Helios and Mint Julep Tracks

Cover of the song "The Promise" by When in Rome, which is on our new album, "Broken Devotion". 

Purchase the album: https://heliosmusic.bandcamp.com/album/broken-devotion

Mint Julep is Keith & Hollie Kenniff
http://www.unseen-music.com

Pre-order

Mint Julep - The Promise

Purchase "Save Your Season" via:
unseen.bigcartel.com/artist/mint-julep
itunes.apple.com/us/album/save-your-season/id476215151

www.facebook.com/mintjulepmusic | twitter.com/_mintjulep

Mint Julep music videos:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P9t0eU_drQ
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LxckeXA5tY&feature=relmfu
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEOmpbk4ya4&feature=relmfu

Formed in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2007, MINT JULEP is the husband-and-wife team of Keith and Hollie Kenniff. Subsequently relocating to Portland, Oregon, the duo cut a limited release album, Songs About Snow, in 2008 and the EP, Adorn, in 2010 – effectively a trial run for further recording in their home studio, the fruit of which is a sublime follow-up, Save Your Season, released by Village Green in 2011. The couple is currently writing and recording their next album, Broken Devotion, which is slated for release in mid 2013.

Hallmarked by Hollie’s seductive, dreamy vocals and a succession of memorably soaring choruses, all of it etched with Keith’s vivid, glinting keyboards, towering guitars and miscellaneous instrumental hooks, Mint Julep make lustrous modern pop music that is wistful and mellifluous yet simultaneously powerful, even epic – equal parts shoegazing romanticism and cool, Kraftwerkian polish. Their songs seem instantly familiar, like old musical friends, a ’classicism’ offset by the freshness and luminosity they exude as they usher you on a breathless ride through the sunlit uplands of electronic indie-rock.

Mint Julep was designed as a conscious departure from Keith’s previous, ambient-orientated projects. “When Hollie and I set out to do something, I wanted to find some way to incorporate her vocals into a slightly different style, rather than just write similar material to my solo work and lay her vocals over top”, he says. “I had the need to write something that had some distorted guitars, loud drums and was a little bolder than what I had previously done. We messed around with a track one night (which became ‘Stay’) and it was a fun process, so we just kept writing more songs so we could do a project together.”

Soon a working pattern emerged, with Keith composing music around Hollie’s lyrics or making tracks which Hollie would then add to. “It just developed after a lot of trial and error, and after a while the material started to plateau and began to sound like an album…”

A Pennsylvannian by birth, Keith Kenniff is an honors graduate of Boston’s esteemed Berklee College of Music, best known as the brains behind dulcet ambient/electronic practitioners Helios and the fingers on the ivories of post-classical piano minimalists Goldmund (the latter’s music once described by no less an authority than Ryuichi Sakamoto as “…so, so, so beautiful…”). A succession of albums under those aliases has made Kenniff the darling of discerning critics and his music has also been widely used in film, television and advertising, not least on the soundtrack to the 2012 documentary Bones Brigade, as well as composing for clients such as Apple, Facebook and Google.

Originally from Ohio, singer Hollie Kenniff maintains dual US/Canadian citizenship, having spent part of her life in Ontario. Aside from Mint Julep, she has collaborated on several additional musical endeavors in tandem with husband Keith, including a children’s music project, Meadows (inspired by the couple’s young son), whose debut longplayer was recently released, and an ambient diversion under their own names. An album of the latter, A Deep and Dreamless Sleep, is slated for release in 2013.

Mint Julep - Aviary

From our album "Broken Devotion". Mint Julep is Hollie Kenniff & Keith Kenniff (aka Helios, Goldmund).

www.mintjulepmusic.com
www.unseen-music.com

SLOW SPIRAL
I believe we are bent in light
and I feel now
We'll never get out
So close your eyes
To the cold
It will take us
Nowhere at all
Nowhere at all

You forget
We have lost too much
And if we sleep
We'll never wake up
So find your mark
Set your sight
I will be with you
In the dark
In the dark
__

On their second album Broken Devotion, Portland-based duo Mint Julep instill their lush and gauzy, synth-centric brand of pop music with a raw and powerful emotionalism. The follow-up to their 2011 debut Save Your Season (praised as “melodically sophisticated and dreamy” by the NME), Broken Devotion came to life over the course of four years, with Mint Julep reaching a new level of lyrical precision while easing into more lavishly textured, intricately layered arrangements. Throughout Broken Devotion, multi-instrumentalist/producer Keith Kenniff (also known for his work as ambient indie-electronic act Helios) and his wife Hollie Kenniff (Mint Julep’s vocalist and lyricist) explore the many bright and dark dimensions of love, a tension that’s masterfully embodied on the album’s title track. Urgent yet ethereal, “Broken Devotion” merges driving rhythms and hazy guitar tones as Hollie’s hypnotic vocal work achingly captures the unraveling of a romance (“There’s a ghost inside us/There are hands on your eyes/Spaces in between us/There are places we can’t hide”). Despite the moody atmosphere of the album, much of Broken Devotion was born from a certain lighthearted spirit within Mint Julep’s creative partnership. Lead single “White Hot Heart,” for instance, began as a playful experiment in retro electro-pop but eventually mutated into an airy and shimmering, synth-laced number that’s timeless in melody. Also featuring a gorgeously sprawling cover of When In Rome’s late-‘80s new-wave hit “The Promise,” Broken Devotion shifts from the frenetic energy of beat-driven tracks like “Incinerate” to the downtempo drama of songs like “Slow Spiral” with delicate grace. Forming Mint Julep in 2007, the Kenniffs originally had modest intentions for the band. “The project really just started out as a way to get my wife to sing, because I knew that she could but was kind of shy about it,” says Keith. Though the duo initially mined much influence from early-‘90s shoegaze, Mint Julep gradually shaped their sound by drawing inspiration from electronic music and from their shared affection for rough-edged music of varying genres (industrial for Hollie, punk rock for Keith). “It took us a while to suss out whether this was something we were just going to have fun with, or if we’d actually release our music,” Keith says. “But we ended up keeping at it, and now we’re at the point where we’ve created something with its own sound that’s very unique to us.” Noting that “it’s been great for Hollie and me to bond over making music, and to have that music feed into our relationship,” Keith points out that Mint Julep have found an even more enduring purpose in creating both Broken Devotion and its predecessor. “Writing music can be stressful, but there’s that joy that comes from creating something that you know you’ll have for a really long time,” he says. “We can finish an album and move on, and then go back years later and let the songs tell us what was happening then, what we were feeling. It’s a cool way to mark all these very specific moments in our lives together.”

