Recorded in an old church near the birthplace of lead Daniel Hedin and taking years to bring to fruition, ‘Hideous Form’ is the new single from Det Hemliga Folket, a collaboration between Hedin and Budapest‘s Marton Fogl. The sound feels intrinsically tied to the origins of the track, offering an austere space full of shadow and cryptic weight, Hedin reaching beyond his surroundings and the present mood to re-engage with something more elemental. A song fitting for a project built around Hedin’s desire to connect with heritage, be that the ancestors who walked the land before him or the very earth of Sweden itself. Det Hemliga Folket is “a re-connection with the wild north inside me and the ancestral blues that whispers within the sound of the earth, the whispers in my head of the very fabric of the land,” he explains. “I hear the ocean and the silence of the forests that raised me like mothers and fathers. The darkness that’s been a part of me is an engine that never can die. It’s not just me, it is the earth where I am from, the deep beneath the soil of the north that is always calling me home.”

Dylan Henner – I Used To See Her On The Way Home from School and She Lit Up The Sky with her Beauty

A collection “which explores both the tactile experience of adolescence and the nostalgia of times now past.” That’s how we described Star Dream FM, the new album from Dylan Henner out via Phantom Limb, with previous singles ‘We Ditched School and Climbed Over the Neighbour’s Fence to Swim in their Pool All Day‘ and ‘We Walked all the Way to the Lake and The Water Was So Still We Jumped in Naked‘ “embracing not just a sentimental fondness for the specific moment but one wider in scope,” as we put it, “longing for the kind of curiosity and carefree spirit which marks youth.” With the album now out, Henner has shared another single and the title of the track says it all. ‘I Used To See Her On The Way Home from School and She Lit Up The Sky with Her Beauty’ is “about the frenzy and passion of love in adolescence,” as Henner explains. “About how your crush can change the whole universe with their presence, make everything feel bigger than you could possibly handle sometimes or so delicate you could lose it in an instance at others. The harp was supposed to represent the sort of angelic ascension of renaissance or classical beauty, which is the only lens you can ever see your crush with when you’re seventeen.”

ERIKA DOHI – Myth of Tomorrow

Later this week, Osaka-born, New York-based composer and pianist Erika Dohi will release Myth of Tomorrow, a brand new full-length via Switch Hit Records and Figureight Records. Described as “a sonic meditation on catastrophe, resilience, and rebirth,” the album builds upon the eclectic style of predecessor I, Castorpollux to push Dohi’s sound in new directions, utilising a variety of sensibilities from dance, jazz, ambient and classical modes to create soundscapes as singular as they are striking. The record draws its title from the Taro Okamoto’s mural of the same name, and the title track draws the clearest line between the two artworks. A song concerned with the endless cycles of existence, not only asking what they demand of us but also how we might find peace and healing within the recurring patterns of life. “For me, the song reflects on resilience and regeneration in the face of life’s relentless cycles,” Dohi explains. “Through its lyrics, I explore the contradictions of modern existence—the struggle to find happiness in repetition, the unspoken burdens we carry, and the illusions we chase in pursuit of fulfillment. Yet, amidst all of this, the song also asks us to pause, breathe, and reconnect with the beauty in the everyday: the sun rising without fail, the moon’s quiet waning, the resilience of a dandelion growing through cracks in asphalt. It’s a song of introspection that invites us to confront our disconnection and rediscover what moves us to live and hope for tomorrow.”

Myth of Tomorrow will be released on the 24th October via Switch Hit Records and Figureight Records and you can pre-order it now.

Haley Heynderickx & Max García Conover – Fluorescent Light

Haley Heynderickx and Max García Conover are no strangers to collaboration, the pair releasing Among Horses III back in 2018 on Son Canciones and the anniversary single ‘How Does the Horse Go Home?‘ five years later. “The genius of both Heynderickx and Conover is their ability to draw a relatable emotion from their subject matter,” we wrote, “tapping into a universal sense of nostalgia and longing and presenting it back to us, shaping and polished into its most gleaming form.” Based on the life and work of Woodie Guthrie and this time to be released via Fat Possum, What of Our Nature is a brand new full-length by the pair which builds upon the chemistry they’ve crafted over the years to offer songs as inventive and heartfelt as anything they’ve released to date. After the verbose and sometimes frantic ‘Boar’, latest single ‘Fluorescent Light’ highlights a more delicate, restrained dimension to the record, though true to Guthrie’s spirit, there’s a seam of social commentary running through it too. A tone at once playful, melancholic and cutting, able to take aim at the banalities and cruelties of contemporary life without losing its airy brightness.

