Dark Wave

New Album Release Fridays: Trentemøller – ‘All Too Soon’

February 11, 2022 — Leave a comment
Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘Memoria’ (LP) (Released on February 11th, 2022) (via In My Room Records)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time to get through the last few hours of your tiresome working week with the aid of yet another daily track of the blog of the ‘New Album Release Fridays’ variety, given how it has always been my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of new music every day! One of today’s most eventful album releases comes from Trentemoller, a Danish film score creator, producer and multi-instrumentalist from Copenhagen, Denmark who has released lush compositions of a cinematic style for over 20 years now by drawing on elements such as Minimalism, Glitch, Dark Wave, Downtempo, Instrumental Hip-Hop, Synthwave, Post-Rock and more with productions that feel eerie and progressive for his grounded discography. Trentemoller started making music in the 90’s as a part of different Indie Rock projects and he has since founded his own label – In My Room Records. He also headlined the Orange Stage at Roskilde Festival in 2009 with a set designed by his close friend and touring drummer Henrik Vibskov, a night that saw him playing in front of 60,000 people with innovative visuals to captivate them. Today, he is releasing his sixth full-length studio album – ‘Memoria’ – via his own label. This is the follow-up LP to 2019’s ‘Obverse’, a record that was nominated for IMPALA’s European Independent Album Of The Year award of that same year and it also saw him collaborate with Warpaint’s Jenny Lee Linberg and Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell. For one of his latest singles – ‘All Too Soon’ – he has reached out to his own girlfriend Lisbet Fritze for a glistening series of radiant backing vocals. Let’s give it a spin below.

Taking us through the narrative behind ‘All Too Soon’ on his own Bandcamp page, Trentemoller says, “All Too Soon examines ostensibly diametric relationships of light and dark, life and death, day and night, love and hate, while actually presenting them as dualistic, and symbiotic, influencing each other as they interrelate. What might appear to be a dispiriting take on our mortality could just as easily be interpreted as its acceptance being liberating”, in his own description. Beginning with a light acoustic guitar strum that becomes more intense and darkens the atmosphere before Fritze’s mysterious vocals kick in, who croons pained lyrics like “Have you ever fallen in/Into an inner void?” and “Do you feel like I do? Abandoned from it all” with an enigmatic presence, with a Trip Hop-influenced soundscape that morphs into a more glitched and distorted picture frame of a piece as the four minute duration of the track takes its time. Trentemoller complements the scattering Shoegaze opus of the chorus – with regretful lyrics like “We can’t live forever/If we could, we would” being sprawled all below percussive feedback stabs by Fritze – with sumptuous melodies of melancholic Drums and antagonized trails of reverb. Together, it makes up for an ethereal combination of psychedelic Dream Rock and textured Progressive Pop with a few vague lyrics like “Is a growing darkness/All you see?” creating a platform of intrigue. Through the means of collaborating with his girlfriend, Trentemoller toys with the idea of connections, with lyrics like “Is it day or night/Is it love or hate/Is it anything between?” that contrast each other and his instrumental work employs some warm percussion that counteracts the more cold, dry tones of the guitar and drums. Overall, ‘All Too Soon’ is a detailed and well-informed exploration of items that are bound together, yet they are opposite and he soundtracks these relations with his pivoting instrumentation and his emotive yet guarded lyricism that doesn’t reveal much in terms of laying out a direct meaning, with an underlayer of Pop that ensures that light is appropriately clashing with darkness throughout his soundscape.

Pictured: Anders Trentemøller in an official photoshoot for ‘Obverse’ (2019) (Photo by David Ampong/Waves.com)

That leaves me with nothing left to say other than to thank you for time and wish you well on your way to the weekend. ‘Scuzz Sundays’ will return in two days time for the usual throwback to the ‘trashy teen’ era of our lives, but I’ve also got some new music to share with you tomorrow that comes from an Indie Rock duo from the Isle Of Wight who have been all played over BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 6 Music since their debut single – ‘Chaise Lounge’ – went viral last year. They are shortlisted for BBC’s ‘Sound Of 2022’ poll and they began touring in the US in December as they keep finding success.

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Today’s Track: HighSchool – ‘Frosting’

February 3, 2022 — Leave a comment
Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘Forever At Last’ (Released on November 1st, 2021) (via Dalliance Recordings)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, of course, and it is time for me to get typing up for yet another quick daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! A trio who spent a long period of over 200 days in lockdown together in their native hometown in the suburbs of Brunswick, Australia – HighSchool are a new Melbourne Post-Punk trio who were formed during 2020 and they have resurfaced after a year of writing and recording an extensive body of work to decent acclaim, with recent singles like ‘Jerry’ and ‘New York, Paris and London’ gaining airplay on BBC Radio 6 Music courtesy of Steve Lamacq’s ‘The New Music Fix’ programming during the early hours of Friday morning each week. Comprised of Lilli Trobbiani, Rory Trobbiani and Luke Scott, the band produces reverb-drenched rock that encompasses between genres like Noise-Punk, Industrial Rock and 00’s Post-Punk Revival in their atmospherically gloomy, but also slightly wistful and textured sounds. Known for their subversive Goth imagery, HighSchool have been finding popularity on Bandcamp recently with the release of their debut EP – ‘Forever At Last’ – which was released on November 1, 2021 via the British-based record label Dalliance Recordings. Check out the single ‘Frosting’ below.

