With this in mind, the previous releases were ambitious enough, but the latest Nuisance project takes those ideas and pushes them to new heights. Coming next month on Katuktu Collective, triple album SAND, STONE, GLASS follows the template set with Kuchisabishii and Qanisquineq but with the dial twisted to eleven. “SAND, STONE, GLASS is an album that was recorded before it was written,” the band explain. “Selected instruments were deeply sampled then coded and designed into a series of 31 virtual instruments by the artist(s) and used exclusively in the making of the record(s).”

Nuisance left no stone unturned when collecting these instruments. They include everything from a refurbished abandoned felted piano and heirloom oud, to a vintage home organ borrowed from Facebook marketplace and synths crafted from experimental found sounds. But the expanded library was only the beginning of the project’s vision. Because just as Scott Robert Allen and Eric Osterman reimagined songs from Kuchisabishii to make the Qanisquineq EP, the triple album invites the collaborators to make two entirely new records from the nineteen songs of the first. The result is essentially three variants of the same album: SAND, STONE, GLASS.

Lead single ‘Sepia’ gives a view into how this plays out. The SAND version of the track is what Nuisance describe as “indie folk meets bedroom pop with a pinch of doo wop,” its acoustic washes drawing the listener into rich world of ambient textures, piano and organ beats. But the STONE variant favours a starker ambient style, the acoustic elements stripped out and replaced with a sense of space, while the GLASS offering leans much further toward the piano, maintaining the expansive atmosphere of its predecessor but offering a fonder, poignant tone.

SAND, STONE, GLASS will be released on 3rd March via Katuktu Collective. You can listen to all three iterations of ‘Sepia’ and ‘Davenport’ now via the Nuisance Bandcamp page.

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After unveiling penultimate track ‘The Sky Was Orange’ back in February, a flittering song that fused everything from sparse Dear Nora-style left-field pop to hyperactive electro, Sotzko recently released the album’s second single, ‘Are You OK?’ It sounds something like the weird, trippy post-punk cousin of an Au Revoir Simone song, airy vocals floating over wiry guitar lines and a persistent drumbeat.

Like much of the record, the track combines natural imagery with elements more personal and fantastic. “While on its surface [Bad Vibes in Mushroom Forest expresses] a connection with nature,” explains the press release, “[it] is interspersed throughout with traces of memory and remnants of technology that in its density is more soothing than repulsive.”

wonders the dirt, ask the trees
you like to see your friends fail sometimes
observes the sun, asks the sea

Bad Vibes in Mushroom Forest will be released on 1st April via Katuktu Records (cassette) and Späti Palace (LP).

Photo by Tanno Pippi

The post Point No Point – Are You OK? appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Binker & Moses – Accelerometer Overdose

The recording project of saxophonist Binker Golding and drummer and composer Moses Boyd, Binker & Moses are representative of a new wave of acts within London who look to combine the jazz tradition with hip-hop, Caribbean rhythms and various electronic styles. The latest single from forthcoming record Feeding The Machine on Gearbox Records, ‘Accelerometer Overdose’ welcomes the tape loops of Max Luthert, pushing things into ambient territory and further increasing the possibilities of the Binker & Moses sound.

Sun June – Somewhere + 3

Last year saw the release of Sun June’s excellent album Somewhere on Run For Cover Records, which recently featured on our Albums We Missed in 2021 feature. The record was released from isolation, and when the band were finally able to get back together they channelled both the frustration of those lost months and the joy of being reunited into new songs. The result is Somewhere + 3, a deluxe edition of last year’s record with three previously unreleased tracks.

The vibe of these new songs is captured perfectly on lead single ‘Easy’. “[It] is a romantic struggle song,” explains says Laura Colwell. “It’s about love and partnership and longstanding arguments that are hard to get past.”

Want it to be easy
Swore we’d be better by now
Picture of your mother
In Vietnam, 1977

Widowspeak – Everything is Simple

“Everything is simple ’til it’s not,” sings Molly Hamilton of Widowspeak on ‘Everything is Simple’, the lead single from the New York duo’s forthcoming album, The Jacket. It’s a song about how things grow complicated with time, how even situations which begin as pure potential eventually become knotted with limitations, and how, unreliable narrators that we are, we often bend reality to adapt. But despite that, the song sounds surprisingly vibrant, unfurling with a patient confidence that we’ve come to expect from Widowspeak. Check out the video, directed by OTIUM, below:

The Jacket is out via Captured Tracks on the 11th March and you can pre-order it now from the Widowspeak Bandcamp page.

