The project of Gothenburg-based musician, producer and visual artist Lela Amparo, Amparo is an outlet for atmospheric and cinematic music that blends electronic, ambient and folk. Taken from new album Day and Night, out now on Bikiniwax Records, latest single ‘After Ours’ is a great example. Drawing on the likes of Bonobo and The Cinematic Orchestra, the song builds from simple guitar and plaintive strings into a rich, jazz-inflected track that’s thick with a sense of late-night drama and emotion. ‘After Ours’ is “inspired by a night spent in Paris before changing the course of my life,” Amparo explains. “It’s about being in the moment and knowing nothing will ever be the same.”

 Getdown Services – Cream Of The Crop

If John Cooper Clarke’s ‘Evidently Chickentown’ conjured the end days through pictures of a tedious, ruined Britain, then ‘Cream of the Crop’ by Bristol’s Getdown Services offers a new vision of the non-future. A world polished to within an inch of its life and then polished a bit harder. A stage of capitalism so late they’ve stopped updating the time on the board. Think branded boozers and no-change-from-a-tenner street food cuisine. The milieu is brought to life by shiny disco beats, though it is the conversational snark of vocalist Josh Law the grabs the attention. A figure who finds himself in a place so soulless he’s not sure whether to self-immolate or burst out laughing. Either way, he’s stuck there and so are you. Roll up everybody, Chickentown’s had a fresh coat of paint.

Jeffrey Silverstein – Cowboy Grass

Later this spring, Jeffrey Silverstein will release Western Sky Music, his second LP for Arrowhawk Records and first full-length since 2020’s You Become the Mountain. Promising an evolution of Silverstein’s cosmic brand of country, the album again features contributions from Barry Walker Jr (pedal steel) and Alex Chapman (bass), and also adds Akron/Family’s Dana Buoy on drums, as well as guest appearances from William Tyler and VSF fav Karima Walker. Lead single ‘Cowboy Grass’ is our first taste, a song with a little more dust and dirt and barroom boogie than anything Silverstein has made to date. Watch the video, directed by Austin Abbott and starring Eric DuRant, below:

Western Sky Music releases via Arrowhawk Records on 12th May. Pre-order a copy now from the Jeffrey Silverstein Bandcamp page.

Melati ESP – BAHASA BARU

With LP hipernatural coming soon on Carpark Records, Indonesian-American experimental pop artist Melati ESP has unveiled new single, ‘BAHASA BARU’. The record is notable in the way it draws on the breadth of Melati’s cultural influences to achieve its vivid sound (Javanese radio Dangdut, gamelan cassettes, Moving Shadow-era liquid jungle and Japanese chill-out are all listed as inspirations), and the new single serves as the ideal introduction to a style which exists outside of the usual categorization of genre or geography. “It’s a personal statement of intent,” Melati explains, “being comfortable in occupying the third space, and creating new ways of communicating that are tethered to intuition, empathy and understanding.” The song comes complete with a video, directed by Melati’s sister Kathleen Malay, which celebrates this embrace of otherness despite, as Melati puts it, “mostly feeling like a baby alien while growing up in Jakarta, always between two worlds.”

hipernatural is out on the 28th April via Carpark Records.

The Saxophones – Desert Flower

Released to announce their third album, coming early this summer on Full Time Hobby, ‘Desert Flower’ is the new single from The Saxophones. For the uninitiated, The Saxophones is the project of married duo Alexi Erenkov and Alison Alderdice, who make slinky Lynchian lounge music that’s dark and velvety, confronting existential concerns with a smoky sophistication. What Erenkov describes as “about avoidance and fear impeding personal growth and the deepening of relationships,” ‘Desert Flower’ is no different. Creeping and cryptic, it blends the material and the mystical, eventually swelling to emotive peaks as Erenkov’s croon gives way to radiant sax. It’s an intriguing glimpse of what promises to be a strange and sublime record.

There are symbols everywhere
signs that even I can’t deny.
Only if they aligned,
I could lift away the veil.

