Showing posts with label Spunsugar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spunsugar. Show all posts

Wednesday, 8 September 2021

Spunsugar - Reb Fountain

Spunsugar - Rodan.

Following on from the release of their highly-praised debut album ‘Drive-Thru Chapel’ last October, fast-rising Swedish trio Spunsugar return once again with their shimmering new effort ‘Rodan’.

Continuing that trend of sweet and euphoric dream-pop textures they have earned a reputation for, ‘Rodan’ sees the group return in stellar form. With its rich and soaring aesthetic married perfectly with smooth and seductive vocals, they are keeping both a tight hold over their progressive sound and pushing the boundaries of it as far as it will go.

While also a danceable-but-sad pop/shoegaze song, Rodan is of course a Kaiju, a Japanese movie monster like Godzilla. “That’s who I felt like while writing the lyrics” guitarist Cordelia says. Rodan was the first Kaiju movie made in color, and that’s a fitting symbolism to Spunsugar’s new material. With glittery guitars, synthwavey drums and Felix’s thumping railroad bass the song is equally yesterday, today and tomorrow in its sound. Elin’s vocals are clear, controlled and encourages you to listen. It solidifies a new direction for the band who feels they’ve come into their own as a unity more than ever.

Spunsugar is an alternative rock band with shoegaze influencers based in Malmö, Sweden, with roots in the small town bible belt country side. The trio has different musical backgrounds which has led media to express praise for their elaboration and new take on the dark and pulsing nature of the post-punk sound and deliver it through a completely new and diverse contemporary lens, incorporating both goth and electronic elements. After an EP and some introductory singles they 2020 released their thunderous and anthemic debut album ‘Drive-Through Chapel’. The album put them on the map as one of the most exciting bands coming out of the scene and Scandinavia with media support from Steve Lamacq at BBC 6Music, The Independent, The Line of Best Fit, Nothing but Hope and Passion and much more.

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Reb Fountain - Foxbright.

The fourth single ‘Foxbright’ is shared from Reb Fountain's forthcoming album IRIS out via Flying Nun Records on October 1st, 2021. The new single serves as a mesmerizing slow-burner, brimming with delicate piano, acoustic guitar and a stunning string section that guides the listener through its tender and understated production, with Reb’s enchanting vocals complimenting the music masterfully.

'Foxbright' is a reminder that there’s love to be found even when we can’t find it in ourselves. Reb wrote 'Foxbright' on the piano in one day, but as with all songs, it’s made up of what has come before; wild fragments in total eclipse. The simple verses, the declaratory motif and extended mid-section were connected by a chorus with a repeating melody.

"When I played Foxbright to Dave Khan he said, ‘that melody is the bass line’. I love that about the chorus; it’s a subtle and hypnotic imprint fully formed.”

We’ve all had a turn at hiding of late; the burrow’s the place we head to when in headlights. Lola Fountain-Best and Reb created an unadorned video landscape in which to observe the state of play. Dressing the set like a re-imagined blanket fort they borrowed a 16mm film projector to project industrial film footage from the 1950’s onto Reb’s body. The result is a beautiful and intimate expression of our nature.

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Wednesday, 16 September 2020

HMS Morris - Rue Snider - Spunsugar

HMS Morris return here for a third time this year with today's single release 'Myfyrwyr Rhyngwladol'. It's a richly layered electronic song with gorgeous vocal reprises between a solid rhythmic soundtrack. === As this is Rue Snider's eight appearance on Beehive Candy, I thinks it's only fair to say we like his music and today's new release 'David Bowie's Clothes' helps explain our fascination with Rue's ever evolving and refined material. === Spunsugar are another band who are making their third appearance here this year with their new single 'Belladonna' where they give Shoegaze some pop sensibilities with striking results.
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HMS Morris - Myfyrwyr Rhyngwladol.

Following the release of two pre-covid singles ‘Babanod’ and ‘Poetry’, HMS Morris are back with the third in the series, ‘Myfyrwyr Rhyngwladol', which translates as ‘International Students’. The single is released today September 16th.

