Bowie meets Source Network Address Translation...

Connan Mockasin - Megumi the Milkyway Above

Connan Mockasin - Please Turn Me Into The Snat

Forever Dolphin Love

Connan Mockasin - It's Choade My Dear

From the first drum machine kick, “Sentiment” is an ephemeral instant classic, an earnest bedroom pop song wrapped in textures evocative of slick City Pop from 1980s Japan, the dreamy experimental disco of Arthur Russell, and more recent experiments in vintage and lo-fi sonics from Dean Blunt and James Ferraro.“ The song is romantic in both senses of the term – intimate, sincere, and seductive, it quivers also with the anxiety that arises in the face of the sublime.
Sentiment is the follow up to Berlin based sometime-Sean Nicholas Savage guitarist Adam Byczkowski's first recording as Better Person, the breathtakingly pretty Soundcloud hit “I Wake Up Tired.” Having joined the roster of Berlin imprint Mansions and Millions, his debut EP is planned for release later this year.

Buy on Bandcamp

Better Person - Sentiment

Come

You're not sure why you decided to come alone to this karaoke bar. A sudden desire for people-watching, you suppose. You don't sing anything, just nurse a drink near the back. For the first half-hour, nothing out of the ordinary happens. Then, another spectator, one you've noticed hovering by a side wall, takes the stage. A slightly tinny drum machine comes forth from the P.A. The song is instantly familiar, but you can't quite place it. It must be some mostly-forgotten hit from the '80s that you haven't heard in years. At first, the singer's delivery is as shy as you'd expect from a fellow wallflower. But slowly, you come to perceive a deep, quiet confidence in his voice. He obviously knows the song by heart. He occupies it as if it were home. Actually, you think his rendition might be truer than the original performer's, although you still can't recall who that was. Although it might just be your second drink taking effect, you've almost begun to suspect that there is no original, that the enigma on the stage in this unremarkable bar, is, somehow, performing an entirely new song for the very first time. As the tempo slows and he begins to gently croon the next track, you become sure. By some weird turn of Lynchian magic, this man on the stage has reshaped the room to his will, coaxing his own private music out of the karaoke machine.

This is the kind of scenario one imagines when listening to Better Person's smoke machine pop. His (Adam Byczkowski) enigmatic stage presence is matched by his elusiveness as a recording artist output: while he's already toured with the wonderful Canadians TOPS and Timber Timbre, and as keyboard/guitarist with Sean Nicholas Savage, at six tracks It's Only You is his longest release, encompassing the critically acclaimed singles “Sentiment” and “I Wake Up Tired.”

While the EP's sonic touchstones – torch songs, Sade, Arthur Russell, synthed-up European and Japanese pop from the 80s, French and Italian movie soundtracks – are all unimpeachably romantic, there's a more Romantic undercurrent of isolation that begins from the way It's Only You was made – all recorded on a computer at home, on Berlin's Pannierstrasse (the same street where Magic Island's Wasted Dawn was recorded last year.) The title itself casually, elegantly captures the paradoxical phase shift which occurs when the movement toward closeness becomes a plunge into solitude. It's Only You is the sound of turning down the mood lighting so low you're no longer sure if anyone else is there.

The transmutation of being-alone-with into being-alone ignites a fixation on memory, and most especially on its entanglement with place. On repeated listens, It's Only You slowly reveals itself as a work of (self-imposed) exile behind a facade of seduction. In the aftermath of intimacy, one is left with only sensual remnants - smell leads to memory (“I found a smell that takes me home,” Byczkowski sings in opener “Somebody Cares”) and memories, of home and of people, lead to the question of place and belonging. In “Somebody Cares,” “I found a smell that takes me home” leads into “I try to notice all the things around” - reminiscence of there demands attention to here – but he concludes “God only knows where I'm gonna live.” “I Wake Up Tired” features the plaintive request “Show me a place / where I feel home;” while the refrain in “Everything Cold” asks the question on the mind of every expatriate in Berlin: “Why is everything closed on Sunday night?” In the still astonishing “Sentiment,” the singer is left unsure of his identity, with only sentiment remaining, precisely because he will “never be from here.” The real revelation of It's Only You may however be the closing track “Your Smell” which, atop a tragicomically funky shuffle, wraps in a cocoon of beautiful confusion all of Byczkowski's themes: lost love, lost locales, and finding oneself again, fleetingly, provisionally, in their pursuit.

