Moon, released on Seattle’s Porchlight Coffee & Records, was originally a physical-only release but the 24th May saw it’s official ‘digital’ unveiling, meaning it’s now available for your purchasing pleasure on the Danielle Fricke Bandcamp page. If you need reminding as to why you should indulge, this quote from our review might help:

“Moon is a lesson in stillness (albeit a frantic, twitching stillness of false starts). Here we have 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.”

To mark the release, Fricke has made a video for the single, ‘Dizzy’.

So head on over to Danielle Fricke’s Bandcamp page to download Moon, or, if you are a vinyl person who missed it the first time around, head to Porchlight Coffee & Records and snag a copy before they’re all gone.

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The album opens with ‘Tenterhooks’, an ambient track which swells and simmers like a post-rock song which never quite reaches a climax. Fricke’s vocals arrive in the closing minute, repeating the same line over and over, sounding like a call into fog or else a silent incantation let free into the internal turmoil of the narrator’s mind. The title track follows with an icy stillness, the mist clearing to reveal a stark lunar landscape upon which Fricke lets her words go:

“Let me be your moon
when you go out at night
shine down on you
I’ll change your tide”

It is from here that the album’s themes of loneliness and isolation develop, although quite how appropriate it is that the narrator casts themselves as the moon itself depends on whether or not a distant lump of rock can feel, can dream. Take ‘The Well’ as an example, a song darker still but never barren, desperation and anxiety and human heat cutting through the blackness. Moon is not a happy album, but it is these sparks of emotion that mean it’s never empty either.

The instrumental ‘Yours To The Ocean’ continues the mood, a layered track of ghostly, cinematic ambience and glitchy electronics playing out like the northern lights above an Arctic wind, managing to convey both stillness and anxiety, an internal writhing amidst external inertia. In contrast, ‘Dizzy’ feels like a short spell of audacity, the narrator gathering the courage to speak their thoughts, even if no-one is there to hear them. ” Let me feel love, even pain / whatever you feel, I’ll have the same” Fricke sings, “we can make it, close our eyes / be lovers, give it time”. But if that was an upward spiral then ‘Cicadas’ is a downturn – slower and sadder, it stutters into life with hesitancy, the candid words of ‘Dizzy’ replaced by a wistful melancholy, an animal gripped by pessimism as its genes stir up the unavoidable compulsion to bed down and hide from an approaching cold.

“Let the cicadas sing
bring the heat in.
We’ve only got a few more weeks
till the winter’s here
then I’ll settle in my room
waiting for you”

‘Grey’ is sadder still, a sombre love-story-turned-tragedy in the most human way, the participants speaking and thinking of love’s ephemeral nature during even the most placid of days, anticipating the acceleration or deceleration or cold hard snap that will turn everything on its head. The (mostly) instrumental ‘Heirloom’ plays like a confused dream below a frozen field, a burrow filled with the smell of life and thoughts of another world, while ‘Maisy’ sees the internalised emotion precipitate into something palpable, a desperate attempt to communicate, regardless of whether the words will be heard or not. For all of the love and loss in the poetry of the record, the song possesses a sincerity and vulnerability so far unseen, resorting to the kind of simple phrases used when all else fails.

“If the world is weighing down on your skin
you will be ok and you will let it in
you can make it love
you will be ok
sometimes life just makes you want to throw it away”

In most movies and books, this opening up would be the catalyst for an upturn of fortunes, the ‘bravery’ of speaking earnestly appeasing whatever cosmic forces govern these things and allowing a reunion or something equally happy. Moon does not work that way. ‘Mourning Dove’ feels like the bottom of a trench, a deep but well-lit nadir in which all shock, denial and anger has dissipated to leave a quiet, introspective continuation, where one commits to their grief and loneliness without embarrassment or fear. With its gentle vocals and spectral instrumentation, the track plays like an empty room, maybe the scene of some vital occurrence, a space once important but now still and serene, the past existing in objects left untouched and faint vibrations in the air.

“I mourn the mourning dove
who calls for it’s lost love in the night
there’s not much left in its lungs
not enough light to see the sun
I’m afraid he’s lost this one”

Closer ‘Rabbit’ is a piano-led ballad made intricate by Fricke’s careful, evocative layering, the track morphing near the three minute mark into a swirling blizzard. Somehow all this adds up to something as simple and organic as any live-take folk song, the electronic, orchestral and pop elements fusing into something heartfelt and heartbreaking, an arrangement I don’t remember being done quite so effectively since the early albums from The Antlers. Quite how the story ends is unclear. It could be read as a challenge, a test of faith, or alternatively as a reprieve, but you get the sense that it is actually no conclusion at all, that these are just more thoughts put out into the empty room, words that will be followed by more as the narrator’s heart and head cycle through the gamut of pain and hope we call life.

“From waking, keep me from waking up
say you hate your rabbit
and let it go”

In a world where so much art is geared towards redemption, where no character is complete without a life-changing epiphany and every downward face of Freytag’s pyramid must entail personal change and regrowth, Moon is a lesson in stillness (albeit a frantic, twitching stillness of false starts). Here we have 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.

