Until then, here’s our June Roundup, a playlist of songs rounding up everything we covered during June. Clever, huh? Click on the artist name in the tracklisting to be whisked away to the specific post.

Tracklisting:

1. Trisha Please Come Home – Advance Base
2. Slower Now – Star Horse
3. I Make Boys Cry – Adult Mom
4. Cordella – On The Water
5. Destroy – Henoheno
6. A Long Time Ago – Kalle Mattson
7. Only One Who Feels a Little Bit Bad – Fazed on a Pony
8. Ohio Snow Falls – Unraveler
9. Pylon Pile On – Benjamin Shaw
10. For Luck – Cyberbully Mom Club
11. The Offer – Yowler
12. When I Met Death – Right Away, Great Captain!
13. Patriarchaeth – Gwenno
14. Future Bones – Bells Atlas
15. Beautiful Brian – Harley Alexander and The Universal Lovers
16. Whip-Poor-Will – Morning River Band
17. I Admit I’m Scared – Eskimeaux
18. Ideal World – Girlpool
19. Observation Satellites – GRNDMS
20. Podesta – Peptalk
21. Cwm Llwm – Yucatan
22. Clouds – Estan
23. Lullaby – Long Neck
24. KiwiKisses – Trenton Point
25. My Only One – PONY
26. Return to View – The Wandering Lake
27. Clicking Clanking – Ylayali
28. Pull Me Apart – Lung Cycles
29. Red Coat – Adeline Hotel
30. Johnny Go Riding – Damien Jurado
31. When the Day is Fresh, and the Light is New – The Wooden Sky
32. The Crow – Sean Henry
33. Yolanda – O-FACE

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Ben Seretan Group

“I wanted these recordings to sound huge. I wanted them to sound massive, gravitational, full of a swirling largeness that could eat up large portions of iTunes libraries” – we previewed Yellow Roses, a new release from Ben Seretan Group.

Yucatan

“Ethereal, celestial ambient post-rock” inspired by the Welsh landscape – we reviewed Uwch Gopa’r Mynydd, an album from Welsh band Yucatan

Benjamin Shaw

“comfortably sad and vividly alive, like watching rain fall onto a city from the window of a train” – a few words about ‘Pylon Pile-on’, the first song from Guppy, the upcoming album from Benjamin Shaw.

Long Neck

“Captures that feeling of creeping slowly over that threshold into adulthood and the revelation that it turns out not to be the whole new room you always thought” – Heights by Long Neck offers candid and reassuringly familiar thoughts on the plight of post-collegiate life.

Cyberbully Mom Club

“Music that feels like the words of an old friend, the sort of person who requires no formalities or effort and is happy to just sit and shoot the breeze” – a few thoughts on ‘For Luck’, the first song from a forthcoming EP by Cyberbully Mom Club.

Estan

“Raging against the pompous nature of professionals and academics…how ridiculous we are to think we can assign logic to a universe of chaos far too big for our tiny heads” – Our review of The Vanity of Reason by Estan.

Trenton Point

“Imagine John Maus teaming up with Small Black and The Cure to soundtrack a melodramatic 80s teen movie where the misunderstood hero finds herself walking home alone from the disco time and time again” – The three-song EP by Brooklyn’s Trenton Point, out on Vacant Magic.

The Wandering Lake

“Part indie rock and part psychedelic folk, all weaved together with Kupillas’ distinctive vocals, which are not quite a warble and not quite a croon and sometimes drawn out landscape-scale without a hint of breaking.” – we reviewed A Wend to Why, the new album from The Wandering Lake.

Ylayali / Lung Cycles

“enclosed in a sense of everyday melancholy…that feeling of long afternoons in gloomy rooms, when the rest of the human population seem faraway and indistinct, like figures from barely remembered dreams.” – Another great split cassette release from Lily Tapes & Discs.

Damien Jurado

“Jurado writes songs that reflect what it is like to be alive in the years either side of the millennium, songs for a landscape both cruel and kind, everyday and surreal, songs that can be sad and exciting and slightly scary and sometimes weird as hell” – We selected our very favourite Damien Jurado songs for our latest Through the Archives feature.

Mike Comite / Hop Along

“When I think about new rock idols, I don’t envision sold out arenas. I don’t hear Top 40 singles or perfect pitch, and I don’t think about stage personas and attitude. What I do think of is transparency, and a struggle” – Not quite last week, but Mike Comite of Old Best Friend wrote a fantastic piece about Hop Along for Property of Zack.

Coke Machine Glow / Jenny Hval

“Have you had breakfast? I was just about to make some eggs and huma—forgive me, I meant to say ham. Wink wink” – Coke Machine Glow presented a conversation about Jenny Hval’s Apocalypse, Girl between Hannibal‘s Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham, suggesting that I’m not the only person in the world who finds the show a little… overblown. All we need now are some meaningless close-ups of food and we’ll have an ‘intellectual’ TV hit.