HMS Morris HQ is nestled on the edge of one of the most multicultural streets in Cardiff, City Road. It’s a noisy, colourful cosmopolitan crush of restaurants, shisha bars and barbers, which have recently been invaded by posh student accommodation projects. But while this may have been the initial impetus behind ‘Myfyrwyr Rhyngwladol’, by the time it had solidified into a definite sound and feel it was no longer a rant about fancy student halls.

Rather it had become an assertion that the world be a better place if we were all International Students. In the context of this summer’s global race-relations reckoning, there is a general moral imperative for us all to become students of the international: to watch the news as if it’s our own story, to actually take it in, to learn and adapt our behaviour. We should be prepared to immerse ourselves in other cultures, just like the international students of City Rd do.

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Rue Snider - David Bowie's Clothes.

David Bowie’s Clothes is the first single from Rue Snider’s fourth full length album Puzzle Pieces, releasing winter 2020/21. It’s a song about the beginning of healing. Rather than pine for a lost love the lyric reflects on the disappointment of being unable to share in another person’s joy. The touring David Bowie exhibit that ended its run at the Brooklyn Museum in 2018 was a powerful, overwhelming, transformative exhibition that serves not only as the impetus for this track but as a metaphor for obstacles to detachment.

“I’ve written a lot about being sad and I’ve used songs to catalogue many of my emotions through the characters I sing about. This song is about a real person and a real situation. When this relationship ended I started going to therapy after a period of deep depression and I was able to address a lot of my unhealthy behavior. It took a while to realize how much my actions contributed to the dissolution of that coupling and this song is one of the many attempts to write about that and take responsibility.”

Before the pandemic Rue toured America extensively playing bars and coffee shops in thirty-seven states, and built a loyal fan base one show at a time. Almost all of those shows were solo and performed on an acoustic guitar played through a Fender Blues Jr.

Rue’s first three records as well as his five EPs, and multiple singles are primarily full band affairs capturing different permutations of indie rock. The forthcoming Puzzle Pieces is a piano based album influenced by artists like Joni Mitchell, Father John Misty and Lana Del Rey. Puzzle Pieces was made in Nashville with Jon Estes engineering and producing. It was mixed by Phil Joly and mastered by Philip Shaw Bova.


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Spunsugar - Belladonna.

Spunsugar, a gothgaze trio from Malmo, Sweden, have just dropped this new single ‘Belladonna’. Following on from the release of their breakthrough debut EP ‘Mouth Full Of You’ last year, a collection that cemented them as one of the finest emerging shoegaze outfits of the moment as well as garnering support from Steve Lamacq at BBC 6Music, Swedish trio Spunsugar now return to announce their highly-anticipated debut album ‘Drive-Through Chapel’, out on the 2nd October via Adrian Recordings.

Two out of three members of the trio Spunsugar, Cordelia Moreau and Elin Ramstedt, befriended one another in a small town outsider clique at age thirteen. Their individual music tastes, Cordelia’s twee-pop, jangle and grunge and Elin’s metal, hardcore and post-rock blended into a mutual love for shoegaze, noise rock and dream pop. At age fifteen they started a four piece band, Elin on lead vocals and rhythm guitar and Cordelia on drums. They discovered that they thrived when writing music together. But even when the band split up, they continued to write songs.

Fast forward to post upper secondary school. After months of hardly speaking to each other, they both ended up in Malmö. After not writing music together for five years they recorded two lo-fi songs in Cordelia’s student apartment and it was as if no time had passed. They looked for a rehearsal space and within weeks they recorded a demo. But they wanted a real live bass player. Cordelia had recently bonded with a university classmate over guitars and they decided to send him a copy of the demo and asked if he would like to come play with them. Felix Sjöström became an intrinsic part of the project immediately. With his influence, their sound became more distinguished, all of them bringing different inspirations to the songs. Now they all have prominent roles within the band but they are also, fundamentally, friends.

