Opener ‘magnet’ begins with a hesitant wistfulness, unfurling gently and slowly to a warm ambient hum. The mood is crepuscular, late evening or early morning, the air shot pink and dusky and moved by sedate breeze. ‘crying in the carwash’ is altogether darker, though no less colourful, a dream walk through a neon-city, where a persistent sense of sadness follows at arm length. With it’s empathetic take on melancholy, the track conjures Broken Social Scene’s  ‘Anthem for a Seventeen Year-Old’, the sense of loss almost it’s own comfort, a blanket within which to warm before the future rewards you with something better.

‘anthem for healing’ takes a more expansive approach, a song of self-empowerment that rises into great, soaring spikes of sound. “You will not silence me,” Loefke repeats, the synths increasing in pitch as her vocals disintegrate into wordless yelps and guitars cut across the noise. ‘we have a dream’ picks up with a more restrained tone, a hushed strangeness cloaking the track before the final third reaches something warmer, before the lush swathes of synths that herald closer ‘beginning’. Loefke’s vocals emerge within pockets of space that mark the almost sci-fi futurism off this noise, before both aspects unite for the transcendental finale.

heart demos is out now and you can get it from the Pendulum Girl Bandcamp page.

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Following Sam Pink’s lead, the record is brutal and dark, the instrumentation allowing the violent alienation and dissatisfaction of his words to soar. ‘False-Bottomed Coffins’ opens with an introduction to the album’s themes, with self-consciousness disguised as misanthropy, caring too deeply masked as blank indifference, and the constant pressure of these repressed emotions pressing on the crown of the skull, like a volcano about to blow. ‘I Own You and You Own Me’ continues this, opening with a pretty clear sentiment—”Two types of eye contact: none and fuck you”—navigating a depressive state that feels like “all there is inside your skull is melted plastic.”  Again, the narrator is tangled within their own thoughts, their attempts at freeing themselves only furthering the bind, a predicament communicated with a Wallacean, inside-my-head tone.

“Living as three people: one inside your head saying hateful/depressed/hopeless shit, another as the one inside your head trying to deal with the first one, and the third one as visible to the outside world, trying to keep people from noticing any trace of the first two.

That moment when you start to have a little feeling/emotion and you look back on having just acted out of not having any feelings/emotions.”

‘Bonus Magnets for my Brain’ meanders in a way that could be relaxed or ominous or both, the instrumentation threatening to bubble over but never quite managing the energy required. Hyper-self-consciousness, banal everyday observations and macabre imagery coalesce into something at once relatable and unhinged, where lines like “The feeling that everything is obvious in a way that’s embarrassing” are followed by “Making friends with the firing squad.” ‘One Night, Your Pillow Will Swallow Your Head’ and ‘Making Friends With the Firing Squad’ furthers this feeling, growing increasingly morbid and strange as horror, paranoia and deep-seated anger make violent ends inevitable—either the narrator will be destroyed or else the entire world around them. All the while, a slow creeping dread advances, looming.

“Talking to the lone lobster left in the tank at the supermarket to calm down and feel connected.
Talking shit to the firing squad.
Smiling wide as you allow your latest ghost to slowly come out of you in front of others, unseen.
Smiling wide as you allow someone else’s latest ghost to go into you as if you earned it.
And you have.
You have you have you have!”

Both this nameless dread and the hope of escaping it fuel the entire collection, and these forces manifest themselves as monsters on ‘No Way to Defeat It but Jump In / No Way to Help It but Let It Die.’ The dread is “A monster with a head made of a hundred toothless mouths (No way to defeat it but jump in),” and the hope “A monster with a head full of knives that never dies, just stumbles around shrieking (And no way to help it but let it die).” Within this tale of suffering, a relationship is painted, though one so fiercely held that it becomes its own form of torment, the narrator’s performing a verbal self-flagellation as penance for their perceived inadequacy, lashing themselves into nothingness in lieu of any better ideas. After all there’s no way to help it but let it die.

Check out the striking video from Wild Child Studios below:

Your Glass Head Against the Brick Parade of Now Whats plays like the fever dream manifesto of the archetypal Disillusioned Kid, someone who, instead of shooting up his school or oxycontin, decided to let the tirade out as language. Stinging and self-loathing and strange, the narrator is sick and tired of a phony world and phony people yet dying of cold within this self-imposed exile. The record then, feels like one final, fatal gesture—self-immolation just to feel that half-second of warmth before the pain sets in, just to see your own blazing reflection in eyes of the faces around you.

