Occupying the far ambient end of his spectrum, new track ‘endless rain, for limitless pain’ is a cinematic instrumental that’s at once expansive and intimate. Opening with a slow creep, the song gathers intensity as it progresses, as though drawing energy from its own momentum and building into an expansive force. However, despite the grand, sweeping sound of the closing minute, the original playfulness remains, resulting in a single that’s finely balanced and expertly achieved.

Back in August, Micah Vaultz also put out a new EP, At Sonrise, Someone Dies…, an eight-song released of chilled, ambient-infused R&B. As displayed on opener ‘born to die (ft. yuno ito)’, here Vaultz’s sound is slow and expansive, straddling genres to incorporate all of his talents into one swirling mix. Tracks such as ‘micah the prophet’ sound something like bedroom pop played through a hip hop filter, while ‘Master’s Piece (ft. q. sol)’ and ‘Take It (ft. naomi)’ are examples of a more polished, luscious sound, unfurling with a vibe both sultry and mellow. In comparison, the title track is a slow-burn ambient track, shimmering with dreamy focus and wistful echoes which wash with reserved brightness, presenting the sort of comfortable poignancy you can relax back into.

You can find Micah Vaultz on Soundcloud and Spotify, so be sure to explore his back catalogue.

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[Quiet Energies] 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.

We were lucky enough to ask Bonnetta a few questions about the record and his musical career, exploring his influences, plans for the future and listening habits. Enjoy.

Jon: Hi Jonas, thanks for chatting with us! How has life been treating you since the release of Quiet Energies?

Jonas: All is well! Been getting ready to tour the new record around Canada a little bit and have been working on a bunch of new projects.

The album saw a shift in tone, with many tracks more cathartic and upbeat (for want of a better term). Do you have a better time when playing these songs live? And do you think the changes set a trajectory for where Evening Hymns are headed in the future?

Well I haven’t toured them long enough to understand them live yet so that’s kind of nice. Our current live setup allows us to explore the songs more than in the past and so that’s been satisfying so far. I’m not a huge fan of touring a record for a long time though so talk to me in a year from now and we will see. I’ve been writing so much new stuff that I’m itching to just keep developing new material live. I don’t think the next record will sound like Quiet Energies though. I’ve been working on some piano music that’s more rooted in soul and R&B so who knows… haha…

In my review of Quiet Energies I mention how you retreated into the countryside at various points, and recorded the album in a rural home studio. Is this escape an important part of your creative process? Are we talking escape-the-city rural or cut-off-wilderness rural?

I just need to be left alone with my thoughts. It’s too easy for me to get distracted and so forcing myself into solitude is my solution to fighting writer’s block. It’s not so much as escape now as a way of life as I moved out here permanently. And it doesn’t feel so much as an escape but more of a homecoming. This is how I grew up and it’s what resonates with me.

What else do you consider as influences on your writing and sound? Are there any musicians/writers/artists you consider important in your development? I’ve seen Jaan Kaplinski’s name bandied about, although it wasn’t clear if it came from you or a reviewer.

Huge Kaplinski fan. I own everything that has been translated to English and even recently acquired some Estonian books of his from a friend. He’s been a large shadow on my work since the beginning almost.
Space and environment are crucial to my work. I always come back to trying to explain this project as less a songwriting project and more of trying to create spaces for people to exist in.
And I’ve really recently been truly inspired by art itself. Just recognizing that I’m very fortunate to make a living by conjuring up things from nothing. I feel very lucky.

Recent months have seen you take a crack at the silver screen, what with an Evening Hymns song in the latest Cameron Crowe film and your score for the documentary Strange and Familiar. How did these projects come about, and how does the experience of making a soundtrack compare to recording as Evening Hymns? Is it something you’d like to do more of?

Well the Crowe film came about cause he got into the last record Spectral Dusk and we became Twitter buddies and chatted a bit. Next thing you know I got an email from Sony requesting the song for an upcoming picture. It was a trip. Very cool and I’m super thankful for that. The doc I scored I’m equally excited about it. It’s about this charming little island off the coast of Newfoundland. The first trailer for that film was cut to my music by an editor friend and the directors really liked it and they reached out. I’m working on mixing that music to release it sometime in 2016. That kind of work really suits my lifestyle right now. I have a home studio that I’ve just added a second room on and so I can work quietly on my own out there. I’m hoping I get to do more score work.

