“Finally I relax,” sings Lejsovka on opener ‘Lime Loop’, with its pillowy synths and sense of patience, “the way everything slumps and settles as it burns.” It’s an immediate introduction to the juxtaposition at the heart of Balance, of finding peace in a world that seemingly has none.

Such spherical drops of serenity sit next to images of anger and violence, balanced by tracks such as ‘Gravel Pit’ with its talk of rage and gnashing teeth and a strange auto-tuned outro that updates the biblical adage about rich men and camels with added arterial spray. Things are dark too on ‘Aggregate’, a track built on looped piano and subtle beats, Freund delivering a breathless flow of lyrics that contrasts nicely with the sparing poetry of the other songs. “Something out in the street woke me up,” it begins, going on to detail commotion outside the window, a dead cat and cop cars and the victim of a mugging (“for a grapefruit and six bucks”).

Not that every song is quite so intense. The track ‘Staircase’ is all nostalgia for times past, and the systolic murmur of ‘Tanking for Zion’ fills what’s otherwise mostly negative space, another mindful and minimal song that sees the narrator time-out to appreciate a patch of warmth and light. “Took a minute in a square of sunlight,” she sings, “rare in this long night.” Such tracks feel like they come close to realizing the balance of the title, managing to square the competing poles and find some form of respite, for four minutes at least.

But even the songs that sound contented can’t escape the anxieties of our age. ‘New Moon’ is a calm and reflective pop song that seems to glow from within. Thematically, it’s an ode to the continuing beauty of nature even in our dramatically altered world, Lejsovka singing of early hyacinths and the “rainbow-skinned pools” of pollution or fertilizer run-off. “Maybe I shouldn’t smile as I, closed eyes, step into sunshine where the forest is clear-cut for high-tension wires,” she sings, “But I can’t really fake it, take it where I can get it.” Even if personal equilibrium is achieved, there’s a wider imbalance looming, and one that is not so easily solved.

‘Spider on Moss’ later returns to ecological concerns, dramatic synths painted across a dark palette like the aurora, as Freund sings of a trip to the gas station to buy some soon-to-be trash. The title refers to a desire to make oneself as small as a spider, to avoid that lasting footprint of destruction that us humans seem doomed to leave behind. It captures something at the heart of Balance, a sense of concern for other living things, both human and otherwise, something Trouble Books try to sum up in a line squirreled away on their Bandcamp page: “Balance is equal reward, opportunity, access, rights for all beings great and small.”

Pause and wonder at the dark trees
looming powerfully over the lit BP canopy
and me,
I’ll try to offset the cost, to be lite,
a spider on moss

Balance is out now and you can get it now via the Trouble Books Bandcamp.

The post Trouble Books – Balance appeared first on Various Small Flames.

If you’re anything like a regular reader then you’ll know that we love Talons’ here at WTD (like a lot), and after seeing Linklater’s film it struck me how they share common methods and goals. The second release in a series of four EPs (more on the third soon), Growing Up pulls a similarly bewitching and indescribable effect, pushing the buttons labelled Love and Sadness and Nostalgia and Death Anxiety all at once and ever so subtly, so that none can be said to be the presiding emotion. ‘My Life is an Endless Outro’ opens the mini-album and sets the unhurried and reflective atmosphere immediately. It sounds like a soundtrack of a wordless driving movie, all grainy analogue film footage of corn fields and motels rushing past open windows on a humid and grey summer’s day, but also has the trademark Talons’ self-deprecating, life-deprecating attitude:

“He blew a tire on 65 North.
Hit a retread in the road- was he looking at the wind farm or down at his phone?
Went across the median, towards the truck that I just passed.
I was on the phone with you, complaining about my job.

Will my last words really be so trivial?
Alone in a rented Scion cube, I’ll slide off into nothing.”