Your Glass Head Against the Brick Parade of Now Whats is out now and you can get it from the Be Softly Bandcamp page. Find out more about Sam Pink on the Lazy Fascist Press website.

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The new year has seen a new track from the Nashville act. Appropriately titled ‘2017’, the song is probably best described as organic folk, following the above description in its use of various tones and textures which bring the acoustic strum into relief. Couple this with Kintzing’s gentle vocals and evocative writing and you have a song that’s quietly devastating, music that’s captured perfectly in the accompanying video, late-night solitude made strange by stark, staccato forces emerging from the sky or within the skull.

“Maybe I’ll leave my house
in 2017
‘The year of the Lord’
I’ll grow wings and fly into the sun
Is that God or just my own thoughts?”

You can get ‘2017’ now on a ‘name your price’ basis from the German Error Message Bandcamp page.

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And, of course, being comprehensive is impossible these days, so let us know if we missed your favourite and maybe we’ll add it to the collection.

Emily Yacina – Nice Try
(RIYL: bedroom pop)

Evening River Band – EP5
(RIYL: country, folk, psych rock)

Ever – But I Am
(RIYL: bedroom pop, dark rooms)

Exam Season – Mostly Homely
(RIYL: indie rock, emo, Trust Fund)

Family Video – Places To Sleep
(RIYL: indie rock, lo-fi, longing)

Field Medic – that beer called becks reminds me of a haiku i wrote
(RIYL: lo-fi, indie pop, modern folk)

Fish Food – For Shadow Hurts
(RIYL: indie pop, lo-fi, weird lyrics)

Folktale Records – Folktale Sampler (COMPILATION)
(RIYL: experimental, folk, indie pop)

Fossil Jane – will you?/you will.
(RIYL: bedroom pop, singer songwriter, )

Free Space – Ahead of Myself
(RIYL: bedroom pop, lo-fi, Trace Mountains)

Generifus – Peace Sign Rising
(RIYL: indie pop, indie rock)

Georgia Maq – Brain Studio Session
(RIYL: acoustic, bedroom pop, Camp Cope)

Ghost Camp – Great Lakes
(RIYL: indie rock, psych pop)

Glider – Demos
(RIYL: lo-fi, psych pop)

GoldFlakePaint – Too Far From Town To Learn
(RIYL: indie pop, lo-fi, Gold Flake Paint)

Good Good Blood – O Belong / Motion Sickness
(RIYL: ambient, dream pop, folk)

Gorgeous Bully – Better Demons
(RIYL: lo-fi, indie rock, fuzz)

Govier – Predator
(RIYL: indie rock, lo-fi, “alien folk”)

High Sunn – i will never learn
(RIYL: chillwave, lo-fi, dream pop)

The post Favourite Free Music of 2016: E – H appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Much has been said recently about how political turmoil and social instability will provide fertile conditions for great art, and whether or not you subscribe to this idea, we’re pretty sure that paying artists makes for even better soil in which to sow creative seeds. The title to this post says ‘free’ music because it’s snappier than ‘name your price’ music, but really that’s a convenient/attention-grabbing misnomer. Bandcamp provides pretty much the most direct way for us to connect directly with musicians and support their work from all over the world, so why don’t we utilise this tool and ensure that art perseveres in the face of everything else that’s going on?

Anyhow, here’s the first segment of the list, covering artists beginning with A – D. We don’t pretend to be in any way comprehensive, so let us know if we missed your favourite and maybe we’ll add it to the list.Albosel – Container
(RIYL: folk, dream pop, magic woods)

Alexandra Gordon – Rain Songs
(RIYL: bedroom pop, folk, Free Cake For Every Creature)

BB Cream – s/t
(RIYL: pop punk, bedroom pop, lo-fi, grrrl power)

Bedbug – if i got smaller grew wings and flew away for good
(RIYL: experimental, twee, sincerity)

Betty Becky – s/t / All the Boyfriends
(RIYL: bedroom pop, punk, lo-fi)

Blue Smiley – Return
(RIYL: garage rock, fuzz, dream pop)

Bois – Asleep with Songs of Longing
(RIYL: pop, soul, indie rock)

Boy Scouts – Homeroom Breakfast
(RIYL: bedroom pop, folk, self-reflection)

Cabbage/Oxblood – Split
(RIYL: bedroom pop, post-grunge, slacker rock)

Candy – Azure
(RIYL: jangle rock, dream pop, lo-fi)