Grantland / Jason Isbell

“It’s hard to keep up a James Dean type of facade if you’re thanking somebody for your salvation. But when you’re writing the kinds of songs that I do, I think your job is to try to be as honest as you possibly can and write about those things that make you uncomfortable sometimes.” – Stephen Hyden of Grantland talks through a list of Jason Isbell’s most gut-wrenching songs with the man himself.

Aero Flynn

We liked Aero Flynn’s self-titled album an awful lot. That’s why it’s so cool to see the band perform this live session for Audiotree.

Distant Records

“An hour of radical ladies influenced by that vintage surf rock reverb because, you know, it must be summer or something.” – Joanna, the face behind Distant Records, has a show on KPSU called The Muse in Music. This week’s show, ‘Must Be Summer or Something’, is all about… you guessed it, summer! Stream below or download this and previous shows over on the KPSU website.

Nice Legs

Seoul-based band and all round good eggs Nice Legs put together a video diary of a recent tour, featuring some lovely shots of the pair doing pretty much everything besides playing music. Check out their Youtube channel for other visual goodies.

And Finally… the 8tracks Playlist of the Week:

Heartbreaking Bravery‘s roundup of the best 2015 has had to offer so far is pretty comprehensive.

2015: Halfway Home from heartbreakingbravery on 8tracks Radio.

The post Week in Review: #7 (22nd – 26th June) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

You should probably know from the outset that Yucatan are from Wales, a location which the band rely on for much of their inspiration. Indeed they describe their music as recorded “beneath vaporous skies, at the foot of slate grey peaks…from where song rises from within the soil.” The band come from Snowdonia, an area of incredibly scenic mountainous national park, and capture the natural beauty of their homeland by writing almost exclusively in their native tongue (the title of the album translates as ‘Above the Mountain Summit’), a language of which J.R.R. Tolkien said “For many of us it rings a bell, or rather it stirs deep harp-strings in our linguistic nature”. As someone who is currently attempting to learn the language for more practical reasons, it’s nice to hear it used to construct something so otherworldly, to be reminded its mythical, ancient quality.

The album opens with ‘Ffin’ (which translates roughly as border or frontier), with its thudding drumbeat and quivering violin/cello in background. Things are lushly understated until halfway point, when big guitars enter the fray and things get a little more bombastic. ‘Cwm Llwm’ (‘Bleak Valley’) is a patient build, its soft guitars and vocals undergoing a gradual increase in intensity, eventually joined by an insistent, anticipative drumbeat and mournful strings, the eventual payoff arriving as everything marries together and drums come crashing down. The track also has a piano-led cooling off period, ending in atmospherics that sound like ghosts real or imagined on misty a hillside. This is followed by the only English-language song on the album, ‘Word Song’, which begins with gentle icy tinkles before blossoming with lush arrangements and cooing background vocals. Next up is ‘Halen Daear a Sŵn y Môr’ (‘Ground Salt and the Sound of the Sea’ – I think!), another shimmering slice of panoramic beauty.

‘Ochenaid’ (‘Sigh’) continues in the ethereal majesty with glacial vocals and strings, minimal electric guitar and thumping The National-style drums, while ‘Llyn Tawelwch’ (‘Peace Lake’) opens with sparse instrumentation, the vocals taking centre stage, building and building to a finale which swoops and soars over snowy peaks. Lead single ‘Angharad’ twinkles and floats before a pounding, cymbal-heavy climax. The title track closes up in suitably resplendent fashion, its triumphant horn-led final third finishing things with a celebratory air.

You can buy Uwch Gopa’s Mynydd right now as a download, CD or vinyl (heck the Yucatan website for a list of suppliers). People of Germany, Austria and Switzerland can grab a copy via Stargazer Records.

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Tracklisting:

1. A Lingering – German Error Message
2. All You’ve Gotta be When You’re 23 – Free Cake For Every Creature
3. Can You Feel It, Too? – Fun Home
4. Garden Tomb – Pasture Dog
5. How Marvelous – Lewtrakimou
6. Out Names – Shunkan
7. Floral Mattress – Naps
8. Rapture in Heat – Liam Betson
9. Astoria – Gwenno
10. Electric Duck – Henry Demos
11. Angharad – Yucatan
12. Orchids (Instrumental) – Celebrity Crush
13. Tulsa – John Statz
14. Snow – Alanna McArdle
15. Yours Till the Ocean – Danielle Fricke
16. The Lights in the Sands of Katumpkale – REW<<

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

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

“For many of us it rings a bell, or rather it stirs deep harp-strings in our linguistic nature. It is the native language to which in unexplored desire we would still go home.”  

‘Angharad’ will be released on Recordiau Coll on the 1st June, with the album following later in the summer.

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