Sabbatical Wilderness – Night Life in the Lemon Town of Büshka (REVIEW)
(RIYL: experimental, narrative-driven music, J-RPGs)

Sad Girls Club – Sad Girls Clubbing
(RIYL: bedroom artists, 90s/00s pop, crying in discos)

Sailor Jupiter – S/T
(RIYL: punk, noise, Riot Grrrls)

Schapero – Girls EP
(RIYL: catchy pop, Toro y Moi, LCD Soundsystem)

Sea Ghost – SG
(RIYL: punk, powerpop, The Unicorns)

Single Colour Fields – Jaundiced Views
(RIYL: dream pop, freak folk, splits)

Sister Something – Duds EP / The Tongue Davids EP
(RIYL: indie rock, post-pop, Mac DeMarco)

Sleeping In – EP
(RIYL: shoegaze, Speedy Ortiz, Sonic Youth)

Slows Down – S/T (REVIEW)
(RIYL: dream pop, drone, post rock)

SNCKPCK – LAVA PAL
(RIYL: Electronic, chill, positivity)

Spirit of the Beehive – You Are Arrived (But You’ve Been Cheated) (REVIEW)
(RIYL: indie rock, lo-fi, dream rock for disaffected youth)

Sports Day Records – RELAY (REVIEW)
(RIYL: indie pop, bedroom pop, compilations)

Stolen Jars – Kept
(RIYL: math pop, folk, Dirty Projectors, Freelance Whales)

Strange Friends – Summer Recordings (REVIEW)
(RIYL: fuzz pop, lo-fi, Gorgeous Bully)

Stray Amour – S/T
(RIYL: indie pop, shoegaze)

Sun Hotel – Coast / Fight Off You Demos
(RIYL: folk, “swamp pop”, Lord Huron)

Sunshine Faces – Peaked / Letting You Know
(RIYL: dream pop, lo-fi, bedroom pop)

Ursidae – Tape 4
(RIYL: drone, field recordings, sonic collage)

The Wailin’ Smithers – S/T (REVIEW)
(RIYL: indie rock, laidback summer fun)

The Wandering Lake – From James’ Garden
(RIYL: psych folk, experimental, meditative vibes)

The Washboard Abs – WHATEVERLAND (REVIEW) / The Beaming Pts. 1 & 2 (REVIEW)
(RIYL: bedroom pop, folk, Mount Eerie)

Wished Bone – Pseudio Recordings
(RIYL: dreamy lo-fi, Elliott Smith, Sharon van Etten)

Yesses – S/T
(RIYL: lo-fi, pop, The Beatles)

We’ve shared a new section of the list every day this week, so be sure to check back for the complete collection. If you find something you like, or think we missed something life-changing, then why not let us know on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr or good old email.

The post Favourite Free Music of 2015: S-Z appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

1. Red Coat – Adeline Hotel (Interview)
   2. S.O.B. – Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats
   3. Daughter of the Sea – House of Wolves (Interview)
   4. Monarchy – Table People
   5. Ruin – Doomking
   6. Lonely Boy – Titus Andronicus
   7. New York Hardcore – talons’
   8. Roar of Nothingness – Sun Organ
   9. Slow Dark Water – Furnsss
   10. You Are Arrived (But You’ve Been Cheated) – The Spirit of the Beehive
   11. It Was Gone – Orchid Mantis
   12. Big Sis – SALES
   13. No Comprende – Low
   14. The Washing Machine – SPORTS
   15. Shark? – Shark? (Everything Is Teeth by Evie Wyld and Joe Sumner)
   16. Christmas in Milwaukee – Advance Base
   17. Only Friend – Valley Maker
   18. My Track ’92 – Pet Cemetery
   19. Dusk; Falling Asleep, Know That You Are Loved – Sabbatical Wilderness
   20. Theremin Demonstration – Leon Theremin (Us Conductors by Sean Michaels)
   21. The Lemon’s Cousin – Boy Scouts
   22. Audrey Horne – Teen Love
   23. Mia – Spencer Radcliffe
   24. Return To The Moon – EL VY
   25. Bug – Alex G
   26. Wild Hearts – Kodiak Deathbeds
   27. Waves – Abby Gundersen
   28. UR = UO – No Touching
   29. Sparrow & Stone – Eva Foote
   30. What Can Be Taken – ÒOR

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

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.

The post Sabbatical Wilderness – Night Life in the Lemon Town of Büshka appeared first on Various Small Flames.