Sundays Alternative Take - Someone Stole The Genre

Basecamp - Watch My Back.

Intro words - Nashville trio Basecamp announce their new EP, Greater Than out August 21st via OWSLA. The EP is a fully realized collection of R&B-tinged dance tracks inspired by the group’s admiration for art and the more technical aspects of electronic music.

Cool vocals over a sparkling soundtrack that pauses and shifts along, their delight in the art of electronic music is clearly defined.

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Pure Phase Ensemble 4 - Morning Rise - (from the album).

The details - Pure Phase Ensemble 4 feat. Mark Gardener (RIDE) to release 'Live at SpaceFest' LP - Pure Phase Ensemble is an international music collective, created especially for the SpaceFest festival in Gdansk, which takes place annually in December and is organised by the Nasiono Association. The city of Gdansk plays host to this blossoming music festival each year in the first week of December, at which time numerous select musicians from Poland and abroad gather to take part in a special workshop series. They collectively compose a concert's worth of music, which they then present live to the festival-goers. Each year, this unique performance is recorded live and subsequently released as an LP.

The programme for each workshop is jointly curated by Ray Dickaty, a British saxophonist improviser and former member of Spiritualized (1997-2002), and Karol Schwarz (KSAS), who also manages Nasiono Records. Along with these two key figures, every festival involves a new musical director - a legendary, internationally recognised musician, who is invited to co-curate the workshop.

During the latest SpaceFest, Mark Gardener, the frontman of celebrated shoegaze pioneers RIDE who also recently released an LP with Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins), occupied this seat of honour.  Past participants include Laetitia Sadier (Stereolab), Chris Olley (Six By Seven), Steve Hewitt (ex Placebo), and Jaime Harding (Marion).

This is a fascinating album and the genres delved in to include - shoegaze, space rock, indie rock, alternative rock, post-rock, dreampop, and ambient. Therefore the featured track is just part of the story, one that has so much to offer and in my opinion, something quite special.

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Wallace - Beauty (Ft. Sampa The Great).

Background - Australian based future-soul singer Wallace has followed up her stunning debut with another stellar track. Beauty is song is about finding beauty wherever you are and finding strength and inspiration internally.

"This is essentially me talking to myself (which I do a little too often). The chorus is me reminding myself that I create my own success: "Caught ya, caught ya, caught ya sewing new starts into my sky" and for lack of a better metaphor every cloud has a silver lining: "Caught ya, caught ya, caught ya re-arranging my clouds", says Wallace.

Inspired by Electric Wire Hustle, Georgia Anne Muldrow and Muhsinah, each verse explores different concepts. The first, stumbling across beauty in a place you didn't expect to find it. The second, realising it's ok to pursue something you're passionate about, and the third learning from a bad experience and growing despite it. Sampa The Great lends a rap to the track,  with her strong, sincere lyrics adding an even more "girl power" element to the music. Be sure to check out Wallace's debut Vinyl Skip, released earlier this year.

Future soul singer and songwriter Wallace Gollan’s music is an exciting mosaic combination of blues, soul, and jazz. She creates music in spaces unfamiliar, addresses silences with harmonies so detailed it is simple and expressive that words are not needed to understand her message. She possesses a type of sound others have labeled in the vein of Erykah Badu, Little Dragon or Carmen McRae. With a contagious smile, a humble personality and a rare name to begin with, Wallace Gollan is set to make some serious heads turn in the music industry.

Soul grooves over a modern soundtrack, Sampa The Great provides a 'pause' that works and the whole thing has that timeless soul feel through Wallace's stunning vocals.

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Silvertron Youth Choir - Spaceship Sunlight (from debt album).

Biography - Doubling down on the zany, beer-battered inflorescence of past projects such as Mongoose Thompson and Nodding Tree Remedies, Thomas Mudrick and the Silvertron Youth Choir take the more hilariously warped happenstances of previous projects and turn them up to 11 with Our God Is A Possum God, the newest release from Mudrick and his Oregon based crew of merry pranksters. As with the aforementioned projects, as well as the prodigious and ever-expanding back-catalogue of Thomas Mudrick’s own solo records (most recently 2013’s (((boing))) and 2014’s Abiqua), Our God Is A Possum God draws listeners into a web of sprightly, imaginative musical vortices that follow none but their own internal piper. With the Silvertron Youth Choir, Mudrick and long time co-conspirator and drum whiz Ian Hartley (The Shivas) cobble together a gem of a record that’s both hilarious and strange, often at once.