You can buy Quiet Energies now from Outside Music (US/Can), Tin Angel Records (UK/EU) and Kütu Records (France).

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Entirely instrumental, the album plies a lo-fi brand of layered, looped guitar music, existing at the weird, internet-only intersection of ambient, bedroom pop and vaporwave. The resulting soundscapes are odd and hypnotic, the kind of music perfect for early morning walks or late evening train journeys, everything cast different and important in the weak light.

This is perhaps unsurprising considering the first track is called ‘Dawn; on the train, waiting to see Francie’. Here the guitars are mellow and separated, the space between each chord as important as the chords themselves. You get the sense the album is stirring, not fully awake, as if the residents of the titular Lemon Town are just about rising for a new day. ‘Sunrise; would you like to grab some bagels? I know a great place!’ is sprightlier, the sonic embodiment of the town’s bustle as cafes and shops see a rush of early morning commuters. This brighter theme continues on ‘Afternoon; the sun shines through the bars of the bridge and I’m happy (in your hands)’, the sound languid in the way of a tropical vacation, like the small sway of a benign blue sea. ‘Dusk; falling asleep, know that you are loved’ winds down relaxed in the aftermath of a perfect day, while ‘Midnight; goodbye Francie, I’m going to miss you!’ sees the first real suggestion of melancholy, the realisation that the day is over descending like a black sheet. ‘???; night life in the lemon town of Büshka’ feels like a drunken walk home through dark streets, or perhaps a dark walk home through drunken streets.

Now we get onto Side B of the tape and it is here where things get weird(er), as if entering a dream or else disconnecting from time in a more novel way. The wonderfully named ‘Büshka’s netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of every bruise on your body; the soft ringing that can be heard all throughout the town but can only be seen in shades of green’ sees a marked stylistic shift, teetering on the edge of that new wave alt-R&B sound without ever quite succumbing. Imagine if How To Dress Well was teleported back to the 90s and locked in a Squaresoft studio and forced to use whatever was at hand. The oddness continues with the restrained and almost eerie ‘Foreign smells, shop signs, and Büshkan sea creatures at the bazaar’, and ‘Spitting flames at the bus stop; the woman who spits flames at the bus stop’ which is more in-your-face and urgent. ‘Late afternoon; the trees in animal crossing are much smaller than the ones in real life; couldn’t we just stay here for a little while?’ sees a brief return to the Side A style while ‘Too Much Mackerel’ is subdued and almost forlorn, like the closing credits of a wistful story.

For reasons I can’t quite pin down, the 90s Japanese RPG feeling hangs over the whole release, and I find myself imagining Lemon Town like a dot on a map from a strange Final Fantasy-Dragon Quest-Animal Crossing hybrid. The opening tracks conjure that town-going-about-its-business sensation you get when entering new locales in the regular portion of the game, while the songs not marked as a specific period in the title (i.e. ‘Büshka’s netherworld…’ onwards) have that distinct end-of-game freakiness common to the titles, where the main antagonist is revealed a puppet to an even more deranged supernatural controller before your party are thrust into some dreamworld to stop him/her/it. This probably isn’t quite what Sabbatical Wilderness intended, and I’m sure reading the story would provide a lot more context, but for now imagining an eccentric town within a peculiar video game will do just fine.

Night Life in the Lemon Town of Büshka is out today (11th August) and you can buy it from Fox Food Records.

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“prismatic music which draws upon a diverse range of styles and artists, blending the visceral emotions of R&B and soul with an off-the-wall, avant-garde vibe akin to Dirty Projectors and tUnE-yArDs”

The band have now released their Hyperlust EP, and it’s safe to say that the above description holds fast. The most impressive achievement is how the band manage to weave the different elements into something so natural, the guitars, bells, chimes, drums and vocals knitting together like the sonic equivalent of a patchwork quilt.