HighSchool recorded their six-track EP project with Archie Shannon from Floodlights behind the decks and it compiles each of their singles to date including ‘De Facto’ and ‘Sirens’, plus the title track and three more, some of which songs have demo versions that date back to late 2020 in terms of their development stages. Opening the short-form release is ‘Frosting’, a Shoegaze-influenced jam that I have been playing on repeat personally, as it reminds me of The Smiths in quite a huge way due to the bittersweet qualities of the emotions and the melancholic sound of the simple guitar strumming that is accompanied by some edgy Goth-rock imagery during the official music video, while it also feels more Lo-Fi than your average Post-Punk act, with some fuzzy guitar riffs that remind me of the DIY Pop music that’s been coming out of the New York psych scene courtesy of artists like JW Francis, combining the moody aesthetics with a softer side that allows the radiant Soft-Rock to lay some emotional groundwork for the swooning lyrics and the sense of longing that is created by Rory Trobbiani’s lead vocals in the delivery. Lyrics like “The second I saw you dance/I was waiting on a love I never knew” and “You can’t win the war if you don’t know who the enemy is” feel contemplative and recall the angst-ridden undercurrent of bands like The Fall in the mid-1980’s, and they’re backed up by a soundscape of textbook Post-Punk where the drowsing guitar effects and the nostalgic Synth riffs, along with a briefly fluttering String sample section, provide an emotive backdrop to support the industrial Bass rhythms that are looped underneath. It feels polished and tidy, but the lead vocals are delightfully slathered in Jangle-Rock guitars that distort the clarity of the nuanced lyrics. Such lyrics recall particularly intimate seconds of time from the past, such as “Can’t say I don’t miss holding hands/And chasing afternoons”, that create more substance for the emotive qualities, as opposed to replicating some of their contemporaries that have been etched into the ‘Indie Landfill’ classification that becomes difficult to break away from. While the music is most reminiscent of modern Pop-Punk and wry Industrial Rock, it almost continues the tradition of bands like Slowdive and DIIV by the creation of the melancholic soundscapes that contain pretensions of stylisation and visual art, but it is more warmly delivered and it aims to uplift Rory Trobbiani’s vocals from a mood of longing to a more nostalgic one. They already sound like a more experienced act than they probably are, and that sounds really great as their music mostly leans on the gloomy side without simply pointing at trademarks of the key influences. Fantastic instrumentally and beautifully performed.

Pictured: HighSchool (aka Lilli Trobbiani, Rory Tribbiani and Rory Tribbiani) (2021) (Photo Credit: Hector Clark)

That’s all for now! Thank you for checking out my latest post, and, for the first time of the year, we seem to have a truly stacked line-up of new albums vying for your attention from tomorrow onwards, and we’ll be selecting one of them as a neat sampler for our ‘New Album Release Fridays’ post tomorrow. We’ll be previewing the newest album from a Missouri-formed indie rock band whose heavy music has been featured in advertisements for Apple, NFL and Bose. They have supported acts like Phoenix, Vance Joy, Joywave, and Cold War Kids on tour since autumn 2018 onwards.

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Today’s Track: LYR (feat. Rozi Plain) – ‘Cascade Theory’

January 10, 2022 — Leave a comment
Pictured: Simon Armitage, Richard Walters and Patrick Pearson (2021) (Photo Credit: Callum Lovell Harrison)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and I’m crossing my fingers for a peaceful start to a new week for you as we invest in yet another daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! ‘Cascade Theory’ is a brilliant new track from LYR, an experimental Post-Rock trio that is currently comprised of British poet laureate Simon Armitage, musician Richard Walters and multi-instrumentalist Patrick Pearson, with additional vocals by Winchester-based Alternative Pop singer-songwriter Rozi Plain. The trio’s name is an acronym for Land Yacht Regatta, and the three creatives say they found each other through the galvanizing philosophy of blending words. Last year, they released their debut album – ‘Call In The Crash Team’ – and they collaborated with Hollywood actress Florence Pugh and Melt Yourself Down’s Pete Wareham on their single ‘Lockdown’. A follow-up EP – ‘Cascade Theory’ – was released in late November via Mercury KX, a five-track release that elevates their typically Spoken Word blended with Ambient Rock style of music to more scientific proportions. LYR have said that “Cascade Theory takes a scientific principle and applies it to a social or psychological setting. Things crash into each other – especially thoughts and ideas – and the resulting fragmentation is both bewildering and exciting”, in their product description for the short-form release. The attached music video follows actor Richard Fox and it was directed by Jordan Martin, as well as produced by Double Vision, and it matches the single to some Noir-like visuals that finds the real world and an imaginary setting colliding at full speed, leaving behind a mess of stardust and glitter. Let’s check it out.