To Be a Cloud will be released via Full Time Hobby on 2^nd June. Pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

Strange Ranger – Rain So Hard

Strange Ranger are a band who have been defined by a sense of self-reinvention. Winning initial acclaim within the spheres of indie rock, 2019’s Remember The Rockets saw the first shoots of shoegaze and pop influences breaking the surface, and by No Light in Heaven the following year they were entirely rebranded as an experimental electronic outfit. New single ‘Rain So Hard’, out via Fire Talk Records, emerges from this electro ground, its lush and layered sound playing as some nameless immensity above the vocals, be it a looming cityscape or wide open sky. This overwhelming scale registers as a kind of melancholy, the vocals adrift within something to large for them to navigate or control. “How do I get out of this movie now?” asks the repeated refrain, hoping for nothing more than another person to cling onto for the ride. Watch the video directed by Ben Turok below:

‘Rain So Hard’ is out now via Fire Talk Records.

Women Tied to Railroad Tracks – Fake Tans

Back in 2019 we wrote about Women Tied to the Railroad Tracks, describing the sound of their album And Levitating as “indie pop that sits in a strange space between mundane reality and freaky dreams.” With their debut record on the horizon with Anxiety Blanket Records, the LA outfit have shared the brand new single, ‘Fake Tans’. A bright summertime track loosely based on Doris Lessing’s novel The Golden Notebook, where the protagonist speaks of an encounter with a man with a crack in his personality: “like a gap in a dam, and through that gap the future might pour in a different shape—terrible perhaps, or marvelous, but something new.”

Yael S. Copeland – Pool

Having made a name fronting Borito, Tel Aviv’s Yael S. Copeland is setting out alone for her first solo release. If the Borito sound occupied a colourful, retro bracket of the dream pop/rock genre, then Copeland’s solo work turns more toward the intimate and lo-fi, having more in common with Alex G and Elliott Smith. With an album set for release later this month, latest single ‘Pool’ shows how this stripped back style is no less immersive or heartfelt, the lyrics playing like something between a daydream and a poem in their gentle reflection, the sound still managing to envelop the listener in its lush layers.

big sky
like a big pool
blue and clear
but I can’t see my
reflection when I look down here

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In March, The Saxophones will release their sophomore album, Eternity Bay, on Full Time Hobby. The follow-up to their 2018 debut Songs of The Saxophones, the album was made following the birth of the couple’s first son, an event which understandably influenced Erenkov’s writing. “My music has always grappled with mortality and the meaning of existence,” he says, “but the birth of our first son and the imminent arrival of our second has greatly heightened my sensitivity to these themes.”

Today we have the pleasure of unveiling the album’s second single, ‘Lamplighter’. Rich with the band’s distinctively Lynchian blend of romantically unhurried instrumentation and syrupy vocals, the track plays subtle percussion and barely-there guitar against smooth, slinky sax.

“The song takes its name from a bar on the misty Washington coast where I spent an evening drinking with close friends,” Erenkov describes. “The night and the following day’s walk on the beach were both enjoyable, but I was particularly struck by how much my conversations, thoughts, and actions were avoidant of the present. Whether through alcohol or simply distracting myself with thoughts of the future, I find ways to fight reality.”

There has always been a quiet grandiosity to The Saxophones, their sound taking inspiration from West Coast jazz, ’50s exotica and ’70s Italian lyricism—a kind of velvet sophistication that holds each song. But there’s a darkness hidden in the folds too, and in the case of ‘Lamplighter’ this comes in the form of self-delusion and the ephemerality of all things, even concepts as big and supposedly lasting as love.

“While indulging, I often convince myself that I’m on some kind of path to enlightenment,” says Erenkov, “that I’ll find an escape from impermanence and be able to touch the eternal. But all of my hedonistic impulses lead me back to the same reality. And I’m left to face the fact that even the truest love is impermanent.”

Eternity Bay will be released on Full Time Hobby on the 6th March and you can pre-order it now from selected outlets or via The Saxophones Bandcamp page.

