If any of the above points make you feel a little down, here’s a playlist of every band we featured during September to cheer you up. As always, click the artist name in the tracklisting to be whisked away to the specific post.

Tracklisting:

1. Hidden Driver – LVL UP
2. Death – CHUCK
3. Seskinore – Hiva Oa
4. Shut Out the Light – Tiny Dinosaurs
5. Foothills – Simon Balto
6. Lie 2 Me – Shana Falana
7. annie – moving in
8. A Lonely Road – Jordan O’Jordan
9. Augustine – The Chairman Dances
10. Golden – Mt. Wolf (feat. St. South)
11. I – Slenko & McKeys
12. zszs – rgz
13. Meditations – Tall Ships
14. Tossing & Turning – Saint Clementine
15. Century Woods – Lisa/Liza
16. Clear Section – Spartan Jet-Plex
17. Trancendless Summer – Peter Silberman
18. Where We Began – Tilman Robinson
19. will you?/you will – Fossil Jane
20. Ya w/Me? – Lomelda (from Swell Tone’s Summer of Sad)
21. Soon Soon – Praything
22. Drive – Mere Women
23. See Through – Suzy Callahan
24. Untitled (Slow) – Jana Irmert
25. Beyond the Stars – The Edge Of The Light
26. Northern Arm – Evening Hymns
27. It’s Not Real – Hazel English

You can check out the previous monthly roundups here, and our various other playlists and mixtapes here.

The post September 2016 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“[The song] feels like several songs coalescing into one, a magic formula emerging by chance from a radio set between stations…post-rock thump, dream pop drone and indie rock vocals shrouded in gauzy ambience… the various elements complementing one another to build into a squally climax”

With such a diverse and varied sound, we thought it would be interesting to find out who the band consider inspirations, and asked them to choose ten influential songs that have in one way or another shaped their sound or just seemed important through their lives.

Ten Songs

from Hiva Oa

Although a lot of fun, this was a near impossible task to whittle a list of what could have been hundreds of songs to a list of just 10. I guess the artists are just as influential as the tracks chosen, and I could have easily plucked 10 different tracks from each of the artists. None the less, here we go.

While collating this list, the one recurring theme from each track chosen was not just the initial impact of the track when I first heard it (often from my youth), but also how these have stuck with me for a number of years and songs that I continue to return to.

1. Ces gens-la – Jacques Brel

I guess it would make sense to start with the man who inspired our choice of band name. There are a number of tracks I could have gone with, but Ces gens-la is a notable gateway to his music. The real power of this track comes in the form of the live visual performance. No understanding of the French language required. His animation is self-explanatory.

2. Avalanche – Leonard Cohen

There is much of his discography that I am yet to discover, on purpose, but Songs of Love and Hate was a staple listen in my youth and still to this day. The desire to do cover versions doesn’t occupy my mind much, however, I have flirted with the idea of doing a cover of this for quite a while now. Maybe I will convince the rest at some point…..

3. Roads – Portishead

Portishead were the first ever band I saw live. I was 12 and couldn’t possibly appreciate the situation I was in (I have my older sister to thank for that), but it still remains one of the best gigs I ever saw. Again, it was hard to narrow down to one Portishead track. Roads….why not!

4. Love me or leave me – Nina Simone

Again, difficult to narrow to one track for Nina, but the musicianship in this track just blew me away the first time I heard it and continues to this day, particularly the contrast of the piano solo and accompaniment. No better example of the classically trained beast trying to burst through the jazz/blues surroundings she feels caged within.

5. Factories – Damien Dempsey

I would love to see the day where Damien is as well revered around the world as he is in Ireland, but I fear it will never be so. Brutal honesty in a disillusioned modern age. As much as I tried, Irish traditional music was something that I just couldn’t warm to. Damien bridged that gap perfectly. I guess I just needed a hero for my generation.

6. I Only Said – My Bloody Valentine

Throughout this list, it could be said that it is singers that are the focal point which first inspired me. Being a singer myself, it is always the aspect I get drawn to initially. Hearing this track for the first time however…..There is just something special about the melody and its delivery. Intoxicating.

7. Lullaby for Hamza – Robert Wyatt

Robert Wyatt is the blend of the above statement. A great unique voice, but with the same strange intoxicating delivery. This was the first Robert Wyatt track I ever heard and continues to be an album I return to. Recently, Daithi and I were having a conversation about Wyatt and Christine piped up to say she never heard of him. The following question being ‘what does he sound like?’……For passers by listening in, they would be forgiven for thinking that two strange animals had escaped from a zoo. You’re trying it now aren’t you…..

8. Clap Hands – Tom Waits

I was first turned on to Tom Waits while in my mid teens and was given his debut album Closing Time by a friend. I loved it but didn’t delve into his discography any further for some time. Imagine my surprise when the next album I heard was Rain Dogs a decade later. This is the opening track and is, again, an album I return to constantly.

9. Song to the Siren – Tim Buckley

I was difficult not to choose his son, but since we are just talking about individual songs here, I thought I would go with this. Something very special indeed.

10. Rez – Underworld

To close things off, I wanted to step away singers. This was the first electronic track that widened my scope of the limitless beauty of electronic music and again, served as the perfect gateway. Such a shame it only lasts for 10 minutes.

Hiva Oa’s new EP, mk II (part 1) is set for release on the 16th September and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

The post Ten Songs from Hiva Oa appeared first on Various Small Flames.

‘A Great Height’ opens the release with insistent drums and sinuous baseline, with numerous types of percussion joining the simple beat as if in thumping chorus. The repetition builds into a near atavistic frenzy, carving out a depth within which you could become lost. Second track ‘Seskinore’ begins with another prominent baseline, this time backed with pretty ambient flourishes which shimmer and glitch behind vocals reminiscent of Thom Yorke. Again the instrumentation gathers in intensity, swelling outwards before being joined by more scattered drums and Tubridy’s vocals following a similar pattern, remaining even for a long while before eventually getting swept up in the energy too.

‘Christine’ is airy and slightly ominous, the ambient drone lethargic and strange like some slow-motion dream world. The vocals take centre stage, rising from the fog with unerring clarity, playing like the confessions of a man as spoken within his head. Closer ‘Johnny Brazil’ feels like several songs coalescing into one, a magic formula emerging by chance from a radio set between stations. There’s post-rock thump, dream pop drone and indie rock vocals shrouded in gauzy ambience as the track gathers around itself, the various elements complementing one another to build into a squally climax.

“Chrisine, oh Christine,
I’ve shot another one”

mk II (part 1) is set for release on the 16th of September and you can pre-order it now from the Hiva Oa Bandcamp page.

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The music defies simple description, although artists such as Sparklehorse, Vic Chesnutt and dEUS have all been mentioned in comparison. If you are a fan of any of these artists, of experimental, lo-fi music in general, or of any of the other mini50 records artists I have featured previously (such as the aforementioned Old Earth or Hiva Oa) then I highly suggest you give A New Start a shot. A video has been made for the title track, which you can check out below:

Similar to their recent Old Earth release, mini50 records are currently offering pre-orders of the album in a number of packages, from a simple CD to a bumper package that contains a CD, bonus EP, tote bag and artwork by Benjamin Løzninger himself. The proceeds of the pre-orders are required to make the album a reality, so be generous. Pre-orders can be placed here. If you do want to get the record, then I would hurry up, as only 100 copies are being produced.

The post Løzninger – A New Start appeared first on Various Small Flames.

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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