly, all the time with the bass so lean and rounded and rolling forward with semaphore fills and flourishes, stretching to meet the jogging pace of the beat.

The tick-tick-tick of metallic sharp hi-hats alternates between the kicks and the lo-fi dull thud snare hits and the rimshot accoutrement that adds textured tangle to the beat, a simple complication that adds an air of technicality to the proceedings. How the veil of dreampop falls away from 'Distance' nearer to the two-minute mark, rapid garage post-punk palm-muted chords judder silkily and takataka hi-hat rattle and a nocturnal slice of guitar noodling lends itself again to this pace, the speed of the track, Nebulamigo making it breezy but intense and only in a somnolent summery sort of way, all the kinetic energy of pogosticking but with such swathes of sunny lethargy imbued in it, the pallid bleach of sunlight its washed out halo.

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• 🔔 'Distance' is taken from the Long Beach, California band's recently released Talk in Roses EP. The six-track digital offering can be downloaded for a paltry $4 if you would like to do such a thing.

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🐣 LUNAR — GLAD YOU STAYED

Swirling with emotive intensity this track exists in a mist of sound, an all-encompassing atmosphere that seems to veil everything around as you listen. A dreamy slow-jam drenched with feeling. Piano chords reverse-resonate from distal zones between the percussive punctuation of the swaying beat, fading-in to the warm dusty clonk of the chord, plaintive and balladic. These layer up, forming cushions of sound upon which the voice of Lunar herself floats lilting and mumbling, the colloquial endeavour of the singing style effusing honesty into the nebulous haze of the track, her words sometimes nuanced with quavering ornamentation.

The lovesong quality of 'Glad You Stayed' shows itself through those cradling vocals, the to-and-fro embrace of the beat with its swishing hi-hats and powerful drum fills and its skittering percussive thickets, where sometimes Lunar's voice quivers without instrumental interruption, whirling and caressing the air with its creaking silken tone. High string sounds twinkle achingly in the chorus, the acute pinch of longing, gut-twisting desire, glimmers sharply, contrasting with the syncopated thump of the kick throughout. The track ascends at the end, whooshes of sweet textured sound rising with sparkles of vocal sample ringing out in the crystalline white noise of it all, the rush of love in a crescendo of memory.

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• 🔔 This is Lunar's first upload on SoundCloud—keep an eye on it for more from this London musicmaker.

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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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CUUSHE – TIE

Mayuko Hitotsuyanagi aka Cuushe is back in town or back in the music world with news of a new and upcoming release. Having lent her voice to a few other artists, notably appearing on Kidkanevil's album My Little Ghost, and releasing a track via Ryan Hemsworth's Secret Songs towards the end of last year, she'll be releasing a new EP called Night Lines. It arrives after her 2013 album Butterfly Case, which sounds pretty much as close to dreaming whilst awake as you could even hope to get, so delicate and floaty were the sounds. What's interesting about this one is that it's not just going to be released on her Tokyo-based label home flau, but also on supercool NY-London label, CASCINE, maximising the world's exposure to this wonderful artist.

Whilst we wait for these new songs from the Japanese singer there is one new song readily and already available. It's called 'Tie' and rather than being produced by Cuushe herself it features production from producer and flau label boss, aus (Yasuhiko Fukuzono). He provides a swaying beat perforated by lightning needles as glistening waterfall chords swathe and swirl with the rich whisper of Cuushe's voice.

Caramel bass crawls groovesome through the icy diamond-drop synth plink-plink melody, things become more cosmic, the pings of electronica seem to be arriving directly from the far reaches of a patch of night sky, somewhere out in the outskirts of your own mind; the beat skiffles more and more, tick-tocks in double time, Cuushe sounds beautiful, her vocals slow and considered, providing a wonderful contrast to the frantic pulchritude of aus' production: she sings a breeze through glittering gem-encrusted walls of a dreamt-up canyon on a wondrous imagined world.

