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

Tracklisting:

1. I Don’t Know – Tina Refnes (+ Lit Links)
2. If I Were a Portal – Evening Hymns
3. Cradle Robber – Tyler Butler and His Handsome Friends
4. Calvander – Mount Moriah
5. The Way It Is, The Way It Could Be – The Weather Station
6. Porch – Long Beard
7. Small Wind Power – Fraternal Twin
8. Mourning Dove – Danielle Fricke
9. 3 – Cat Be Damned
10. Cold Apartment Floors – Vagabon
11. I Used To Be A Bird – Fairweather Currents
12. Drive-Thru – Honeyuck
13. Ghosts – The Washboard Abs
14. Litany – Tyler Key
15. Aviator Shades – Quiet Hollers
16. Book of Right On (Joanna Newsom cover) – Foxtails Brigade (Lit Links)
17. Judy Blume – Mal Devisa
18. So Long – Dot & Logic
19. A Swift Thing – EP
20. Stuck w/ Me – Home Lives
21. Close Call (Adderall Anxiety) – Shaky Shrines
22. Boys – Dicktations
23. Nothing – Strange Friends
24. Careful Creators – Summering
25. Blinding White – Vapour Night
26. Pull – Slow Dancing Society (Hidden Shoal compilation)
27. Calmest – Naps
28. As He Walked Into the Field – Robert Stillman
29. Church Bells – Tommy Perman, Simon Kirby & Rob St. John
30. Seven – Oh, Rose
    31. No Hell – Cloud Cult

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

“The album takes the formula of Stewart’s previous releases and stretches it panoramic, bedroom pop on a mountainous scale, a departure from his norms in all the right ways. The band build dense layers of guitar which, paired with rumbling bass and crashing drums, create something imposing, a monolith rising through the fog.”

The great news is that the full album has now been released, and the promise saw at the start of the year has been realised. Eight songs of dense indie rock which borrow as much from the cathartic peaks of post-rock as they do from the slow and spectral sound we’ve come to associate with Stewart. We begin with ‘In Linear’, with it’s slow and considered start, all open spaces and dark winding guitars and Stewart’s signature vocals. The “choruses” spike with heavier instrumentation, our first taste of the album’s post-rock tendencies, while the gentler verses are full of lines like:

“You always cover the receiver with your hand
why don’t you want them to listen
why don’t you want them to understand?”

‘LAFK’ opens with almost martial drumbeat before the advent of inky and slinky guitars, eventually blooming into a track which fuses a sheer rock passion with emotive vocals and reflective air of something else entirely, bringing to mind earlier Winterlseep releases and particular the music of Brian Borcherdt’s Dusted project. The song is punctuated by moments of almost pure silence, where the only sound is the receding reverb of the previous burst of instrumentation, a sound you can’t be sure doesn’t exist only in your inner ear. Eventually things build to a pinnacle, ending in a furious cacophony of pounding percussion and squealing guitars. ‘Careful Creators’ gathers itself and then comes crashing to life, the vocals sad and oddly serene, floating in during the intervals between the noise (“To be alive is to be alone”).

The title track is a patient and vaguely ominous song, guitars rolling in like surf on an abandoned shore, while ‘x’ shakes things up with its shimmering, shifting ambience, like ice crystals gliding through the great black expanse of outer space. A discordant clang announces the arrival of ‘Temporary Widow’, which has shades of Explosions in the Sky, epic crests of feedback and pummelled drums surrounding the soaring vocals like a big staticky storm cloud. ‘Concrete Plans’ marches out of a drone that sounds like some kind of cosmic wind, the drums holding a rhythm that feels almost heavy rock.

“Under someone else’s concrete plans
you’re not even a name
or the print of your own hand
you become so dependent”

Finale ‘Words’ is epic and reverberating, stretching over the nine minute mark and enduring all manner of tumult in its duration. It converges into perhaps the heaviest maelstrom on the entire album, before descending into a lull at the very finish, just sparse guitar and Stewart’s vocals, like the strange glowing hush in aftermath of a tempest.

“It’s alright if your words
don’t come as easily to you
if everything is overheard
maybe they’re not supposed to”

This is an album that has it all. It’s pretty easy to turn to cloying metaphors to describe the sense of vast space it conjures, the poignancy or Stewart’s vocals, the pure tangible noise that the band can summon. It takes a little bit of everything and melts them down into something that’s quite unique. Something that is quite distinctly Summering.

You can get Summering now via the Summering Bandcamp page.

The post Summering – s/t appeared first on Various Small Flames.

March has gone and Spring has sprung. If you were too busy trying to top up your vitamin D levels with every weak little sunbeam then fear not, we have collected everything featured on Wake The Deaf in one handy little playlist. Follow the links in the tracklisting to be whisked away to the relevant pages.

We are taking a short break over Easter to gather our thoughts and hopefully return with something shiny and new. No promises just yet but keep an eye here, Twitter or Facebook for developments. Until then!

Tracklisting:

1. i. – Danielle Fricke
2. Dk/Pi – Aero Flynn
3. Summering – Summering
4. Chapter 1 – Human Behavior
5. Dogs 1 – Vio/Miré
6. A Home Just Over Yonder – Frankie Duff
7. M.M.G.A.T.M – Field Medic
8. Broken Necks – Eskimeaux
9. Maybe I’m Wasting My Time – Jake Rollins
10. God is Laughing at Me – Butterfly House
11. Hold Me Like a Child – GOOD, GOOD BLOOD
12. Invisible Cities – Beat Radio
13. Somebody Kill Me Please – LVL UP
14. The Plane – Andrew Hung
15. Roles Reversed – Kid In The Attic
16. Floral Mattress – Naps
17. Tennis – Derek Piotr
18. The Day is Past and Gone – Jean Ritchie
19. The Day is Past and Gone (Variations) – Sarah Louise
20. Buffalo Bones – Wes Tirey
21. Don’t Go – Radical Dads
22. Lucky Man – Joplin Rice
23. Billy Madison Victory Song – Krill
24. Demise – Psalmships

March 2015 Roundup from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

The post March 2015 Roundup – A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Regular readers may be familiar with the sounds of Paul Stewart, the Canadian who makes introspective and atmospheric modern folk music (not unlike the Field Medic release we featured recently). Summering is a band from Vancouver of which Stewart is now a member, along with four other musicians with a variety of backgrounds, mostly from the more abrasive end of the musical spectrum such as metal, punk, techno and hardcore. These three tracks are intended as a preview of the bands forthcoming album, due some time this summer.

The album takes the formula of Stewart’s previous releases and stretches it panoramic, bedroom pop on a mountainous scale, a departure from his norms in all the right ways. The band build dense layers of guitar which, paired with rumbling bass and crashing drums, create something imposing, a monolith rising through the fog. I found myself thinking of earlier Wintersleep albums in the way they fuse melancholic indie with the noisy dramatism of post-rock. The tracks were recorded live at Monarch Studios in Vancouver, a decision that sounds to have paid off as the band’s thunderous energy is tangible.

If you want my advice, head over to the Summering Bandcamp page, download the preview on a name your price basis, and then sit patiently for the full album.

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