‘Milwaukee’ is about as noisy as Talons’ have ever been, the swirly background fuzz and percussion taking things a lot further than the simple acoustic recordings we’re used to, though it’s still cloaked in that same sense of reluctant apathy. I can’t think of another band who could make the line, “Milwaukee tonight smells like the mall in middle school” sound so resigned and nostalgic and sad. But the standout line comes later in the track, a line that to me sums up everything Talons’ stand for, the whole aesthetic in twelve words:

“Its funny how life can be so rad sometimes
then its not”

‘All That Hasn’t Burned is Drowned’ is classic Talons’, the lyrics reading like the kind of poem that makes me wish I could get into poetry: “The house across the street from us is burning down / I woke up to the heat on my face (I guess the wind must have been blowing the other way)”. Then the instrumental ‘Song For Carissa’s Wierd’ puts acoustic guitar over that looped, feedback-type sound that worms its way into several of the tracks, while ‘Richmond’ is a song that highlights Tolan’s knack for sounding simultaneously sad and hopeful, “As the sun rises somewhere in western Virginia /  You’re the only thing that’s in my head / And I won’t lose you again”. The effect is really difficult to explain, like pain and joy rolled into one, and is exemplified by the reference to listening to Boxer back to back repeatedly, one of the albums we leant on until they became the redemption we needed, the albums that make it hard not to look at past troubles with something approaching fondness.

‘Song for Bass VI and Joe Golden’s Vibrochamp’ is another instrumental, featuring Keith Freund (of Lejsovka & Freund and formerly Trouble Books) on bass clarinet, before the two-part final track emerges from faint sound recordings. ‘Growing Up (Part 1)’ opens with the most important lyrics on the record, a summation of the titular themes, before transitioning seamlessly into ‘Growing Up (Part 2)’, the instrumental finale/epilogue. The closer plays like Boyhood if the camera had kept rolling, if the boy graduated and became wary and weary and had to try to make a life during a global recession.

“Is growing up just getting better at letting yourself off the hook?
At learning not to look?
(or to look away from the things you could change but don’t)”

The fact that the above lyrics are an explicit explanation of Growing Up shows just how subtle and indistinct the record’s themes are, though that’s not to say they are not felt keenly. Indeed, if anything they are too immediate to properly describe, charting history in the present, emotions and trends which define us so closely we cannot get a good view of them. I guess that’s the point of art, to convey the things that we can’t yet put into normal words. Talking about this kind of stuff directly somehow feels wrong, like it should be left to David Foster Wallace to make sense of with Charlie Rose or something, but the feel of these songs capture something. If someone was making a time capsule and wanted to show a civilization in 4016 what it’s like to be alive (and of a certain age/social class) today then I’d play them this.

You can buy Growing Up now from the Talons’ Bandcamp page.

The post Talons’ – Growing Up appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Evening Hymns – Quiet Energies
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“The album takes the suffocating, nebulous shadow of grieving and distils it into something small and hard and strangely tactile, a mysterious object that will always be there in your pocket, radiating its secret and peculiar brand of comfort. This isn’t about forgetting death, or even really ‘moving on’, instead its about coming to a deeper understanding of one’s life, about how a person can be so shaped by another, and how such an impact can and should be a source of immense pride and joy, no matter how hard some days can be. In other words, Quiet Energies is about understanding how it is in fact life, not death, which shapes us and our view of the world.”

Kathryn Joseph – Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled
(REVIEW)

“This is a simple album about things so complicated that it’s almost impossible to put them into words. It’s about those thoughts and feelings that we all experience but never admit, the things that we, be it through etiquette and embarrassment and fear, dare not confess to others or even ourselves. Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled is an album about people: lonely and loved, corporeal and divine, mortal and terrified yet enduring with a resilient hope that never quite goes out.”