“The scientific phenomenon that is central to the EP is found in behavioral economics and explains decision making in sequential fashion, enlightening us on why observation follows imitation”, Mercury KX adds about the EP’s titular track in a press statement, explaining, “Simon Armitage’s ambient Spoken Word passages, at the forefront of the track, expand upon their personal interpretation of the network-based theory”, in the EP’s listing pages. This collision of objects, like the paint of the music video colliding with “space junk” as Armitage recites in the single, mirrors the vibrant explosion of poetry and Post-Punk of LYR’s sound on the track, as Armitage recalls that “one thing follows the other” in a key refrain of the lyrics. We start off with a minimal Piano beat that builds up to a soaring drum beat before a guitar riff is introduced to the melody, which becomes lightly distorted and feels suitable for the grim black-and-white colour palette of the music video. Meanwhile, Armitage uses a fairly laidback tone for his vocals that feels insistent as brief anecdotes like “Drop the tight bow in next door’s pond and call it a song/Broke a borrow side on a hiding rock, Mowing wet hay” and “It built a business park in a green field, While I fitted about and fine-tuned, the useless Haiku of a Rubik’s cube” that not only explain the cascade theory that is relevant to the track’s title, but apply the theory to everyday practices. A key refrain later on, where Simon Armitage recounts, “In the face of Jesus, I saw the orangutan” connect the theory to ongoing debates around religion and science. Not only are the lyrics intriguing, but the instrumentation feels cinematic and engrossing, as the chirping guitars and the reminiscent Drums create a stirring soundscape of unyielding chords. There are echoes of Sigur Ros in the Post-Rock textures, while the bass lines are more comparable to Future Islands in how the lyricism melds with the ascending melodies. There’s a hint of Jarvis Cocker to the male vocals, which come across with a near-equal mixture of light humour and academic intellect. A solid interplay between the male vocals and the female vocals of Rozi Plain is present too, who uses warmer lyrics like “Ding, Ding, Ding/You’re bowling in a pan” and “We need everyone sitting, now everyone stand” to contrast the high-tempo aggression of the Prog-Rock elements with a softer tone of voice that controls the chaos, for lack of a better term. Overall, thanks to the excellent pacing and the good interplay between Armitage and Plain – that reminds me a little bit of how the tone was calming on Peter, Bjorn & John’s mid-00’s cult hit ‘Young Folks’ in a few ways – ‘Cascade Theory’ is a treat that combines anthemic Post-Rock with clever intellect to engaging results.

Pictured: Cover Art for ‘Cascade Theory’ (EP) (Released on November 12, 2021) (via Mercury KX)

That brings us to the end of today’s presentation on One Track At A Time, and I thank you for sticking to the blog with me. Please feel free to join me again tomorrow as I shine a spotlight on some more music that came out in the latter end of 2021 that deserves a listen. My next pick comes from a Liverpool-based solo artist who found fame on TikTok and then began touring with bands like The Orielles and Trudy & The Romance – before he released his debut album through Melodic Records last October.

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Today’s Track: Mandy, Indiana – ‘Bottle Episode’

January 4, 2022 — Leave a comment
Pictured: Valentine Caulfield (Lead Vocals/Chief Songwriter), Scott Fair (Rhythm Guitar/Producer) and Liam Stewart (Drums/Percussion) (2020)(Photo by Will Shields)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and I’m thrilled that you’re getting invested in yet another daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Formerly known as ‘Gary, Indiana’ – which is a true story according to Pitch Perfect PR – a bizzare twist of events saw this Manchester-based Alternative Punk project settle on Mandy, Indiana as their current name. Originally a duo comprised up of Valentine Caulfield (Vocals, Lyrics), Scott Fair (Guitar/Producer) and Liam Stewart (Drums/Percussion), the band mesh Noise-Punk with experimental recording methods that have found SFX of cluttering footsteps and muffled piano appearing on their debut EP release – ‘…’ – which was released digitally on November 19th, 2021 and later physically issued on December 10th, 2021 via Fire Talk Records. Their tracks for the EP were recorded in a variety of different places, from the band’s rehearsal spaces and traditional studio set-up to outside locations like a cavernous industrial mill. The band are also known for directing their own music videos that combine found footage clips with a style of macabre film-making craft which the batch of musicians state were influenced by film directors like Leos Carax and Gasper Coe in style and structure. ‘Bottle, Episode’ was recently featured on KEXP’s ‘Song Of The Day’ podcast, and you could also know Stewart from commonly touring with Lonelady. Let’s check out the new single below.

Seeking to capture a tale of conflict between armed forces for ‘Bottle, Episode’ – Caulfield says, “I wanted to build up on the military style of the track, but in a very slow crescendo, and not in a very obvious way”, as she explained in a press statement. Fair added, “The inspiration for the guitar line was based upon a recording of a flood siren in Todmorden. I was going to use the recording as a sample but then I decided to try and recreate it with the guitar”, to the conversation. Seeking to capture a somber and hawkish tone with their intriguing single, the band get off to a riotous start with a ramshackle drum beat that patters along to a brisk pace as Caulfield delivers some foerign language vocals, before a taut guitar melody is introduced to the fray in mimicry of a siren, as Caulfield snaps with her vocal pitch as the sinister pulse of the single violently screeches along with its layered soundscape of carefully programmed snare beats and destructive guitar riffs that, ironically, feels very combative in nature. Lyrically, war is never explicitly being mentioned, but there are clearly bleak themes afloot as Caulfiend’s growling vocals imply that men are all waiting for a massacre of-sorts. Instrumentally, however, it relies a little on a Club-oriented sound as the melodicism rises gradually as to introduce the new elements of the track in coherent ways and the battle between harsh abrasian and lyrical edge owes some debt to the No Wave music of decades past. While not for the faint-hearted, ‘Bottle Episode’ conjures up some disturbing imagery of bullets tearing apart the lives of soldiers in effective ways as it feels similar to a dance-oriented track in it’s layering, but they’ve made sure the chords are dark and dissonant enough and the arrangements are brutal enough to convey the very dark textures of the lyrics to strong effect. Overall, a strangely fun but all the more sinister recording that certainly includes some fascinating production tactics that has a unique selling point for the band and a stark visual reminder of the brutality of military conflict that earns notice.

Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘…’ (EP) (Released on December 10th, 2021) (via Fire Records)

That’s all for now! After an understandably bleak note on the site today, we’ll be turning up the good times tomorrow as ‘Way Back Wednesdays’ makes its return to the blog as a weekly fixture. We’ll be remembering the third and final single to be taken off a UK top five album from the original Trip-Hop act of 90’s Bristol. The band won a BRIT Award for Best British Dance Act and have sold over 13 million copies worldwide. The trio have won two Q Awards and a pair of MTV Europe Music Awards.

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Today’s Track: Marissa Nadler – ‘If I Could Breathe Underwater’

December 20, 2021 — Leave a comment
Pictured: Marissa Nadler in a promo photoshoot for ‘For My Crimes’ (2018) (Photo via Sacred Bones Records)

Good Morning to you! You are reading the words of Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time for you to catch up on some great music from 2021 that may have skipped you by during the first time with yet another daily track on the blog, since it’s always been my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! If you’ve been a regular follower of my site for a while, you may know that I love a bit of moody, bluesy and sometimes Folk-ish Americana, with artists such as Weyes Blood, Sharon Van Etten and Alexandra Savior being some of my favourites of this style, to name just a few. One of the genre’s most memorable offerings from the past year was ‘The Path Of The Clouds’, an album released in late October by the Boston-based and Washington-born singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler via Bella Union Records. She has managed to sustain a 20-year-plus career, and her latest record was her tenth mainline studio album. She typically swings for a Chamber Folk style of sound with elements of Gothic Rock and Dream-Pop mixed into the cauldron, but myself and a few online publications, such as Pitchfork and The Boston Globe, have each also noticed an underlying influence of Black Metal within her production too, an element of her mezzo-soprano vocals and dark instrumentation that sets her apart from other fine artists of the genre. Raised as Jewish, Nadler studied Painting at the Rhode Island School Of Design, where she learned artistic drawing techniques such as illustration, bookbinding, woodcarving and encaustic painting while singing at Open Mic Nights in the Providence area while she achieved a bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree a year later, and the hard effort that she puts into the visual storytelling of her music is evident through her unique background in Art Education, later touring with Drone Metal bands like Earth and the American primitive guitarist Jack Rose. Like many others, the origins of ‘The Path Of The Clouds’ were established during the Covid-19 pandemic, where she spent her time of self-isolation by watching repeats of the True Crime documentary series ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ and began writing songs about, and inspired by, the subjects of the series through their perspective. Receiving a wealth of positive reviews throughout NME, UNCUT, Record Collector, MOJO and more, Nadler fulfilled her goal of immortalizing the stories of people who deserve to be told on the recent LP. She also enlisted guests like Mercury Rev’s Jesse Chandler and multi-instrumentalist Milky Burgess. Her longtime friend Mary Littlemore, who plays the Cosmic Harp, features on Nadler’s wistful song ‘If I Could Breathe Underwater’ below.

Accompanied by an official music video directed and edited by Jenni Hensler with cinematography by Nick Fancher that depicts a preternatural world of fiction where Nadler changes the colour of the water and the sky, while floating effortlessly through a lake, becoming one with the colours and the ink, Nadler says, “When I wrote ‘If I Could Breathe Underwater’, I was contemplating the possibilities of possessing various superhuman powers: teleportation, aquatic breathing, extrasensory protection, and time travel to name a few. As a lyrical device, I married those powers with events in my life, wondering if and how they could change the past or predict the future”, in her press release. ‘Ethereal’ seems like an over-used word to me in the music press of today, but, really, there’s no better word to use for describing the textures of Nadler’s soundscape craftwork here, using a pulsating keyboard rhythm and a delicate, seductive bassline to create a light and flute-like series of sounds. Lyrics like “Shapeshifter, a cloud above your door/Late winter, like a storm” merge together with a poetic fluidity that conjures up a Shoegazing atmosphere and creates some menacing, but defiant, chords that feel as if they’re skipping weightlessly between a row of imaginary clouds while carrying an anchoring resonance through the zoned-out state of the subtle grooves of her rhythm guitar melodies. Lyrics like “If I could bring the moon down/So the day would never come/Would you fly, circle around the sun?” ponder something more philosophical and shore up against her vocals like the tide slowly coming in during a frosty morning at the seaside. Overall, it feels like perfect listening for the dry and icy December or January season of the year, as the melodies feel a bit ‘dreary’ in a way. That’s usually a derogatory statement, but what I really mean to state is that her sound is very cerebral while just about reaching some melodic heights that make it feel catchy enough to resonate. Moreover, the very layered and hallucinatory toolkit of Mary Littlemore’s cosmic harp echo the tone of the story nicely, as to bring the conceit of the song’s title to life in a fictional dream-state way when met with the consistency of the mildly anthemic guitar beats and the gradually paced Drum riffs. An intricate beauty with plenty of diverse inspiration to it.

Pictured: Cover Art for ‘The Path Of The Clouds’ (LP) (Released on October 29, 2021) (via Bella Union Records)

That’s all for now! It is almost time to float away into the good times of Christmas in just a few days away, and so we will be soldiering on with our ‘Countdown To Christmas 2021’ series tomorrow with a brand new and original Christmas single that is also raising money for Feed The Homeless in Bristol. It comes from an equally talented female solo artist who released her debut self-titled LP on Invada Records last year with a follow-up EP releasing earlier this year. She also performed ‘Mork ‘N’ Mindy’ with Sleaford Mods on ‘Later With Jools Holland’ on BBC Two earlier this year.