Better Person - I Wake Up Tired

taken from the 1981 album 'Running Out Of Time' to be re-issued on URU/Lucky Number on March 18th, 2016. 

Pre-order:
http://smarturl.it/rexy
http://www.roughtrade.com/albums/100400

http://www.luckynumbermusic.com
http://uru.world




Rexy - Alien

from the "Eternal Delight" CD/LP (NNF316)
Not Not Fun / 2016

DELIGHT:
https://purplepilgrims.bandcamp.com/album/eternal-delight
midheaven.com/item/eternal-delight-by-purple-pilgrims

Purple Pilgrims "Thru Evry Cell"

Taken from the album, Peace or Love, out 5th August. 

Pre-order limited edition blue suede shoes coloured vinyl -  http://smarturl.it/DavidWestLP 
iTunes -  http://smarturl.it/DavidWest.iTunes 

Biog
“angels of light have your souls in a vice / we want to be free / we want to be loved / we want to be kissed from heaven above” - David West, Dream on Dreamer
                
When Tough Love first began putting out records, one of the guiding motivations was to release music that sounds like the music David West makes. We didn’t know it at the time, because we hadn’t yet heard of him. It’s funny how the very thing you’re looking for falls into your lap. If you don’t already know of David, and the various guises he performs under, then I’m a little envious, for you have a lot to discover for the first time. On 5th August, Tough Love will release Peace or Love, the second album to be issued under his own name. That can be either your starting point, or your continuation down a road.

The facts: Peace or Love is the follow-up to USA/Australia-based musical artist David West's 2015 cassette release, Drop Out Of Collage. Peace or Love is a collection of songs stemming from wild and free bedroom four-track cassette recordings and personal hard drive sample raiding, with contributions from various musical friends in Perth, Western Australia and SF/LA, California. West draws inspiration from free-thinking artists of the past and present on this polyphonic platter, from soft indie strumming and free soundscapes, to disco and soul-pop. West currently plays in the guitar pop band Rat Columns, synth-pop project Liberation and post-punk trio Rank/Xerox, and has been in varied acts such as Lace Curtain, Burning Sensation, Total Control and Whalehammer.

If you were feeling particularly grand, you could say that David West has created his own ecology, or you could just say he’s a very busy man. I told David over email that Peace or Love feels like an album that was made specifically for me. His reply? “It is for YOU. And YOU. And YOU. And YOU…Peace or love is the same thing - you want to be free and you want to be loved....but you gotta choose one” This is music from the margins that deserves a place in the middle of anyone's heart. 

“it's peace or love baby / you said it before / that you want it all / it's peace or love, baby” - David West, Peace or Love 

iTunes

David West - Dream On Dreamer

DANG RELEASE SEPT 23rd 2106:
BUY DANG VINYL NOW: http://bit.ly/2cozu1H

Edwin Mathis White (from the band Tonstartssbandht) creates a capella DIY gospel as Eola using loop stations and vocal processing effects pedals recorded to tape. On stage or on tape, Ed's performance is dang spiritual. Edwin currently lives and grew up in Downtown Orlando, Florida but has spent the past 11 years living mostly in NYC, and sometimes in Montreal & Baltimore. The album Dang drops Sept. 23rd with Leaving Records on Vinyl, Cassette, and Digital. Blessed be.

Connan Mockasin - Please Turn Me Into The Snat

Connan Mockasin

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