Young Jesus – Grow / Decompose
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“As the title describes so neatly, Grow / Decompose speaks of the familiar paths that human lives follow. Despite all the strangeness, the characters here are going through the age-old problems – depression, anxiety, identity crises, existential terror – the problems of being You and You alone, Molina’s “curse of a human’s life”. For all of the complexity of our existence, we are still locked in the atavistic pattern of life and death, everyone more or less condemned to the same mistakes and fears and joys that we as human beings have been experiencing for generations.”

Danielle Fricke – Moon
(REVIEW)

“Moon is a lesson in stillness, a moment stretched out, questions asked but not answered, a monologue that might never leave the room. The wonder of the album is that the human emotions of love and longing never evaporate, continuing to push through the frost where they are warmed by earthshine, opening up the possibility that the very feelings which caused the pain could be the things which end it. So while the narrator is trapped, they never submit to the vacuous silence of space. Hopes are still hoped and dreams are still dreamed and wishes are cast from cold, cupped hands, skywards.”

Yowler – The Offer
(REVIEW)

“Burns with quiet intensity, its strange lyrics feeling oddly personal, giving the album the intimacy of hearing about someone else’s dreams. Guitars sidle and prowl like shadows and the whole thing seems on the verge of something vaguely dangerous. All eight tracks are a study in the art of minimalism, of the exchange between poetry and negative space. It’s certainly a lot more than just quiet and pretty folk music”

Advance Base – Nephew in the Wild
(REVIEW)

“I don’t know Owen Ashworth, and maybe I’m completely wrong, but he seems like a kind and empathetic generally nice human being, in the same way the best writers seem like people you could be friends with. Even if none of that is true, I guess it doesn’t matter – what is indisputable is the fact that he’s a damn good writer who tells stories that speak to and help us all. While it’s easy to cast him as the lonely boy in front of a keyboard, the truth, at least in my eyes, is that he’s often hardly there at all, a transparent gateway into the lives of people you’ve never met, feeling things you thought you had to suffer through alone.”

Siskiyou – Nervous
(REVIEW)

“Nervous is an album of dizzying scope and ambition, quite literally the tumult of sound and emotion inside one man’s head. It is by turns dark and creepy, shimmering and vibrant. Siskiyou have never sounded so eerie, so threatening, or so expansive. And I have to admit, I don’t think they have ever sounded so good.”

Samantha Crain – Under Branch & Thorn & Tree
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“These are songs played like inner thoughts or secret diary entries of persons not usually able to or justified in expressing their true sentiments, people who are not as tough as they let on, but tougher than they think in the middle of the night. A selection of underdogs living the lives they have been given, not pining for more or complaining at a cosmic injustice. Quiet, noble people in the trenches of everyday life, those with the broadest shoulders and smallest voices and a hard, buried sense of pride who treat hardship like a member of the family.”

Lejsovka & Freund – Fatal Strategies
(REVIEW)

“Fatal Strategies inspires a multitude of strange, lateral thoughts – a soundtrack that doesn’t need a film. The musical translation of the postmodern ruminations of an over-active, twenty-first century brain. Music unearthed by a post-society people, who’ll turn it up loud and sit in their ruined cities, reclaimed by branches and vines, and wonder and wonder about us.”

Frog – Kind of Blah
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“Kind of Blah is a product of this place, an album imbued with the spirits of a sparkling past… Judy Garland is America. Lusty teenagers are America. Jesus Christ is America. So is Dr Pibb and dusty valleys and shut-down bowling alleys and all the communal memories shared by millions just like you. Kind of Blah is America, the U S of A in eleven songs – quirky, joyous, breathless, exhausting, addictive, heartbreaking and downright weird, accelerating towards a distant horizon while keeping its eyes firmly on a halcyon past that sure seems like it should have been more fun.”