Photos by Conner Sorenson

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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.

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A new volume will be posted every few weeks and will offer a collection of really great songs that we’re determined not to let slip past our radar.

Kraków Loves Adana – Rapture

The second single from upcoming full-length Songs After The Blue, ‘Rapture’ sees Kraków Loves Adana perfect their slightly weird and fully nostalgic brand of pop music. The project of Hamburg-based duo Deniz Cicek and Robert Heitmann, the sound here is one of ominous romance, as though working emotions loose from the past, exploring the strange spaces and film-grain footage of sun-bleached tapes, their contents at once dark and neon-lit, love and heartbreak entwined into cinematic spectacle.

“Tell me what’s next
Tell me what’s best
Put a cassette into the tape deck

Gotta play it for me
Hear the voices weep
Let the sad poets sing me to sleep”

The single comes complete with a fantastically fitting video by Wy’s Ebba Ågren, which also fulfils the slightly weird/fully nostalgic criteria:

Songs After The Blue is set for release on the 6th April via Better Call Rob. In the meantime, be sure to check out the first single ‘American Boy‘ too.

Cool American – Focus

Following up 2017’s excellent Infinite Hiatus, Portland’s Cool American are back with the latest instalment of their better luck next year series, which collects the b-sides and demos that didn’t fit on the full releases. That, however, does not mean a dip in quality. As ‘Focus’ attests, the differences between these songs and those on Infinite Hiatus are just stylistic, swapping out the runaway energy for something a little more languid and dreamy. Therefore the band get a chance to flex their musical muscles and try out some different formulae, and in doing so explore other faces of the millennial ennui they are making a career exploring.

better luck next year: vol 3 is out on the 16th February via Good Cheer Records and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp. The first and second volumes, as well as Infinite Hiatus, are available there too.

Bucolic – Blue Tree

The recording project of New Jersey’s Seth Carpenter, Bucolic makes music combining dream and bedroom pop to create something at once downbeat and uplifting. Taken from a forthcoming EP, Glow Worm, ‘Blue Tree’ serves as a great introduction for those new to his sound. Opening with a an emotional sparseness, the Carpenter’s vocals enter to portray a kind of detached regret, as though too sad to properly register the loss. Or else, the Bucolic sound is one so used to the idea of regret, so rooted in the melancholic way of things, that the loss becomes proof of something, using time passing as a way to remember what we still have left.

Glow Worm will be released in March so keep an eye on the Bucolic Bandcamp page.

There’s Talk – Give It Up

The latest single of Oakland’s dreampop trio There’s Talk, ‘Give It Up’ is the opening track of a new EP, bathed water moon. The title of the release feels pertinent, because if ever a string of three near-abstract words could describe the There’s Talk sound then it is this—ethereal and lightweight yet hiding a darker side, the bright face of Olivia Lee’s vocals masking some cold, desolate flip-side, of which her melancholic style seems all too aware.

You can pre-order bathed water moon now from the There’s Talk Bandcamp page, including lovely 7″ vinyl edition complete with an art print and pin badge.

Doomking – I Laid the Prairies to Rest

We featured Doomking, the recording project of Victoria-based musician Jordan Soles, back in 2015 upon the release of their album, A Mark of Something No Longer In Existence. We described the album as “a release very much of and for our times,” with a “mixture of impassioned sentiments and general despondency shrouded in a haze of confusion,” all fuelled by the fracturing of human connection as we increasingly move contact online.

Stripping things back from A Mark of Something, Doomking’s new single ‘I Laid the Prairies to Rest’ feels like the aftermath of the previous album. With the last thrashings of resistance all but ended, an insulated sense of isolation has taken over—sparse and lonely and poignantly pretty, the prairies committed to sound.

‘I Laid the Prairies to Rest’ is available now from the Doomking Bandcamp page.