This is one of four tracks that will be on Night Lines and I dunno about you but I'm looking forward to hearing the rest of it. Pre-order details are here.

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• I did a Q&A with Cuushe once, check it out – it's Lazy Interview #14.
• And if you are interested, the devastatingly cute/beautiful artwork (top) is by Yoko Kuno.

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ULZZANG PISTOL – PASTEL 女の子 (ET ALIAE REMIX)

Welcome. If you've never been here before, well done to you; if you have been here before, well done to you, too. Basically, we're here today to talk about a remix of a song, or perhaps more specifically a remix of a track. I actually heard the original track, 'PASTEL 女の子' (where '女の子' – onnanoko – means 'girl' in Japanese), a few weeks ago and thought "hmm ooo yea I'ma write bout dat" but it seems it never happened. However, now that I'm here, and you're here, it's the perfect time to give it a sprinkling of spotlight.

So yes, the original, by Filipino musicmaker Ulzzang Pistol – who also heads up the Philippines-centric Youngliquidgang collective – is a Latin-flavoured slice of synth-lounge, complete with groovesome bassline, 80s-drum-machine tom fills and glimmmerings of glockenspiel. A kind of laid-back, easy-listening, city-by-night feel, flourishing in its own sense of romance.

Made for and taken from the net-station/label datafruits.fm compilation, Funky Freaky Freestyley, Ulzzang Pistol put it up with downloadable stems, allowing anybody to remix it. And that's exactly what et aliae (which means 'and the others/rest' in Latin, but it's feminine plural so could be translated as 'the other girls' or sth like dat) has done.

Mixing the dizzy potential of R&B-inflected beats and neon-tinged tremolo synth chords with softly reverbing marimba and gentle glassy cascadings, the London-based et aliae produces a stunning remix that simpers high above the original; a persistent ghost of swirling cloud-sounds that summon silver-outlined dreams.

Say, if the original was the actual soundtrack to a person wandering around the heart of a city replete with bustling streets and entertainment at every turn: then this remix is that person's out-of-body experience, their true consciousness floating as their body is jostled by crowds, beset on all sides by relentless sights and sounds and smells, seeking without end something indescribable.

Or at least, that's what I get from it... so uh...

• HEY! LISTEN! You can download this lovely pot of jam HERE (cliicky-cliiiiiick)
• This has been released on international netlabel, MAGIC YUME: "Promoting dreamy music from a magic world."
• FEEL LIKE REMIXING THIS URSELF? Then go for it (stems for download).

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JAWS – THINK TOO MUCH, FEEL TOO LITTLE

Where am I? What? Huh? Oh right. It's 2014. May. Tuesday. It has been sunny but it is not sunny today – major bummer. But it's ok. I found something a month or so ago that was on a little list of 'Things To Definitely Keep An Eye On' so I kept my eye on it and nothing happened so I'm just gonna write about their newest song.

Oh I've done it again haven't I? Just carried on without giving a mention to what I was writing about. They never taught me how to do that in journalism school. Actually I never went to journalism school, can you tell? Ha. Ha. Haaa—. Anyway, I'm writing about JAWS, a band from Birmingham (UK not US), and part of the fabricated/joke scene 'B-Town' (incl. Peace & Swim Deep) – though it's always the way that, without approval from artists purportedly "in" the scene, all scenes, all genres, are just fabrications – but I can see how it's a joke: I live near a place called Kingston and we call it K-town, jokingly. Not that I'm in any sort of band or anything.

But with writing about music you kinda have to dig for clues, make connections & assumptions, and come to conclusions – if they're widely accepted enough, they become gospel. For instance, none of these B-town (I even hate writing it, ok?) bands have a very similar sound, yet NME was able to see that the scene "seemed to roll out of bed, insular and uncontrived, smirking at its own in-jokes." Fine. Yet there is a waft of irony in the use of "uncontrived" – finding these differences, purposefully looking for them, is a journalistic contrivance in itself. How we are endlessly at odds with ourselves.