Good Good Blood – The Dizzying Parade

Back in November we introduced you to The Dizzying Parade, the latest album from Good Good Blood on Team Love Records, with single ‘Green Bank’. “A densely layered track which balances a propelling drum beat with an dreamy weightlessness,” we described, “Smith’s vocals finding that neo-psychedelic line between attitude and ethereality.” Ahead of the album’s release this week, Good Good Blood have unveiled the title track. Another propulsive song which gradually builds in intensity as it unfolds, the tension growing and growing before unravelling into a sonic kaleidoscope of colour and sound. A finale as disorientating as the title suggests.

Allegra Krieger – Taking It In

Brooklyn-based songwriter Allegra Krieger is back with Precious Thing, a new LP out via Northern Spy Records this spring. Lead single ‘Taking It In’ introduces the album’s distinctively inviting and wistful sound, Krieger’s gentle croon sitting within a changeable arrangement of strings that conjure the sense of memories ebbing and flowing around the present moment. “Where am I now? Where was I three years ago?” she asks, “Where is my mother where is anyone I know?” Check out the video by Samuel Ogoe, Melissa Lozada-Oliva and Koa Ho below:

Precious Thing releases via Northern Spy Records on the 4th March and you can pre-order it now from the Allegra Krieger Bandcamp page.

 chores – Trip Wire

chores are a post punk slash dream pop band from Rochester NY. They recently released their debut single, ‘Trip Wire’, taken from a forthcoming EP. It’s a wonderful introduction, the kind of lo-fi indie pop gem that would be right at home on an early 90s Sarah Records sampler. As the title suggests, it’s a song about trying to avoid all those little everyday triggers that spark anxiety. As lead Heather Swenson sings “it’s a thick mire, avoiding any tripwire / that could signal friendly fire somewhere in my brain, so many times a day.”

Melk – Yankee Division Highway

Self-described “aspiring optimists” from Washington D.C., Melk make dreamy, punky indie pop that nevertheless traverse some pretty serious emotional depths. Comprising of Melissa Kain (guitar & vocals), AJ DiGregorio (bass) and Alex Scheuer (drums), Melk have just released their second EP, a three-song collection called Somebody, Nobody, Anybody. The standout is the slow-burning final track, ‘Yankee Division Highway’, a song the band say is “about how apathy can erode the trust you have in loved ones.” Kain guides us through the patient build, matching the intensity of the instrumentation before drifting into a rueful croon.

Carrie Biell – See Through the Trees

“I’ve been living my whole damn life trying to make everybody feel alright,” sings Seattle-based singer-songwriter Carrie Biell in latest single, ‘See Through the Trees’. “Maybe I’m sick of trying.” The line captures the track’s strange relationship between uncertainty and conviction, where beliefs are felt with palpable force even when solutions might not be easy or accessible. “This is about feeling maxed out in life by people and life commitments,” Biell explains, “but still trying to open up and be vulnerable in a new relationship. It’s about responding to your own needs while also giving to a new partner and learning to trust.”

Modern Nature – Performance

Rising from the ashes of previous band Ultimate Painting, Modern Nature is the new moniker of London‘s Jack Cooper. A project which takes the compositions and songwriting developed with Ultimate Painting and builds upon them with a newfound willingness to improvise and experiment. This month sees the release of latest record Island Of Noise on Bella Union, with lead single ‘Performance’ offering a glimpse of what’s to come. A song “written from the perspective of someone seeing or realising something overwhelming for the first time,” as Cooper puts it, consisting of a multitude of moving parts that mimic a kind of irrepressible curiosity.

Check out the video by Conan Roberts, Phoebe Cooper and Cooper himself below:

Island Of Noise is out on the 28th January via Bella Union and you can pre-order it from the Modern Nature Bandcamp page.