猫 シ Corp. – News at 11
(RIYL: vapourwave, 90s TV, mass media)

Cayetana – Tired Eyes
(RIYL: indie rock, jangle pop, punk)

Cereal + Sounds & Z Tapes – FRY YR BRN
(RIYL: indie rock, covers, TV theme songs)

Coping Skills – Relatable Web Content
(RIYL: lo-fi, bedroom pop, Millennial angst)

Constant Companion – Curious Design
(RIYL: pop punk, lo-fi, indie rock)

Corvus B. – France, Later
(RIYL: poetry, spoken word, haunting banjo)

Crabapple – Further Out
(RIYL: indie pop, summer jams, lo-fi)

Daytime TV – DAYTIME TV 2
(RIYL: indie pop, lo-fi, rock)

Deer Scout – Customs
(RIYL: folk, singer songwriter, Gregory and the Hawk)

Dogbreth – Second Home
(RIYL: pop punk, Cloud Nothings, Joyride!, rock ‘n roll fun)

Dowsing / Ratboys – Split
(RIYL: indie rock, pop punk, emo)

Dying Adolescence – Dear you, It can’t wait.
(RIYL: bedroom pop, lo-fi, teenage feelings)

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While such a statement might conjure the holy icons of celebrities on magazine covers or the communal prayers of sports crowds, or even the near-transcendental flutter experienced at the promise of large sums of money, Wallace’s truth is probably a lot more subtle and personalised, centred around our view of ourselves and the yearning for something more. As such, much of the worship goes on inside our heads, small hopes and habits we repeat over and over, as though incantation and ritual might invoke our better selves.

Don’t Hide From The Light, the debut release from PAT MOON, feels like this sensation committed to music. The solo recording project of Portland’s Kate Davis, who you might know as the face behind Track and Field Records, PAT MOON utilises analog synths and drum machines to create what could be described as dark dream dance or ecclesiastical electro-pop. At once insular and expansive, the album feels like a private ceremony within an abandoned church, solemn and serious and sacred in its own humble way, pertaining to no system of belief beyond that of human experience yet feeling instantly recognisable, a likeness of our own inner-thoughts. Such empathy is present from the first bars of ‘Feel You’, the opener possessing that warm-yet-cold feeling peculiar to cathedrals, where death and guilt and love and life are so entwined they become one.

Other highlights include ‘Show Me a Sign’, an echoing, synth-heavy plea for enlightenment, the spectral chorus of ‘I See You’ and ‘Love Me as I Am’, another song that manages to be at once intimate and vast, submissive and resolute, a steadfast hymn summoned from deep within. Closing track ‘Enter My Mind / All I Know is Now’ is imbued with a certain lightness, a candle-lit organ-drone which seems to brighten across its run-time.

With its melancholic seriousness punctuated with near-mystical frisson, PAT MOON’s debut is a reminder that worship is not some hotline for divine intervention but rather a process of feeling and thinking and believing. Sure, Davis may find her prayers unanswered, her rituals unrewarded, but you get the sense that the very process of acting and asking can be a route to confidence and love. One that does not rely on the whim of a deity or the alignment of the stars.

Don’t Hide From The Light is out now and you can buy it from the PAT MOON Bandcamp page.

Photo by Sam Velenne

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Your dancing shoes might come in useful during ‘Dream Wild’, its surfy guitars sounding pastel pink and aquamarine as they jangle along merrily, while ‘Cool It!’ is equally pepped-up, even the slight sadness in Pender’s vocals not dampening spirits. ‘Like Always’ is a wonderfully melodic and catchy, Lender singing “I don’t think I wanna hear that / please don’t tell me how I look”, before ‘Hit and Miss’ closes the EP with a final slice of lean and energetic jangle pop, the vocals giving things a dreamy romantic vibe.

“Blue eyes keep tearin me apart
I do, I just keep fallin’
I’m sinkin’ please save me again”

You can buy Terry Vs. Tori now from Bandcamp on a pay-what-you-can basis.

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The compilation is out now and you can grab a copy via the No Dice Tapes Bandcamp page, or get a download on a pay-what-you-can basis (but it’s for a good cause, remember?).

