[Weekly Mix] 2021.06 (1)

I Need Somebody To Love Tonight

‘Killing Time’ was written in the middle of Sydney’s lockdown, when the day to day was dominated by screens and staring out of windows. It captures the band’s confusion and anxiety felt in the early stages of the pandemic, when their usual ways of creating music together was turned upside down.

Killing Time

Debut single from newly formed Now Open Smokes, Swedish duo who combines chewing motown vibes with cold Nordic sorrow. The duo has previously, from their own quarters, received attention by P3 SE and Clash Magazine as well as working with Mark Needham (The Killers) and Brian Lucey (The Black Keys). 

“Soft Lie” is a sunny pop song, stuffed with musical flirting, sticky Mellotron, tasteful noise and dark vocals. 

For fans of The Weeknd, The Blaze, Tame Impala, Future Islands and The Radio Dept.

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/5qZn2loywO8X2320jb9jzT?si=UcBRIRygQ46WlWLzfwhCrg

Soft Lie

The Haunted Youth - Coming Home - Fr 04-06-21

"Vampires'' is the first single from Strand Child's upcoming debut album "Are You Ok?''. The song twists sweet sentences of melancholy and alienation into a dream rock tune ready-made with a light touch and a sweet melody. The haze of bliss never lifts, but without ever fully covering a persistent sense of unease. Unease stemming from regrets one cannot shake, and consequences one does not want to face.

“Vampires”, along with the album “Are You Ok?” was recorded, mixed, and mastered at the TRIXX Studios in Berlin by Fabio Buemi & Klaus Knapp.
Strand Child will be releasing a live-action and vampire-themed (I mean, why not?) music video to accompany the single on June 11th 2021, followed by other goodies in preparation for the album release later this year!

Vampires

Not Even In Vegas (feat. Thomas Headon)

On the occasion of the exhibition Celeste at Copenhagen Contemporary, the artists and musicians CTM (Cæcilie Trier) and August Rosenbaum present their new album of the same name with Posh Isolation. The exhibition is an immersive installation structured in acts that has been created with the artists Lea Guldditte Hestelund and Ea Verdoner. Trier and Rosenbaum's songs and instrumental pieces can be found in the gallery as an element in a hybrid work of sculpture, video, and choreography that explores corporeality and transience. Their album 'Celeste' presents these recordings as a standalone work.

Rosenbaum is an acclaimed pianist and composer based in Copenhagen. He has won two Danish Music Awards for his solo work, and his list of collaborators includes Zeena Parkins, Kim Gordon and Jesper Just. Rosenbaum's work has been commissioned for film and performances at Palais de Tokyo, The Royal Danish Ballet and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Trier is likewise based in Copenhagen, releasing music under her alias of CTM. Her latest album "Red Dragon" presented an experimental approach to both songcraft and production that quietly captured critical acclaim. As a revered cellist, vocalist and composer, Trier has been involved in a wide array of projects and collaborations across genres and disciplines.

A suite of twelve pieces comprise the album 'Celeste.' Each piece interlocks with another, and together it can be thought of as a prism through which the work's materiality is both conceptualised and felt. Having developed the sound material with the objects and surfaces in the exhibition, and phrasing the work with the movement and tactility of the space itself in mind, 'Celeste' both renders the exhibition aurally and illustrates some of the sensuous qualities that can be found within it. Tones generated by striking and manipulating the stones within the installation are the starting point for some of the pieces, for example. Project onto these processes a poetic and philosophical meditation on value and runaway existential motifs and one starts to understand the themes around temporality and anthropomorphism that haunt every gentle stroke that has gone into 'Celeste.'

Though the instrumentation—predominantly cello, accordion, and piano—is articulated clearly across the album, the resonances found within and around each instrument feels just as descriptive as the plaintive though curious melodies that they deliver. Cadences are toyed with through the album too, prompting a tricky sense of duration and teasing the listener to focus on these carefully stoked ambiences. Between the medley of acoustic instruments and digital treatments, Trier's supernatural vocals linger. The lyrics give snapshots of characters and beings that drift from focus just as they enter, often ambivalently.

Detached from the gallery, 'Celeste' is a truly mesmerising work that is hard to place in any one category. It straddles many forms just as it presents itself as a whole. The delicate compositions befit the tender themes, making it an engrossing parallel to its namesake installation.

The album will be released on June 25th on all formats, including a limited edition vinyl with a scent sample taken from the exhibition space. 

releases June 25, 2021

The album was mixed and co-produced by Malthe Fischer

Mastered by John Hannon

Celeste

Even if

CTM & August Rosenbaum - Even If

PRE-ORDER: https://lnk.to/Didi_Han-What_You_LoveME

Korean talent Didi Han trailers her debut E.P. for Roche Musique, with the single What You Love – which finds Didi laying her silky, sultry, tones over layered sunny summer melodies, full of Asian flavour. File under gorgeous, smile inducing, dreamy, pop.

More exclusive music

Premiere: Didi Han 'What You Love' (feat. Wansun Kim)

knife girl "Metro EP" out july 2nd on Playground Records

written+performed+produced by knife girl
mastered by Philip granqvist

give it 2 yu

From the Crystalline Stricture album, 'Pristine Gardens'.

Available on TONN Recordings Bandcamp.

Vocals M. McIntyre.

Image © Christopher Martin

[Weekly Mix] 2021.06 (1)

Niche Music