Kramies – Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour

Back in August we introduced Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour, the new album from Kramies on Hidden Shoal, with single ‘Hollywood Signs’. The track showed the album’s nuanced nature, the sound following “a newly nostalgic direction, full of dreamlike longing and evening colours,” as we put it, yet one which possesses “something strange and quietly unsettling, full of the mysterious allure which Kramies has always offered.” With the record out now, the title track has been unveiled as a new single, the cornerstone of the record which embodies all of its richness and duality. Blending autobiography with fiction, ‘Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour’ rises from relative restraint into something enveloping, Kramies moving from a spacious, drifting sound into something rich and triumphant, playing like a metamorphosis witnessed in real time.

Langkamer – Crows

Following on from 2024 album Langzamer, as well as lead Josh Jarman’s solo release under the moniker Classic Trucks earlier this year, Bristol‘s Langkamer are preparing to release their fourth album in as many years. Coming early next January via Breakfast Records, No was recorded in the Spanish hills at Zarzalico and carries some of the Mediterranean clarity in its sound, creating enough space to examine the full scale of our frenetic contemporary life. Lead single ‘Crows’ gives a taste of what to expect, a track fired by nervous energy and unanswered questions, barrelling forwards despite its clear desire to stop and change. “’Crows’ is a song about the crazy shapes we contort ourselves into trying to create art in the era of late-stage capitalism,” the band explain. “Working a thousand jobs. Writing songs with the left hand while writing emails with the right hand. Your day is already doomed the moment you open your eyes. Everything’s a bad omen.”

Orchid Mantis – Strange Heaven

Change and evolution are key features in the career of any artist, especially one as prolific as Orchid Mantis. “Over the years, Atlanta, Georgia-based artist Thomas Howard has used the [project] as a space in which to explore a host of musical styles,” we wrote back in March, “each release responding to and building upon that which came before it so that the work was always in flux.” In Airports, the second Orchid Mantis full-length to be released this year, not only continues this process but meditates on the very meaning of such an endeavour. What does it mean to commit to a life making music? And how might it help chart all that is lost and preserved over the years? The result feels like the culmination of everything Orchid Mantis has done to date, returning to old styles and techniques as readily is it breaks new ground, and thus becomes something of a mission statement for the project. A declaration of intent to give the past and future equal billing, full of the spirit which has been pieced together over the years yet open to possibility. New single and closer ‘Strange Heaven’ expresses the sentiment most succinctly:

as it fades away
we could keep drifting
we could form a star
we could be lifted

The Planes – Tear the World Apart (MFLB Version)

We last wrote about New York indie rock outfit The Planes back in 2023, describing ‘First Breath After Mask’, a single from EP Dark Matter Recycling Co., as “a song at once depressed and affirming. As though from with its own inertia stirs some last attempt at catharsis.” Now the band are back with Motel For Lightning Bug, a brand new release which sees them continue their own idiosyncratic mix of rock and pop influences, harnessing some of the energy of their livewire shows without losing a sense of emotion or reflection. It is fitting that opener and single ‘Tear the World Apart (MFLB Version)’ is a reworking of a fan favourite from live shows, what the band call label as “slacker indie rock bubblegum” which deals with loss with equal parts wistfulness and wry humour, not to mention an infectious sense of momentum which only builds across the length of the track.