Spunsugar are works at a faster paced than a lot of their shoegaze peers and accompanied by electronic drums. They are more often compared to Curve, Swervedriver or Ringo Deathstarr rather than the likes of Cocteau Twins or Slowdive. Although heavy on effects, nothing is hidden within the music, including the lyrics. The lyrics are heavy with pop cultural references, stemming from Cordelia’s love for obscure genre films. Often driven by riffs rather than soundscapes, they focus equally on having a prominent bass as well as prominent guitars.


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Thursday, 13 August 2020

Teenanger - Spunsugar

Just four weeks after we first featured them Teenanger are back with another energized and must hear post punk track entitled 'Trillium Song'. === Spunsugar have just released 'Run' and in their case it's a couple of months since we first came across them with 'Happier Happyless' the latest offering takes us into a more powerful Alt Rock world that's nonetheless hard to ignore.
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Teenanger - Trillium Song.

Toronto’s DIY scene purveyors, Teenanger have just shared their blistering new single, 'Trillium Song', the second to be lifted from the new record, Good Time – out October 2 via Telephone Explosion Records – which has found support at Paste, The Line of Best Fit, BBC 6 Music, So Young and more. The new record, which comes mixed by renowned Toronto musician, Sandro Perri, follows previous releases that have found the band share stages across North America and Europe with the likes of METZ, Ty Segall, Death From Above, Dilly Dally, Dish Pit and more.

'Trillium Song' presents another agile take from Good Time, drawing once again on striking melodies and a wiry new wave sound palette, this time utilising a two-pronged vocal foray with both Melissa Ball and Chris Swimmings lending their voices. Whereas previous releases from the group have suggested a more abrasive post-punk approach, Good Time demonstrates a pop-leaning slant on the sound of Teenanger without removing their ear for social commentary.

Speaking about the new track, Swimmings says: "This song is about the province of Ontario where we all reside. Mainly about the current provincial government’s way of dealing with the education system and the environment. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Premier Doug Ford (the song’s primary subject) was making good headway at polishing his public image by being hands-on. He made promises of people not losing their jobs and tenants not being evicted. They were timely promises in the beginning as we are now seeing many tenants in Ontario face eviction due to not being able to make end’s meet in the pandemic."

Good Time arrives off the back of a turbulent few years for the group, a period filled with self-reflection, a restless search for creativity and more than anything, a need to rewire the very essence of the band. The four-piece had tied up the rinse and repeat promotional run for their 2017 self-titled record in the spring of 2018; their fifth album, which had started to find them some acclaim, also marked their first decade together as a group, quite an achievement by anyone's measures in the current climate. The line-up was unchanged since Teenanger's inception, and the members had become somewhat inseparable over their time together; whilst the album release and the corresponding tour was somewhat celebratory, it also brought with it a severe bout of writer’s block that unexpectedly placed their existence in jeopardy.

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Spunsugar - Run.

Following on from the release of their breakthrough debut EP ŒMouth Full Of You¹ last year, a collection that cemented them as one of the finest emerging shoegaze outfits of the moment as well as garnering support from Steve Lamacq at BBC 6Music, Swedish trio Spunsugar now return to announce their highly-anticipated debut album ŒDrive-Through Chapel¹, out on the 2nd October via Adrian Recordings.

Featuring the previously shared single ŒHappier Happyless¹, which has already gathered huge amounts of support across numerous publications and streaming services, the outfit¹s first full-length outing sees them take on the dark and pulsing nature of the post-punk sound and deliver it through a completely new and diverse contemporary lens. Produced by Joakim Lindberg at Studio Sickan, Malmö, who has filled it with a rich and textured atmosphere running the length of this new collection, ŒDrive-Through Chapel¹ sets itself as one of the most thunderous and anthemic offerings in the Adrian Recordings catalogue.

