SINGAPORE : I'm Waking Up To... Obedient Wives Club - Murder Kill Baby Oh the glorious fuzz! Obedient Wives Club take their self-styled Spectorgaze (remember this kids!) to all new heights with the release of their Murder Kill Baby EP. What awaits is the throwback-to-saccharine 60s girl-band inspired pop paired with an almost manic dose of fuzzed out backwash that only the evilest of musical geniuses would dare tread upon. Don't let any of [...]
The cover art of her debut album kinda casts Jessie Ware as a modern-day lady in satin, and Devotion backed that perception rather nicely. No other album in 2012 sounded as poised or as stylishly rendered as Devotion , and the smoldering sophistication Ware projects is wonderfully distilled through her songs. Mid-tempo soul balladry mesh seamlessly with flutters of dreamy electronic music made for the floor, as Ware and her musical collaborators put the finishing touches to an entrancing pop album full of smoky restraint and subtle inventions. - Keith . [...]
While I waited for The XX's Coexist to match the minimalist thrills of their debut album, and as I pondered why I still lifted my skinny fists to Godspeed You! Black Emperor's Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend despite its (glorious) predictableness, I discovered an album that struck a darker and colder atmosphere than the former, with all the devastating inclinations of the latter: Raime's Quarter Turns Over a Living Line is a tense, terrifying excursion of brutal ardour, casting a post-industrial gloom over much of anything I've been listening to this year. [...]
Perhaps Nocturne is the atmospheric pop opus that Wild Nothing has been building up to ever since Jack Tatum’s winsome debut Gemini turned up in 2010. For his sophomore album, Tatum taps into an echo chamber of dark, subterranean pop nostalgia that lulls the listener into false paradises without ever losing grip of the songs’ melodic vitality. Nocturne thrives on that sort of ephemera and obscure objects of memory that are miraculously transmitted — only in dreams. - Keith . [...]
Philosophers, pimps and pale kings may argue for the better angels of our nature, but riled-up septuagenarian Bob Dylan is having none of that shit. His 35th studio album Tempest drips with tales of carnage, Shakespearean vengeance and unrequited desires — not to mention a winding 14-minute title track that deconstructs the Titanic sinking in surreal details. The death-obsessed landscapes Dylan paints are no country for old men, yet Tempest bears the true grit of a grizzled survivor’s defiance in the face of mortality: The more I die, the more I live . [...]
Under the overwhelming weight of an audacious album title like America , Dan Deacon has found an inexplicable spontaneity in a most exuberantly arranged pop record. The diverse connotations that America conjures is merely a foil for Deacon's free-ranging creation of a world of density, expansiveness and childlike joy. The pace is blisteringly ADHD, with surprises at each corner flowing comfortably into each other. It's addictive fun - just don't read too much into it, and enjoy the ride for what it is. - Dan . [...]
Arriving five years since his last full-length record, I Know What Love Isn't from Jens Lekman is certainly well worth the wait, an enchanting breakup album so good it deserves its own manic pixie dream girl. In his songs, Lekman has seldom shied away from self-deprecation and lightheaded moments of vulnerability. I Know What Love Isn't takes it a few steps further in revealing all the hallmarks of a hopeless romantic, brimming over with its rumination on heartbreak and love’s memories — or as Jens sings it, it’s all a bit like learning to [...]
SINGAPORE : I'm Waking Up To... .gif - Diatribe .gif embodies the illusion of data passing off as real-life moving images by giving us an electronic amalgamation of observatory life with shades of melancholy, hope and resolution. While usually accompanied by ukulele, Weish finds the embrace of warm textures courtesy of Din, with synthesizers and beat arrangements assembling base emotions into the soul of a machine. - Brian . [...]
Adventures in Your Own Backyard , the homespun fourth album by Patrick Watson , finds the Canadian singer-songwriter and his bandmates expanding their joint creative discipline in the confines of their home studio. The result is a set of handcrafted songs that manage to sound intimate in spite of the somewhat mercurial quality of the musical arrangements. The waltzing grandeur of Adventures in Your Own Backyard bears the distinctive traits of Watson's songwriting, yet the languorous song material chugs along with a confidence that infuses the album with a sense of discovery in every melodic detail. [...]