Sister Wanzala – Now You’re Mine

Back in 2022 we heralded the apparently triumphant return of London sibling trio Sister Wanzala, singles ‘Perfume‘ and ‘Top Drawer‘ appearing after a three-year hiatus which started soon after the release of 2019 EP The Circus and signalling an almost reluctant determination to pursue making music in an age which can often appear to be designed to convince you otherwise. Fittingly, both tracks featured dreams as a central motif, though rather than some inspirational battle cry to all those who which to pursue their passions, they either described these dreams as full of disaster (‘Top Drawer’) or declared a desire to have them removed entirely (‘Perfume’). You can already guess what happened next. The return was a false dawn, Sister Wanzala retreated into their shells again, only… what’s that? A new track, two years later? Another self-deprecating press release declaring their career a failure and promising more of the same? You’ll understand if we don’t call ‘Now You’re Mine’ anything more than another small blip in might otherwise be a pristine half-decade of silence, but as soon as the jazzy opening unfurls with all its nineties daytime TV swagger and the cold groove settles with effortless cool, you’ll be glad you got anything from the project, no matter how alluring and brief.

The post Weekly Listening: October 2025 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The release won Kramies acclaim from a variety of places, not least Billboard who christened him ‘The Dreampop Troubadour’, but now he’s about to return with a brand new full-length and is already stepping away from the persona. The aptly titled Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour sees Kramies push his work in a new direction. Made in collaboration with Grammy-winning producer Mario McNulty (David Bowie), the new album takes the mythic beauty of its predecessor and pushes it in a newly nostalgic direction, full of dreamlike longing and evening colours. But as lead single ‘Hollywood Signs’ demonstrates, this hushed, soothing style possesses an underside. Something strange and quietly unsettling, full of the mysterious allure which Kramies has always offered. The lyrics might tell a realist (if melodramatic) tale of two people, lovers or former lovers, but that’s only half of the story. In the world of Kramies, nothing is ever quite as it seems.

‘Hollywood Signs’ is out now and available from Bandcamp. Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour will be released in October via Hidden Shoal.

The post Kramies – Hollywood Signs appeared first on Various Small Flames.

I have come to the conclusion that all fairy tales endeavour to describe one and the same psychic fact, but a fact so complex and far-reaching and so difficult for us to realize in all its different aspects that hundreds of tales and thousands of repetitions with a musician’s variation are needed until this unknown fact is delivered into consciousness; and even then the theme is not exhausted. This unknown fact is what Jung calls the Self, which is the psychic reality of the collective unconscious […] Every archetype is in its essence only one aspect of the collective unconscious as well as always representing also the whole collective unconscious.

Kramies has long been dialled into such ideas. Across a range of releases, the Dutch-American songwriter has nurtured a distinctive style of folkloric music. A combination of folk, rock and dream pop which conjures its own fantastical worlds. Places both haunting and romantic, separate from reality but on some level echoing its deeper truths. And if, as per von Franz, these truths are complex and difficult and far-reaching, then it stands to reason Kramies will continue to build these worlds, each time circling a little closer to that unknown fact—the Self.

Released by Hidden Shoal, the new self-titled album represents the closest Kramies has come to communicating this Self. A record as committed to world-building and atmosphere as ever, but also loaded with personal details too. What feels like the culmination of a career to date. Where everything is consolidated and offered in its most fully realised form. Life in all its surreal wonder and visceral reality. Kramies, told as truthfully as possible, whatever form that truth takes.

Kramies was kind enough to answer some questions about the record, so read on for a deeper dive into into its themes and inspirations, the balance between myth and reality, and how its existence was predicted in a palm reading he received many years ago.

I think the title of the record is a good place to start. You’ve put out plenty of music in the past, so what is it about this collection that made you choose a self-titled release?

In the past I’ve written these type of dark & dreamy folklore EPs and whimsical songs. Stories that came to me as the seasons changed. Over the years those releases gained me a lot of press and recognition, but I felt like I was slowly growing through those songs and stories. I’ve been doing this for a long time and trying to really understand my craft and where it comes from. It seems I have re-created or brought back a genre of my own around this type of dark storytelling and I’ve become very comfortable sitting with that and creating. Yet, for the first time I found I was writing more personal and drawing into my own dark stories. There was a magical collision between this folklore that I’ve been creating and my own history. It was also the first time I wasn’t concerned with the outcome; I just wrote and was sort of pushed into taking time. It felt like there was no appropriate title for this constellation of songs… Also – true story, a long time ago an old lady who practiced witchcraft was reading my palm and told me that I would have a body of work titled by my first name only.