Silvertron Youth Choir isn’t short on inanity, assembling what could at times be described as children’s music made for (and seemingly by) mightily stoned adults; a pin wheeling, day- tripping, hipping and hopping, skipping and jumping ramble through the worm hole into a range of delightfully visual and guffaw-inducing ditties tackling all manner of subjects, such as: pies made of whiskey and bacon, soda pop downloading computer programs for red necks, water spider birds on the tundra, philosophical mayonnaise, peanut butter trains, cosmic hybrid creatures riding forklifts, pamplemooses, and, as a lyrical coup-de-grace of sorts, Justin Beiber mounted triumphantly atop a giant rodent.

If all that sounds like an earful of nonsense, it is, and that’s the point. The crux of Silvertron Youth Choir’s tune-wrangling is in their ability to spool out numbers that make liberal use of deft musicianship and pop/folk song craft while remaining ridiculously irreverent and often wickedly funny, eliciting a sense not unlike those uncontrollable belly laughs one gets after too many bong rips. As with so much of Thomas Mudrick’s past work, Our God Is A Possum God is firmly indebted to the Old Masters’ use of dada-inspired non-sequitur as a way to contort the quotidian nature of mainstream pop and rock: early Beck, Zappa, Ween, the Residents, They Might Be Giants, etc..

Weirdly wonderful and the vision of Justin Beiber mounted atop a giant rodent is reason enough to include. Featured track is one dimension of a genre undefinable album, hence the Zappa & They Might Be Giants references above.

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Three More Saturday Songs

Stephen Caulfield - Parkview (album).

Background - Parkview is the debut full length album by Stephen Caulfield. Written, performed and produced entirely by Stephen, Parkview was recorded over a number of years in a self-built studio that looks out over the local park. 

Parkview is an album of 11 songs that showcases Stephen’s ability as a singer-songwriter on piano and guitar, whilst also demonstrating his love of fusing strict electronic music with organic natural sounds using many weird and wonderful instruments and effects that he has collected over the years.

Stephen loves playing with, and altering sounds to create a unique palette of noise, he alters the computer recorded sounds by changing their speed, pitch, timing or dynamics to make new sounds that are then used to make rhythms and melodies. Beneath the production trickery and instrumentation lies a solid foundation of good song writing and Stephen’s solid abilities as a singer. The core component of each song is Stephen’s voice which ranges from lush arrangements of multi tracked harmonies to simple, tender vocals rich with emotion.

The resulting music is a mixture of sounds that include sparse ambient, acoustic guitar and piano, pulsating synthesizers, power driven rock guitar and lush instrumentation. On Parkview, these sounds are brought together to create a diverse album that has a dream like atmosphere from beginning to end. Stephen’s influences include Elbow, Imogen Heap, The Beatles, Thomas Dolby, Kirsty MacColl, Radiohead, Bon Iver, The Blue Nile, Talk Talk, Doves, John Grant, Death Cab For Cutie, The Postal Service, Bombay Bicycle Club, Snow Patrol, New Order and Peter Gabriel.

Considering the time and effort that has gone into this album my expectations were set quite high. I am not disappointed. The quality of the songs and the attention to detail in the production are really good. The featured track is the first on the album and seems a logical starting point.

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Hollow States - Damage I've Done.

Background - The band - Sydney three piece comprised of singer Huck Hastings, guitarist Joel Woolf and keyboardist Hayden Woolf - craft songs that are both heartfelt and intelligent; equal parts haunting and jangly. 'Damage I've Done', which even from the title is emotionally weighted, typifies this approach, offering irresistibly catchy pop hooks wrapped up in darker musical tones. Unmistakable within this sound is Huck's effortless and emotive voice.

When debut EP 'Darkness Is Laughing' was released in January, it was met with favourable reviews that praised the band for their elegant simplicity and their strangely melancholic stirring. Its lead single, 'If I Have To Grow Up', showed an honest lyrical expressiveness, and introduced the band's sound of hypnotic rhythms, almost eerie pop guitars and bitter-sweet melodic hooks. 