Artwork by Annabel Amin

The post No Dice Tapes – 2016: the year all bad things went away and everything turned out to be fine appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The album opens with ‘wild fire/flowers’, a track which sounds like a cross between Yowler and Moutain Man, the opening a wild hymnal (“let is spread like wild fire / let it grow like wild flowers / everything we know comes from water”) before the introduction of electric guitar and a hazy ambient background. The song is a good introduction to Trust Fall’s aesthetic, the gentle bedroom folk littered with small moments that threaten to be less gentle, the lyrics wrapped in imagery of the natural world, reassuring and timeless yet also volatile, too large to control.

“I had a life
before I was born
in the water”

‘Monsters Aren’t Scary’ is a delicate song buried beneath reverb, the low grumble representing the titular monsters, while ‘Winter Walking’ is a short track in the vein of free cake for every creature or Cyberbully Mom Club, full of small, sincere details that read like an internal practise of a conversation that will never take place (“Winter walking by the ocean / this is a good rock to sit down on / you are a good friend to sit next to”). ‘Boundlessness’ has a similar feel, although a dark cloud has passed over the narrator, the easy joy of the previous track replaced by uncertainty and unease.

“When did we invite the storm in our home?
And I envy the way you seem to know the way.
I’ll try not to rely on your ghost”

‘In yr truck’ opens sad and lonely, like Girlpool played at half-speed in an empty field, before building into a frenzy, the guitars accelerating and the vocals becoming almost unhinged. ‘Maria’ is slow and melancholic, occupying a flat space of acceptance where the things you love have slipped away. “Everything will change,” she sings. “I must remember that,” as if trying to convince herself such heartache is natural. It becomes clear that the song details a dissolving relationship, the dissipation of love through the slow erosion of time and space.

“What do I do now? What do I say to you
in the kitchen, when you ask what I’ve been up to?
It’s not that you asked, it’s that you had to ask
It’s that you didn’t know that makes me so sad.
I miss you.”

The album closes with a cover of Keith Whitley’s ‘I’m No Stranger to the Rain’, which comes off as a triumphant finale, a moment of strength or assurance in the gloom, as if there’s a certain pleasure in passing through sadness and appearing intact on the other side. “But I’ll put this cloud behind me,” she sings. “That’s how the Man designed me / To ride the wind and dance in a hurricane / I’m no stranger to the rain”. It seems, perhaps ironically, that admitting to your metaphorical wet climate might just help you notice the sky brightening once in a while.

You can grab boundless and unafraid now from the Trust Fall Bandcamp page on a pay-what-you-can basis, and on cassette from Reflective Tapes.

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Dead Skin Cells is Efinger’s attempt to deal with a move to New York, an event which offered her first chance to meditate on the dark things in her life whilst being physically removed from them. This caused a lot of rumination on the importance of the familiar, and whether geographic location alone can have an effect on a person. In place of the regular bio or blurb, the album is introduced by a poem by Efinger’s friend Becca Uliasz, which captures this feeling far better than I can:

“maybe the places we are in change what we are
maybe context rubs off on us the way we leave dead skin cells in the places we frequent
maybe it leaves its cells on us the same way
and we just trade back and forth
until we aren’t us or here or there but a new thing altogether” – becca uliasz

Like most of the songs on Dead Skin Cells, opening track ‘mother’ is short and sparse and deceptively dark, just simple ukulele and Efinger’s soft and almost child-like vocals delivering lyrics darkly surreal. “in a dream me’s (?) were crying black blood and water / my mom didn’t see me floating like a sheet of paper.” ‘projection’ doesn’t even break the minute barrier, a sweet song about sending thoughts back home, and the personal stand-out ‘dark hearts’ sounds like its drifting from a quiet bedroom window, a feeling increased by the distant sounds of sirens, and has a chorus that is eerily resonant with the book I’m reading at the moment.

“We break our little hearts
you broke my little heart
when thunder struck your little life
when we were apart”

‘cereal box’ is a song about personal habits and (wrongly) feeling sad and stupid for being the person you are, opening with the perfect lines “he caught you in a cereal box said why do you eat so much? / said why you wasting my money a battle cries a crutch / he caught you in your room at two watching pokemon / said you’ll never do anything why you wasting your day off?” ‘sundrops’ feels reflective and somehow more hopeful, conjuring that golden feeling of watching a sunset and being aware of all your problems but not overwhelmed by them, of feeling like one little person in a very big world and being okay with that. All that’s left then is ‘will you’, which is about missing someone dearly, about sending letters and the solace in looking at the same moon.

The tapes have already sold out, but you can get ratbath’s Dead Skin Cells right now as a name-your-price digital download via the Fox Food Records Bandcamp page or the ratbath Bandcamp page.

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