There was a decidedly otherworldly tone to many of your previous releases. Something mythic which challenged the line between real and fantasy. Would you say Kramies continues in this vein? Where does the needle fall on the real-fantasy spectrum, if any significant distinction should be made?

Well, Kramies definitely does fall into that vein, but it has more truth and clarity. I can never get too far away from the otherworldly and mystical sound. That’s what flows to me organically and out of nowhere like wind through the woods. It’s just on this album I was doing exactly what came to me and not trying to overly create something. I’ve become very comfortable being my strange artistic self, I’ve come to terms that I’m a sort of Willy Wonka meets Madhatter creative being with a crazy laugh and a unique life story that’s all my own. I think that finally started leaking through into this album. Plus, I do think having multiple producers really help make this a kaleidoscope of sorts. I think this time it’s a 74% mythic and 37% real life which much more than before (that equals 111% and I don’t know how I came up with those numbers, but I like it).

Playing into this are themes of ghosts and memory too. You’ve described how ‘Hotel in LA’ mirrors a period of your life where “there was a beautiful blur between the lines of what was real and what was nostalgia in the making.” Could you expand a little on this relationship between the past and present, and the importance of memory more generally across the album?

In my past I was a drug addict and many times close to death. For many years I stumbled in constant circles, exhausting cycles, and hid from realties. Yet life always gifted me with amazing adventures and special moments which has created a sort of beauty amongst the unpleasant for me. This tends to stir my witchy cauldron of creative nostalgia in a pretty more beautiful way. Yet because of the addiction my memories are a bit upside down until I find a moment written on paper, recollections in boxes, or an old friend comes to a show and reminds me of funny past tales.. I think I took all those past clues, life puzzles and current tapestries and melted it into this album. I just want to quickly say that you ask wonderful questions, I’ve done quite a few of these over the years and its rather lovely to swim deeper and try remembering things.

On a related subject, I’m interested in the sources of inspiration which directly seed your songs. I’ve read ‘Hotel in LA’ was inspired by an old letter? How did such an object compliment your exploration of the memory?

What’s crazy is since the days of my sobriety, I’ve moved to fourteen apartments in seventeen years. I’ve kept a lot of boxes filled with music clippings, memories, photos, letters etc. I’ve moved those boxes 100 times and never opened them; I just keep adding to it all. Well just over recent times I decided to open some of the older boxes to find many beautiful and personal time capsules. I believe it was all just proper timing, I could have opened these boxes anytime over the last seventeen years, but it was something magical that finally pushed me to look. There were so many letters from people I once loved or people who were inspired by my music and all sorts of things.

You know for a while there after my last EP in 2018 I was drained creatively. I live a very artistic life and I make a living off of it which can really take a toll on your energy. It took opening these boxes at the right moment and seeing positive memories that might have been created in the darkness of addiction and youth but now seems to light up and spark my memories to create this current album.

Can we talk about inspiration more generally? I definitely get a literary influence to your style? Who/what do you view as central to the shaping of your work, be it in terms of lyricism or sound?

The truth is I always wanted to be a writer. I’m more influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien or The Brothers Grimm then I am by much music. In fact, the first book I ever read as a kid was The Hobbit, it was the first time I remember being able to visualize imagery in my head from the words I was reading. My attention span was always to short to be a writer so song lyrics became my craft. The best part though is last year I wrote the soundtrack to a French book called Legend of the Willow. It was the first adult, fairy tale, pop-up book with a soundtrack. As you read it, you scroll your phone over the pages, and it plays the soundtrack… It’s been so fantastic to do stuff like that because it combines my love of books with what I do.

Quite an array of talent helped bring Kramies to life, from Jason Lytle and Tyler Ramsey to the excellent Allison Lorenzen. Could you talk a little on how the collaborations came about?

