obligatory top ten (in no particular order)

testbild! – une teinte intense (friendly noise)

goldmund – two point discrimination (western vinyl)

elegi – sistereis (miasmah)

epic45 – may your heart be the map (makeminemusic)

gultskra artikler – kasha iz topora (miasmah)

helios – ayers (type)

greg haines – slumber tides (miasmah)

port-royal – afraid to dance (resonant)

innocence mission – we walked in song (badman)

stars of the lid – and their refinement of the decline (kranky)

i would also like to mention:

peter broderick – retreat/release 7″ (type)

james blackshaw – the cloud of unknowing (tompkins square)

pants yell! – alison statton (soft abuse)

the hepburns – something worth stealing (radio khartoum)

you’ll notice my affinity for all things miasmah. they really are a wonderful label. i might keep adding to this as the hours pass. there’s so much left to hear that i feel bad to name just these few (umm..quite a few actually).

tidbits

here are a few things that i’ve come across that are very much worth your while:

fireflies – xmas song

…this a link to a song off the new fireflies album, goodnight stars, goodnight moon, which i will tell you much more about in the next week or so. expect to read words like “lovely”, “bedroom”, and “laying on your back in an open field with a gentle breeze ruffling your shirt.” this free mp3 comes courtesy of lavender recordings.

remington super 60 – merry christmas ep

…excellent christmas ep by a fantastic yet little known group that has released music on Radio Khartoum (see link in sidebar on the right), one of the best record labels in these united states. four songs of winter magic to keep your ears warm as you cosy up next to the fire with your hot chocolate. merry christmas to you, remington super 60.

celestial – last day of summer ep

…this is a wonderful (and free) ep by celestial, who has released a great debut album on skipping stones records entitled Dream On. the songs on this record are remixes of tracks on the debut record, which you should no doubt pick up as we speak. i should’ve posted this ages ago as it doesn’t fit in with the festive mood of the two other items, but regardless, these are great songs for any season, particularly on the last day of summer.

sjoberg vs. testbild!

this will be the last youtube video that i post. it’s funny, you could spend hours on that site and not know where the time went. i don’t want to fill this blog up with videos galore because i intended for this to be much more focused on the written word, but i came across victor sjoberg and elisabet sjokvist reinterpreting testbild!. it is awe-inspiring to say the least. if someone could let me know which song this is supposed to resemble, let me know, because it sounds nothing at all like testbild!

 

FYN 62

here is the video for rondo by the most valuable players. the song is part of a single released as a free mp3 on friendly noise, which i discussed below. i didn’t mention this release as part of my entry but it has grown on me alot. i’ll have to investigate them further but this is an excellent tune, with an ever-changing rhythm and a groovy synth. this is perfect for those cool winter nights when your driving around downtown looking for a place to go to, only to find that you end up staying in your car until the song has finished playing. most valuable players have released an album entitled “you in honey” and this is their first new material in two years. there isn’t much news or info from their website but check out their myspace page HERE.

through one door and out another

my view on myspace could be categorized as tempestuous; by this i mean, i have alot of qualms about how people think it should be used as opposed to what it’s intended use should have been. i just signed up the other day and yet sassyflirt and sexyready have already investigated my profile and sent me messages. every day, it seems i read about people who thrive on getting the most “friends” as if it’s some high achievement, and it’s almost become a necessary manufactured stepping-stone for success. lately, what i’ve been finding, and the main reason why i even started a page, is that the good outweighs the bad.

for instance, and what i’m going to say will seem quite obvious, i am a big fan of alistair fitchett’s unpopular blog, as you can tell by the link on the right. well, one day i’m reading his page and he mentions a band by the name of ‘moscow olympics’. my eyes adjust, yes i am a fan of orange juice as well, this band might be something worth checking out. i google. i find their myspace page. i listen, it’s excellent. i love blueboy, northern picture library, and the wake, obviously, so do moscow olympics. i look at their friends listed below the music player. i find a band named ‘fireflies’. this interests me greatly. ever since i used to travel into the mountains when i was younger with my family, i’ve been fascinated by fireflies. who wouldn’t be? when my sister and i would explore out behind our cabin to a shallow creek and walk through splashing our feet at the stubborn rocks, looking for crayfish, often we’d see blotches of light traveling in circles like little stars (you know that if you lay on your back perfectly still and stare at a star for a long period of time, it will shake back and forth ever so slightly). when i asked my parents what those blotches were, they came up with the name: fireflies. what else could they have been named? back to the present. i arrive at the myspace page for fireflies and i listen. it is brilliant. i love 60’s pop, maurice deebank, the much-missed band on earworm called screen prints, soft-sung vocals with lo-fi symphonic orchestration, songs about love, loss, and nature. i instantly love fireflies. this is how myspace interests me.

