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.

Vio/Miré are a band from Providence, Rhode Island, led by Brendan Glasson. Their fourth album, You Will be Spending Time Outdoors, in the Mountains, Near Water, came out last September. Their music is a mixture of folk and ambience, with reed organ, cello, chorals and synths used to create lush soundscapes upon which Glasson’s poetic vocals float. Think Sea Wolf mixed with an orchestral Sufjan Stevens, folk songs written over the top of cinematic compositions.

The album is one of contradictions, somehow sounding intimate and expansive, gentle and harsh, poetically abstract and beautifully simple. In this way it manages to mirror nature in all of its guises – spellbindingly beautiful and callous and cruel and innocent in a way humans are no longer able. For example on ‘Dogs 1′:

dogs are barking in an alley way
they’re fighting over bones
I love the moment till I curse the day
breaking bottles over stones
and I have seen the grass’s easy sway
under spruces overgrown
and I have known the near to move away
how the wind was overblown

As with anything related to the natural world, mortality and death is a major theme. Much of the beauty and sorrow on the record can be traced to the transient nature of life, something that manages to be bleak and comforting and harrowing and joyous all at once. Much of this is barely explainable, much better felt through the music than explained by words, but it is something similar to the curious mixture of wonder, satisfaction and melancholy felt when looking at a range of mountains or rugged coastline. ‘Snakes’ closes with a contemplation of life:

sent to hell to stir and swelter,
I returned and sought my love

but if the way were many days,

if present passed as present does,

how would you ask someone how his journey was?

You would be forgiven for thinking this all sounds a bit New Age-y but it is anything but. You Will be Spending Time Outdoors, in the Mountains, Near Water feels less like a 45-minute album than a landscape, a world which existed long before the album was recorded. Vio/Miré offer a way into this place, and you would be a fool not to take their hand and experience it for yourself.

You can buy the album from the Vio/Miré Bandcamp page.

The post Vio/Miré – You Will be Spending Time Outdoors, in the Mountains, Near Water appeared first on Various Small Flames.