Two out of three members of the trio Spunsugar, Cordelia Moreau and Elin Ramstedt, befriended one another in a small town outsider clique at age thirteen. Their individual music tastes, Cordelia¹s twee-pop, jangle and grunge and Elin¹s metal, hardcore and post-rock blended into a mutual love for shoegaze, noise rock and dream pop. At age fifteen they started a four piece band, Elin on lead vocals and rhythm guitar and Cordelia on drums. They discovered that they thrived when writing music together. But even when the band split up, they continued to write songs.

Fast forward to post upper secondary school. After months of hardly speaking to each other, they both ended up in Malmö. After not writing music together for five years they recorded two lo-fi songs in Cordelia¹s student apartment and it was as if no time had passed. They looked for a rehearsal space and within weeks they recorded a demo. But they wanted a real live bass player. Cordelia had recently bonded with a university classmate over guitars and they decided to send him a copy of the demo and asked if he would like to come play with them. Felix Sjöström became an intrinsic part of the project immediately. With his influence, their sound became more distinguished, all of them bringing different inspirations to the songs. Now they all have prominent roles within the band but they are also, fundamentally, friends.

Spunsugar are works at a faster paced than a lot of their shoegaze peers and accompanied by electronic drums. They are more often compared to Curve, Swervedriver or Ringo Deathstarr rather than the likes of Cocteau Twins or Slowdive. Although heavy on effects, nothing is hidden within the music, including the lyrics. The lyrics are heavy with pop cultural references, stemming from Cordelia¹s love for obscure genre films. Often driven by riffs rather than soundscapes, they focus equally on having a prominent bass as well as prominent guitars.


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Friday, 5 June 2020

Spunsugar - Running Red Lights - Yard Arms - Eliot Bronson

Spunsugar share 'Happier Happyless' where the genre spanning band mix rich synth sounds with dream pop vocals and some natural rock. === Today Running Red Lights have released the new single 'Hollow' the band taking us in a different direction that they describe as 80's mock Gothic power pop, could not put it better myself! === Yard Arms are back with 'These Four Walls' and the Bristol based duo are on splendid form with this hook filled pop/rock song. === We were impressed by Eliot Bronson not that many weeks back and now he has released 'Empty Spaces' which is another refined singer songwriter track.
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Spunsugar - Happier Happyless.

Following on from the release of their breakthrough debut EP ‘Mouth Full Of You’ last year, a collection that cemented them as one of the finest emerging shoegaze outfits of the moment as well as garnering support from Steve Lamacq at BBC 6Music, Swedish trio Spunsugar now return with their latest dose of forlorn industrial electronics on ‘Happier Happyless’ through Adrian Recordings.

With a strong affinity for post-punk, noise-rock and dream-pop, this genre-bending new offering sees the group deliver one of their hardest and most impactful releases to date. With a Robyn-esque direction, filled with the atmospheric vocals of frontwoman Elin Ramsted, the group look to emulate the warm and driven sound of acts like Cocteau Twins and Slowdive with their pulsing aesthetic.

Speaking about their new single, the band said, "’Happier Happyless’ is a sour and sweet song, tackling subjects of pining, happiness and revenge. Having a fittingly slower pace than former Spunsugar singles, this song is also an homage to the shunned 2001 slasher movie Valentine, released a little too late in the post-Scream era. Written with the aim to have “a memorable hook, a thumping synth bass line and a gazey chorus” this is a good introduction to the bands debut album, because of the constant switching of emotional tonality."

‘Happier Happyless’ is set to become the band’s first taste of their long-awaited debut album ‘Drive-Through Chapel’, which is set to later this fall via Adrian Recordings.

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Running Red Lights - Hollow.

Toronto band, Running Red Lights, announces the release of the second single in their retirement ‘Sendoff Series’, 80’s mock-gothic power pop single, ‘Hollow’. The series marks the finale of a fifteen year career that includes a multitude of awards, notable performances, international tours, as well as some beautifully crafted music.