Recorded and mixed by Tim Carr (Matt Corby, Urthboy), 'Damage I've Done' is a beautifully-produced slice of indie rock that marries catchy pop smarts with honest, relatable human emotion. Hastings bears his soul on the song, with lyrics like “If I could have ten thousand lovers I would / I'd be understood / I'd never let them down and I'd make them all feel good / I'd give out my love to you” adding sparkles of sunlight to cloudy skies. Openly embracing of their home town scene, Hollow States are set to get busier on the live front in support of Damage I've Done with touring planned for the warmer months ahead.

A fine jangly, indie rock song, Hollow States can clearly cut a track that begs for airplay on any mainstream music radio station. Come on programme controllers, cut the bilge and put bands like this on.

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Damien J Brennan - Shine.

Background - Damien J Brennan was born and raised in County Down, Northern Ireland. He learned to play the guitar and began busking whilst backpacking through Italy and Australia. Shortly after his return home he began song writing and on a limited budget recorded some garage demos. These initial recordings received positive feedback and a glowing review from critically acclaimed mastering engineer Pete Maher (U2, Snow Patrol, Katy Perry, Hudson Taylor).

Damien recorded his first professional tracks in Zero Hour Studios and these songs led to gigs locally and in London. They were also picked up for radio play on Tom Robinson's BBC Radio 6 show and Baylen Leonard and Aaron Philips on Amazing Radio, together with a number of regional UK stations. Tony Moore of Soho Radio invited Damien to sing live on his show and to appear live at London's Bedford this August. The future is looking very promising for this up and coming Irish talent.

Some artists teach themselves how to play an instrument and then cut their teeth busking, travelling and producing their own demos. Its no guarantee of further success, but when artists who have worked hard to be heard, have this amount of natural talent, it's no surprise they are being picked up on. After all it is all about the music.

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Thursday - Cutting To The Chase

Sunshine and The Blue Moon - Buffalo Child.

What they say - I think it's safe to say we're a nostalgic bunch. We get our music on vinyl or tape, we take our photos and shoot home videos on film, we drive around in my big old boat of a car, anything that brings us a little farther away from the pervasive technologies that dog all of our daily lives.

Our new video "Lucy" was directed and shot on super8 film by our best friend and honorary band member Laura-Lynn Petrick (....Mac Demarco, Calvin Love, Michael Rault...) in the heart of winter. We're releasing it now since it seems completely inappropriate. We signed with The Hand Recordings and will be releasing our debut LP this fall.

We had no intention of using this footage for a music video, but it just looked so great we thought might as well use it for something. We put it over a demo recording of an old song that people seem to enjoy, we hope you enjoy it too!

What we say - Keeping on the inappropriate theme, Beehive Candy will feature a different demo and just provide a link to the video (here). Actually it's just a feeble way of featuring two numbers from them, easily spotted eh?

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Berlin Blue - Used To Know.

And the promo says - Berlin Blue is a Sydney-based indie rock band consisting of front man and guitarist Alex Toh, bassist Thomas McGreevy and drummer Gerardo Flores Torres. The band’s music can best be described as indie rock mixing Britpop and alternative rock elements, with The Jam, The Libertines and The Mars Volta being among their key influences. Their frenetic yet polished live performances are matched with an onstage charm and wit that has seen Berlin Blue garner a steady following and turn heads at key Sydney venues such as Oxford Art Factory and The Annandale Hotel.

The recent release of their eponymous debut EP showcases the band’s lead single “Used to Know” - a guitar-oriented track that revels in its sing-a-long hooks and pulsating rhythms, the perfect way to introduce one of the newest bands on the scene. At first listen the song shows its true indie-rock heritage, thanks in no small part to its upbeat tempo and crunchy tone. Any thoughts of imitation are quickly abandoned, with the song’s ear- burningly catchy guitar riff demanding immediate attention and carrying through with the band’s pounding rhythms. Along with all this, Berlin Blue also manage to instil their sense of sarcasm and refined irreverence in the track, a rare accomplishment for any band.

And we say - It's a feisty song reminiscent of new wave first time around. No pretentious indulgence here, just indie rock done well, maybe music wise, that's enough for some of us?

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The Vernons - Snap My Fingers.

The story so far - Gold Coast blues-rockers The Vernons are back with an in-your-face hip shakin' number titled Snap My Fingers. The first single from an as yet untitled but soon to be released EP, 'Snap' visits the darker side of the human psyche while belting out a punchy, rockin’ and rollin’ ear-fest. The track's infectious vibe is built on the foundation of a tight riff, great groove and Jonny Nyst's dazzling vocal acrobatics. The super production of the new sessions come courtesy of Brisbane guru engineer Konstantin Kersting (Moses Gunn, Belligerents, Junkyard Diamonds).