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Today’s Track: Fasme – ‘ICI’

December 7, 2021 — Leave a comment
Pictured: Fasme (aka Tom Ferreira) playing a live DJ set at Gaîté Lyrique, Paris (2020) (Photo by Underscope TV)

Good Morning to you! You are reading the words of Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time for some big room melancholy that comes courtesy of yet another daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Said ‘big room melancholy’ is one niche that the Belfast-formed dance duo of Bicep (Matthew McBriar & Andrew Ferguson) have become a pair of unofficial kings of, scoring Best British Group and Best New Artist nominations at last year’s BRIT Awards for their concoction of Italo-inspired Electronica and multi-layered Breakbeat production. However, the duo have set a few new parameters for curatorial duties with the launch of their appropriately titled imprint label, Feel My Bicep. Their first signee is the Paris-born and Nantes-based experimental electronic dance music producer Tom Ferreira, who releases his music under the moniker of Fasme. Having caught the attention of the big-league’s Bicep when he released the ‘Stretched World’ EP last April, Bicep found ‘ICI’ on YouTube and so began playing Ferreira’s music in projects like a Friday Guest Mix for Mary Anne Hobbs on BBC Radio 6 Music and the duo’s own FMB radio podcast on Apple Music. Fasme has recently supported them on tour in October and he performed a live DJ set at Sarcus Festival in France in late September. Ferreira has said that “Fasme” is a nickname that his aunt gave him at her house during the summer one year. He takes his style from the Braindance, IDM and Techno Ambient scenes of the 00’s and he has named acts like RX 101, Binary Digit, James Shinra, David Harleydson and EOD as his influences. ‘ICI’ is taken from the new ‘Home’ EP which he released in late October via Feel My Bicep, of course. Check it out.

Bicep, as the co-managers of the Feel My Imprint indie EDM sub-label, writes that “his melodic sound is created on analog synths, evolving between Acid, Electro and Braindance” on the Bandcamp listing page for Ferreira’s recent ‘Home’ extended play, adding that Ferreira describes himself as “more of a live performer than a studio man” in the product’s description page. A track that reminds me of Aphex Twin’s ‘Druqks’ double album released in the early 00’s of misfit recordings with it’s set of minimalist Classical influences and Tin Man-esque Acid Jazz wiggling production that aims to conjure up some ‘Alien-like’ qualities overall, ‘ICI’ is a mid-tempo Trance serving that wants to provide a great example of why Fasme is a decent fit for Bicep’s Feel My Bicep label. Thankfully, this is a goal that Ferreira seems talented enough to succeed within, and ‘ICI’ has all the building blocks required to be in place to keep the festival crowds grinning, as well as feeling soft and melancholic enough to please those who would rather listen while tucked into their beds with their headphones at a good volume late at night because the chords never feel too overpowering and the distorted electronic Keys sounds never feel too harsh or aggressive for the scene either. It has it’s moments of melodicism with some moody chords that take a dark approach to the layered Lo-Fi production and some big emotive Synth hooks, as well as some mechanical electronic drum kit programming that gives the tone of the track a suitable uplift, but it never quite channels these sounds into an explosive track full of beat-driven sounds and plenty of ‘Bro-Step’ energy. Instead, it feels like a more pensive and contemplative wind-down for the end of a long night. A nebulous mix of acidic Synths, heartbroken Piano chords and neat, warm Bass stabs – ‘ICI’ is more concerned with multi-layered Synth loops and powerfully entrancing moments. Overall, ‘ICI’ is an impressive little recording that pulls off the fairly difficult task of making the Bicep-esque rave-ready despondency sound a tad more positively wistful.

Pictured: Fasme (aka Tom Ferreira) photographed for a wertn.com Q&A feature (2020) (Picture via Leviet.org)

That’s all for now! Thank you for checking out my latest post, and we’ll be counting down to Christmas with another festive-themed post featuring a track that left its mark on the niche in 2005. At the time, the track was written and performed by a Philadelphia-based indie rock band, but the project is now the solo work of multi-instrumentalist and producer Alec Ounsworth. The band appeared in the 2008 film ‘The Great Buck Howard’, and David Bowie was famously seen at some of their shows.

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Spooky Season Special: John Carpenter (feat. Cody Carpenter & Daniel Davies) – “The Shape Burns” (From 2018’s ‘Halloween’)

October 31, 2021 — Leave a comment
  • Pictured: John Carpenter (2021) (Photo Credit: Marlow Stern/Abaca Press/AP/TheDailyBeast.com)

Halloween greetings to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, instructing you to park your Broom up and sit for a spell, since its time for the second part of our Spooktacular specials where we compare the classic and contemporary Halloween soundtracks, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Yesterday, we took an in-depth listen to ‘Michael Kills Judith’ from the titular scene of John Carpenter’s seminal 70’s horror flick, ‘Halloween’, and, today, we’re listening to ‘The Shape Burns’ from the recent reboot of the series. The production stages of 2018’s ‘Halloween’ saw the original film’s director and composer, John Carpenter, make his return to the series for the first time since 1982’s ‘Halloween III: Season Of The Witch’ as an executive producer and general creative consultant, and he also composed the soundtrack alongside Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies. The flick was directed by David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express, Manglehorn) and it also saw Jamie Lee Curtis return to the franchise for more to reprise her role as Laurie Strode from the original film. Ignoring the narrative continuity of previous films from the series, which saw diminishing returns in later installments, the plot of 2018’s ‘Halloween’ is set 40 years after the story of the original Thriller film and it follows a post-traumatic Laurie Strode who prepares to face Michael Myers in a final showdown on Halloween Night. ‘Halloween’ (2018) was an enormous commercial success when it broke box office records for the Slasher genre previously held by 1996’s ‘Scream’ and it has gone on to become the current highest grossing Slasher film in unadjusted dollars, racking up over $255.6m in cinema ticket sales against a fairly small production budget of $10m. ‘The Shape Burns’ occurs during a pivotal moment in the film where Strode traps her old rival – Michael Myers – in the basement and sets him alight for the final time, presumably, since Myers also stars in ‘Halloween Kills’, the sequel that is now showing in cinemas. In the US, the new sequel is also streaming on some tiers of the Peacock streaming service for 30 days after its theatrical release. Another sequel after that – ‘Halloween Ends’ – will follow in 2022. Grab a slice of Barmbrack and hear The Shape burn below.

