This week we’ve got a particularly unique bunch of new releases that I’m really excited about. Ed Tullett put forth a home-recorded hors d’oeuvre to his upcoming remastered full-length, Inspired & the Sleep transport us to edgy SoCal, Teen Daze take us on an inward journey featuring nature and electronica and Prince Rama give us a glimpse of the post-apocalyptic music scene. Sheesh, these musician-folk always seem to keep us guessing, huh?
Max Greenhalgh, the man behind San Diego’s Inspired & the Sleep (@insprdandtheslp), says that he loves music which has “a strong, interesting groove.” By the sound of it, he’s well on his way to mastering the art of creating such a thing. The band’s music (I’d call it lo-fi tropical pop?) is littered with weird, wonderful rhythms filled in with scratchy vocals, ukulele, piano, and electronics. I love it when music sounds specific to the place it originates, and this stuff does; there’s an unmistakably pseudo-punk southern Californian sound to it. It’ll give you beach vibes without the cutesyness and playful punk vibes that don’t weigh down the sound one bit. Inspired & the Sleep’s first full-length, Teenager., is out this week on Bad Panda Records. It’s only $1 on Bandcamp — I highly recommend you jump on that.
It seems that a whole sub-genre of organic, ethereal folk emerged after the 2008 release of Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago. The melancholic music has sparse percussion, lots of strings, lots of falsetto voicing, and eerily cryptic and broken lyrics. Ed Tullett (@edtullett), a nineteen-year-old from the UK, is already distinguishing himself as a prominent artist in this area. In 2011, he single-handedly produced and released his first LP, Never Joy. The album has since been remastered and comes out again on December 4th. In the meantime, Tullett has offered us a gem of an EP entitled Trawl (released via Hype Music). The overall sound is mellow and gorgeous, with an attention to musical nuances which rivals that of artists ten years his senior. It’s a great little fall album, as well as an exciting primer for Tullett’s upcoming full-length.
In early June, Vancouver’s Teen Daze (@teendaze) released their third full-length album, entitled All Of Us, Together. It received lukewarm reviews, with one critic even calling it “just computer music with no soul.” The band, believing their music had been sold short, immediately began on a new album, employing an entirely different release method than before: having no interviews and no tour, and putting all of the songs online for streaming. The music itself was to be the main focus.
This album is beautiful. It was formed in a way that dramatizes a spiritual catharsis of sorts. Mostly instrumental and completely euphoric, the songs feature a rare dichotomy of nature and electronics. The overall effect is simple and refreshing.
I’m just gonna go ahead and say it — this album is straight-up amazing. When I first read about the concept a few months ago, I threw a tiny fit of euphoria because it is just that cool. Brooklyn’s Prince Rama (@PrinceRama2012) created Top Ten Hits of the End of the World as a nod to the impending 2012 apocalypse. It’s a compilation in which the members of Prince Rama channel the ghosts belonging to ten bands that died when the world ended. The album spans many genres, each band having background information as to their music and legacy. The fact that one band can create such a varied array of musical styles is a testament to their immense knowledge and talent.
The single off the album, “So Destroyed,” is by a ’90s group called Rage Peace, forerunners of a youth movement with the same name. The band was known for their frequent acts of violence and vandalization; their music a bubbly representation of their dark objective.