Now, I would like to forget about that and say hello to 'Think Too Much, Feel Too Little' by the eight-legged JAWS.

First thing that struck me was its vague similarity to something else, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it, till I realised it was 'Every Breath You Take' by The Police. It kinda follows the same chord progression and has that same plinky palm-muted pattern, though in the JAWS song its a twining of two guitar patterns that seem to shimmer-glitter in the lightbulb-heavy flavours of a post-party mood. Indeed, the song's lyrics, sung with a nicely reverbing nonchalant lilt, spin a tale of dimly lit dancing interrupted by the end-of-the-night's awakening; a romance dream with splashes of colour and the syncopated bassline oozing groove with the slow-sway fruity drum crunch and blissful anti-triumph in this half-lament of a track – "We get it, we get it, it's over / I'll go back to being alone…" – full-stopped with a crescendo of reality, drowning out the star-dots of hazy memory and love-in-passing.

Lovely stuff. If I'm late on it then pffffffffft whatever, but I'm glad that I found this song, whose title is quite similar to a line from Charlie Chaplin's speech in his film, The Great Dictator.

• Some comments on the song mentioned an album or EP or something soon, but I don't know anything. Best thing is to follow these guys on the links below – if you like what you hear, of course.

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Like JAWS on Facebook
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MEISHI SMILE – LUST

Oh goddd this like everything else has taken ages to actually get from my ears to my brain to my fingers to the keyboard. It was released over a month ago. What is "it"? God damn— it's Meishi Smile with his debut album Lust. Yes indeed it's "The 1st Album" – there can never be another one by Meishi Smile, no no nope. This is the 1st album and it always will be.

But what is it like? Lust is essentially a mix of rough and smooth, a mix of harsh self-berating distortion and endless reverb free-floating out into the gulf of digital voids, all beset with J-pop sensibilities; it's sugar-coated white noise, it's dance music for bedroom dwellers and indoors inclined individuals, it's idealised. Within its 8 tracks, there are many moments where it soars past the boundaries of euphoria with a post-Balearic furore, too happy to be real; a gentle, dream-induced kind of EDM, not the type you'd hear in a massive tent at a festival, but the type that takes you away to weird worlds in the middle of the lonely nights.

Opener 'AJS' perhaps embodies this EDM style most clearly, keeping all the tropes of the so-called genre – like multiple drops and trance-like melodies skirling away in hookish fashion; likewise, 'Honey' drops in with octave-skipping bassline and clean-cut fast-paced synth melodies. However, here is a quirk of the album: the vocoder. There is something retro about the vocoder, yet in its very nature it IS a modern device. It is at odds with itself. But this works perfectly for Meishi Smile. The vocoder appears as a mainstay of 'Pale', which alongside its icicle-esque synth glistenings gives the track an atmosphere of coldness, of chill in the nominal sense. It's also in the chilled atmosphere of the next track, 'Still' – looping vocoders battling high-register hollow synth and wide washes of dreamy chords.

These chilled vibes start the proceedings on 'Heart', a song that moves between swaying seabed ambience and bouncing electro-dance; thick synth bass grooves in a pop mood and the vocoder seems here to be "singing" more than anywhere else. It's a song of slow and fast. That slowness, however, is portrayed so much better on the almost-surprise track 'Ai' – this one sounds like a super-reverbed and super-distorted version of the kind of slo-house synthpop that the infamous Drive soundtrack popularised with artists like College and Kavinsky (in this instance, more by the former than the latter). It reeks of nocturnal stylings, a simple melody and a steady, driving beat fogged by reverb and underpinned by formative rows of saw-wave bass jounce.

