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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SCOOBERT DOOBERT — TAKE A BREATH

⌾ LISTEN TO SCOOBERT DOOBERT, TAKE A BREATH ⌾

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Called an “anti-anxiety” song by its creator, ‘Take A Breath’ by San Diego-based musicmaker Scoobert Doobert positively glistens with calm. Chorused guitars splash in wobbly arpeggios above an easy lope of groovesome bass, all underpinned by drums that crunch without being harsh. A sunny, psychedelic ambience exudes from the soft but lightly crisped sounds at work here.

The track was inspired by “this one time that I had sleep paralysis,” Scoobert Doobert says, and features lyrics that document the fear, and the outlandish imagery (Goku from Dragonball flying around the room, anyone?), that can arise in the strangest moments between sleep and waking. And so 'Take A Breath' feels as down-to-earth in its storytelling as it does existential in aesthetic.

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• 🔔 Listen to more Scoobert Doobert over on SoundCloud.

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GOURMET — STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN

⌾ LISTEN TO GOURMET, STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN ⌾

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Self-proclaimed maker of "spaghetti pop", the Cape Town-based Gourmet inducts us into a syrupy and psychedelic tribute to WWE star, Stone Cold Steve Austin. Well, tribute or not, much of the song — also named 'Stone Cold Steve Austin' — is spent with a vocal refrain that begins "Stone Cold Steve Austin..." It's wrestler-heavy, but it's not about wrestling.

It's just part of the idiosyncratic nature of Gourmet's music. A lyrical mosaic, stream of consciousness in style, the spoken word lines are unaffected, unpolished, and remain a refreshing strolling vernacular of a vocal.

Similarly, while decidedly modern in its undertaking, with its minimalist appeal and spacious production, 'Stone Cold Steve Austin' dips heavily into the hunny pot of the past, Gourmet also namechecking Michael Jackson as the track gloops onward in a groove, in a galaxy of its own.

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• 🔔 'Stone Cold Steve Austin' by (who calls it "intercontinental left-field pop music") is taken from his Peace Forever Seaside Senegal Castle EP, released by Baketown Records. You can get it on Apple Music among other places.
• 🔔 Update: There is also now a 'Stone Cold Steve Austin' video.

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🐣 STEVEN A. CLARK — KARMA

⌾ LISTEN TO STEVEN A. CLARK, KARMA ⌾

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"Just getting into bad relationships over and over. Then one day you realize that these relationships are just a reflection of what’s going on inside of you," writes Steven A. Clark of 'Karma'. With the skewed bassline cutting a warped groove, the cyclical – yes, karmic – guitar twinkling out of focus, and lyrics that speak of that "internal battle", the spills into your mind, seeping through the cracks.

At its centre swirl the vocals of Steven A. Clark himself. Worn, cradled in woozy effects and cutting an infectious R&B glimmer in lines like "Everyday, everyday, everyday / Telling me lies disguised as truths" and laying himself bare (literally) in the opener, "I'm naked / Over you..." it swings between these flying falsettos and a soothsaying mantra crooned in a plasma gravel: "Cause when the karma comes / The karma comes / karma's coming your way." A feverish warning.

"We do some much external shit looking for people, places, things, activities to make us happy, or distract us from the way we feel about ourselves," he explains more about the track. Something like Tame Impala analysing the uglier sides of the brain, 'Karma' is a psychedelic saunter around the block, a me-and-my-thoughts gloopy, gossamer tangle.

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• 🔔 'Karma' is taken from Steven A. Clark's upcoming album Hypervigilant, actual release date TBC. Stream 'Karma' by clicking this text and choosing from one of the various streaming services that you desire.

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🐣 MR LITTLE JEANS — FORGETTER (CHE REMIX)

⌾ LISTEN TO MR LITTLE JEANS FORGETTER REMIX BY CHE ⌾ Mr Little Jeans' original 'Forgetter' inhabits a dark, swaying world entrenched in sub-bass, sometimes pillowed with sun dappled breeziness. But completely destructing this darkness, turning on the light, and transporting it from the gloomy forest of the original, Che hops on a remix of 'Forgetter'.