Oh well that really has been some sort of magic, I have been really lucky to experience so many brilliant artists come into my life and help me. Some I’ve known for years and some just appeared. It rarely happens for artists this way but for some special reason all these wonderful humans were a part of this. I think there’s seven well known artists on this LP and I have a lot of love and respect I have for each one of these people. I think its what also made this album so different and detailed. Each person who worked on this album has a unique story on how they came into my life, I’ll spare you the long stories but for them all to be on one album is truly magic, and if you don’t believe in magic then that’s your business and I don’t know what you call it but its real.

This might be like choosing a favourite child, but I’m always interested which specific songs are held most dearly by the artist themselves. Do you have a favourite on the record? And, if so, what’s special about that one?

This is going to sound absolutely mad but my favourite “child” on this album is the cover art that Lady Viktoria created. Each song has such a special moment captured in time for me that it would be so hard to pick one. Yet somehow though when all gathered under the painting of the cover it all makes sense for me.

Kramies is out now via Hidden Shoal and available from Bandcamp.

Artwork by Lady Viktoria, photography by Jerome Sevrette

The post Kramies – S/T appeared first on Various Small Flames.

LA-born, Nashville-based songwriter Alicia Blue has just released her most recent EP Inner Child Work via Magnetic Moon, and opening track ‘DTMTS (Don’t Tell Me To Smile)’ serves as the perfect introduction to her work. A song which seizes upon the pressure to present yourself a certain way, even when the world is overwhelming and smiling is the last thing on your mind. “I’m a real thing,” Blue sings, “If you want to be with me / know that sometimes the sun’s not going to shine.”

Inner Child Work is out now via Magnetic Moon and available at the usual places.

Angel Saint Queen – Diablo Lake

The product of a months-long road trip, Angel Saint Queen’s ‘Diablo Lake’ takes in the range of the American landscape, be it wide-sky deserts of Utah to the rainy mountains of the Pacific Northwest. A track which highlights the duo’s bittersweet tone, capturing a sadness for leaving and excitement for what comes next. A little wistful, a little upbeat, ready to roll the windows down and ride on through to whatever place should pop up next.

‘Diablo Lake’ is out now and available via streaming services.

First Rodeo – Didn’t It Rain Last Night

There’s a certain old-time charm to Portland‘s First Rodeo. A collaborative project between Nathan Tucker and Tim Howe, their sound has more than one foot in classic country rock. But there’s a contemporary freshness to the sound too, meaning wherever their boots are planted, there’s no question they are facing out over fresh ground. Lead single ‘Didn’t It Rain Last Night’ is the perfect introduction, a song contemplative and sometimes melancholic, its Americana roots accentuated by Sam Wenc‘s bowed banjo, though infused with a confident rhythm which rubs off on everything.

Goon – Emily Says

Fresh from releasing album Paint By Numbers, Volume 1 back in February, LA’s Goon are already back with brand new record, Hour of Green Evening. Described as the band’s “most complete statement,” the album sees Goon combine everything which came before to realise their most polished and detailed sound yet. Single ‘Emily Says’ shows off just how evocative this can be. A love song dedicated to frontman Kenny Becker’s wife Emily Elkin which celebrates the transformational power of forming a bond while acknowledging it cannot alleviate all external ills.

it hinges here in the air
a garden in wait
blanket of sunshine
and i’m like “i wanna be there”
and emily says “hope still appears”
and though i know in my heart it’s right
feeling like hurting myself tonight
nobody’s candle is burning bright
the wind inside the blades of grass will unbind it

Hour of Green Evening is out now and you get it from the Goon Bandcamp page.

Indigo Sparke – Pressure in My Chest

This October sees Australian songwriter Indigo Sparke return with their second full-length album, Hysteria, on Sacred Bones. With focus on themes of love, loss, history and reconciliation, the record is a raw yet far-reaching collection of songs, pushing beyond the relative minimalism of debut echo yet retaining the intimacy at its core. Lead single ‘Pressure in My Chest’ pitches the listener straight into the deep and honest sound, building with the slow intensity suggested by the title until its cathartic conclusion.

Jack Keyes – The Moon is Too High

Louisville songwriter Jack Keyes released his second record Dissolving in Dusk this month, an album we’ve described previously as “wrapped in an easy-going sincerity that holds both melancholy and fondness.” After ‘Grey Balloons‘ offered a conflicted picture of a relationship slipping away, final single ‘The Moon is Too High’ searches for a way in which to appreciate the present moment, however difficult and fleeting it might seem, with an endearingly lo-fi and intimate sound.