Oh, Rose – SEVEN
(REVIEW | REVIEW OF ‘SEVEN’, THE VIDEO)

“Olivia Rose’s voice carries the tracks beyond the genre norms into peculiar territories. Raw and versatile, her vocals range from whelps and wails to quiet, haunted whispers. On their début full length SEVEN, a record on which, if anything, Rose pushes things even further. Lean and wiry guitars lead proceedings while a lo-fi buzz envelopes everything, Rose’s words cutting through like shards of glass. The vocals have the quality of an exorcism, like the unnatural utterings of a twelve year old as some jaded man of faith flicks holy water at her forehead.”

Valley Maker – When I Was a Child
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“When I Was a Child is an album about belief and love in a variety of guises, about the big and unknowable questions, from love and growth and family to God and everlasting life. It’s an album about all of us, basically.”

Eskimeaux – O.K.
(REVIEW)

“O.K. is about reality, the moment we live in and the people we share it with. It’s about the things we want and the things we wish for and the things we can’t control. It’s about doing the best you can and hoping it’s enough, about accepting and learning and growing so that whatever hand you’re dealt, you carve out some semblance of meaning and happiness to make everything worthwhile”

Aero Flynn – S/T
(REVIEW)

“This is not an album in which the emotional arc is self-contained and easily mappable… The redemption is the very fact that Scott is creating words and sounds, that he is letting others know where he is and how he is and why he is. The album is the flare of hope hanging in the night sky, burning bright and incandescent.”

Hip Hatchet – Hold You Like a Harness
(REVIEW)

“[Speaks] of that vulnerable core at the heart of every man, and the desperate, ridiculous attempts to suffocate it with cigarette smoke or drown it in whiskey or cover it over with scars. Hold You Like a Harness is an album about tough guys who know deep down that they aren’t so tough. Yeah they fight and drink and make merry, but they’re also sentimental and lovesick and terrified of everything.”

Mike Pace & the Child Actors – Best Boy
(REVIEW)

“Best Boy is for the children of the 80s and 90s, reminiscing about the age where entertainment exploded, where VHS tapes and cable TV transformed us into constant consumers. Of course, as consumers we were sold promises, told we merely needed x, y and z to be happy and successful and pretty and popular. It’s kind of ironic that a time built on visions of the future is now seen as a utopia locked in the past. Pace gets at this feeling by writing feel-good songs tinged with longing, nothing too sad or serious, nor a Father John Misty-style ironic assault. Instead, Best Boy is a wistful celebration of what we had and presents some convincing reasons for why we feel the way we do.”

Fanpage – LYA
(REVIEW)

“Fanpage’s music occupies a space between life and imitation, too mechanical to be described as organic yet too intuitive and mysterious for machines. It wanders a strange distance ahead of the human race, amongst a chaos born of our need for order. Love and delirium and bright white fear roil beneath the feedback, humanity kicking and twisting within a noise filled with myth and magic and dread. Terrifying and beautiful and glorious, LYA is an album for the information age, where data has exploded to incomprehensible volumes and become its own wilderness.”

Titus Andronicus – The Most Lamentable Tragedy
(REVIEW)

“Life (and especially mental illness) isn’t a neat Freytagian pyramid, so why should a representation of it conform to expectations? […] You are left with the impression that the band have said “fuck it, we’re doing it our way”, rejecting a clear genre in favour of whatever felt right at any given time. This kind of zealous self-belief in their own work is interesting, as it’s at odds with Our Hero’s struggles to accept himself as Himself, and sees Titus Andronicus cutting swathes through the field of wannabes, imposters and pretenders and stepping up to the plate as the twenty-first century’s bona fide punk rock band.”

Elvis Depressedly – New Alhambra
(REVIEW)

“This is not a born-again Love-The-World-Because-Life-Is-Great sort of album. Elvis Depressedly will not mend broken bones or cast out demons or have you walking across hot coals. Instead they say that afflictions are not all there is, that you are not defined solely by your circumstances. They say that peace and hope are never out of reach and offer an achievable version of optimism, one which does not require manic enthusiasm or God-like goodwill but instead a pinch of determination and a firm belief in love.”

Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – S/T
(REVIEW)

“Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats could be your favourite anti-heroes of the sixties, the forgotten friend of Otis Redding and Sam & Dave, or maybe from even further back, a band of villains rolling into nameless pre-war towns to cause shitstorms in cowboy brawl-bars and put smiles faces for one night only. That there is a serious side is less a surprise than a foregone conclusion, because no man has conjured this kind of bone-level fervour out of a pleasant existence. No, here are people staring down the barrel, people stranded in a sea of beer, locked inside some breakneck motion in which a grin and a grimace are practically indistinguishable. Whether this is a defiant two fingers or last hurrah seems unclear even to Rateliff, himself too caught up in a compulsion to dance and scream and shout. Whatever you take from this record, one thing is clear: They can’t put you in the ground if you’re still moving.”

What were your favourite albums of the year? Let us know through one of the usual channels – we’re on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram.

The post Wake The Deaf’s Favourite Albums of 2015 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

On a related note, things are gradually getting busier for us in other areas – Liam works full-time and I’ve gone back to school – so the old two posts a day routine might not be maintained too often any more. That said, in an effort to keep things ticking over, we’re going to introduce a new ‘Flash Review’ feature where we cover albums in less words than we would otherwise use. It’s not ideal but a short piece is better than no piece. There’ll still be a good smattering of the usual style too.

Tracklisting:

1. Birthstone (Reprise) – Pet Cemetery
   2. Vice – Roundheels
   3. Forever – Boosegumps
   4. So Long – Heavy Boots
   5. Long Walk To All Sorts of Place – Fanpage
   6. Feathers & Leaves – Ocean Floor
   7. Down Predator Souvenirs – Lejsovka & Freund
   8. Vacation – Florist
   9. 2. – Old Earth
   10. Never Good Enough – Eerie Summer
   11. EZ River – Wilder Maker
   12. Thumbs – Claire Cottrill
   13. If I Were A Portal – Evening Hymns
   14. Jenny Come Home – Andy Shauf
   15. Only Friend – Valley Maker
   16. The Flood – Mike Pace & the Child Actors
   17. Close Call (Adderall Anxiety) – Shaky Shrines
   18. Nancy Kerrigan – Frog
   19. Kaleidoscope – Arbes
   20. The Book of Love – ARMS

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

Fatal Strategies is essentially a classical album (or neo-classical or whatever fancy people call it). I’ll admit to not listening to all that much classical music, mainly because I fear it would sail over my head, or not seem all that relevant, or something equally ignorant. But the “classical” music that Lejsovka & Freund make is different, it’s classical music that my brain seems to cling on to, to wrap itself around in a grey-furrowed hug. That’s not to say Lejsovka & Freund’s music isn’t intellectually/philosophically deep and complex, because it is. As Keith Freund puts it in his blurb:

We’re beyond excited about how it’s all panned out, hopefully others enjoy it as much. There are some different ideas, allusions, philosophies, and jokes in here but there’s really no need to belabor your listening experience with them.

Anyway, the point is that Lejsovka & Freund make classical music that does something to my brain, something I’m hardly able to process, let alone elucidate. For whatever reason, it makes me feel good. Not in a fun, dance-around-my-bedroom kind of way, but in a heartwarming, perspective-giving way. It has all the hallmarks of the genre – strings and piano and no conventional vocals, but it also feels fresh and contemporary.

Their songs have always seemed part organic and part not, subject to rhythms both mystically natural and complexly digital. Tracks are liable to fracture into pixelated shards which float off into the ether, flowing streams of countless 1s and 0s. Opener ‘Return to Emptiness’ is a great example of this. From all manner of noises – clicks and bloops and hums and whirs – comes a beautiful piano line sounding almost like the passing of time. The track stops abruptly before the end, giving way to slow quavering strings, like the unsteady laboured breaths of some strange alien life form. It’s a strong start, and a welcome reassurance that L&J are sticking to what they do best.