Now psychedelic, the track cuts a groove with suburban by-the-lake bass that pops and lingers and stumbles happily along; sparkling liquid guitars fall slow motion from one chord to the next with sloppy lustre; just part of the original vocals survive, simmered thin and garbled into each other.

It's a whole new plane of existence, one into which we're inducted and ejected from with cosmic tunnels of thick synth. Mystery and pyschedlia mix in the semi-idyll of Che's remix, propelled by the gentle thump of a beat, well away from the trap dilution and shaded inflections of the original 'Forgetter'

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• 🔔 There's actually a free download of Che's weed-soaked remix of 'Forgetter' by Mr Little Jeans, which is nice.
• 🔔 And you should check out Shuco by Che, an album he released with Astro Nautico last year. You can listen to it and everything else on Bandcamp.

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🐣 TOPAZ — CROSS

The main core beating-hear of this track is that overdriven bump, that tumbling rhythm of distorted boops that seem to roll around your head as you listen; that, strangely, is the catchy part of this track. For a rhythm to be catchy is quite some feat, rather than, you know, an obvious hook, the hook here in 'CROSS' by Chicago-based musicmaker TOPAZ is the deep-set creaking bulky hypnotic foundation of the track itself. Vocals croon ghostly contentment whipping through the canyons and peaks of crushed sound, ushering you in.

Alongside this the upper air of the track flickers and crackles with all the negligent energy of an ancient television, an incorrectly repaired plug, an original tract of music with guitars and vocals sent through a digital mangle. Tracks with this sort of quality always have this feeling of speaking from elsewhere, having to squeeze signals through a fissure in time in order for them to swim scratchy gorgeous in your ears, like a kind of aural oxidation, the track feeling dug-up, uncovered.

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• 🔔 The artwork for 'CROSS' was created by João Coutinho.

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🐣 COOL TRIPS — LANDMARK

The melting atmosphere, the horizon spilling onto the earth and the grand oil colour splashes, the waves of thick stodgy paint, swirling and whirling together and running over the land like a flood in slow motion. That's 'Landmark' setting the scene for you, the low-slung sludgy psychedelia of it crafted by Portland-based musicmaker Cool Trips—not the typical sun-glittering stuff you might be used to, but this inhabits a different time of day, a different state of mind, the chorus crooning in with grounded wisdom: "I can't live forever / forever's too long."

"I think the hook is going to tend to sound a little morbid to a bunch of people," says Cool Trips in an email to us, "but to me it's about living and dying in moments in a metaphorical sense more than anything... and learning where the high roads are and how to find them. It's strangely positive given all the reminders of inevitable death." And to frame this darker theme, this slice of surreal reality, the kick drum slams overdriven and the tottering bassline skips and dawdles, abrupt atonal synth sweeping sharply above, the vocals call out as if from a different dimension, as if already having died and giving melodic advice from beyond the grave, a slow and steady zombie march of sound.

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• 🔔 You may purchase the fascinating 'Landmark' via Amazon if you so wish. Alternatively, or additionally, you can listen on Spotify. It's taken from Cool Trips' Bloodshot Moon(& The Heart vs Reality) EP.

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🛰 GUEST MIX 029 :: SIMILAROBJECTS

"Over the years I've developed a nasty habit of digging for music during my spare time," Manila musicmaker Jorge Juan B. Wieneke V aka similarobjects writes in an email. "Whether it be the sounds of the past, present or future it always seemed like I've got a habit of seeking for something good for my ears to munch on." He's the latest artist to step up to the plate and smash a guest mix out of the park—and it seems as though he's a good choice because music, and not just making it, is a big part of this producer's life.

"For writers, people say that "reading is writing" and I feel like this applies to us musicians as well," he explains, "so when I'm not creating I just spend a lot of time digesting music from everywhere and anywhere."

In this guest mix, our 29th, similarobjects takes metropolitan Latin flavours and psychedelic guitars, moods conjured with gentle glossy keys and meandering jazz journeys, magical crooning pop party music, and gradually mixes them into the indigenous interiors of the Philippine islands with darkly chiming percussion and fresh organic textures: it is a cocktail of history and culture.