Airium + Double Honey – Concrete House Of Dreams And Pools

A collaboration between producer Airium and vocalist Double Honey, ‘Concrete House Of Dreams And Pools’ is a rich, expansive electronic pop song inspired by the work of David Hockney. Here, the honey-thick vocals and soaring instrumentation are coloured by an over-arching melancholy, a kind of life-affirming gloom that descends as the sun sets over a city. Indeed, the vocals and instrumental brightness fade into the night-time solemnity, so that the closing stages play like the sun’s dip below the horizon, replaced by shadows and blinking neon.

Airium + Double Honey can be found on Soundcloud.

The Saxophones – Just You

Back in October we told you about ‘Aloha’, the new single from California’s The Saxophones, a track which we described as “both sad and somehow not… like gentle moonlight glinting across a tropical bay.” We also mentioned that the b-side was a cover of ‘Just You’ from the Twin Peaks soundtrack, and the band have now released this into the world too. As we expected it’s pretty much the perfect material for The Saxophones, unfurling in a ways that’s equal parts sultry and strange.

Get ‘Aloha’ from The Saxophones Bandcamp page.

Jelani Sei – LVNDR TWN

Released last autumn, LVNDR TWN was the latest genre-bending release from Hartford’s Jelani Sei—combining r&b, indie rock, pop and soul, as well as mathy flourishes and a sprinkling of a Dirty Projectors-esque oddness, to make a sound that’s as entertaining as it is unpinnable. If, like us, you are late on this one, then allow ‘Divinity’ to win you over. Starting sunny and driven forward by a strong drum beat, the subverts the pop genre by refusing to settle into any familiar pattern, the style, tempo and vocals changing at will to create a thriving collage of musical goodness.

LVNDR TWN is out now and available from the Jelani Sei Bandcamp page.

Why Dogs Why – Linus

Why Dogs Why is the recording project of Alex Johnson from Northridge, LA. Formed after his previous outfit Bedbugs ceased toward the end of 2017, the moniker will be used by Johnson for a series of singles, one every two weeks until the summer. Mixed by Derek Ted, ‘Linus’ is the first such track, detailing a bittersweet opinion of suburban life in the San Fernando Valley that manifests as an agoraphobic terror. As such, ‘Linus’ is a frantic panic of a song, racing with anxious statements and a certain volatility, as if the whole thing might come apart at the seams at any given moment.

Grab ‘Linus’ now from the Why Dogs Why Bandcamp page.

Tree House – Nonsense

Tree House, the project of London resident Will Fortna, released his debut EP, Into the Ocean, back in September on Memorials of Distinction Records. We missed the boat at the time, but a recent video for the EP’s opening track, ‘Nonsense’, gives us the perfect opportunity to catch up. The song exists on the smoother end of the bedroom pop spectrum, minimalist grooves undulating behind Fortna’s gently sighing vocals. The video is equally dreamy, a video collage featuring doves and lizards and pastel-hued clouds.

You can get Into the Ocean from the Memorials of Distinction Bandcamp page.

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The good news is that the band are back with a new single, ‘Aloha’, which continues in this manner. The song, which the band describe as “a reflection on the ebb and flow of personal growth, escapism, and the repair of a relationship,” is perfectly poised and patient, unfurling with an elegant grace across its four minute run time, like gentle moonlight glinting across a tropical bay, both sad and somehow not. 

“You saw the cactus bloom
its scent filled your room
You cried a thousand times
and now, you’re fine.” 

‘Aloha’ is released on the 17th of November, and you can order it from The Saxophones Bandcamp page. The track comes with a b-side cover of Twin Peaks classic ‘Just You’, which seems like a great choice for The Saxophones sound, if you needed extra encouragement.  

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Field Medic – Flash Tattoo

If you’ve been following WTD for any length of time, chances are you already know all about Field Medic (if not, check out reviews here, here and here), and the way he makes folk music for the Twenty-first Century. The latest Field Medic single, ‘flash tattoos’, is yet another example, what feels like a sincere classic folk song at heart, a quietly confident paean to celebrating your differences, but embellished with warm lo-fi pop stylings that keep things genuine and rooted to the ground.