Pompey – Overwhelmed

Montreal based artist Pompey has played in a variety of acts within the city, lending his talents to the likes of Thanya Iyer, Corey Gulkin and Paper Beat Scissors, but Overwhelmed is the first full-length album of his own. Released by Anything Bagel, the record is a self-professed pandemic album. A product not so much of the prolonged anxiety of the present but rather Pompey’s methods of coping. A deliberate search for comfort and kindness within the constant pressure, carving out a space in which to rest. The title track illustrates the mood as good as any on the record, delivered with a deliberate tenderness which invites the listener to share the safe harbour for a while.

I try not to frown
Smile spreads light throughout my crown
I will trust myself
Over time

Nuisance – Kuchisabishii

A collaboration between William J. Seidel and Ryan E. Weber (REW<<, Eric & Magill), Nuisance craft a version of dream pop coloured by folk and classical sensibilities, though the process is far more notable than that. Weber spent two years recording instruments and coding them into software, building up a library of sounds which can be downloaded at Poetic Devices. After such a laborious process, the pair decided their first use of the program should be as immediate as possible, and the first Nuisance album Kuchisabishii, (out now via Katuktu Collective) came together in just two days. A shifting, impressionistic exploration of intimacy and immediacy, it’s a wonderful example of music made from the ground up, from atomic level building blocks to an album-sized ecosystem.

Don’t Worry – Crushing Weight / Head’s Chocka

Fronted by co-leads Ronan Van Kehoe and Samuel Watson, Don’t Worry have won recognition with their blend of wry observation and nostalgic charm. Following last year’s single ‘As If By Magic‘, the outfit are returning with full-length Remorseless Swing on Specialist Subject Records, and the first singles suggest the Don’t Worry style is evolving in several directions beyond their indie rock/emo roots. Be it the poppy (or poppier) rhythms of ‘Crushing Weight’ or the sweet romance of ‘Head’s Chocka’, though the lyrics still have signature flashes of wit.

Why can’t we just take this moment
Flatter it with rapturous applause and leave early doors
Listen, my head is chocka
But I can no longer forget here and now

Oh, how
I’m tongue tied over you

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Upset – S/T

The current project of former Best Coast and Vivian Girls drummer Ali Koehler, along with Patty Schemel, Nicole Snyder and Lauren Freeman, Upset formed in 2013 and released their debut record She’s Gone on Don Giovanni that same year. In 2015 the band put out a 10″ via Lauren Records and now are back with a self-titled album on the same label. The album continues to perfect the band’s pop-punk flecked crunchy indie rock, with songs like ‘Lucky Strikes Out’ exploring relationship woes with blazing energy. There’s even a Hollywood-style happy ending, so what’s not to like?

The Great Yawn – California

Based in Pretoria, South Africa, The Great Yawn are a country folk band led by singer-songwriter Danielle Bakkes. Following on from this year’s full-length album, Botanica, the band are back with a brand new single ‘California’. Offering a sultry yet tongue-in-cheek take on the the West Coast culture, the song scores its syrupy, dreamy style with a cutting satirical edge, evoking chlorined pools and toned bodies and those superficial fantasies we know to be false yet secretly pine for all the same.

The track comes complete with a video to further these ideas, directed by Susan van Tonder with cinematography by Heleen van Tonder, and you can watch it below:

Botanica is out now and you can find The Great Yawn on Spotify and Apple Music.

Point No Point – Don’t Cancel Your Plans

Point No Point is the recording project of multi-instrumentalist Jana Sotzko, a renowned figure in the Berlin music scene known for the likes of Soft Grid, Dropout Patrol and many more. The new Point No Point album, Drift, marks a return to the early experimentation of Sotzko’s career, moving away from the rigid planning and attention to detail that represented the Soft Grid style in favour of something more impulsive and impromptu. The result is a release that lives up to its name, a drifting collection of songs, unguided by anything beyond the mysterious natural rhythm of things.

‘Don’t Cancel Your Plans’ encapsulates this new mindset. With its spacious, patient sound, the track is sparse yet undeniably warm in its own peculiar way, and Sotzko’s distinctive vocals are equally captivating, sitting next to the likes of Dear Nora in their confident, idiosyncratic flow.