"As of late I’ve really been stuck on listening to a lot of Filipino records from the '60s, '70s and '80s that draw influences from Western jazz, Indo-jazz, jazz-funk, jazz-fusion, ethnic, samba, folk music, Brazilian, as well as some pieces that fall under the category of ethnomusicology," Jorge writes, taking us through the mix. "I thought I'd share a slice of Filipino culture through some of my favorite selections as a lot of these artists/songs really spoke to me and I hope this mix finds you well. And for those who follow my work maybe this mix can paint a picture of where my head is at the moment."

Previously the musical output of similarobjects has been typified by enigmatic atmospheres, otherdimensional flavours, beats that range from dusty organic to clipping and chaotic, a sonic world of synthetics and introspection. The gentle, cleansing house ambience in last December's two-track release Etheric is different to the high-concept frame of SoundCloud album Happiness is a deactivated Facebook Account, filled as it is with nerve-racking breakcore-style beat glitches and a hectic dystopian mood. He mentions in his email that he's working with RBMA Paris alumni JOHN POPE on "a collaborative EP in the form of a videogame," which will be announced properly soon.

This guest mix, however, acts as a precursor to another upcoming release that seems as though it will be moving away from his past futurist abstractions. It's an EP called UGAT.

"Ugat means "Roots" and it carries with it a sense of re-connecting with our roots as Filipino people," Jorge tells us. "The underlying concept of this EP is that the whole body of work is an ode to forgotten and lost instruments, rhythms, cultures, traditions and practices of the Philippine Indigenous Tribes and our Ancient Ancestors."

As such, some parts of this mix – the obscure mystery of 'Suling Suling' and 'Ugnayan' for instance – really feel like a moodboard for the producer, fresh paint on the palette for his next artistic endeavour, the next step of his musical evolution.

☆TRACKLIST☆
００：００ Bong Peñera – Batucada Sa Calesa (1977)
０２：５４ Bobby Enriquez – Recado (1982)　
０９：４４ Flip Nuñez – See You Later　(1976)　
１７：１４ Bob Aves – Gongs Can Swing (2014)
２０：５３ Boy Katindig – Midnight Lady (1978)
３１：２５ Dakila – Makibaka/Ikalat (1972)
４０：０６ Pasta Groove – Suling Suling (Dr José Maceda Rework) (19??)
４２：０８ Dr José Maceda – Ugnayan (1974)
５２：０２ Joey Ayala – Buwan Buwan　(1991)

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🐣 ZENXIENZ — MISSING CALIFORNIA

A self-destructed blare of lights and colour, of rocks and cosmic material, a delicious morsel of music that mixes these things in a heady unidentifiable salad of matter and anti-matter. Cacophonous and bustling, the sounds crammed into this track fuse together without dissolving into one another, like those vintage psychedelic visuals of oil and water swilling in a tray atop an overhead projector but sped up, these sounds crash and rollick, storm and surge, smack and clatter, synths and percussion alike, all of it alive and wriggling for being alive. This is 'Missing California' by zenxienz, something that begins slow and composed despite the sloshing of colours and sounds, the bleeperie of electronics like the conjurations of circuitboards.

Beneath these slower sections a heavy beat cranks muffled and smothered by synthetics, distant booms and clacks close-at-hand but stifled in the bubbling heat of the sounds, some of them jostling woodblock smacks and clatterations—and then this segment of breakbeat-flavoured percussive patterns, the drum & bass toppling of this sonic tower into a kinetic mash of music, wide horizon-searching synth playing a solo, an aching landscape intoxicated lead, and later on the psychedelic infusion is evident with a scramble of freeform melodies and irregular shapes, zooming towards the end, a dizzy psychic joyride into the wonderfully chaotic imagination of this musicmaker.

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• 🔔 'Missing California' is from zenxienz's second album Brainforest, to which you can listen via SoundCloud.

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🐣 POLTRAGHOST — EXPOSURE

To a shuffling march of French touch style rounded meaty drum sounds, we enter into this disembodied club, a cube of strangeness spinning through space like an errant asteroid, an Enterprise of the stars that instead of going where no-one has ever gone before is instead spinning and spinning with this fever dream of dance firmly lodged in its prefrontal cortex. The familiarity of the track, that you know you can dance to it, lies in those sharp thumping kicks, the pugilistic bump of the snare, the thud and tang of it propelling tracts of pinprick starlight glitter and wobbling nebulous string samples across the mysterious expanse, the gloopy groovesome bass and its ascending notes casting a cloak of pioneering exploration over it all.