“it don’t pay to be different right now
but sometime I know someday it will”

The song will appear on a forthcoming EP, so keep your eyes peeled for the full release.

Praything – You’ll Be Mine

Praything, the project of Brooklyn’s Ju Kovacevich, is another artist we’ve featured several times (for example here and here). Praything’s first song of 2017 is ‘You’ll Be Mine’, another slice of lush and anthemic indie pop, Kovacevich’s distinctive vocals delicate and vulnerable against steady percussion and bubbling synths, before the whole thing breaks out into a cathartic wordless chorus. Sometimes you don’t need words to express emotion.

On the Other Side – Lincoln Oak

On the Other Side is the solo project of Dwight Miller from Modesto, California. He has an EP out early next month on CA DIY label Make Anything Records, and has recently released the first track, ‘Lincoln Oak’. The sound is emotionally charged, emo-tinged, indie rock, with shades of Pinegrove and Modern Baseball. The label say Miller tries to make “music that isn’t just escape from his problems, but forces him to tackle them head on”, so expect heart-on-sleeve sincerity behind the throaty barked vocals.

She Was My Ryan is due on the 7th of April, and you can pre-order it now from Make Anything Records.

Cassandra Jenkins – Red Lips

New York’s Cassandra Jenkins is soon to release her debut album Play Till You Win, and has just released the second single ‘Red Lips’. The song is a beguiling mix of Emmylou Harris’s country rock, Mazzy Star’s dreamy lingering pop and the strange and emotional synths of the Twin Peaks Soundtrack. The song deals with the encroachment of the digital realm on our lives, and the subsequent impact on our mental health. There are messages woven into the fabric of the track, as Jenkins explains, “Each verse takes on one color from the RGB spectrum: red for love and desire, green for jealousy, and blue for sorrow.” If this is anything to go by, the album will be one to look out for as it takes pop music to new ruminative and thematic depths.

Play Till You Win will be released on April 7th through Jenkins’s own label Cassandra Complex, which she set up as a means of making “social commentary in a way that is accessible and beautiful”. You can order it now from Bandcamp.

ULTRAS – Team Handed

The moniker of Scottish multi-instrumentalist Gav Prentice (formerly Over The Wall), ULTRAS is a veritable melting pot of influences, from pop, rock and traditional folk to electronica and hip-hop. The self-titled debut album, set for release this April, is therefore a diverse listen, though lead single ‘Team Handed’ finds Prentice practicing a similar style to that of Over The Wall. Warm guitar and background ambience are coupled with detailed lyrics that manage to sound both dejected and alive, giving the whole thing an emotive, empathetic vibe that speaks highly of Prentice’s songwriting capabilities.

ULTRAS is set for release on the 28th April via Hello Thor Records and Instinctive Racoon.

On The Water – Sun Temple

Philadelphia-based experimental folk band On The Water have announced their sixth collection of songs, Superposition, to be released in the middle of April. Written by Fletcher VanVliet and featuring an array of contributors both old and new, the release comprises of unorthodox folk songs which seem to fall somewhere between eccentric and organic, playing like thoughts and feelings presented unfiltered. Single ‘Sun Temple’ is a good example of this, eschewing convention to sound like a direct view inside someone’s head, ending up every bit as immediate and weird as that might seem.

Superposition will be released on the 22^nd April and you can pre-order it now from the On The Water Bandcamp page.

Rosie Tucker – Fault Lines

Rosie Tucker is a musician and songwriter from LA. Her latest single, ‘Fault Lines’ is her first new music since her debut album Lowlight, and provides what she describes as an “indie-rock ode to a particular sort of sun-bleached, So-cal feeling of isolation”. Fans of Waxahatchee and Frankie Cosmos will find plenty to like, especially as the songwriting is so strong. As the title suggests, the lyrics use the geology beneath California as a metaphor for movements of a more personal nature.