Kramies – Hotel in LA

With a brand of folk-inflected dream pop willing to combine history with folklore and myth, Kramies has made a name across several acclaimed EPs, but this September sees the release of a self-titled debut full-length on Hidden Shoal. Featuring Todd Tobias (Guided By Voices), Patrick Carney (The Black Keys), Jason Lytle (Grandaddy) and Tyler Ramsey (Band of Horses), the record offers a layered, ethereal sound which challenges the distinction between real and dreams when contemplating the past. Which is something single ‘Hotel in LA’ captures perfectly. “It kind of follows that timeline of my life where there was a beautiful blur between the lines of what was real and what was nostalgia in the making,” he explains. A space in which experiences are processed into memories, and all the emotional significance attached. Check out the video by Derek Lee LaJoie below:

Kramies is out on the 9th September via Hidden Shoal.

Lee Baggett – Fruit Dog

Born in the Philippines, Lee Baggett moved to Sanger, California as a kid, going on to form a band in high school and becoming part of the San Luis Obispo music scene through the eighties and nineties in bands like Unknown Origin and Fever Tree. Work with Kyle Field’s Little Wings and the Be Gulls followed, as well as a solo career which stretches right through to the present with Anyway, a new record coming soon on Perpetual Doom. Single ‘Fruit Dog’ taps into this history, like a long-lost seventies summer jam complete with a surreal slacker spirit which captures that easy-going West Coast swagger.

 Nwando Ebizie – Myrrha

Nwando Ebizie is a multidisciplinary Afrofuturist artist gearing up to release debut album The Swan this month on Accidental Records. A lesson in speculative world building, the release conjures an fictional matriarchal society which feels both timeless and utopian, Ebizie’s use of found sound and footage bending the lines between the historical past and imagined futures. An enthography of what was and what could be. Described as “a lament,” single ‘Myrrha’ confronts the intricate relationship between pain and change, finding space to mourn and celebrate those who have suffered through a process of transformation.

The Pleasure Majenta – Gardens

Hailing from New Zealand and now based in Berlin, The Pleasure Majenta craft a deliciously dark sound which draws upon goth and noise influences with a cowboy twang too. Their latest record Looming, the Spindle came out recently on Dedstrange, and final single ‘Gardens’ serves as a great introduction for the uninitiated. Opening with a palpable foreboding, the track coalesces around itself with shadowy grace, the mood decidedly Lynchian as it unfurls, beckoning the listener further into its slowly sashaying heart. Check out the video filmed, directed and edited by Anna Winslow below:

Looming, the Spindle is out now via Dedstrange and you can grab it from The Pleasure Majenta Bandcamp page.

Sun Kin – I Wanna Believe

Following on from ambient EP Painting Whales, Part 1 earlier this year, Kabir Kumar has turned Sun Kin back toward a more indie pop direction with new single, ‘I Wanna Believe’. A bright, smooth track packed with upbeat energy and heartfelt emotion, its tone never quite erring on the side of irony or sincerity but instead embracing a duality within its retro glitz. On the one hand there’s a playful side (“I wanna believe in love / I’m eating a chocolate bar named for loneliness”) but there’s a more earnest thread to the track too. What Kumar describes as about “gaining love by treating it as a spiritual foundation.”

vireo – Coyote

Following on from 2019’s leaf heap, an album we described as “slow and patient and peaceful as the late autumn dusk,” Pittsburgh‘s vireo are set to return with brand new record, Moss Longing. Lead single ‘Coyote’ introduces a collection of songs centring around “climate anxiety, folklore, wanderlust and children’s books,” its careful folk pop sound blossoming gradually into something bright and affirming, the vocals of lead Chris Beaulieu shaded by a sense of sadness but not beholden to it.

Moss Longing is due to be released on 18th August. Pre-save on Spotify, or keep on eye on the vireo Bandcamp page for pre-order info.