Fifteen years is no small commitment and the band wanted to honour those years with a proper good-bye. Though they played a farewell show to a sold out Toronto audience in November of 2019, RRL chief architects, Kevin Howley and Scarlett Flynn, have since been haunted by the ghosts of abandoned songs that currently exist only in the consciousness of an old hard-drive.

‘Unfortunately, after 15 years, RRL lost its vivacity and it was time to let it go’, Scarlett remarks, ‘however, there still remained the question of what to do with all the material that never made it to a release. There is nothing worse than banishing a song to its grave, having never given it a chance to live’. Therefore, in a single driven music economy, RRL is seizing one final opportunity to draw its final breath.

The second single in the sendoff series forms a shadowy coalition between indie rock and 80’s pop/darkwave. Hollow opens over minimalist swirls of ominous sounds evocative of a classic 80’s horror film soundtrack. Scarlett’s voice maintains a trancelike composure insinuating a feeling of creeping dread. The song seamlessly swells and mutates into a fast-packed mock gothic 1980’s pop/rock chorus with urgent, syncopated grooves and full-throttle gritty vocals. The alliance of mythological imagery with the twisted, hypnotic echoes of the synth hauntingly paint the spectral portrait of what remains of a scorned woman and her painfully vacant heart.

The single hollows out its own niche in the RRL ethos, distancing itself from the classic euphonic and organic RRL folk fare. It is the 80’s power-pop black sheep that will satisfy fans longing for nostalgic RRL circa 2008. The song and the official music video is set to premiere on YouTube and release to all major streaming platforms and digital stores, Friday June 5th.

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Yard Arms - These Four Walls.

The third EP 'Sanctuary Lines' from Bristol-based melancholic pop duo Yard Arms, is due for release June 26th. Described by frontman and lyricist Noah Villeneuve as "an exploration of combating nostalgia in the modern age", the EP is bursting with alt-indie hits and I'm really excited about this release.

Ahead of the EP, the second single 'These Four Walls', the isolation anthem they never knew they had written, is released today June 5th.

Initially the song was an avidly honest commentary of longing for the ‘honeymoon periods’ in life and dealing with our internal voices that keep us thinking the grass is always greener. The timely lyrical themes began to take on a whole new meaning as the world around us began to shut its doors due to the coronavirus.

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Eliot Bronson - Empty Spaces.

Acclaimed singer/songwriter Eliot Bronson, shares his new single “Empty Spaces”. The song is the title track from his album which is set to be released on July 24th via New Pain Records.

The song dives into the bittersweet depths of emotional experience with humility, honesty, grace, and sadness” fits perfectly into the tapestry of the album, which was written during a period of tumult — including the breakup of a 10-year relationship, the end of an engagement, and a move from his adopted home of Atlanta to his current headquarters in Nashville.  The collection is about loss, redemption, the places we leave, and the homes we make for ourselves. More importantly, it's an album about starting again and it’s Bronson's sharpest songwriting to date.

The project can be viewed as a concept album as Empty Space's unique punch is best  delivered on the title track where Bronson sings about coming to terms with the void left by his ex's departure. The song’s video illustrates this sentiment quite literally. It's a breakup song for realists — a song that neither wallows in its own misery nor celebrates a sense of newfound freedom. Bronson sings about the complicated feelings that exist somewhere between

Of the project the artist shares, "I began writing the kind of songs I needed to hear," he explains. "Empty Spaces was the best healing work I could've ever done. I had a weird, challenging childhood, and I originally turned to music because I didn't have anywhere else to go. I made my own little world that made me feel safe and understood. This time, I really needed to find that space again. I made this record for the same reason that I wrote my first song. It wasn't for anybody else; it was for me. Hearing the right words at the right moment can be the most magical elixir you can possibly take. It can heal you."

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Joe Kelly & The Royal Pharmacy - Cult Of Venus - Tora Luna

Joe Kelly & The Royal Pharmacy - Cast Me Down. Newport's Prodigal Son Joe Kelly & The Royal Pharmacy announces his 2nd album, t...