Various Swell Sounds is a new collaborative playlist series from Shana Hartzel of Swell Tone, Jon Chin of Cereal and Sounds, and myself. Instead of constantly exchanging tracks amongst each other, we have decided to work together to bring them to more ears. Every month, we will match a selection of our old and brand new favourites to a specific theme, as decided on a revolving basis month by month.

Following the dangerous freedom of Shana’s Unguarded Beach, and the angsty heartbreak of Jon’s Violet’s Aren’t Blue, the third edition sees us take up the mantle with something altogether more unsettling. Because, let’s be honest, we live in unsettling times. Silicon Valley is (allegedly) controlling our elections, Russian spies are being attacked on foreign soil and Infowars has a White House press pass. Yes, we’re paranoid. But are we paranoid enough?

1. Crystal Stilts – Alien Rivers
2. Sixteen Jackies – VHS #1
3. The Paranoyds – Sleep Paralysis
4. The Buttertones – Ghost Safari
5. Total Control – Stonehenge
6. WINT – Dark Matter) We (Endless
7. Iguana Death Cult – Whispers
8. Screaming Females – Glass House
9. Vundabar – No People to Person
10. Liza Anne – Paranoia
11. Big Air – Mr. Mind Control
12. Matias Aguayo & The Desdemonas – Cold Fever
13. Baby Brains – Walk Alone (The Cave Collection)
14. Pye Corner Audio – The Black Mill Video Tape
15. Protomartyr – Here Is The Thing
16. Eddy Current Suppression Ring – Colour Television
17. Silly Pillows – Figment of Your Imagination
18. Stef Chura – Becoming Shadows
19. JACK – Fear Of
20. Eerie Wanda – Happy Hard Times
21. Cave & Lenderson – Friedgeman
22. La Luz – Cicada
23. Snakadaktal – Fall Underneath
24. Institute – Familiar Stranger
25. NOTS – Fluorescent Sunset
26. CLINIC – The Return of Evil Bill
27. Lying Down – Betty and Barney
28. Dr Dog – Listening In
29. Timber Timbre – Creep on Creepin On
30. Good Good Blood – Dinosauria

Spotify:

Playmoss:

Artwork by Liam Doyle, logo by Stolen Chapstick

The post Various Swell Sounds #3: Paranoid Style appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

Typhoon – Rorschach
Cloud – Two Hands Bound
Trust Fall – do it right
Wooing – In Colour
Tree House – Nonsense
Long Neck – Milky Way
Sara Renberg – Take the Summer Off
Special Moves – Half and Half
Lying Down – Betty and Barney
Pastel – Close
Monarch Mtn – Saint in Armor II
Doomking – I Laid the Prairies to Rest
vierzig skizzen – passwords
Old Robes – The Spider and the Spectator
Jeremy Squires – Gift
Bill Vuono – Think of Me (feat. Earl McVeigh)
Kraków Loves Adana – Rapture
Cool American – Focus
Bucolic – Blue Tree
There’s Talk – Give It Up
Airium + Double Honey – Concrete House Of Dreams And Pools
The Saxophones – Just You
Jelani Sei – LVNDR TWN
Why Dogs Why – Linus

You can find all of our monthly roundup mixes here, and be sure to stick around into March to see what musical goodies we’ll be sending your way. And, of course, please reach out on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram if you have something you think we should hear.

The post February 2018 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The track opens with gloomy guitars, crashing cymbals punctuating the steady drumbeat (fans of last year’s great Viewfinder album take note), evoking a creeping sensation, like being sucked into an increasingly strong conviction or paranoia. When they arrive, the vocals are downbeat and sardonic, delivering strange and disturbing lyrics that suggest the track is about Betty and Barney Hill rather than Betty and Barney Rubble—a couple allegedly abducted by aliens near Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1962.

Like most close encounters, the story is a strange one, with the original sighting accentuated by missing time, bizarre night terrors and eventual hypnotic regression with a view to dragging memories through their amnesia for further understanding. The result was that Hills were thrown into an increasingly unsteady world where truth and fiction merged, where no memory could be trusted and no dream written off as pure fantasy. And this is what Lying Down capture so well, and perhaps something akin to what Airey felt trapped in his room on opioids. The unsettling certainty of the too-deep obsessive, at once held captive but also somehow set free—as though in being jarred from reality, they reach a sense of higher purpose.

“I’m growing afraid of what I cant see
They were there, I felt them, there.
Something in my head attracts the tall white,
plagerian white, alien white,

I’m growing afraid of what i can’t see,
they were there i felt them there,
I am a hybrid,
Protect the hybrid”

You can pre-order De Rigueur now from the Hidden Bay Records Bandcamp page.

The post Song Premiere: Lying Down unveil ‘Betty and Barney’ from debut release De Rigueur appeared first on Various Small Flames.