'Exposure' by sometime remotely conjoined duo Poltraghost lives in this interdimensional zone, a sort of blissful nowhere of its own creation. The alien nature of the track does not come from these regular elements – these tried-and-true tropes of 4/4 kick-snare electronic music: a regular foundation – but mostly from the pitch-shifted vocal that with a silken rumbling tone delineates something unintelligible, resonating richly into the stripped-back rhythmic body-pop space of the track. Theremin sounds call out into the universe searching for the right frequency on which to communicate; synth lead plays out airy and plasma, breezy blasts that colour the solidity of this track with modulating digitised lonely washes, the futurism of it feeling fleeting and ephemeral as it drifts fatefully through starfields and constellations.

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• 🔔 'Exposure' is taken from Poltraghost's debut album, Nineties Business Woman. This can be acquired digitally via the duo's Bandcamp.

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Y/N GUEST MIX 020 :: VIKTOR TORVIK

I can't remember exactly how or why I stumbled across this guy, or when even – I guess it was like a month ago now. He had made this mix of all these easy listening and lounge music tracks from the '60s and '70s, containing nothing obvious and only music that was fresh to my ears from all over the world. I needed a mix from this guy. Desperately in my soul. So I messaged him on YouTube. And now: here we are.

His name? Marco Luján, aka Viktor Torvik when he's making "retro sets" like this one. He's from Lima, Peru, and I was super happy that he shared with me (with us, you readers and listeners out there!) a lot of Peruvian music which I'd never dreamed of hearing, as well as some choice numbers from across the globe. This blog's middle name is Internationalism, so I deeply approve of this mixture from around the world. In Peru, Torvik is a DJ and also an underground producer of varying styles of music from jungle and soundscapes to lounge and easy listening.

"I am inspired by classic movies, exploitation films, old cartoons and TV shows from 60's and '70s," he tells me. "In the '90s artists like Towa Tei, Dimitri from Paris, Fantastic Plastic Machine, Luke Vibert, United Future Organization, Masters at Work, Aphex Twin and many, many others inspired me to create music." Whilst not listening to music, making it, or making mixes, he also DJs at a place in Lima called Eka Bar.

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I wanted to choose a group of songs from all over the world and especially from my country.

VIKTOR TORVIK

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So anyway: what's in store for you in this mix? Easy listening, lounge, jazz, Latin flavours, soft rock, psychedelia. It's a fluffy, mellow mélange of music that travels the world from the USA and Brazil to Venezuela and Italy (only half the countries featured in the mix), stopping off on the way for sojourns into the more popular and fleeting sounds of the '60s and '70s. From the USA we have Ray Conniff, band leader and arranger, whose creation 'Lowdown' is smooth and buttery, dripping with soulful guitar. Moving on, there's the weed-advocating 'Marihuana Mantra' by German group Kuno & The Marihuana Brass, whose controlled rowdiness is a soft rock invocation to the drug. Later on we're treated to Los Destellos and their Peruvian brand of Colombian genre cumbia in 'Volando Alto', a mix of tasty, bustling rhythms and rich waves of psychedelic guitar.

One particularly interesting story that I looked into (mainly because I spent so long looking for any evidence of her existence that I got engrossed in the process) was that of Emma Sugimoto. Born in New Jersey but raised in Osaka, she started out as an actress, then a model, then her debut was with 《アイ・アイ・アイ》 – 'Ai Ai Ai' in this mix – via Columbia Records in 1970, going with ELEC Records for a 1974 album 《エマは愛》Emma Is Love. She retired from all this in 1980 and married restauranteur Shimpei Wada, whose French restaurant "シェ・ワダ" – Chez Wada – is still open and, by the sounds of things (I think), thriving.

And on that note, I've spoken too much. Let's listen. The first time I listened to this I was having lunch with Bextree – I ate a toasted ham and cheese panini. Made the whole thing wildly delightful.