That's in direct contrast to the happy-happy pop of previous track 'Summer Blue', a foray into something maybe you'd find on a videogame – squelchy bass, simple but very effective synth raining down in showers of 8-bit bleepery with an overriding melody played by synth lead and vocoder, syncopated toytronic chords in lieu of house piano for extra oomph. This is in direct contrast to the closer and most crazy of all tracks, 'Tears'. Meishi Smile mysteriously describes it on SoundCloud: "Dedicated to the one who was lost." And indeed, in title and in its near-happy hardcore extreme distortion, this aims to reflect not the moroseness, the lassitude, of being sad, but the fury and frustration of sadness, wholly up-tempo yet down-beat, tear-like droplets of synth raining down amidst the whirlwind haze of twisted grey noise synth.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE. There are remixes. KOSMO KAT keeps 'Summer Blue' close to the original, adding touches here and there – percussion, a sunset-conjuring breakdown, droplet sample – for what is 'Summer Blue V2' basically. 'Heart' retains its washes of sound, yet is given a gentle touch of officious industry by Uio Loi, and la pumpkin turns it into an almost beatless slice of bassy experimentalism with added instruments, with the original melodies picked out and spotlighted. mus.hiba does likewise with 'Pale', extracting the song from its up-tempo frame and giving it a semi-trap makeover with added 80s synth melody and waves of trance synth. My favourite, I think, is gigandect's redoing of 'Honey' – now essentially a chiptune number, completely overrun with glorious bleeps, from its low-low buzzing bass all the way up to its fluid telephonic melody.

Phew. Well, this ain't conventional dance music; Meishi Smile ain't conventional. This is dance music hazed over with influences from videogame music to shoegaze and beyond, dreams converging like clouds to rain down startling reworkings of various recollections, feelings, and recollections of feelings. It's icy and robotic, but this cybernetic feel exudes nostalgia and emotion with subtle effortlessness; behind a mist of idealised sounds, just as anybody URL is veiled by idealised monikers and titles, Meishi Smile is there with boundless feeling.

• Get Lust for 10USD by clicky-clickin over here
• Listen to the truly awesome guest mix that Meishi Smile made for YES/NO

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MOONCREATURES MOONCREATURES EP

It is nice to listen to relaxing music sometimes. It can be easy to become stressed about things, because I suppose there are a lot of stressful things and situations lying around out there - the likelihood of you stumbling on or tripping over on one of these obtuse stressors is quite high. But don't worry, because music - especially that which lies in the field of relaxful chillment - can help. Just sit back and close yer eyes innit, drift off to some nice music. As William Congreve said, "Music has charms to soothe a savage breast" and a savage breast is most certainly caused from gettin' totally stressed out about everything/some things.

Of course, this is not the be-all-and-end-all of music; it's not the POINT of music, for me anyway. The point of music is... well, that's an issue for another day, and probably something really babblesomely philosophical, too. And so I introduce Mooncreatures, a band from London who make the kind of music that could carry you on a rainbow road (definitely not the Mario Kart kind) to dreamland. Well, actually, it's more of a misty road that winds around scenery that is a Gaussian blur of itself, onwards to the long shoreline of sleep.

Their self-titled EP is old-ish, but as I KEEP saying: anything new to me is new. Is it not? Anyway, it was recently released on tape via label Italian Beach Babes, but it sold out. Happily, however, that dreamy stuff is now on bandcamp and free to download. Get to it.

It's a game of three halves, or rather three thirds. Whilst all of it is masked by a heavy and heady dose of dreamy reverb and ever-expanding echoes on guitars, the styles of how this sound is delivered changes. 'Lakedrainers' and 'Coasting' have the same feel, a lean into lo-fi dreampop, a sunny-ish sound; 'Lakedrainers' has a bleak, bright-white sky beauty about it, whilst 'Coasting' seems to me more like angled beams of light cutting through breaks in cloud. Then you have the more distorted shoegaze of 'Balloon Festival' and 'Cattle Camp', the former a jangly-pulsed 80s indie number, the latter a slow-march of melodic feedback.