You can buy Moon on white vinyl now from Porchlight Records. If you are feeling decadent you can buy the ‘Fancy Edition’ (priced at $25) which gets you a limited edition art print and lyric booklet. The vinyl will ship on the 4th December but comes with an immediate download.

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‘The Well’ is taken from her upcoming album Moon, which you will be hearing a lot more about in the coming months. The song is at least partly inspired by Andrew Kaufman’s All My Friends are Superheroes. As Danielle explains:

“I remember opening this book while waiting at an airport to fly over the ocean and back home. An event in the story causes the main character’s wife to be hypnotized to no longer see him, and so he becomes invisible to her. The book is a fairly quick light read and filled with humour. However, underneath it all I felt attached to this struggle where no matter how close the husband felt to his wife, he was never really there in her eyes. This idea inspired my song ‘The Well’, as I was in a long distance relationship at that time, I thought no matter how close I felt to the person, at moments there would always be an ocean between us, making me invisible.”

The accompanying artwork is a painting by South African artist Amor Coetzee in response to the song. You can find her on the Dayfeels website, follow her on Tumblr and Instagram, and ‘like’ her Facebook page to be sure to keep up with her work.

Remember that you can (and should) order Quiet, Constant Friends on cassette via the Wake the Deaf Bandcamp page, which come with a selection of small prints of the original artwork. Digital downloads available too for the fully-functioning members of the twenty-first century among you. Every penny of the profits go straight to Worldreader so what are you waiting for?

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Keep your eyes peeled for more details regarding Moon, we’ll be certain to write a full review once we have had a chance to hear it. In the mean time, why not grab yourself a copy of Burrow?

The post Danielle Fricke – Cicadas appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Danielle Fricke is an artist and musician from London, Ontario, who you might know from her work with Snow Mantled Love (who we featured here and here). Fricke and the others have put the band on an indefinite hiatus while they pursue other projects and, while Fricke has been releasing a steady dribble of songs and videos, this EP is her first physical release.

Burrow is a four-song EP of rich, atmospheric ambient music. ‘i.’ opens with samples of birdsong and the sound of the wind before gentle and poignant piano meanders with what could be melancholy or wonder, the last mammal left before winter or the first to rise from hibernation. ‘ii.’ sees the piano swapped out in favour of something even more subdued, a fragile electronic breeze which whistles over a land muted with snow. ‘iii.’ is slightly weird and skewed, overlayed with staccato fuzz which appears with the skittish unpredictability of moths around a lamp, while ‘iv.’ opens out into something larger and more intense, a blend of cinematic instrumentation and electronic drone with Fricke’s voice swirled into the mix. Behind each track is a delicate yet ever-present hum, a continuous noise that (paradoxically) mimics silence, the sound of air in your ears when all else is absent that gives a sense of intimacy and isolation.

While Fricke is certain to have success as a conventional indie/pop musician and vocalist, Burrow shows that she has many other avenues to explore and exploit. Don’t be surprised if her instrumental music forms the soundtrack to the best, saddest film that hasn’t yet been made.

You can buy the album now from Fricke’s Bandcamp page.

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It starts off with regular songs that are somehow linked with a scary theme before taking a more traditional Halloween vibe, a kitsch spookiness akin to handing out candy in costume to kids with bedsheets over their heads. Finally, in the second half on the mix, things take a strange turn and get weird, an unsettling section best listened through headphones in a dark room.

Beware the Moon: a Halloween Mix from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

Tracklisting:

1. Halloween Parade – Lou Reed
2. Werewolf (or …While I Was Casting Demons Out of You) – Tyler Lyle
3. Witches – Low
4. She Just Happens To Date the Prince of Darkness – Say Hi To Your Mom
5. The Bear – Snow Mantled Love
6. Casper the Friendly Ghost – Daniel Johnston
7. Skeleton Man – Evangelicals
8. Dracula is Only the Beginning – COOLRUNNINGS
9. My Body’s a Zombie for You – Dead Man’s Bones
10. Woman – Timber Timbre
11. Colours – JB Newman & The Black Letter Band
12. Dance of the Dream Man – Angelo Badalamenti
13. Fear of the Unknown and the Blazing Sun – Colin Stetson
14. Guilt – Piggy
15. Alone – Alone
16. Childhood’s End – Majical Cloudz
17. Fridge Music – Mogwai
18. The Mirror Reflecing (Part 2) – The Haxan Cloak
19. The Cellar – Nick Cave & Warren Ellis
20. I Know (Jon Hopkins Remix) – David Lynch

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Labeling Conversations as “dream pop” would be to do it a disservice. This isn’t some formulaic collection of by-the-numbers, post-chillwave, bedroom recorded, melancholic pop music, but rather an assortment of influences and ideas, a willingness to experiment with sounds and structure. For example, the album’s shortest song (excluding a forty second instrumental piece), ‘All In The Name Of Good Dancing’, clocks in at under two minutes, whereas ‘Dream Talk’, the album’s sprawling midsection, breaks the ten minute barrier.