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• T R A C K L I S T •

• 01. Jaime Delgado Aparicio – Todo el Mundo me Persigue (1966 Peru) 00:00
• 02. El Dúo Dinámico – Galileo (1966 España) 03:14
• 03. Banda Veneno – The Girl from Paramaribo (1972 Brazil) 05:38
• 04. Heinz Kiessling – Spicy (197? Germany) 09:16
• 05. Ray Conniff – Lowdown (1976 USA) 11:20
• 06. Lorenzo Santamaria – Carnaval (1979 España) 13:12
•       interlude
• 07. Kuno & The Marihuana Brass – Marihuana Mantra (1970 Germany) 16:50
• 08. Black Sugar – Viajecito (1971 Peru) 19:20
• 09. Bossa 70 – Si Voce Pensa (1971 Peru) 24:09
• 10. Los Destellos – Volando Alto (1974 Peru) 27:11
• 11. Aldemaro Romero – It's Impossible (1972 Venezuela) 30:19
• 12. Emma Sugimoto – Ai Ai Ai (1970 Japan) 32:10
• 13. Luciano Michelini – Il Volto Nascosto Di Luna (1969 Italy) 37:32
•     + outro (Cigarrillos Country Club con filtro. Peruvian 60's publicity) 

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TIM BURGESS THE ECONOMY

This is just the kind of music that you need on a sunny Wednesday evening, chilled and gentle, like the gradual drooping of the sun as it glints upon the world from sideways. Long shadows and longer cocktails. Trimmed lawns and trees waving in languid rhythms. Clouds lightly dusting the sky. Yeah, just like these things.

It's just the kind of scene that this song - 'The Economy' by Tim Burgess - serves as a rather nice soundtrack. I have to admit, when I first heard it I was like "...what" - BUT! I was soon won over by the peaceful grooves of the song, smoothed and lulled into a state of chill. Verily.

What begins as something that you could find playing in an episode of Spongebob Squarepants - y'know, cause of the particularly beach-bum, lapping-waves feel of the subtle slide guitar in the background and the general happy feel of the skiffly acoustic guitar - turns quickly into a multi-layered well-textured almost, well - probably actually, psychedelic song.

Nice eh? Really nice. You can see what I mean though, right? It does start with this Hawaiian feel, but into this really nicely built monumental psychedelic soft rock/pop rock song. The falsetto vocals throughout peek just above everything else, always remaining audible and strangely soothing, keeping to a catchy melodic pattern. But it doesn't take centre stage, and actually - nothing in this song does take centre stage. Everything works as one, each element allowing the others their own breathing space and own little chances to shine.

A 60s-hippie type vibe bemists the song when a flute begins playing, cool and reedy, weaving a breathy melody around the staple strumming pattern of the guitar. But the real surprise is a guitar solo, a really overdriven electric guitar, playing understatedly but with force and passion, taking us soaring up into the clouds towards the end of the song, where all the sounds are culminating - support vocals enriching it with their harmonies, the thickening effects of distorted guitars joining the acoustic rhythm, a breezy synth filling in the gaps.

Full-flavoured yet gently chilled (like I said, it's perfect summer evening music), it comes from his second album Oh No I Love You, released last year. I had no idea but Tim Burgess is lead singer of The Charlatans, boy am I stupid.

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WASHED OUT IT ALL FEELS RIGHT

Well well well well, it is some more music as usual. Except this time it's not as "as usual" as you'd think because it involves a quite drastic style change of the person I am writing about. Yes, that's right: it's Washed Out (aka Ernest Greene). I first encountered this guy, not actually in real life but musically, like two years ago when I wrote about his song 'Eyes Be Closed' which came from his debut album Within Without. That stuff is very different from what I have discovered today. Yes. It seems as though Mr Greene has eschewed (what a horrible word, I hate it) the majorly reverb soaked Balearic slowdown of his older material in favour of something a whole lot more acoustic. It's still down-tempo and it's still chilled out but it's different yo it's just different - mind you, I'm judging this all from one song: 'It All Feels Right'.

Yeah. And I suppose since lyric videos mostly always end up getting made, why not make a lyric video to begin with?