“We wanted to honor the original Halloween soundtrack in terms of the sounds we used”, Davies has explained in a press release for the reboot’s OST, adding, “Being limited by the length of time in scoring the sequence, we focused on the director’s tempo, timing, and vision. He would tell us what he had in mind, how long the cue should be, what emotion he wanted, and we would take it from there. It’s only the three of us, there is no elaborate system. We wrote, performed, and orchestrated everything”, to his notes for the OST’s release, with the aim of paying homage to the major ‘Halloween’ score that Carpenter composed and recorded in 1978. As with yesterday, I’ve attached a clip of the scene where ‘The Shape Burns’ is used below and a piece of the audio with a plain text background in this post – just for your preference of reference! At first instance, ‘The Shape Burns’ feels surprisingly very similar to the ‘Michael Kills Judith’ stinger from the original film that we explored yesterday and that is because Carpenter and company bring back the tingling Synth melody that goes back and forth throughout the original soundtrack. Once again, things feel minimalist and the production design is not very elaborate, instead relying on rather simplistic melodies to convey emotions of bittersweet melancholy and taking the final stand that Laurie Strode and the other characters perform in the movie since the chords feel urgent. There’s less of an emphasis on tension, however, and more of an Orchestral style that suggests something has been paid off, mixing some feelings of triumph and relief in the contemporary score. It revisits the chilling Synths of the original score and the non beat-driven nature of the old soundtrack with the clear nods to Halloween’s late-70’s past, but there’s a higher tempo and some more varied Electronic keys sequences that inspires a ‘send-off’ or ‘battle’ theme, connoting a higher sense of action and pace in the recent film than the vintage one. The score taps into a slightly higher gear and it introduces some lower pitched Synths that feel more grand and cinematic than what came before, but the production methods still feel rather low-key and not too overly produced because the formula is kept simple. Overall, ‘The Shape Burns’ promises a thrilling and exciting sequence that hurtles the unsettling Strings at a neck breaking speed, while keeping the same Synth patterns and Lo-Fi production of the original score in tact. This move, in turn, adds new bells and whistles to the score in comparison to the original flick but it also manages to make it feel rather old and reminiscent of the original flick due to the clear similarities which point directly towards the late-70’s. How very Ghoulish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmAbvUaq58I

If you are not currently up to speed on the first part of our Spooky series that began yesterday, check out these thoughts on ‘Michael Kills Judith’ from the original ‘Halloween’ score. Try not to get caught up in Michael Myers’ killing spree while you do it here: https://onetrackatatime.home.blog/2021/10/30/spooky-season-special-john-carpenter-michael-kills-judith-from-1978s-halloween/

  • Pictured: Cover Art for ‘Halloween’ (OST) (Released in 1979) (via Columbia Records/Varese Sarabrande)

That’s everything for now – and all for this year’s All Hallow’s Eve too. There’s no tricks tomorrow though, and just treats, as we jumpstart the beginning of the new month with new music from a new artist. It comes from a 17-year-old singer songwriter who is releasing her ‘Artificial’ EP next Friday. She makes indie alt-pop songs with a hint of psychedelia and jazz – and she has received daytime airplay from BBC Radio 6 Music.

  • Pictured: Actor Nick Castle with Michael Myers’ iconic Halloween mask (2018) (Photo by Ryan Green)

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New Album Release Fridays: Geese – “Low Era”

October 29, 2021 — Leave a comment
  • Pictured: Cover Art for ‘Projector’ (LP) (Released on October 29th, 2021) (via Partisan Records)

Good Morning to you! You are reading the words of Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time for us to take a closer look at one of the week’s most newsworthy album releases for yet another daily track on the blog, because it is always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! The likes of LGBTQ+ Techno activist Maya Jane Coles, legendary Leeds Trip Hop producer Nightmares On Wax, Qrion, Sam Evian, Eleanor Buckland and mainstream music mega star Ed Sheeran are all releasing new full-length efforts today, but one of the most intriguing offerings comes from the Brooklyn Art-Punk band Geese. ‘Projector’ was intended to be their last album before they split up and went to seperate colleges in the US, but they were signed up to Partisan Records, the home of successful bands like Fontaines DC and Chubby & The Gang, and appointed the critically beloved producer Dan Carey (Idles, Squid), who Geese cite as influences, to mix their new album. Their beginnings as a band trace back to 2016, however, where their members met during freshmen year at high school and they bonded over their love for 70’s Synth-Rock groups like Yes! and Pink Floyd to build chemistry together. Their single, ‘Disco’, has gained huge praise from the alternative music press, and Geese have since been covered by journalists from NME, SPIN, Brooklyn Vegan, Stereogum, KEXP, KCRW and more. They have also headlined Berlin, a club located beneath the Lower East Side Bar 2A, found in their borough in New York. They’re also expanding through the UK and Europe, with two performances set for The Honeyglaze in London and a concert taking place at the Endorphin Transistor in Paris next month. Get a taster with recent hit ‘Low Era’ below.