The album opens with ‘Drift Down’, which you can see in video form below. The song is perfectly titled, feeling like the soundtrack to a slow and gentle descent. Next up is ‘Familiar Ground’ which starts slow and considered and builds into a climax that shimmers and swirls like something by Beach House.

‘The Bear’ is a Gothic folk fairytale, reserved and slightly creepy, like Timber Timbre whispering as they fall asleep. It tells the tale of a journey into the woods and an encounter with a grizzly bear.

“Trapped we are inside this place, 
trapped we will dig our own graves

But the bear will keep us safe,
if we only do one thing for him.”

Perhaps one for your alternative Halloween mixtape?

The aforementioned ‘Dream Talk’ descends into a lovely throbbing murmur, with barely audible vocals that echo and fade, not entirely unlike Julianna Barwick. ‘Ill’ is devastatingly sad and pretty, opening with the line, “try to pretend you’re not dying”, it captures the same mournful air of The Antlers’ brilliant album, Hospice. Next, ‘All In The Name of Dancing’ changes the tone, a Memoryhouse style pop song. The album closer (this time excluding an instrumental/ambient bonus track) ‘Chairs’ is all dreamy and pretty for a while and then begins a slightly surreal acceleration and ends in some kind of muted frenzy.

Check out the video for ‘Drift Down’ below:

You can get Conversations on a pay-what-you-want basis via the band’s Bandcamp page. It’s not often you find ‘free’ music with as much heart and attention to detail as this, so please dig deep and give the band a little something, they deserve it.

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Intro/Extra is the project’s first release and so a chance for Zarola to set out his stall, to lay down his themes and ideas for the project. He says that Gatsby’s Estate represents the “contact between grandeur and the subtle, social and recluse”. The aim of the project is to present the “decade of excess through a shadowed lens”. Such contradictions are at the forefront of the EP. Why is it, at a time of great material excess and moral freedom, that everyone feels so lonely? Obviously this is where the project’s name comes in. For all the pomp and splendour of Jay Gatsby’s lifestyle, for all the beautiful people who attend his famous parties, he is ultimately unhappy and alone.

You can download the EP via the Gatsby’s Estate bandcamp page, for however much you feel like giving.

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(RIYL – “Defeatist Folk”, Nostalgia, House of Wolves)

Pop Winds – Earth To Friends

(RIYL – Psych Pop, Animal Collective, Parts & Labor, Braids)

Praything – Her Skin Caught The Glow

(RIYL – Indie Pop, Pianos, Beach House, Fleet Foxes, Youth Lagoon)

Rem’s Floating Chandelier – Think Of The Willows

(RIYL – Chillwave, Ambient, Dream Pop, Variety)

Ricky Eat Acid – Ambien Music

(RIYL – Ambient, Drone, Melancholy)

Ricky Eat Acid + Arrange – Sketches

(RIYL – Ambient, Collaborations, Ricky Eat Acid, Arrange)

Roman Ruins – Homebuilding

(RIYL – Electronic Pop, Animal Collective, Beach House)

Sean Atkins – Volume One / Volume 1.5 / Volume Two

(RIYL – Acoustic, Singer Songwriters, Bright Eyes, J. Tillman)

Selkies – Tall Grass

(RIYL – Psych Folk, Nature, Mountain Man, Joanna Newsom, Lemolo)

Seth Frightening – Don’t You Worry (Heat Death)

(RIYL:Experimental Folk, Smog, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Grouper).

Shipwrecks – Whatever

(RIYL: Bedroom Pop, Talons’, Phil Elvrum, Sufjan Stevens)

Sledding With Tigers – Being Nice is Still Cool

(RIYL: Folk Punk, Defiance Ohio, Andrew Jackson Jihad).

Snow Mantled Love – Romance 126

(RIYL: Dream Pop, Sharon Van Etten, Beach House, Twin Sister, Sigur Ros).

Spook Houses – Trying

(RIYL: Indie Rock, Pavement, Titus Andronicus).

Squanto – On Being Lumpy

(RIYL: Ambient, Folk, Nils Frahm, Talons’)

The post Favourite Free Music of 2012 (P – S) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

15. Isaac Delusion – Early Morning EP

(Cracki)

14. Shipwrecks – Whatever

(Self Released)

13. The Long Haul – Debtors

(Tangled Talk)

12. Daniel Rossen – Silent Hour/Golden Mile

(Warp)

11. Snow Mantled Love – Romance 126

(Self Released)

10. Wake Owl – Wild Country

(Vagrant)

9. Groundislava – TV Dream

(Friends of Friends)

8. Why? – Sod In The Seed

(Anticon / City Slang)

7. The Wandering Lake – Ashame

(Self Released)

6. Memotone – Hands

(A Future Without)

5. Throwing Snow – Clamor

(Snowfall)

4. The Antlers – Undersea

(Transgressive)

3. Shlohmo – Vacation

(Friends of Friends)

2. Tyler Butler – Violence

(Self Released)

1. TNGHT – TNGHT

(Warp / Lucky Me)

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