In the general sound of this track there is a whole lot more that lends itself to trippy psychedelic rock than to what is known as "chillwave" as such. The drums sound a lot more 'live' for a start, and there are other tangible sounds like a rambling acoustic guitar in there somewhere, as well as woody strings that provide a triumphant kinda vibe. However when it comes to the musical change after the refrain "It all feels right..." everything turns a whole lot more trippy, blissful sounds rain down, and everything could just as well be playing underwater or in space with that kind of atmosphere change. A little bit Animal Collective y'know.

It is a stark change. A direction that I neither expected nor desired but one that, now that it's happened, ain't 'alf bad. Only joking, it is really nice. Smooth and liquidy. Positive and all-encompassing. A sound that definitely reflects the fact that it all feels right, so don't worry. And still there are those vocals which don't seem to come from anywhere, all adrift in a very wide sea of sound.

Whew. And and and: it comes from his NEW ALBUM which is coming out 12th August and is called Paracosm.

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YOUNG FATHERS I HEARD

It's amazing what you find sometimes. Here's a song called 'I Heard' by a Scottish trio called Young Fathers, made up of Kayus Bankole, Graham Hastings, Alloysious Massaquoi. They call themselves a "psychedelic hip hop boy band" apparently and it's not actually far off the resulting sound that these three think up together. So, it was a pleasant surprise to stumble upon these guys.

Combining exotic-sounding beats with a wash of deep, gurgling bass, the song is exemplified by its soulful vocals, whose echoing tones and faraway layering effects tower in the choruses with the somewhat touching (no pun intended) refrain of "Inside I'm feeling dirty", and croons near mournfully in the verses. Slow and sure of itself, 'I Heard' is a great, calm-yet-stormy track for sure.

Listen for yourself:

The whole thing is atmospheric, ambient synth organ sounds introducing the song alongside the clip-clop of plodding percussion as the voice comes in. Everything mixes together towards the end in a chilled yet intense climax that left me feeling glad to have heard the song and also curious as to what would come next. Luckily, there is more new stuff after this to come. Yes. This song apparently comes from a new release titled simply Tape Two, out 11th June on Anticon.

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BEAT CONNECTION SAOLA + INVISIBLE CITIES

This is the sound of Beat Connection, a Seattle-bred band touting themselves as "Tropical Psychedelic Pop" - I'd say that their self-diagnosis is quite accurate. If you like comparisons — if that's your thing, if that's what you're into, if it makes you click the play button — then think of them as hybrid of Delphic / Friendly Fires / Vampire Weekend, except less of the pop and more of the tropico-psychedelic or psycho-tropical. The song above, the dance-driving, samba-toting, delectably rhythmic 'Saolo', is a perfect example of the kind of wooden-hut-and-tiki-lights vibe that weaves its way through all of the music on their album The Palace Garden, released 6th August this year. It's a song that moves from the daylight chillfest of holidays in the sun to the glowing humidity of an equatorial night in the space of 3 minutes 37 seconds.

In the above song, 'Invisible Cities' the vocals of the singer are shown off. It's decidedly a more sombre affair than 'Saolo', though still full of afrobeat rhythms and beautiful harmonies that turn it into a soaring dreamtime chillout session. These two show the range of Beat Connection: one minute you're jumping up and down, another you're swaying or nodding your head. It's a shame that nobody seems to have picked up on these guys because their album The Palace Gardens is full of more chilled, tropical electro that shows a side of the band that's rather partial to a bit of dancefloor storming: 'Think Feel' (featuring guest vocals from graphic designer Chelsey Scheffe) illustrates this more than adequately - listen to that HERE.

Show these guys some love and share their sounds with your friends!

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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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TAME IMPALA APOCALYPSE DREAMS [FREE DOWNLOAD]

They're back. Tame Impala are back - and how glad am I they are! Their wonderful, psychedelic Beatles-aping album Innerspeaker pretty much blew my fragile little mind and opened it up to the possibilities of some boys from Australia bringing the sound of the sixties to the 21st century in an intense tableau of guitar licks as wide as the outback and as beautiful as the sea combined with garden shed drum virtuosity dirty fuzzy strongman bass and vocals coming from the very ghost of the Summer of Love itself.