the song i hear from the fireflies page is called ‘we heard the fireworks’ and it was glorious. i tell myself that i must get in contact with the person or persons making this wonderful music. i email. i get a reply instantly. lisle mitnik is fireflies. lisle(pictured below) is a very generous man and sends me ‘the forest’, an album recorded years ago that is absolutely splendid. ‘the forest’ is made up of ten songs, each with a title or theme that is somehow eco-related. this does not mean, however, that this album is some folky pagan ode to nature, on the other hand, it’s an album of personal songs sung with a delicate vocal with ornate guitar lines and lo-fi orchestration.

when i listened to the first few songs, i was so awash with nostalgia i had to start the record over. have you ever had that feeling? it’s like your listening to a record; it sounds nice, maybe you smile, but something just clicks and suddenly an intense feeling just overwhelms you and you have to begin the record again. when i got to ‘your secret code’ i immediately thought of my sister and i walking along the creek. once or twice, we’d stop to skip a rock or two across the water. the crayfish weren’t always easy to find, they’d hide under the grimy rocks that you’d have to upturn; it was like sticking your hand into a dark box where, you never knew what you’d come up with. the other songs on the album are just as powerful, albeit in subtle ways. ‘the longest ride home’ is wonderfully orchestrated and quite uplifting, even as mitnik sings in his hushed vocals: “i still can’t love you, but i’ll try”. this theme is predominant throughout, where, given the delicate and heartbreaking nature of the lyrics, the music that surrounds it gives the words hope so all does not seem lost.

fireflies has just released an album via lavender recordings called “goodnight stars, goodnight moon” and an ep entitled “snowstorm” on twentyseven records, both of which i haven’t heard yet but i’m sure would be on my year-end list.

 

…and i’ve got to be free

every month, friendly noise delivers a treat on their webpage: a free mp3 release. now, i’m not one of those people that hangs around file-sharing services and milks them for every penny (not spent). i believe in the notion that you should pay for your music simply because that is the way you support the arts. the bands and artists we love create music for the omnipresent public and we, in turn, return the favor by helping them stay afloat to continue creating music. it’s worked for many years and it should continue to work this way. the artists and bands i refer to are not the ones that sell thousands and thousands of albums a month, instead, most of the music i listen to is from people who are, in most cases, just scraping to get by. these are the bands and artists that very much need our support and we shouldn’t diminish our role in this relationship simply because the option to get the music for free exists. with that being said, if a label offers me free, exclusive tracks by bands and artists that interest me, who am i to argue with them?

so, friendly noise offers a free mp3 release each month and just recently, i’ve gone through and downloaded every single one of them. to begin with, there were some artists i was already familiar with such as testbild! (of course), action biker, peter jackson (of differnet), radio dept., and differnet, so, naturally, these were the first releases i snatched up. it comes as no surprise then that all of their contributions are very much worth your while. testbild! continues to impress with two tracks of exquisite bizarro beauty. “Dedicated to Therese Holm” ambles along at a brisk pace with a slow-churning accordion for quiet contemplation. “En gång i Stockholm” features a jazzy synth with both female and male harmonies to produce an excellent number. radio dept. cover “Bachelor Kisses” written by the much-missed grant mclennan, which is good but i’ll always return to the original. one artist i hadn’t heard of was redmalm (pictured below), which proved to be one of the more interesting releases. recalling some of the experimental stuff released by Type Records, whom i do love dearly, redmalm produces some excellent electronic music with two instrumental epics called “The Bravest Person I Know” and “Things and Thoughts”. i tried to find more about him recently and came across a new ep of his released on Starving But Happy.

i would also also remiss if i didn’t mention the solitary musings of jian, who features on two songs of refined folk, and enheten for musik och melodi with their morricone bossa flourishes and big band style waltzes.

do yourself a favor. pay a visit.

the inexplicable feeling of testbild!

in keeping with my fascination for all things friendly noise, i most certainly wouldn’t be able to say much without mentioning testbild!