I know we haven't been the most regular in writing this year. But the year-end review is something we'd never let go, so look out for our take on the best releases this year. Thanks for sticking with us. The appended artwork for Actress ' R.I.P is an an evocative accompaniment to the album, with Eve Ackroyd's charcoal rendition of a hand feeling for yet blending into the textured painting serving as an apt interpretation of how Darren Cunningham immerses himself into the multifarious layers that make up his music. [...]
SINGAPORE : I'm Waking Up To... Galactica - Saul's Tighs In a little-known recess in Singapore's music scene, there existed a group of science fiction aficionados with a common love for the space odyssey Battlestar Galactica. They went on to write some dreamily-inspired shoegaze with titles such as Saul's Tighs and Gaius Is Crying... Again, referencing series characters Colonel Saul Tigh and Dr Gaius Baltar. While the concept is an inside joke, the music [...]
I finally caught the Andy Warhol: 15 Minutes Eternal exhibition at the Art/Science Museum last weekend. Presented in a strictly chronological and unapologetically didatic approach, the exhibition served as a well-charted primer to Warhol's work through the years. There was something magical about viewing his early commercial work, his rudimentary but precisely transferred blotted lines anticipating his impending factory-produced pop art statements. But I found his later works somewhat devoid of that cutting edge, as if he ironically ended up mass producing and reproducing his established aesthetic, almost labouriously. I did, however, find myself mesmerised at the middle [...]
Divine Fits , the new project fronted by Spoon's Britt Daniel and Dan Boeckner (former member of Wolf Parade and Handsome Furs, both bands now defunct), is an amalgam of the two's shared musical ethos, all tightly-wound pop hooks and raw energy. Their perfectly executed cover of "Shivers", a song originally performed by The Boys Next Door (the teenaged incarnation of The Birthday Party featuring Nick Cave, Mick Harvey and Rowland S Howard), operates on a propulsive pulse that draws inevitable comparisons to Britt’s main band that we long admired. So yes, as much as it sounds unscripted, the song’s [...]
SINGAPORE : I'm Waking Up To... FAUXE - Be My Love A mysterious force has been brewing in Singapore, bubbling beneath the shiny veneer of saturated city lights. The glitchy imperfections of static haunt the corridors of abandoned buildings, a sign of life from androids realising self-awareness. FAUXE leads a charge into this unknown realm, stirring up quite the storm with his debut EP Ubuntu and letting his music trickle down your window panes [...]
Me? I'm getting better everyday . I was revisiting one of my favourite Jim O'Rourke albums this week, and was surprised at how well, albeit quietly, the popping and rocking Insignificance has aged through the years. In "Therefore, I am", the driving opening riffs sound like they've never stopped since they were first recorded more than a decade ago, while the pop harmonies that gave the song its richness sound even brighter than before. That's what I said, don't believe what you heard. But I never know whether to take O'Rourke [...]
I can’t wait to listen to Love This Giant , the album-length collaboration between David Byrne and St. Vincent which will be out sometime next month. The band’s third album Strange Mercy (2011), a collection of kaleidoscopic art-damaged songs, is still on heavy rotation of course, and last weekend’s Summer Sonic 2012 festival in Japan provided us with the chance to get acquainted with the evolving music and lead singer Annie Clark’s intense stage performances. The mannered chamber pop of her debut Marry Me (2007) is a distant memory, ceding to [...]
Aya Sekine was brought to my attention after we received the mailer from the awesome folk at Syndicate that she would be featured alongside Pleasantry's Isa Ong who will be performing as Sleep Easy the next installment of Syndicate's Subsessions. Curious, I decided to take a gander at what awaited us this Saturday. Aya Sekine plays beautiful jazz improvisations on her piano and keyboards. I probably didn't realise, but I'd heard her play at the Blu Jaz cafe / bar, and I was always impressed by the music I was hearing as it [...]
SINGAPORE : I'm Waking Up To... MUON - Aqua Assault The muon is an elementary particle similar to an electron. MUON is also a musical entity that exists in Singapore, whether as one person (Nick Chan) or more (currently, Jordan, Ren and Adam). Despite its varying states of existence, MUON's music is rather akin to its sub-atomic namesake with its deconstruction of pedantic structures, but also as intelligent, intense and cryptic aural and visual [...]
i'm waking up to...
listen to Ghost cover Depeche Mode's "Waiting for the Night"
Disclosure – When A Fire Starts To Burn
New Sound // “Better Off” // Quadron featuring Kendrick Lamar
Luce, Silvia Capasso: testo e video della finalista di The Voice of Italy