So naturally when I saw that their new album, Lonerism, would be flying off the shelves 8th October in the UK, I got pretty excited. How excited? I can't tell you. Excited enough I guess. And when I heard their new song 'Apocalypse Dreams' I was even more excited. Why? Because they've kept that self-same energy that dominated and swept over previous outing Innerspeaker like a platinum tide of sun and ecstasy (n.b. feeling not drug). Have a listen:



It's a good thing this song is available for a free download because it is such a good song. It's a rich, luscious sound that still drips with all the psychedelic intensity of a bus ride through a desert under a deliciously empty blue sky. It's still very Beatles-esque, but it really isn't a bad thing: it's a brilliant thing.

At the 2:59 mark the song cuts off like a tape turning over and launches into wave after wave of flanging guitar madness in a glorious soundscape of chill. I don't know whose idea that was but it's a great bit of dynamism from a band who knows dynamism inside out. In all its effect-laden beauty, this song stands out as something that'll be floating around this summer like an electromagnetic wave of joy as a hot sun rolls around the land like a giant weeble. Everything about this song is perfect perfect perfect.

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• Here's Tame Impala's official site
• Here's their Wikipedia page
• Tame Impala on Myspace...
• Tame Impala's Facebook page
• Check out more of their stuff on SoundCloud
• Follow Tame Impala on Twitter
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THE FLAMING LIPS FEAT KE$HA 2012 (YOU MUST BE UPGRADED)

Watch out everyone: it's everyone else, and The Flaming Lips. It's an interesting one, because they've teamed up with a lot of other artists for their new album, from Tame Impala and Yoko Ono, to Neon Indian and Nick Cave, there's a lot of talent in the mix. The album is called The Flaming Lips And Heady Fwends and is out now.

An interesting song and the first single from the album is '2012 (You Must Be Upgraded)' featuring, bizarrely, Ke$ha. The song also features Biz Markie (not sure who he is so here's Wikipedia to help) and whoever the hell Hour Of The Time Majesty 12 is/are - strangely I found this whole spiel about Illuminati conspiracy fairytales when I searched for them/her/him/it: http://www.hourofthetime.com/majestyt.htm. Weird.

What is it with people and conspiracy theories?

...Anyway here is the song.



The Flaming Lips have always been a bit weird, or brave, whichever you like. With past songs like 'She Don't Like Jelly' and 'Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Part 1', there's definitely something different in the makeup of this psychedelic rock band for however long they've been going, like well over 20 years.

Both the band and Ke$ha herself have never done anything that sounds even remotely like '2012'. The stop-start rhythm of the drums and the brazenly brash buzzing synth that sounds like a snippet of a HEALTH song or something. Not only does Ke$ha's breathy, decadently slack and sultry voice fit perfectly with the slapdash distortion of the song, it also sounds perfect when saying lines like "Put me under your acid spell / Cause I want my mind to be completely toast". It's sharp and strong. Could be Sleigh Bells (thought it was when I first heard it). But then again it couldn't really be many people and listening back, it definitely sounds like Ke$ha.

Then there's this great breakdown in the song from about 2 minutes in to about 3:30. Gentle and floaty, it's just this vast synth swirling around as Ke$ha's vocal becomes more and more reverberated. Then the song whirls round and shoryukens whoever's listening to it as the crazy sawing of the original synth and the original beat swing back in like a meteor on a string.

It's different, it's quirky, it's brave as hell, it's got Ke$ha in it. It's brilliant.

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• The Flaming Lips official site
• They're on Wikipedia!
• They are also on Facebook
• And Twitter

• Here's Ke$ha's official site
• Here's her Facebook page
• And here's her mofo'ing Twitter
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THE INTEREST GROUP THE PASSENGER & THE BOYS AND THE GIRLS

Self-releasing things these days is the norm. Why not? It's a really simple way to connect with thousands of people very quickly. There's no use messing about with a record label or a PR company, or both, if what you want to do is get your sounds out there as quickly as possible.