The atmosphere on the release is decidedly sunny, the vibe generally laid-back and soulful and the cacophony of instrumentation vibrant and bright. However, behind the summery veneer lies a collection of esoteric lyrics which hold an abstract mysticism, frontwoman Sandra Lawson-Ndu posing vague, existential questions as if channelling some higher power or divine force. “If future takes me to find our bones,” she sings on opener ‘Future Bones’, “I’ll mold them together / and desert this form / Break (break) original rules that would guide the way we’d move until we required cover and strange spirits remained.” The song continues in this manner, using precise imagery to trace imprecise, unknowable things, the words coalescing with the music to create something unclear but imbued with meaning, as if reaching somewhere deeper within your brain or soul than you can consciously go. As Lawson-Ndu sings on ‘Sugar Queen’:

“Intertwined by things we’ll never see, never feel, never know, never we try”

[…]

“Lost in these thoughts that you’ll never know, never hear, never ask, never you’ll care.”

This idea of the lyrics and music entwining to work together is an important part of the Bells Atlas sound. Of course, the majority of songs are based on this marriage but there usually seems a certain degree of disconnect, the words an afterthought to the riffs, the instrumentation an accompaniment to the poetry. Here, both are treated with equal importance, so much so that it becomes difficult to determine which came first. It’s hard to imagine such an experimental sound being created before the profoundly obscure lyrics, yet it’s almost as if Lawson-Ndu is writing about the music itself, as if the lyrics already existed in the kaleidoscopic cocktail and she merely had to delve in and present them for our ears.

You can buy Hyperlust now from Bandcamp, as well as their previous releases and some pretty cool t-shirts.

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Old Earth

“Has this trance-like quality that is almost impossible to describe…It’s music that isn’t satisfied with making pretty sounds in the background, that gets right to the root of things” – New EP …until they’re called sees Old Earth in typically scintillating form.

The Washboard Abs

“Sad but in a cosy, reassuring way…like being alone in an empty room on a rainy afternoon, when the not-quite-twilight has that blue-grey quality and the only sounds are raindrops on the glass and the shooooshing of passing cars” – WHATEVERLAND by The Washboard Abs is the second great Z Tapes release in a week.

The Tarantula Waltz

“Reminds us that no matter how hard, life holds pockets of goodness and wonder, providing moments of fierce, bright joy which light up the dark” – Lynx EP by Swedish folkster The Tarantula Waltz

Molly Drag

“Sad and remorseful in a child-like sort of way, the existential anxiety of adults not yet formed so that his grief can occupy a pure, selfless sort of level” – ‘Open Casket Hidden Meaning’, the brand new track by Molly Drag.

Furnsss

“A return of the gloriously sloppy rock that Furnsss purvey” – Burlington lo-fi rock act announce new EP via our good pals at 80N7.

Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats

“Continues with the jaunty, boisterous vibes that set apart Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats from his solo work, sounding like mid-barroom, drunk-but-honest proclamations” – Nathaniel Rateliff gathers his band in anticipation of their debut EP.

Aidan Knight

“Starts off as a smooth and kinda groovy soft rock track which threatens several crescendos before the horned-filled celebratory climax around the halfway mark” – Aidan Knight has put out a new song in preparation for his third album, coming this autumn on Outside Music.

Small Houses

“So here’s the deal. You pledge on small amount of money in return for a digital download pre-order, and Quentin gets to make a new record and eat something other than craisens” – Small Houses needs your help on GoFundMe to make his new album.

Eskimeaux

“It’s about finally feeling okay with not feeling okay” – Impose has a substantial piece on Eskimeaux’s new album, O.K.

The Epoch

“A sweet, introspective sort of songwriting is the tendency, though hardly the rule. As an inspiring support system and model for artistic collaboration, their cult following is quickly growing” – The Epoch Collective find themselves in good company in Brooklyn Magazine’s round-up of the twenty people defining Brooklyn music in 2015.

Matheny / Molina

“Molina always seemed to know exactly which cards not to show, and with his deep body of work created music that is somehow both haunting and comforting in equal measure” – William Matheny of Southeast Engine shares his memories of Jason Molina and serves up a great cover of ‘Just Be Simple’, all over at Common Folk Music.

Best of 2015

A week late on this but the ever-reliable Gimme Tinnitus has put together a list of the best music of 2015 thus far. Well worth digging through to uncover a few unheard gems.

