A Weather Archives - Various Small Flames https://varioussmallflames.co.uk/tag/a-weather/ New and independent music Mon, 12 Sep 2016 11:03:36 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://i0.wp.com/varioussmallflames.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/cropped-finalwhite-e1490809629909-1.jpg?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 A Weather Archives - Various Small Flames https://varioussmallflames.co.uk/tag/a-weather/ 32 32 88787050 Houses – A Quiet Darkness https://varioussmallflames.co.uk/2013/05/24/houses-a-quiet-darkness/ Fri, 24 May 2013 12:31:00 +0000 http://www.wakethedeaf.co.uk/?p=394 Houses are Chicago’s Dexter Tortoriello and Megan Messina. Back in April they released their sophomore album, A Quiet Darkness, a concept album which deals with the experiences “of a couple searching for each other in a post-nuclear apocalypse”. The idea was inspired by a trip the duo took along California’s Highway 10, particularly the abandoned houses which they encountered along the route. The band even went as far as to record much of the percussion samples inside such locations and […]

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]]> Houses are Chicago’s Dexter Tortoriello and Megan Messina. Back in April they released their sophomore album, A Quiet Darkness, a concept album which deals with the experiences “of a couple searching for each other in a post-nuclear apocalypse”. The idea was inspired by a trip the duo took along California’s Highway 10, particularly the abandoned houses which they encountered along the route. The band even went as far as to record much of the percussion samples inside such locations and ended up using snatches of the ambient background noise on the album too.

As the concept suggests, the album is highly cinematic and is doused in melancholy, while neatly side-stepping the epic bombast that would have been easy to create handling such an emotive theme.The album also avoids going too far in the opposite direction. Far from a series of unlistenable dirges, it has a soothing ambience, with much of the violence that is usually associated with such post-apocalyptic scenarios left to the imagination. Think McCarthy’s The Road minus the explicit brutality, all doomed love and snatches of painful sentiments. This is all captured much better than I am able in the beautiful trailer below:

The resulting sound lands somewhere between the emotionally charged aesthetics of bedroom pop artists such as Arrange and the male-female vocals of Stars or A Weather. I have seen some criticism in reviews regarding the album’s length (around 55 minutes), but I think this is unfair. It is very hard to find an album that so successfully engages the listener in its concept and I found myself lost in this crumbling world for what was almost an entire hour. Listen to my current favourite track, the post-rock influenced ‘Beginnings’, below:

A Quiet Darkness is out now on Downtown Records and you can buy it now from most good retailers, or, if you live in North America, get a copy directly from the band during their upcoming tour. Check the dates here.

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]]> 394 Hiva Oa – The Awkward Hello, Handshake, Kiss https://varioussmallflames.co.uk/2013/04/04/hiva-oa/ Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:10:00 +0000 http://www.wakethedeaf.co.uk/?p=414 Hiva Oa are an Edinburgh-based three piece who “produce music with a fragile sense of melancholy, buried under a brooding darkness”. Last year they produced two excellent releases, both of which were released on Mini50 Records (who also put out Old Earth’s Small Hours). The first was a four-song EP entitled Future Nostalgia For Sale, which definitely should have been included on our Best Free Music List. Intended as a precursor for the band’s first album (more of which later), […]

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]]> Hiva Oa are an Edinburgh-based three piece who “produce music with a fragile sense of melancholy, buried under a brooding darkness”. Last year they produced two excellent releases, both of which were released on Mini50 Records (who also put out Old Earth’s Small Hours). The first was a four-song EP entitled Future Nostalgia For Sale, which definitely should have been included on our Best Free Music List. Intended as a precursor for the band’s first album (more of which later), two of the songs offer a preview of what was to come. ‘Badger’ pulses with a simple synth melody that repeats and repeats like the call of some strange bird, before building to a crescendo of crashing drums. ‘Urban’ is a very different track, although equally arresting. It begins with a simple strummed guitar and delicate vocals (sort of like a Scottish version of bedroom acts such as Talons’) and then a mournful cello floats in like a ghost and the whole thing gets even prettier.

The second release was the aforementioned debut album, The Awkward Hello, Handshake, Kiss. The album smoulders with a brooding intensity, the sombre guitar and lonely cello complemented with a variety of forms of percussion to create an organic piece of art which billows and swirls and seems to seep through your headphones. Hailey Beavis also provides vocals on many of the tracks, allowing male and female vocals to interchange and interact (in a way that on several occasions brought to mind an even more sad and dolorous A Weather).

The Awkward Hello‘s opener, ‘The Floods Have Woken The Quiet Sleepers’ starts with delicate finger-picking and the gentle throb of percussion, punctuated with the aforementioned cello, and continues to build until a glockenspiel twinkles, heralding the crescendo that breaks the song as if it’s a pane of fragile glass, the repeated exclamation of the line “We go down” the beautiful shards that tumble away after the impact. Another of my favourites is ‘Thunder’, which is composed of a forlorn guitar, down-tempo drones and glum vocals. Ensure you stay tuned after the album closer for an incredibly beautiful hidden track that is just man and guitar and sounds like something from very early albums by The Antlers.

You can buy The Awkward Hello, Handshake, Kiss now from mini50 Records for a very reasonable £10. I would also recommend checking out The Good Ship, an album made by Stephen Houlihan (of Hiva Oa) and Hailey Beavis, which is also really quite lovely.

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