K. Campbell – Chords Come Easy / Static Threads

We wrote about K. Campbell back in April when he released his album Heads Up on Poison Moon Records. “Taking the DIY aesthetic of punk and hardcore and filtering it through the more refined lens of power pop,” we wrote, “Campbell […] retains the immediacy and personality of the former while gaining the polish of the latter, allowing for songs that are as affective as they are precise.”

November saw the release of a new double single, Chords Come Easy / Static Threads, which develops this aesthetic further. Belonging to the same family as the work of Beat Radio, ‘Chords Come Easy’ is a nostalgic slice of lo-fi rock that celebrates the power of creating art, while ‘Static Threads’ adds a jangling warmth to the mix, maintaining a wistful air but not dwelling on the past.

no reason to look back if you accept the fact
that our days will end with simple math
and static threads

nutrients – always in bloom

Toronto quintet Nutrients specialise in sweet and snappy songs, borrowing from slacker rock and dream pop and some psychedelic tones too to create tracks both bright and soft. After a series of self-released tapes, last month saw the band release their self-titled debut on Earth Libraries—a record that embraces the warm, relaxed style that Nutrients have made their own.

This is made clear on single ‘Always in Bloom’, a sub-two-minute track that punches above its short run-time. Because, in contrast to its succinctness, the song is mellow and loose, not rushing toward a conclusion but ambling slowly, taking in the hazy atmosphere through which it moves.

tumble, tumble on down
down where those prickly plants
and the evergreens are always in bloom
seeing double
see twice or vice versa
exercise all the second thoughts you can’t bare to lose

Nutrients is out now on Earth Libraries and available from Bandcamp.

Winter – Nothing More

Hailing from Curitiba in Brazil, Samira Winter moved to Boston at eighteen and started recording under the moniker Winter. The project combines the gauzy dream pop of the Cocteau Twins with something a little more psychedelic, resulting in a sound that is at once immersive and surreal.

After a series of successful bilingual releases, Winter are now teaming up with Bar None Records for a brand new EP, Hazy. Taking the band in newly lo-fi direction, the EP draws influences from the bedroom aesthetic to strip back the layers of previous material, allowing for a more intimate, direct sound. Lead single ‘Nothing More’ is a good example, showing off the conversational tone of the release, and it’s nuanced take on what it means to be in love.

Cayley Thomas – Midnight Hours

Based in Edmonton, singer, guitarist and songwriter Cayley Thomas is set to release her debut record, How Else Can I Tell You?. An album that “reflect[s] upon a period of subconscious overwhelm and the subsequent shift into conscious thought and awareness,” the songs blur the line between studio richness and home charm, managing to achieve a vivid pop sound without sacrificing any of the personal wrinkles that give them their charm.

Lead single ‘Midnight Hours’ is a great example of this. A pop song with an eccentric edge, the track proves accessible but also disarmingly weird, as though below the polished surface lies a whole world, strange and deep. The video, which Thomas co-directed with Sam at Bootjack Video, furthers this sensation, leading the viewer through all of the window dressing in order to get closer to the essence of one’s thoughts.

Keep an eye on the Cayley Thomas website for more information on How Else Can I Tell You? 

Teen Idle – Dreaming

The recording project of New Jersey-based songwriter Sara Barry, Teen Idle fuses the heartsick melodrama of 60s love ballads with the downbeat and languorous tones of 90s slowcore. The result is a melancholic sound clouded by love, so richly textured that you feel you could lean back into it and never quite fall through. New single ‘Dreaming’ is the perfect example, emerging from a slow and wistful opening that sets the tone from the off, the track possessing a smooth, elegiac tone that threatens to rise into some great crescendo but instead meanders on in its restraint.

I know you want to leave these familiar streets
The city weeps
When the moon fades
There will be no light
If you’d be mine

Leggy – Not What You Need

Back in March, Cincinnati trio Leggy released their latest album, Let Me Know Your Moon, on Sheer Luck Records and cemented their place among the most exciting and interesting indie rock bands plying their trade today. “[Leggy’s] punk rock possesses an inner tension,” we wrote in a preview piece. “Both the sound and Allaer’s lyrics having a tautness that always appears on the verge of snapping, lending an atmosphere that is both engaging and slightly volatile, a provocative spirit that threatens to unravel at any moment.”