Nick Cave / DrFasutusAU

A few weeks late on this but it’s worth sharing: Artist DrFaustusAU has drawn a Dr Seuss-style cartoon version of Nick Cave’s ‘Red Right Hand’. You can read more about it on Faster Louder or click the image below to see the whole storybook.

Protest Music

“A reminder that soulful dissent can be both entertaining and politically efficacious. Soulful protest is the work of skillful musicians using their gifts and raising their voices to recreate the world so that everyone has an opportunity to fully participate and no one else’s voice ever again has to remain suppressed or unheard” – Jason King over on at NPR Music has put together 100 hours of protest music, using R&B and the genres which came before that helped form the genre.

Frog

“An attempt to engage modern musical ideas from a 1950s style of arrangement… [it] was a complete failure in that respect but a success in most others” – The Line of Best Fit are streaming Kind Of Blah, the new album from Frog that could well be the soundtrack of your summer.

Summer Camp

“Inspired by 90s Point Horror and Fear Street books and teen horror films, and the idea that a bad relationship can be just as terrifying as a serial killer” – Noisey are streaming Summer Camp’s Bad Love before it’s release next week on Moshi Moshi.

Shamir

And finally, Shamir walked around Brooklyn and played some songs for La Blogotheque:

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‘Bling’ is the latest single from Hyperlust, a jagged pop hit which manages to not only bathe the listener in a glowing summer chill but also challenge the concept of capital-T Truth in reality and the mind, answering its own mystical questions with the only fair motto of our times. I don’t know.

“What do you mean?

I don’t know

Just a sign of science

Just a sign of science

What did you see?

Eyes to the floor

And if I do not understand it, was it real?

What do you mean?

I don’t know”

Hyperlust will be released on the 31st May and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp. If, like me, you are new to the band, be sure to go back and explore their previous releases.

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The album opens with the brief ‘A Fog’ in which Lacey declares, “Your hearts a strong thing / That you’ve learned nothing about”. This line proves an early taste of the lyrical nature of the album, which comes across as Lacey’s latenight thoughts, vague questions and accusations, pleas and promises and confessions.

‘Home’ opens with a music-box melody and blossoms into a beautiful slice of dream pop. The beat picks up and adds an urgency to the chorus line of, “They see their father’s eyes / When the sun comes up he promises that they’ll be alright”. As I said last time, the horns during the finale seem to herald bigger things, a jump in scope and ambition, the product of an extremely talented musician hitting his stride. This is also apparent in the instrumentation elsewhere on the album, for example, the instrumental ‘Heart//What if This Were It?’ sounds cinematic, like the soundtrack to a tragic finale of a movie.

‘Stranger’ opens with these lonely, floating atmospherics before the onset of a really nice guitar melody. Yes it’s a sad song, but it’s not a typical syrupy dirge, it has a groove, the sort of hip swaying melancholy of later Bon Iver releases. Again the lyrics offer fragments of isolation and self-doubt.

Another of my favourites is ‘Time’ which opens with a simple mournful piano which repeats and repeats, becoming almost hypnotic by the time it fades out at the end. Lacey delivers the vocals.

It sounds like r&b minus the swagger, the masculine posturing. It’s more concerned with existential angst than beautiful girls and trite professions of love. But that’s not to say that Their Bodies in a Fog is simply cynical and pessimistic navel gazing. Lacey certainly wears his heart on his sleeve, this is one of the most earnest albums I’ve heard for a long time. But it never becomes too much, presumably because, as the listener, we feel that he’s telling the truth. The angst on show is real and sincere, and I think we can all relate to that.

You can get Their Bodies in a Fog as a pay-what-you-like digital download via Bandcamp, or on limited run cassette tape via Orchid Tapes.

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Stone Candles is eclectic and experimental and therefore very difficult to categorize. The band use a cacophony of guitars, synths, looped samples and strings to create their own unique take on electronic music, an approach which has influences from r&b and hip hop to pysch folk and bedroom pop. It is to the band’s credit that this fusion of influence and genre never feels forced or jarring, the album feels complete and flows very nicely.

The album is out now on Mush Records, get it from their website, where the album is also streaming in full. You can also get it from the Pressed And Bandcamp.

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