Geese – whose oldest member has just turned 19 – have plenty to say about ‘Low Era’, which comes accompanied by a gloomy and trippy music video that was directed by Fons Schiedon, and they explained, “We like the idea of confusing the listener a little, and trying to make every song a counteraction to the last, pinballing between catchy and complicated, fast and slow”, adding, “Low Era is on one end of that spectrum, and ultimately broadened the scope of songs we thought we could make”, to their press notes. ‘Low Era’ ushers in a psychedelic 3-D element that ends up appearing throughout the new album, a single that Geese began playing live in 2020 and it helped them to grow their following. Calling back to Alt-Rock bands like The Strokes and Klaxons of the 00’s, ‘Low Era’ builds appeal from its raw and cagey vocals, the persuasive blend of steel guitar frames and shoegaze influence, and the New Wave instrumentation which gives proceedings a quirky uplift, and echoes the sentiments of LCD Soundystem and A Certain Ratio in radiating something more groove-led from the misfit psychedelia with the balance of playfulness and commandment. Their guitar melodies are a little funk-oriented, but lyrics like “On the hour of my death, the page rips/All is lost, and I am left to rot” are quite morbid and the delivery is fairly authoritative, but given a Falsetto-like croon to make things feel a little bizzare or pecuiliar, even. Some of the lyrics, like “Modern magazines and holy scriptures/My play rehearsals all go unheard” are witty and sardonic, while other lyrics like “The beginning of the end approaches/You and I, we float up to the top”, sound more post-apocalyptic and a little silly in tone, and so Geese approach the track as a neat balancing act of taut Post-Punk afflictions and more wacky, dance-led undertones. It is a risky move, but it thankfully pays off pretty well on ‘Low Era’ because these two different moods are juxtaposed pretty evenly and distort one another with an overlapping effect at times, so the production feels coherent and charming, leading up to the atmospheric instrumental section that finishes ‘Low Era’ off at the end. This is an intriguing track where, despite the call for dancing or listening quietly seeming a little unclear in direction, the band are pulling off more tricks than your average, moody gang of Post-Punk outcasts, with some instrumentation that feels interesting despite a little unfocused at times. A hypnotic combination of Synth-Punk and Prog Rock, coming from a band who are still really young and developing at a strong pace.

  • Pictured: Cameron Winter (Lead Vocals/Keyboard), Max Bassin (Drums/Percussion), Dominic DiGesu (Bass Guitar), Foster Hudson (Rhythm Guitar) & Gus Green (Lead Guitar) (2021) (Photo by Daniel Topete)

That brings us to the bottom of the page – for yet another day, of course! There’s no ‘Scuzz Sundays’ feature this week because we are getting into the Halloween spirit with a two-day spread of Spooky Season posts, where we will be comparing selected songs from the soundtracks of the 1978 version of ‘Halloween’ and the 2018 rebooted release, both of which were scored by the prolific Horror film director John Carpenter.

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Today’s Track: Glüme – “Get Low”

July 27, 2021 — Leave a comment

Just like a Tree, this Las Vegas native has been ‘Logging’ in to her PC. New post time!

  • Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘The Internet’ (LP) (Released on April 30, 2021) (via Italians Do It Better)

Good Morning to you! It’s Jacob Braybrooke, and I’m heading towards your screen with another daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! I’ve got a very interesting one today from a Los Angeles native, Glüme Harlow, who has just released her debut solo LP, ‘The Internet’ on Johnny Jewel’s (from Chromatics) label Italians Do It Better. A simple Google search reveals a ton of very fascinating details about her, from playing Shirley Temple on a Broadway stage, to being a professionally trained Tap dancer influenced by Ginger Rogers. She proclaims herself as the “Wal-Mart Marilyn Monroe” and she’s been a part of the Arts industry since a very early age. She was a child star, with credits for the ‘101 Dalmations’ and ‘Kingdom Hearts’ IP’s, and credits for an acting role in one of Japanese anime icon Hayao Mizaki’s films, according to her IMDB profile. Tragically, she has also been diagnosed with Prinzemetal, a rare heart disease where a coronary artery supplying blood and oxygen to the heart goes into Spasm and suddenly narrows. The writing process of her new record saw her confined into a restricted space due to the effects of her illness, and it pairs her intimate experiences at the time with a homage to old-time Italo cinema. Get a taster with ‘Get Low’ below.

“I didn’t like the vision of myself as a sick person. So I went on The Internet”, Harlow told KEXP in a press release when the title track from her new LP was featured on their ‘Song Of The Day’ podcast, adding, “My online presence was my truth even though it was a lie. I have this self at home who is sick, & then this self on the Internet that’s doing amazing. The world wasn’t looking for me. But online, I could live the life I wanted to live”, to her explanation of the album’s idea and concept. On ‘Get Low’, Harlow sings about falling in love, and how this affects your brain chemistry and nervous system, but, since she suffers from a heart condition, lyrics like “You light up my nervous system/Save me from this autonomic prison” come across more literally, with an accessible Avant-Garde arrangement being conveyed through her personal experiences of dating with autonomic dysfunction, and it reflects how her feelings conveyed can be a literal, cascading time for her. It feels wonderfully inventive, with lyrics like “I could drown in your mind/Careful, I’ll undress your mind” feeling both raunchy and sincere in nature, as these harsh observations permeate through the 80’s, New-Wave Synths and the prominent Bass stabs. The arrangement combines melodic digital Drum beats with some vintage, screeching Keyboard riffs, often feeling harsh and cerebral, yet oddly intimate, in reflection. She also goes to the end of the world with her visuals, veering into Art-Pop styles with her organized imagery of an out-of-time tap-dancing misfit, or a Baby Jane-type child star with an unknown maturity, and she uses this gently developed character as a cover for her to speak her mind with an innocence and honesty. Although her real name isn’t exactly a secret, it feels irrelevant to the work at hand because it never feels significant to her image itself. Overall, this is a well-inspired and a thoroughly enjoyable listen, and I’d highly recommend checking out the track ‘What Is A Feeling?’ from the debut record as well.