Mint Julep - Slow Spiral

Cover song by one of our favorite hits of the 80's by Bananarama. Mint Julep is Keith and Hollie Kenniff.

https://www.facebook.com/mintjulepmusic/
https://www.instagram.com/holliekenniffmusic/
www.mintjulepmusic.com
www.unseen-music.com
Photo by Eric Cahan http://ericcahan.com/

Bananarama - Cruel Summer (Mint Julep Cover)

Remix I did as Helios of my other project Mint Julep.
LYRICS
Rushing through the door into the street
I’m waiting for you to meet me here
We’re going down to Second Avenue
The days gone by
Days gone by
Days gone by
Looking at you there underneath the light
In spite of myself, I start to smile
Something tells me that it’ll be alright
The days gone by
Days gone by
Days gone by
We are together in the autumn air
And everyone is dancing now
We’re going to wait it out
The days gone by
Days gone by
Days gone by

Mint Julep is Keith &amp; Hollie Kenniff.Our new album Save Your Season is out now.<a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/save-your-season/id476215151" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/save-your-season/id476215151</a>
Buy the remix here <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/days-gone-by-single/id476210444">http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/days-gone-by-single/id476210444</a>

Formed in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2007, MINT JULEP is the husband-and-wife team of Keith and Hollie Kenniff. Subsequently relocating to Portland, Oregon, the duo cut a limited release album, Songs About Snow, in 2008 and the EP, Adorn, in 2010 – effectively a trial run for further recording in their home studio, the fruit of which is a sublime follow-up, Save Your Season, released by Village Green in 2011. The couple is currently writing and recording their next album, Broken Devotion, which is slated for release in mid 2013.

Hallmarked by Hollie’s seductive, dreamy vocals and a succession of memorably soaring choruses, all of it etched with Keith’s vivid, glinting keyboards, towering guitars and miscellaneous instrumental hooks, Mint Julep make lustrous modern pop music that is wistful and mellifluous yet simultaneously powerful, even epic – equal parts shoegazing romanticism and cool, Kraftwerkian polish. Their songs seem instantly familiar, like old musical friends, a ’classicism’ offset by the freshness and luminosity they exude as they usher you on a breathless ride through the sunlit uplands of electronic indie-rock.

Mint Julep was designed as a conscious departure from Keith’s previous, ambient-orientated projects. “When Hollie and I set out to do something, I wanted to find some way to incorporate her vocals into a slightly different style, rather than just write similar material to my solo work and lay her vocals over top”, he says. “I had the need to write something that had some distorted guitars, loud drums and was a little bolder than what I had previously done. We messed around with a track one night (which became ‘Stay’) and it was a fun process, so we just kept writing more songs so we could do a project together.”

Soon a working pattern emerged, with Keith composing music around Hollie’s lyrics or making tracks which Hollie would then add to. “It just developed after a lot of trial and error, and after a while the material started to plateau and began to sound like an album…”

Mint Julep - Days Gone By (Helios Remix)

A cover Hollie and I did as Mint Julep of a Headphones (aka David Bazan) song.  

Our new Mint Julep album "Save Your Season" is available now: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/save-your-season/id476215151

Mint Julep - I Never Wanted You (Headphones Cover)

Download here: https://heliosmusic.bandcamp.com/track/iteration

https://www.facebook.com/mintjulepmusic/
http://www.unseen-music.com/mint_julep 

LYRICS
Remain in the light
Go back to your quiet life 
with your poetry 
And tell me what it’s like to see so clearly 
And tell me what it’s like to see so clearly

Through an avalanche
Through an avalanche

All the things I couldn’t say
A void that draws me in until I disappear completely
I’m lost in the arc of sky moving silently
I’m lost in the arc of sky crossing silently

Through an avalanche
Through an avalanche

(Lyrics: Hollie Kenniff | Photo by Maria V. Cano)

Mint Julep - Iteration

From the EP "Adorn" | available as Flac, mp3 here: http://www.unseen.bigcartel.com/artist/mint-julep

Mint Julep is Keith and Hollie Kenniff

Mint Julep - Arristea

Get a free download of our new track Coming Apart Again here http://bit.ly/DPdownload and listen here http://bit.ly/Prmm9d
Download Valentine (Blood Diamonds R&B Fantasy) here: http://ge.tt/8wf0ONH/v/0
'Valentine' is out now and is available on iTunes: http://bit.ly/Jb78z2 
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Helios and Mint Julep Tracks

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