The last third of the EP is atmospheric ambience - '(Coast Road)' is like the soundtrack to a sunrise, conjuring with its wide modulation an actual coast road, winding and breezy; 'Meet The Ocean' is a slow-down lo-fi Balearic-style melody - think Ibiza in sepia tones. Overall, the whole thing sounds like a journey to the sea and back, however in a typically English way the beauty is bleak, smothered by clouds. Country roads snake through endless green fields towards a beige sand beach, where a grey sea laps weakly at the coast and splashes into jutting black rocks. But there's a beauty in it, something stark and wild, which is what I think has been captured quite nicely by Mooncreatures.

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TAMARYN I'M GONE

Good morning. To start the day, I've got a pretty song from a beautiful singer: 'I'm Gone' by Tamaryn. She's New Zealandish (is that right?) born and bred, but moved to San Fransisco at some point to pursue the rosy path of music. It's not a bad life at all is it? Maybe that's why her music is so ear-friendly. Easy-listening. But not in a picture book kind of way. More in a grand impressionist painting kind of way.

You just know from first look, first listen, that it's a pulchritudinous thing. I think that's a good way to describe this song. It's actually a kind of sound that isn't insanely happy, it's more sadly content than that. It reminds me of an overcast day by the sea, the wind blustering along the dirt-coloured beach and the sea with its shade of dark teal and brown whipping its washes in the near-distance. You walking along in a raincoat and hair tangling around your face, hoping for a sunny day at the beach but preparing for the dismal seaside experience.

Perhaps this is just because I am used to a day by the sea anywhere in the UK. It's kind of beautiful in a disappointing way, isn't it?

Not like this song. It's beautiful in a pretty way. But judging from the title, it's supposed to sound like a grey day at the beach. 1-0 me.


Nice, isn't it?

I totally dig the lazy laid-back psychedelic effects on the guitars and the lo-fi, 80s-esque drums. All of it pours over you like a stream of liquid nitrogen, chillingly hypnotic with its distorted sounds and Tamaryn's voice, purring and crooning in the midst of the clashing guitars. The track is a chasm of absence and loneliness out of which this blissfully aching dreampop sound erupts.

It comes from her upcoming second album Tender New Signs, due for release on 16th October on Mexican Summer records. She's collaborated on this on with longtime collaborater-producer Rex John Shelverton. And if it's all like this, I'll be looking forward to it.

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• This is the Wikipedia entry for Tamaryn
• The Facebook page of Tamaryn
• Tamaryn on SoundCloud
• Follow Tamaryn on Twitter!
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WILD NOTHING NOWHERE EP

Having enjoyed the past grooves and mellow-jangly guitar scapes of Wild Nothing - the one-man-band that is Jack Tatum - I was pleased to see the new, two-track Nowhere EP floating around. I was even more pleased to hear it.

The haze dream of first track 'Wait' is an up-tempo foray into a quasi-psychadelic sound. Some ancient recording process has allowed Wild Nothing's new songs to sound like Beatles B-sides (at least for a few seconds in the chorus). There's a lovely little guitar lick in this one which, though far from towering, is rich and warm, but all too short. On a side note, is it wrong to say that this could be a sped-up Fleet Foxes basking in the sun? Perhaps it is.

Next we have the title track, 'Nowhere' - it's markedly different to previous work, which was speckled with more melancholy than it is now. The sunshine duster has gone to work on these songs, though within this song there is that sense of nostalgia that always brings with it a little sadness. There's an instrument used here that I can't quite pin down - sounds like some kind of mouth organ - but it is lovely. It smacks of innocent sunshine days. It lacks a sure hook, but it works great both as background music and active, have-a-listen-to-this-and-chill-the-eff-out music.

And in this grey weather (that we share occasionally with the wide blue of the sky) nothing could be more welcome than a prevarication of better times to come. In terms of weather anyway; let's not bring politics into this.



Have a listen above. Wild Nothing is definitely on my summer playlist. Which starts now of course, now that my winter coat has been voided finally. Let's all get into the groove of jangle-dream-haze-pop.

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