Sculpting their sound from long nights out, hung-over days in and their parents’ old vinyl records, The Vernons distil a distinct modern blues-rock sound and have been compared to the classic sounds of The Black Keys, Jack White and Kings of Leon. The band’s recordings so far spread across two EP releases and have been critically applauded around Australia and the United States, where Esquire Magazine insisted to its readers: “Remember, you heard 'em here first.” Quickly becoming renown for their 110% give-it-all live attitude, The Vernons have been headlining tours in support of their releases, while supporting the likes of Hoodoo Gurus, Wolfmother, Seasick Steve, The Rubens, Wolf & Cub, Stonefield, Ash Grunwald and more. The band also have the Big Day Out festival under their belt.

Snap My Fingers is out this Friday August 7 with upcoming EP release and tour details TBA, but in the short term the band will be headlining the Food and Fire Festival in Roma, Queensland on September 12.

Our little story - Almost rockabilly in part, this song is a little bit like The Stray Cats turning the amp up to eleven. Attitude in abundance, your hips never had it so good....

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Wednesdays Triple Play

Fresh Snow - Proper Burial feat. DIANA's Carmen Elle.

Background - Toronto instrumental four-piece Fresh Snow announces their sophomore album 'Won,' out September 11 via Hand Drawn Dracula on vinyl/digital and on limited cassette edition via Reel Cod Records. The album's first single "Proper Burial" features vocals from DIANA's Carmen Elle.

Born in a dive bar on Toronto's Bloor Street in 2010, four friends gathered to make improvisational music based on their love of drones, noise and-less obviously-strongly melodic pop music. Since their first show in 2011, Andy Lloyd (bass, keys) , Brad Davis (guitars, keys), Jon Maki (drums), and Tim Condon (keys, etc) have released a split 7" single with METZ, a full-length album, "I" (Reel Cod Records), and a cover of 'Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle', featuring vocals by Julie Fader on the Nirvana tribute album, Milkin' It (Hand Drawn Dracula).

They have been invited to perform at NXNE, Wavelength, Long Winter, Electric Eclectics, and Arboretum Festival, along with venues throughout Ontario and in Montreal putting on their live show that's featured them in red hoods, wooden masks, and playing inside a pod full of projectors. Primarily an instrumental band with a core line-up augmented by guest horn and string players (including Trent Severn's Laura C. Bates), Fresh Snow is not easy to pigeon hole.

Considering the background info provided, the featured song is a straight forward piece, that keeps things simple and the vocals round out the song, making the forthcoming album of real interest.


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Color Collage - Shareholder.

Color Collage's album 'Pieced Together' is out this Friday (August 7th) on Paper Garden Records. We featured them a few weeks back, however with another song to share and a Brooklyn residency starting tonight, how could I resist another mention. Facebook page (here).

8/5   - Brooklyn, NY @ Pete's Candy Store (residency)
8/7 - New York, NY @ Fulton Stall Market (207A Front St in South Street Seaport) - Record Release Show with New Myths & Strange Names.
8/12 - Brooklyn, NY @ Pete's Candy Store (residency)
8/19 - Brooklyn, NY @ Pete's Candy Store (residency)
8/26 - Brooklyn, NY @ Pete's Candy Store (residency)

Described as 'electronic doo wop' all tends to become clearer with this fine song.

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Valdaway - Beautiful View.

Background - Recorded with acclaimed engineer Dave Parkin (Jebediah, Abbe May), 'Beautiful View' is the stellar first single taken from the forthcoming album 'Boom Shake Heartbreak'. The track is a shining example of the band's take on Alt-anthemic rock with a modern sonic palette.

The story of Valdaway begins some ten years ago in an isolated small town in the scenic South West of WA, when three young brothers and a best mate started jamming in the garage of their family home. Honing their craft and developing their chops throughout virtually all of WA's best known pubs, an earlier incarnation of the group saw the release of debut material, but it it wasn't until 2013 that it really felt right to brand the emerging outfit as Valdaway. 'Beautiful View' is out August 7 through all good digital retailers.

Well if this is what Alt-anthemic rock sounds like, then the odd song now and then will do no harm. Seriously, this is well honed no nonsense rock, simple as that really. Facebook (here).

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