The post Weekly Listening: July 2022 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

1. I Don’t Know – Tina Refnes (+ Lit Links)
2. If I Were a Portal – Evening Hymns
3. Cradle Robber – Tyler Butler and His Handsome Friends
4. Calvander – Mount Moriah
5. The Way It Is, The Way It Could Be – The Weather Station
6. Porch – Long Beard
7. Small Wind Power – Fraternal Twin
8. Mourning Dove – Danielle Fricke
9. 3 – Cat Be Damned
10. Cold Apartment Floors – Vagabon
11. I Used To Be A Bird – Fairweather Currents
12. Drive-Thru – Honeyuck
13. Ghosts – The Washboard Abs
14. Litany – Tyler Key
15. Aviator Shades – Quiet Hollers
16. Book of Right On (Joanna Newsom cover) – Foxtails Brigade (Lit Links)
17. Judy Blume – Mal Devisa
18. So Long – Dot & Logic
19. A Swift Thing – EP
20. Stuck w/ Me – Home Lives
21. Close Call (Adderall Anxiety) – Shaky Shrines
22. Boys – Dicktations
23. Nothing – Strange Friends
24. Careful Creators – Summering
25. Blinding White – Vapour Night
26. Pull – Slow Dancing Society (Hidden Shoal compilation)
27. Calmest – Naps
28. As He Walked Into the Field – Robert Stillman
29. Church Bells – Tommy Perman, Simon Kirby & Rob St. John
30. Seven – Oh, Rose
    31. No Hell – Cloud Cult

The post November Roundup – A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

While the collection comes from a particular genre, there is still room for much variation across the thirteen tracks. Antonymes and Kryshe favour fragile, graceful piano, Cheekbone push a sci-fi inspired electronica and Chloe March creates a lush chamber pop. Todd Tobias evokes a mixture of shimmering bliss and nostalgia, his track ‘Nan Madol’ playing like a super-cinematic missing number from the Twin Peaks soundtrack, while Stockholm’s Erik Nilsson’s gently tropical ‘Drawing/Dreaming’ feels like watching the sun set into the sea on the last night of your holiday. Other highlights include the goosebump-inducing melodrama of Slow Dancing Society’s ‘Pull’, Elisa Luu’s ethereal ‘Chromatic Sigh’ and the aching melancholy of closing track ‘Empty Cradles’ by Sleeping Me.

Tracklisting:

Antonymes – The Siren, Hopelessly Lost
My Majestic Star – Meaning Less
Markus Mehr – Hubble
Chloe March – Old Tree, Mon Coeur
Cheekbone – Far
Erik Nilsson – Drawing/Dreaming
Slow Dancing Society – Pull
Gilded – Velar
Todd Tobias – Nan Madol
Elisa Luu – Chromatic Sigh
Kryshe – Africa
Medard Fischer – Five Years Almost to the Day
Sleeping Me – Empty Cradles

You can buy Long Range Transmissions now on a pay-what-you-can basis from the Hidden Shoal Bandcamp page. Find all the latest news on Hidden Shoal releases via their website.

P.S. The artwork is by Perth artist/graphic designer Gabrielle Harcourt.

The post Long Range Transmissions – A Hidden Shoal compilation appeared first on Various Small Flames.

‘The Lights in the Sands of Katumpkale’ is a short neo-classical track that draws on a wide range of styles and genres to create a surreal, cinematic slice of orchestral pop. Lable Hidden Shoal describe the song as “a window into Ryan E. Weber’s kaleidoscopic musical universe,” which seems more than apt. You can grab it for free right now over at Bandcamp.

Not content with the intricate track, Weber teamed up with Megan Olinger Sweeting to shoot an accompanying video which certainly ups the intrigue. Focusing on the strange movements of various body parts, the video is what my uneducated self would label Lynchian, although I’m sure those who enjoy avant-garde cinema would know of a few better examples. Whatever the influences, the whole thing is shot on Super 8 and transferred to VHS, giving that mysterious/creepy/slightly seedy feel of 70s/80s arthouse flicks. Watch it below:

The album will be released on Hidden Shoal the 16th July.

The post REW<< - The Lights in the Sands of Katumpkale appeared first on Various Small Flames.