‘Municipal Xerox’ coats pianos in a dusting of electrical static so tactile in headphones you can almost crunch it in your molars, continuing with intermittent swells of feedback, the piano picking up to quite a pace, something I subconsciously categorised as a watching-cityscapes-fly-by-a-train-window tempo. ‘Nothing, Just Looking at the Moon’ is another beauty, great breathy pulses preceding yet more lovely piano which sounds somehow contentedly sad (if that’s the right word), a little like the title of the song itself. ‘Debris Fields’ has this weird intro of stuttering electronics, fluttering strings and cantering piano, which descends into a period of hush, like some strange vacuum. This eventually gives way to feedback and drones and a decidedly ominous air, before a trilled set of beeps, like a supercomputer calculating some crucial formula, heralds the return of piano and pretty, elegiac strings. ‘Carry this Object’ is mostly piano-led, but also develops these strange background sounds – rustles and whispers and taps (apparently from You’re Worth It – an ASMR radio show on Berlin Community radio) – eventually clearing to reveal a woman’s voice repeating the cryptic phrase “another rectangle, an open cage”.

‘Downed Predator Souvenirs’ floats on a haze of strings and low droning piano (be sure to check Gabe Schray’s video below!), while ‘Fog in the Ravine’ has a wonderfully suitable title – tendrils of atmosphere creeping in at the start before the entrance of pianos somehow both sombre and sweeping. Closer ‘Hamburgers in the Woods’ has sounds like an errant Geiger counter or holographic raindrops bouncing on the leaves of some strange digital forest. The track (and album) then ends in vocals that seem fit for a lonely monastery or valley-sat, fire-lit campsite, but are actually soprano Megan Elk and her interpretation of the Swenson’s Galley Boy recipe.* Yes really.

Fatal Strategies inspires a multitude of strange, lateral thoughts – a soundtrack that doesn’t need a film. The musical translation of the postmodern ruminations of an over-active, twenty-first century brain. Music unearthed by a post-society people, who’ll turn it up loud and sit in their ruined cities, reclaimed by branches and vines, and wonder and wonder about us.

Fatal Strategies was released on vinyl by Bark & Hiss (US) and MIE Music (UK). You can also download it via the Lejsovka & Freund Bandcamp page.

*I had to look this up. Say hello to Swenson’s Galley Boy.

The post Lejsovka & Freund – Fatal Strategies appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

1. By My Side – Valley Maker
   2. Shadow Play – Tierpark
   3. West Texas – PWR BTTM
   4. Console – Joplin Rice
   5. Lightning Dream Shuffle – Will Stratton (for Genius Loci)
   6. Dazed By You – PINS
   7. Y U – Fanpage
   8. The Rest – Alex Bleeker and the Freaks
   9. I’m Not – Hoshifo
   10. Nothing, Just Looking at the Moment – Lejsovka & Freund
   11. Stole Ur Bike – Boosegumps
   12. Our Headache Years – Nudes
   13. Worry, Glory – The Silence Set
   14. Sand – Frankie Cosmos
   15. xplodineyez – Field Medic
   16. Walking The Line – Sam Moss
   17. Bedroom – Alanna McArdle
   18. Tired – Captain Samurai
   19. Birds – M Caridi & The Glow
   20. Gardensong – Funeral Advantage
   21. Snow Bird – Ama Moii
   22. So Long, Suzie (The Damage is Done) – Morning River Band
   23. Cracks in the Sidewalk – Naomi Pop
   24. Burn This – Mauno
   25. What Coast – Grubs
   26. Pulled Over – Generifus
   27. EZ River – Wilder Maker

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

Imagine my excitement then upon hearing that the husband and wife duo have a new album on the way. Fatal Strategies is due for release in October on Bark & Hiss in the US and MIE here in the UK, and promises to continue where Mold on Canvas left off, deepening the couple’s exploration of what they term “DIY shitty classical”. Add to that some help from CFCF and you’ve got yourself all the ingredients for something pretty amazing. I can’t wait to hear the whole thing, and luckily I can get a taster right now, courtesy of Boiler Room:

You can pre-order Fatal Strategies right now via Bark & Hiss or MIE. Be aware that records are super-limited so grab one quick!

