
Yndi Halda It's not often that one gets the opportunity to praise not one, but TWO British bands in the same review. With our nation's tendency to churn out quavery-voiced folksters, derivative indie-rockers and Shoreditch oxygen-wasters with depressing regularity, it's a delight to be able to wax lyrical about two UK acts who buck the trend by being really rather good. Birmingham six-piece Shady Bard are purveyors of luscious orchestral post-rock; a beguiling brew of French horn, trumpet, strings and piano that at turns delights with its subtlety, and rouses with its grandeur. Drawing [...]
Sorry I forgot to post this on Sunday! RULES for uninitiated noobs : With roughly 100MB of webspace, I give birth to a weekly Mix Tape to be deposited on your iPods or Zunes or Kingklangs or whatever the industry is currently pushing on you. Sometimes there will be themes that link all the songs together, other times I'll just throw songs at a wall (not literally) and see what sticks. This week includes a couple live cuts (Will Oldham, Yndi Halda), and a bunch of randomly selected tunes. The final track was recorded by [...]
Hi everybody! I've got nothing else to say! I'm in the middle of a frustrating work week, while everybody else i know is either away for a few days or relaxing at home. This should be an eventful week, though. Ken and kT are visiting, there are some great shows upcoming, and...uh...that's about it I guess. I'll have something more interesting to blog about after another open-to-close shift at work tomorrow. And I'm sure I won't at all sound depressed and/or acid-tongued. RULES for uninitiated noobs : With roughly 100MB of webspace, I give birth to [...]

The following pictures are from my Grandfather's collection from when he went overseas as a young Marine. All photos scanned and uploaded by my brother Steven... Bombay School of Emotional Engineering - Slicing the Skin Between My Toes Bombay Yndi Halda - We Flood Empty Lakes [...]
The Godspeed You! Black Emperor School of Thought Like Explosions in the Sky, GY!BE has amassed a massive following. So much so that they were even name-dropped in the recent film Pineapple Express. Unfortunately though, any time someone hears a long instrumental song with a string section these days, they immediately pose the question "Is that [...]
I used to go bowling with my father a lot when I was younger. He is one of those forty-plus-year-olds who work a 9-5 job all week (most Saturdays, too) and then go bowling on Sunday mornings with friends. It's one of his few opportunities to do something human. When I was a youngster, a morning spent with my dad and his friends was a vacation. They talked dirty and smoked a lot of cigarettes. This was in the days when bowling alleys only allowed scoring by hand. As I sat and watched the old men bowl, playing with my [...]

For those of you who enjoy a bit of post-rock from time to time, be sure to check out Canterbury's Yndi Halda . Last year's 4 track EP Enjoy Eternal Bliss was no small affair: over an hour of epic build-ups, climaxes and dénouements with themes running through all four pieces. A (rare) live gig back in June took place at London's Barbican Centre ( the largest multi-arts centre in Europe) and the band took advantage of the opportunity to present some new, unreleased material at the show and also ran through all the [...]

Trust me, this is the future now... Sylvain Chauveau + Felicia Atkinson Experimental / Minimalist / Electroacoustic the constant skeptic says: "the track Aberdeen is haunting, experimental, and ephemeral... I zoned out on the highway and listened to it on my IPOD in traffic towards Washington dc circa 5am on a Tuesday.... countries, city names, and ghosts haunt the track and memories creep up from nowhere into this space-time from upper dimensional clouds.... I think God, Allah, Jack Kerouac, and Buddha must [...]

Remember when we used to go on field trips in school and hustle kids from other schools at The Movie Game? Or when we took a blasé History 101 course at the University of Vermont and filled entire notebooks with line after line of names and films? Remember how we played the Kevin Bacon game before the book came out, when we still had to link people to him through films like Planes Trains and Automobiles , Diner , and Flatliners ? A cinema-obsessed childhood often means an unhealthy amount of movie trivia knowledge. I [...]
There are two videos I'd like to talk about today. That's all I've got, really. I'll try to at least make my commentary wordy and intelligent, to make up for the fact that I am relying on outside sources for this content. Both of the following came up in conversation this afternoon while I was hanging out in Echo Park with Steve and Nick. I think we spent much more time debating the first one, while I only brought up the second one in passing. Either way, please enjoy and by all means, share any reactions. Don't just copy this [...]

Funfunfun received some electronic mail the other day from the guys at the wonderful UK label Big Scary Monsters , who are home to bands like Secondsmile, Meet Me In St Louis, Jeniferever, Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly and many more, telling me about t wo of the newer bands on their rosters, one i'd heard of and one i hadn't. Yndi Halda are a 5-piece from "The Garden Of England" (a.k.a Kent) and create some beautifully epic and colourful [...]

Yndi Halda is a five-piece post-rock outfit from Canturbury, UK. They create a wide range of emotions through their wordless masterpieces. Their tragically short EP Enjoy Eternal Bliss captures an inherent sense of optimism and at the same time creates images of desolate landscapes. This is definitely a band for those who enjoy groups such as This Will Destroy You and Explosions In The Sky . MP3: Yndi Halda - Illuminate My Heart, My Darling! [...]
My monthly ten-track playlist exclusive to artists in the United Kingdom is now available for your listening pleasure. This edition has some good stuff from multiple genres, including a new track from Pete Doherty's Babyshambles , a newly-interpreted version of The Beatles ' "Strawberry Fields Forever" from the upcoming release of Love , the downtempo work of Zero 7 , the "folktronica" of Four Tet , and a nearly twelve minute long epic post-rock track from Yndi Halda , which is Eddic for "Enjoy Eternal Bliss." Available in [...]