  • Pictured: Glüme in a PR shoot for a Q&A interview with Weirdo Music Forever (2021) (Photo via PR)

That’s all I’ve got to share with you for now, but please feel free to join me again for ‘Way Back Wednesdays’ tomorrow, where we revisit one of the sounds of the past that has been influential to the sounds of the present. This week’s pick comes from a 90’s US Hip-Hop duo from Queens, New York who spent six years together before they disbanded in 1995. In that time, they were a credible asset to the ‘Native Tongues’ collective comprised of East Coast Hip-Hop groups A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul & The Jungle Brothers. The rap duo cited creative differences as their reason to split up.

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New Album Release Fridays: Andy Stott – “Hard To Tell”

April 16, 2021 — Leave a comment

The Manchester-based IDM producer who puts zero Faith In Strangers. New post time!

  • Pictured: Cover Art for “Never The Right Time” (Released on April 16th, 2021) (via Modern Love Records)

Good Morning to you – My name is Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s finally time again for me to get typing up with today’s track on the blog, as always, because it’s my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! This week’s new release schedule is a bit more subdued than usual for me, with nothing that immediately strikes a great deal of familiarity with me. Your options include the first new album from The Offspring in nearly a decade, the sixth studio album from unique Dublin-born multi-instrumentalist Imelda May, and also the tribalism-centric second studio release from the cult Michaigan band Great Van Fleet, who have drummed up some buzz overseas. However, the name that I am going to focus on today is Andy Stott, who rings a small bell with me because I enjoyed what he did with ethereal textures and haunting percussion on 2014’s ‘Faith In Strangers’. I haven’t kept tabs on him much since then, but the Manchester-based producer of Dub and Techno music has remained prolific, releasing five long-player albums on the Modern Love label. The cerebral new album was reportedly finished last year, but after dealing with a heavy set of personal issues, no doubt, worsened by the isolated nature of the Covid-19 pandemic, he decided to re-develop the record into one that he describes as a “kind of inner-world sadness trip”, and it follows up 2019’s double EP release of slow and raw ambient tunes, ‘It Should Be Us’. Check out the lead single ‘Hard To Tell’, with vocals from Stott’s Piano teacher and frequent collaborator, Alison Skidmore, below.

The Techno reformist has always been credited as a musician whose music draws from a snapshot of where he feels he stands creatively, functioning as a reflective spearhead of whatever curiosities have been nagging his mind persistently, and he says of the new release, “Definitely in the past, my productions were organic, quite dense and thick. There was something really false and thin and delicate about these new sounds”, adding, “At the same time, there was something really beautiful about it and it sparked my interest. It triggered these other things that I had heard in my mind and I realized I could get the same vibe with that sound”, to hint at the possible new music directions. Whereas ‘Faith In Strangers’ was a little more beat-oriented and strangely suited for a wind-down scene at a dark and dingy nightclub, his latest crawls towards more Dark Ambient and interior sounds. The opening feels reminiscent of a Nigerian or Taiko drum beat, building a sense of ‘Things are not as they seem’ before a polished, twangy bass guitar riff enters the scene. The vocals of “Don’t have to feel, No need to fight” are very depressive and grim, with washing waves of aching Synth melodies trickling their way into the fray. The vocals of “Sharp like a needle, This life I’ve bought” and “Street lights and cars gleam/Ferociously” sit uncomfortably and disorientingly in the mix, but the instrumental bed effects offer enough of a hint at Stott’s more melodic past work on ‘Faith In Strangers’ to feel strangely comforting at points, and act like an open acknowledgement of misery and pain, and a shoulder to cry on. We simply don’t hear a great amount of music about things like chaos and destruction these days, and ‘Hard To Tell’ also reminds me of The Future Sound Of London’s ‘Dead Cities’ from 1996 with it’s slow-building progression and it’s slightly Cinematic undertones, which makes me picture some post-apocalyptic imagery of urban decay. I think the track relies on a little co-operation from the listener to use ‘Theatre Of The Mind’ to get the strongest effect from this tune, and it’s probably not something that you would just slip on at some house party, but there’s an excellent balance of weight and light to the proceedings. If you are a listener like me who likes to just indulge in the sadness at times for melancholy therapy, however, this works pretty well for that situation. Dreary and Bleak – but in the most hauntingly solid way.

  • Pictured: Andy Stott at the live “Modern Love Showcase” (2014) (Photo via Detroit Metro Times)

That’s all for now – I’ll leave you to enjoy your weekend, or grieve along to this, either way, enjoy what you do. My first new Scuzz Sunday featured post in two weeks will arrive in two days’ time with style. Before then, however, I’ll be back tomorrow, for the second appearance on the blog from a slightly off-the-radar Folk multi-instrumentalist, signed to the Secretly Canadian indie label, who has released her latest single as an ode to the “Lost Musician” that is Nick Drake. If you really liked what you just read, why not follow the blog to get notified when every new daily post is up and why not like the Facebook page here?: https://www.facebook.com/OneTrackAtATime/