As such, wild Philadelphian soft rockers The Interest Group are joining the self-doers, musical polymaths who all think that do-it-yourself does it best: they have released a two-song EP (I suppose) on both their Bandcamp and SoundCloud pages. It's called ∞. Infinity? Infinity sign? Either way, it doesn't matter.

They seem to have found a bridge somewhere in the world that spans the gap between now and the psychedelic freewheelers of the late 1960s. From the sounds of it, they frequent this temporal crossing quite often, revelling in beauty of it. They basically sound like this picture above.

'The Passenger' soars as a kind of melancholic Nancy Sinatra-esque airship above any kind of modern sound. Complete with guitar sounds straight from a spaghetti Western, not only does this song scream Americana, but it also whispers darker, more sombre themes. 'The Girls And The Boys', on the other hand, is a little more sunny, starting with a chaotic intro that makes it seem as if a surf rock song is coming along. However, what ensues is a Jefferson Airplane-meets-lo-fi-Beatles chill-out of a song - from the washed-out vocals to the poppy bassline, it's a soft, cushiony song that presents less hard edges than 'The Passenger'.

Get to know. Can't wait for more songs. The enigma of The Interest Group will reveal itself soon!



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• The Interest Group on SoundCloud
• Here's their Bandcamp page
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BEAK> BEAK>

I had no idea that this band even existed, the UK-based BEAK>, until a couple of days ago. More to the point, I had no idea that it was formed and is fronted by Geoff Barrow from Portishead. Why? I have no idea - I guess if you don't look you don't find.

So I had a wee listen to their 2009 self-titled debut album and was super impressed at the way everything sounded - raw and energetic, but well-produced and polished at the same time. It's a kind of minimal mix of strong bass mixed with erratic beats that all provide foundations for washed-out vocals, harsh effect-laden whipped-up guitars and other ambient sounds that all provide for a pretty majestic experience, I've gotta say.

It runs through all sorts of genres, from the wonderful pure synthtastic electro of opener 'Backwell' to the psyched-out ambient dub of 'Ears Have Ears'. The psychedelic grunge post-rock spook-fest that is 'Ham Green' comes out of nowhere and fills the air with real crunchy bass some ethereal just-in-earshot yelling and a lovely bit of heavily phased guitar solo madness towards the end. It's that sound that you can't get away from though, that triumphantly energetic atmosphere that seems too good to be true.

But it is true. Geoff Barrow and bandmates Billy Fuller and Matt Williams recorded the album "live in one room with no overdubs or repair, only using edits to create arrangements." So that's how they get that amazing sound, like you're listening to a live take - BECAUSE IT IS ONE. All the songs were also written in Bristol during a 12 day period, meaning that this band just goes up and up in my estimation - there's a lot of talent here. Even the pure noise of 'Barrow Gurney' is cool to listen to, acting as a scuzzy introduction to the chilled and gentle lounge chants of 'The Cornubia'; yes, they sure know how to create a dynamic.

The album ends on strangely dystopian tribal electro vibe, it becoming the final echo you hear before the music fizzles out - its first half cries with beats and bass, the second is bristling with harsh experimental electronic noise, reverb and distortion flying around until the last second.

But the stand-out track, for me, is the understated buzzing fly presence of 'I Know'. Carried through to its end by a galloping skiffly sped-up hip-hop beat, this is the perfect song to put you in a daze and keep you there - it's very easy to lose track of time listening to this song. There are some wonderful Ian Curtis-esque vocals skulking in the background that drop quietly with the bass that provides the beef for this brilliant song.

So, as you can tell, this is definitely worth a listen. And being the nice guy that I am, I've shared the album below, along with the track listing. Enjoy these sultry sounds.

1. Backwell - 06:14
2. Pill - 05:34
3. Ham Green - 06:27
4. I Know - 05:01 (could've been 0:30 - could've been 10:43)
5. Battery Point - 07:10
6. Ears Have Ears - 04:22
7. Iron Acton - 05:00
8. Blagdon Lake - 04:43
9. Barrow Gurney - 02:01
10. The Cornubia - 04:00
11. Dundry Hill - 07:37
12. Flax Bourton - 02:49



• Check BEAK> on Bandcamp
• And also on Myspace
• And here's their little Wikipedia page

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