as mentioned in my previous post, i’ve written at length about their work before. testbild! manage to craft lovely songs that would melt any self-affirmed sunshine-heart, but it’s their ominous sense of dread that hangs over alot of their work that really sets them apart. ‘dread’ might be too strong a word, but there’s an unsettling presence weaving through their work. i’m not sure if there’s too many artists that can devise songs that can be played on the brightest sunday morning or the coldest winter night, but testbild! must have this dichotomy in mind while writing their songs. each record by testbild! conjures up something completely different for the listener; their new one, entitled Une Teinte Intense, is no exception in this matter. moving even further away from some of the post-punk, fast-paced work of their earlier material to an almost-prog spiritual adventure through “moorish cafes” and Islamic temples, Une Teinte Intense manages to delight and bemuse at every opportunity.

from what i’ve read about the album, testbild! took their inspiration from isabelle eberhardt, who, upon checking wikipedia, got fed up with societal norms (who wouldn’t), liberated herself from the confines of those same norms, and embarked on a spiritual journey. she died quite young, but not before dressing as a man, converting to an obscure form of islam, and travelling through africa among many other places. this inspiration becomes abundantly clear after listening to the album, not only because of the few snippets of a french female voice scattered throughout, but the music evokes arabic instrumentation and song titles such as “Maghreb” surely tell you we are in foreign territory.

from what they say on their website, testbild! have four projects they’re working on right now, and, they have an album that Radio Khartoum has been threatening to release for some time entitled The Lolita Wagner Case; to say testbild! are busy is quite the understatement.

stay tuned for the next installment where i delve even further into the friendly noise universe…

(best) Friendly Noise

lately, i’ve been enthralled by a small swedish label called Friendly Noise
a year ago i wrote a review about a band named Testbild!. the record, Imagine A House, was extremely lovely but carried with it a sense of the macabre, giving the songs a strange dichotomy i’ve not heard in all my years. you can find that review Here.

fast forward to now and i’m finally in the midst of exploring this mighty fine record label. i got in touch with the label with the intention of writing a review of one of their newer records, in turn they sent me Differnet’s Collapsing Universe. when it arrived i put it aside to listen to when i got a chance (as a side note i must admit i’ve been very busy these past few months and lost track of this release and label). recently, Friendly Noise released two records i’ve been eagerly awaiting to hear: The Dreamers’ Day For Night and Testbild!’s latest, Une Teinte Intense. falling back into my radar, i remembered the Differnet release and set out to find it…

tucked under some papers, bills, and books was a strange looking cd case. on the cover, instead of the artist’s name and the title of the album we have a generous amount of coffee beans. what, you may ask, do coffee have to do with the phrase ‘Collapsing Universe’? how are the two connected? this is just the question i started out with as i began listening to the album (on another side note, has anyone done a record sleeve with scratch and sniff artwork? if any record is deserving of this honor, it’s this one). the vague yet whimsical description accompanying the album seemed perfectly apt, i almost felt like supplementing that in place of whatever i’m writing here. as the record starts, with an organic look into a busy corner compete with spacial plucking of a guitar( a bit reminiscent of the first track off The Montgolfier Brothers’ second record, The World is Flat) and the din of buses and cars and bees(..yes!), the song immediately shifts into an electro-industrial setting. the clash carries on further with the voice of a woman declaring in a robotic voice, “My part is over.” the cacophony of synths “collapse” into a song that moves at a pace that suggests New Order trying to emulate the rich industrial landscape of Eraserhead. Thus begins a record that, i believe, concerns itself with the slow, inevitable decline of organic life, composed by people who have clearly struggled with the importance and reliance upon technological devices. Differnet is aware of what the world will eventually look like and tries to stress the finer points of beauty found in the cracks of this computer age.

on “savage”(a cover of a Eurythmics song), Differnet use a million bleeps and blips, sampled percussion, all thrown on top of one another to create a symphonic clash. this aspect of worlds colliding, or even the whole idea of a collapsing universe, is quite evident in how certain songs reach a climax or a boiling point where instruments are pitted against each other, and the result is a struggle between what will eventually win out and what will fall by the wayside. Mixed throughout is the wistful, ethereal voice of anna-karin brus, which brings a balance to the rough world the music paints for us. all in all, another great release from Friendly Noise.

tune in next time where i continue writing about the friendly noise establishment.

onwards…

 

hello. what you’ve stumbled upon is  another music blog. bear with me. my name is michael and i’ve spent most of my life with music. alot of what i listen to simply doesn’t get the recognition it deserves.what i intend to do is shed some light on music i come across and share it with you. i will try my hardest to keep this focused on music and not self-indulgent ramblings i’ve been prone to stoop to.