January 2016 Roundup – A Mixtape

Jon Doyle — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 15:29:47 +0000

Here’s the January 2016 roundup, a mixtape featuring every artist we covered last month. Due to the holiday break and various end of year lists, it’s not as long as usual, but we are positive you’ll find something that tickles your fancy. Click the artist name in the tracklisting to be taken to the post in question.

Tracklisting:

1. Amerika – Wintersleep
2. Born Confused – Porridge Radio
3. Catchyalater – Frog
4. Water – Opals
5. Listerine – Foxall
6. Nightmare Song – Oscar Lush
7. October Mirage – Island Eyes
8. Past is Personal – West America
9. Roller – Quilt
10. Unattached – Two White Cranes
11. On the Nights You Stay Home – Donovan Woods
12. Call Out – Minor Moon
13. Consolation – The Chairman Dances (Lit Links)
14. First I’m Sorry – Haley Heynderickx
15. Waitress – Soft Lions
16. Vanitas – Hanging Hills
17. Waiting – Faint Peter
18. Farewell Navigator – Naomi Pop
19. Gifts – Real Swell
20. Future Wife – Jacob Faurholt
21. Wall – Slows Down
22. Olly Oxen Free – Creature Speak

P.S. On the subject of roundups, make sure you read about our favourite albums of 2015, our favourite songs and favourite free music.

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Song Première(s): West America & Porridge Radio

Jon Doyle — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 10:49:55 +0000

You might recognise Brighton-based project Porridge Radio from our Favourite Free Music of 2015 list, their album i’m not sure anymore managing the perfect blend between cool lo-fi rock and strange, morbid sadcore. Well now the band are back with hello dog friendly, an eight-song split release with LA’s West America (who are described as “intense-apocalypse-sadness punx”) and we’re lucky enough to bring you a song from each band ahead of schedule.

West America‘s offering is ‘Past is Personal’, a messy garage rock song which lurches from slow to quick to slow again, always feeling on the cusp of something erratic and dangerous. Think the rough noise of Times New Viking meets the peculiar delivery of Krill. The vocals are difficult to discern for the most part (the lyrics read “♩є(･◇･｡)э♩є(･◇･｡)” over and over on Bandcamp), adding to the unsettling feel, as if you are amidst something important but impossible to understand, all meaning and context reduced to sharp energy in the air.

Porridge Radio‘s track ‘Born Confused’ is less ramshackled, an odd and desperate pop song which somehow manages to twin the deadpan drawl of disaffected youth with a fervid, otherworldly catharsis. To go out on somewhat of a limb, the track sounds like a lo-fi version of a great punk song The National never wrote, offbeat and dreamlike and curiously detached, the attempts to communicate to an unnamed second person through this fog building into frantic, Berninger-esque regurgitations of a simple phrase. What emerges is a track enormously relevant to our generation, the tide of anger and fear and hope breaking through the barriers which normally keep it below the surface (that is, feelings of loneliness, ineptitude, an intense aversion to appearing naive) to make a song uplifting but never glib, and true without ever really understanding why. Thank you for making me happy.

hello dog friendly is out tomorrow (Wed 13th) on Memorials of Distinction. If you are in/near Brighton (UK) then there’s a release show tomorrow evening at Green Door Store (doors at 19:00, 18+), so get along to that, and we’ll try and get a full review of the release written up ASAP.

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January 2016 Roundup – A Mixtape

Song Première(s): West America & Porridge Radio