With the album receiving praise and the year seeing Leggy tour with the likes of The Ophelias, Summer Cannibals, Pile, The Spook School and Personal Best, the band are closing out 2019 with a brand new video for ‘Not What You Need’. Directed by Jo Shaffer, the film is a celebration of what Leggy does best, blending dreamy shimmers and nostalgic longing with something far more confrontational, all topped off with a playful air that adds further layers to the tone. Check it out below:

Let Me Know Your Moon is out now via Sheer Luck Records and available via the Leggy Bandcamp page.

So with Vol. 31, that’s Bright Sparks done for another year. Be sure to check out the Reviews and Previews sections for more in-depth writing, and keep you eyes peeled for our end of year lists in the coming weeks.

The post Bright Sparks: Vol. 31 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Pass/Ages are a duo, Caitlin Grimalkin and Jonn Gauntletier, from Vero Beach, Florida. They’re a darkwave band, drawing upon all kinds of late 70s and early 80s influences to create dark and shadowy synth pop. Their debut full-length, Taken Underneath, has recently been released by Katuktu Records.

Opener ‘As It Rises’ sets the scene, building from mean-sounding fuzzy guitar and the hollow pulse of percussion, thick with a sense of morbidly romantic ruin. But for all the nostalgic reference points, Pass/Ages are making music for the here and now. The ominous, apocalyptic atmosphere isn’t concerned with blast radius and toxic fallout but rather rising sea levels, the irresistible advance of all-engulfing water.

Buildings collapse, rivers rise up
against the city walls
the ocean roars with laughter as
she wipes the slate clean

‘Possession’ is a ghost story, the narrator welcoming another spirit into their body, while the title track is lush and dramatic, containing just one repeated line that again captures a sense of futility. “When the tide pulls in,” they say, “I am taken underneath.” ‘How Much Did You Take?’ has a thumping bass line and floating ice-cool vocals, while ‘When the Sky Ignites’ sounds harsh and fractured, synth pop for a sub-zero Cold War concrete wasteland, now left to gather weeds and ivy.

Named after the meadows of the Greek underworld, ‘Asphodel’ continues this stark and ominous feel, while ‘Cavalcade’ feels murky and spacious, Grimalkin’s dramatic lyrics delivered with a soul-sucked dead-eyed calmness.

But you mistook their cold eyes for starlight,
And you mistook their breath for the wind,
And you mistook their skeletal limbs
For the branches of the trees

Finale ‘Materialize Me’ finishes things off with one last blast of off-centre synth pop, delivered first person from the perspective of some malignant being. “I live on the edges,” Grimalkin sings, “the breath and the mist, the space in between,” and the enveloping sound has you believing every word.

Taken Underneath is out now on cassette via Katuktu Collective.

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All of these qualities are displayed in the opening track, ‘House of Straw’, with its delicately intricate guitar and emotive vocals rising occasionally in impassioned peaks. Rosner’s lyrics are wordily poetic, like verses from a few centuries ago that paint an age old story of love and loss. Traditional in a newer sense is ‘Only Water (Lost At Sea)’, a folk song that could have risen into the snowy New York night above Greenwich village in the 60s, its lyrics borrowing imagery from ancient maritime folk songs to explore contemporary living.

“Cause this, this is water,
that rises above the sound
and we are all just brothers,
lost at sea”

‘Georgia on My Mind’, a cover of the song written by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell in 1930, has a soulful vibe, Rosner’s smoky vocals snaking around gentle acoustic guitar, while ‘Wheel and the Stone’ is carried along on a bright but ruminative strum, Rosner delivering lyrics that deal with the tortures that life can hand out. Despite this serious subject matter, the last quarter rings bright and celebratory, with choral vocals delivering the defiant line that inspires the album’s title.

“Burn away,
defy the night”

Final track, ‘Wide Eyes’, brings things back for a gentle and rounded conclusion. It’s a love song, one seemingly written after the struggles of the previous tracks. “You see I’ve found my place, I was stolen for your side”, Rosner sings, “I can see that no trial can deny this wide eyed reverie”.

You can get Burn Away, Defy the Night now on limited edition CD (see below) or name-your-price download from Katuktu Collective, or The Jackal’s Son Bandcamp page.

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