On ”best from the inbox” we gather a couple of standout tracks submitted to us via email directly from the artist/band or a small imprint. Please give them a chance to break through the waves by listening, sharing your opinion and if you like what you here, by showing your support here or directly to the artists.
MISUN – SUPERSTITIONS
After countless tracks and EPs – rainging from beat-heavy electro-pop, 60’s Motown, to crude garage rock – prolific and stylistically diverse LA band Misun will release their debut album on November 11. “Superstitions” is its bounce, erratic – and absolutely sublime – first single.
Ludvig Moon – Swim Dream
Ludvig Moon’s Anders Killerud sent me an e-mail with their first EP featuring the grand, beautifully orchestrated “Swim Dream”. You can find their debut EP on bandcamp or buy it through Riot Factory (Rallye Label in Japan)
Sean O’Neill – I Know You Worry
“I Know You Worry” is the final track off Australian minimalistic/experimental folk musician Sean O’Neill’s Visions EP (out now) Recorded at Hackney’s Urchin Studios with Dan Cox (Thurston Moore, Lianne La Havas), the bio describes Sean as heavily influenced by his time spent living London as well as delving deep into the works of various minimalist composers including Arvo Part, Brian Eno and Phillip Glass. Improvisation played a key role while recording, with the three tracks also featuring intricate additions from some of the capital’s rising avant-garde and jazz musicians.
Mary Caroline – Such A Liar
Mary Caroline wrote me that:
“My debut studio album attempts to capture the edginess and beauty of my northern life, forging my own path in the remote wilds of the Northwest Territories. Over the past few years I’ve been busy touring extensively throughout Canada. I also spent time living in a remote trapper’s cabin on the shores of the Liard River, 600km from the community of Yellowknife. Here I learned about the old trapping lifestyle, sustenance living and arctic gardening.
In order to achieve what I wanted for this album, I removed myself from those familiar surroundings and spent this past summer recording at Hamilton, Ontario’s converted church studio Catherine North.”
Mary Caroline’s debut album Life on Earth is due out January 2015.
Toph Allen – Limits
Toph Allen wrote me the following;
” In the daytime, I’m a scientist — an epidemiologist. I work at a nonprofit in NYC, where I analyze data and build computer models to understand emerging infectious diseases. At night, I’m an electronic producer/songwriter.
I grew up in a musical household and played the violin throughout my childhood. I’ve been tinkering with electronic music since I’ve had my own computer, incrementally building a working knowledge of music production. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, though—I think that’s why it took me a while till I was pleased enough with my music to release something.
My strongest musical influences are probably in the realm of instrumental electronica. In particular: I aspire to Röyksopp’s crisp, punchy production. Jon Hopkins’s too. Artists like Nils Frahm and Max Richter do so much with stark, minimal compositions. I love the way that Boards of Canada uses interesting distortion to build atmosphere, and I love wordless music that takes you on an emotional journey, like Sigur Rós and Explosions in the Sky. But that stuff is just a small, biased selection of the music I love—there’s too much to mention, from pop to folk to EDM, it all shapes what I do.
The first single, “Limits,” opens with spare synths that conjure a balearic dreamscape—one that vies for space with, and is eventually subsumed by, foreboding, jagged arpeggios of dystopian synthesizer. It forms the emotive core of the Path Dependence EP.”