“California aches on her tectonic plates
she waits to make the break into the sea”

Keep an eye on the Rosie Tucker website for info on future releases.

Sleep Movies – Paper Hat

Sleep Movies is the recording project of Pittsburgh’s Skyler Brimmierer, who featured recently on the Crafted Sounds compilation, Have a nice day. (of which there are a few copies left, if you’re quick). April sees the release of EDG, a hazy-yet warm collection blissful lo-fi pop that plays like a tropical sea mist descending on your day at the beach. Lead single ‘Paper Hat’ serves as a perfect introduction, the vocals fuzzed to the point of indecipherability, yet losing nothing in their message thanks to the expressive delivery and idyllic vibes. As such, the track is temperate and hospitable, allowing the listener to relax back into its cloudy embrace. As the press release suggests: “Watch TV in your dreams, and flip on Sleep Movies.”

EDG is out on the 13^th April via Crafted Sounds and you can pre-order it now in both digital and physical formats via Bandcamp.

Panther Hollow – Jamie

NYU music composition graduate Bernardo Ochoa writes and performs for Modern Diet, Ackerman, and a variety of other Brooklyn-based bands, though Panther Hollow is his personal recording project. With the help of Matti Dunietz (drums), Dan Hemerlein (bass) and Evan Lane (trumpet), Ochoa has put together an EP, People Synesthesia, which pulls inspiration from all directions to form what the press release describes as a “stylistically diverse collection of portraits and transient feelings.” While lead single ‘Office’ was a fuzzy slice of grungey garage rock, second single ‘Jamie’ uses banjos and mandolins in support of Ochoa’s gentle, wistful lyrics to create something altogether more pacifying.

People Synesthesia is set for release on the 31st May.

The Saxophones – New Tradition

You may remember us writing about The Saxophones back in August, when we reviewed their debut EP, If You’re On the Water. Excitingly, the 3-song single is now getting the release it deserves on Full Time Hobby. To celebrate, the band have released a video for ‘New Tradition’, a track we described in our review as a “slow dream pop song, like a sad croon in a sparsely filled dance hall, Alexi Erenkov’s sax snaking around and conjuring an almost Lynchian, noirishly romantic vibe”. The video takes a slightly different tack, setting the song to footage of a bright summer day, and one man’s attempts to shake off a sense of gloom.

You can get If You’re on the Water now on 7″ vinyl or digital download from Full Time Hobby.

Day Joy – Fumbling

A few months back we featured ‘Florida’s Warm’, the new song (after a three year hiatus) from Michael Serrin’s Day Joy project. We described the track as, “[not] hopeful so much as hopeful of hope, the narrator holding on to the image of a brighter day, homesick and half-tortured by the slim possibility of the chance the sun might rise once more, bringing a thaw that might allow some sensation to return to frost-bitten limbs”.

Making good on his promise to release the album single by single, Serrin has now unveiled ‘Fumbling’, our second taste of the direction Day Joy will take on the new record. The track is a slow burning ballad, Serrin’s plaintive vocals laid on top of melancholy piano, gentle percussion and winding atmospherics. It’s a stunningly accomplished piece of work that’s wrought with emotion and certainly has us eagerly anticipating the rest of the record.

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And, of course, being comprehensive is impossible these days, so let us know if we missed your favourite and maybe we’ll add it to the collection.

Peach Club – The Bitch Diaries
(RIYL: punk, rock, lo-fi)

Pet Cemtery & Henoheno & Brittle Brian & Francie Cool – Split
(RIYL: bedroom pop, sad music, lo-fi)

Porridge Radio – Rice, Pasta and Other Fillers
(RIYL: lo-fi, bedroom pop, carbohydrates)

Post-Trash – Volume Two
(RIYL: compilations, bedroom pop, indie rock)

Psychic Shakes – Psychic EP
(RIYL: lo-fi pop, chilled out vibes, down-tempo beats)

Ratbath – Dead Skin Cells
(RIYL: bedroom pop, folk, sad)