The post Lejsovka & Freund announce new album, Fatal Strategies appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklist:

1. She Reminds Me – Family Video
2. Jean Skirt Mystique – Naps
3. Sail – Swim Lessons
4. Mirror Threat – Waiters
5. Tibetan Clouds – Chips Calipso
6. Smokesquare – Fanpage
7. This City Will Eat Itself – Blush Response
8. Undone – Phoria
9. Lungs – Pixel Fix
10. Ancient Ways – Interpol
11. Have You Seen My Son – Benjamin Booker
12. Ballad of Big Nothing (Elliott Smith cover) – Arms
13. Stupid Boy – Owl John
14. Memento Mori – Hollow Wood
15. It’s the End of the World As We Know It (R.E.M. cover) – Free Cake For Every Creature
16. Youth – Thad Kopec
17. You Belong – Lucas O’Connell
18. Knives – The Meanest Creature Ever Known
19. Accept That the Mark Will Outlast You – Old Earth
20. If I’m – Sea Oleena
21. Joni – Old Amica
22. Autumn in the New Canaan – Lejsovka & Freund

August Mix from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

The post August 2014 Roundup – A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Trapped in the (familiar) post-college void, without a job or money to pay rent, Mattox found solace in the music of Trouble Books. Scraping together $300 he travelled to Akron in an attempt to find out more about the people who were unknowingly helping him. The resulting documentary charts the history of Lejsovka and Freund, from their meeting at a house party to their eventual musical (and romantic) partnership. We hear about their philosophies, their dislike of live shows, their preference for records over MP3 and the names of their cats.

You can hear the whole thing below:

The post Brendan Mattox – Life in a Peaceful New World appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The good news is that Keith Freund and Linda Lejsovka are still recording music. They have recently released a new album entitled Mold On Canvas. The bad news is that I’m late to this party and the LPs have already sold out. But don’t let stop you from checking out what proves to be a nuanced, interesting release.

The band describe their new sound as “DIY Shitty Classical”, which I can’t help feeling is a small slice of false modesty. Let’s get it straight that I know next to nothing about classical music, and I’m not particularly interested in its finer points, but I’m struggling to see how anyone could describe this album as “shitty”. Freund explains, “Mold on Canvas” is an exploration of ability… trespassing into the academic or classical music world with an amateur’s guess on pushing the right keys.”

The album opens with ‘Borrowed Mic Test’, which gently buzzes and pulses into life, the cautious wing-beats of the Lejsovka & Freund moniker as it emerges from its chrysalis. After just two and a half minutes this sonic lepidopteran takes flight, as pianos take over and we get our first glimpse of the new “classical” angle. Next up is ‘Hexations’, with its initial jarring slide giving way to some mournful piano. The title track is sad and pretty in all the right ways and ‘From Royal Ave’ shimmers with a warm, droning fuzz, cut through with some really nice strings.

Freund seems to have had a pretty clear picture in mind when composing these pieces, “These pieces are made by and for the view from huge sunroom windows overlooking a wooded ravine.” My advice would be to find yourself a sunroom, or just a wooded ravine (or really anywhere pretty), and let yourself drift off with it.

Mold On Canvas is a sad album, but not ‘sad’ in its usual usage, meaning upsetting or morose, but instead a different sad: a reflective, comforting sad, one almost synonymous with beautiful. I like it a lot, and I think you might too.

You can download it in its entirety via Bark & Hiss

The post Lejsovka & Freund – Mold On Canvas appeared first on Various Small Flames.