Ravetank – Wasting Your Life From 9-5
(RIYL: alternative, pop, lo-fi)

Real Swell – everything else is terrible!
(RIYL: lo-fi, experimental, lo-fi pop)

Rhucle – Rustic Lullaby
(RIYL: ambient, mindfulness, field recordings)

Ryan Tanner – Promised Land
(RIYL: folk, Americana, country)

Ryder Eaton – Peach Pit
(RIYL: folk, lo-fi, experimental)

Saint Clementine – If We Are Falling / I Wish I Knew What You Did Last Summer
(RIYL: indie rock, lo-fi, pop punk)

The Saxophones – If You’re on the Water
(RIYL: ambient folk, dream pop, alternative)

Sea Offs – Sea the Blind
(RIYL: ambient, folk, dream pop)

See You At Home – The Future’s Here and It’s Terrible
(RIYL: indie, emo, dream pop)

Shalash (or, ШАΛАШ) – X
(RIYL: ambient, drone, compilations)

Skittish Arm – The Dog EP
(RIYL: ambient, drone, experimental)

Soccer Mommy – For Young Hearts
(RIYL: bedroom pop, lo-fi, indie)

Svelte – svelte EP
(RIYL: post-rock, noise, shoegaze)

Swell Tone & Z Tapes – Summer of Sad
(RIYL: bedroom pop, sad songs, compilations)

Be sure to check out the previous sections of our favourite free music list here.

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Tracklisting:

1) Lost (Season One) – Camp Cope
2) Johnny – Basement Revolver
3) Can U Hear Me Now? – Porridge Radio
4) All 4s – ARMS
5) If You’re on the Water – The Saxophones
6) In Ribbons – Psychic Shakes
7) a good pet – Real Swell
8) Breadcrumbs – The Perennials
9) Father is a Craftsman – Modern Studies
10) Aligning With the Sun – Dear Tracks
11) Cake Bath – Cloud Cover
12) Postdoc Blues – John K. Samson
13) Room For Love – Wooden Dinosaur
14) Crab Line – Trust Fund
15) 1 – Young Jesus
16) Life’s Rough – Serial Chiller
17) Never Lonely – Space Mountain
18) I Wish I Was Plural – Free Space
19) More Than Science – Sunshine Faces
20) Maya – Competition
21) Fireball – Albosel
22) It Hurts- A Day Without Love
23) That Went Well- Guppy
24) Kids Playing Outside – Almanac Mountain
25) Patience To Undo the Patience – Psalmships

You can check out the previous monthly roundups here, and our various other playlists and mixtapes here. Be sure to pop back throughout September and beyond to see what autumn brings!

The post August 2016 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The band say the title track is “inspired by a summer week that saw suicide, the transition of a relationship, and Alexi and his father’s nearly fatal boating accident”. Like the rest of the EP, the song has an almost ethereal feel, like the ghost of an old love song creeping through an ancient transistor radio.

“When you climbed that tree,
they should’ve never left you alone.
I wished I heard you shout.
I would’ve rushed down at the slightest sound”

‘New Tradition’ is another slow dream pop song, like a sad croon in a sparsely filled dance hall, Erenkov’s sax snaking around and conjuring an almost Lynchian, noirishly romantic vibe. Finale ‘Best Boy’ closes the EP in similar fashion, slinking along in shadowy elegance. The Saxophones make music that sounds somehow from another age, in possession of that grand melancholy found in old-timey pop songs, sounding simultaneously sad and beautiful and achingly human.

“There’s a pain in my teeth
there’s a pain in my feet
there’s a feeling of dread I can’t reach but it feels good.
I’m still young.
I swear I know how to have fun”

You can get If You’re On the Water now as a free download, or on limited edition 8″ lathe-cut picture disc from The Saxophones Bandcamp page.

A word of advice… The band say “These records are very low fidelity. Many of the sounds are distorted and unbalanced. They do not have the fidelity of traditionally pressed vinyl records. That being said, they sound wonderful (quite otherworldly) and they look great!”

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