BJM Mario Bajardi Releases New Track ‘Crusty’

Busy Composer continues being busy!

I’ve had a great new track come through from the Italian composer, that’s just released his new EP, titled Inverse. I will be doing a review for this release, but i’m dropping this in now so you can get some more background here. Mario Bajardi is the behind this music and it turns out, he is a busy boy! He’s been busy working on a track titled Insemina for Sweetheart a short movie directed by Quentin Tarantino’s assistant Miguel Angelo Pate. So this guy is moving up in the world!

The movie has only been teased at so far, but looks like it could be rather top!

But yeah, the review is coming this week (the first week of December) and until then, I hope you enjoy listening to Crusty.

Witchingseason Release New Single ‘Codeine’

Debut EP to be released at the end of November

Witchingseason are a post-grunge act that I’ve featured before and are planning to release their first EP soon. Before that though, they’ve released another single titled Codeine. This track is much longer than the previously featured Spiders, but more or less features a similar grunge vibe that slides between Nirvana and Queens of The Stone Age, at least on this song it does. The guitar sounds suitably bleak and thick with the bass, while the drums all sound fiery and as usual, singer, Tom Reynolds hits all the right grunge spots.

The interlude that occurs about five minutes in is a nice change in pace, but I feel is somewhat unfulfilled and could be drawn out in a different direction, just to make the stab of snarly guitar at the end that little bit more striking. When said snarly guitar does come in, the drums really go for it here as well which sounds top, which also reminds me of a problem I had with these guys last time – the instruments all just mold together at some points in Spiders, but here there seems to be more distinction. The bass can be heard grooving away in the background and the drums have some fantastic parts.

I can only hope that this transfers over, more so in fact, into Witchingseason’s EP. There will be a review next week, hopefully. Probably.

So stay tuned, this is not over.

New Music Review – HAU – HAU

Band: HAU
EP: HAU
Genre: Noise-rock, electronic, abrasive-core
Social-media: Bandcamp/Soundcloud/Blogspot

Listen:

And:

HAU are a noise-rock, abrasive-core, band from Greece. The sound behind these guys is one of angered percussion, destructive guitar, ugly vocals and brief dabbles in electronic elements, such as synth work and sampling (?). Put all of this together and you get a very cut-throat act that refuses to pander to any strict structure or reason. Back in May of this year, HAU put out their first EP, which was also a self-titled EP and these are my thoughts on said EP:

The animalistic nature behind HAU is very comparable to that of bands like Lightning Bolt, with their incomprehensible, heavily effected, lyrics, jagged stringed instruments and pounding percussion – everything is just GO, from the start with both these bands. When HAU are playing to their strengths, they are incredibly effective and satisfying to listen to, especially when you enjoy the moaning guitar as much as I do. However, there is still a rather diverse selection of sounds on this EP – both Pattern 5 and Pattern 7, are messy noise-rock charges on your ears, but the other two tracks are much more experimental.

Cunts & Needles (with A†D) is a slow boiling track that slithers around with some sporadic drumming and some almost alien-like vocals. Oh, and the way, these alien-like vocals don’t just occur on this track, they’re a persistent presence throughout, which is fine, they suit the style of music perfectly. But yeah, the track itself fiddles with various electronic improvisations that feel very unsettled at times, as they just flicker around with the occasional percussion – It’s a difficult track to pin down. By the end though, it’s just as loud and proud as the Pattern tracks.

These Pattern tunes are my favourite tracks on this release, without a shadow of a doubt. The guitars a bass sounds on Pattern 5 and Pattern 7 are incredible and the way that they take no prisoners with their approach to their music, is just phenomenal. If you enjoy vicious sounding… everything, you need to listen to these songs, they are ruthless and unforgiving – the way this sort of music should be.

Norma, is also a hard track to strip down to something more than, ‘experimental’ and ‘woah’. It’s probably the most eccentric track on the album, mainly because it starts out so deceptively quiet, with brief flickers of drums and synth screeches, with some very sudden and haunting stabs of synth latter in the track. But then, halfway through the track unrolls completely into a real horror of intimidating vocals, primal beats and more stabs. Norma is probably the most fidgety track on this release, it just can’t sit still for more than three minutes!

What HAU have done with this release is set a very chilling bar for themselves that will lead to, hopefully, more music that’s as angry and powerful as this.

Final Notes:

HAU’s self-titled EP is everything that you’re afraid of listening to and proud of it. It’s malicious sounding songs are immediate and have a forceful staying power and if you like any kind of hard music, then you should check these guys out.

New Music Review – Vapour Night – Vapour Night

Artist: Vapour Night
Album: Vapour Night
Genre: Shoegaze,ambient, post-rock
Social-media: Facebook/Bandcamp/Soundcloud

Listen:

And:

Vapour Night is the musical, shoegaze, post-rock and ambient music project of Ali Murray, a singer-songwriter from Scotland, that also has another (rather dreamy, ambient, folk-like affair) musical project under his own name – you can check that out here. Today though, we’re going to be focusing on his self-titled, Vapour Night release from last year. Louder Than War have described this release by saying: ‘The sound skilfully treads a fine line between distortion and haunting melodies which are particularly evocative of these short days’. I don’t often quote other sources in my reviews, but in this case, I find the reference to be true to a certain extent.

Vapour Night’s self-titled does move between moments of extreme distortion and sound, to some rather gorgeous melodies, like on the second track, The Pulse: this song has some contrasting electronic drums and some very well-produced guitar. The song has this really neat and clean guitar line that get’s more and more tense as the song goes on, until there’s this massive explosion of distortion and noise at the end. I think it’s times like this where I think Vapour Night is at it’s most brave and powerful – the loud and cut-throat is what makes this release stand out. Even the track Knowing It’s The End sounds vibrant with it’s great use of chords, although the bass and vocals are rather forgettable. The tracks Wings Ablaze and Cruel Weather, also sound incredibly loud and bold with their masses of distortion thrown on.

That’s not to say the clean and slower moments are bad, but they can feel a bit more lifeless than these Goliath tracks of distortion. I’d say the main offenders are Below Zero (although I did like the synth on this track a lot, it just needed something else) and until the guest vocals come in, the track, Night Flower. I felt a little bit lost by the instrumental at the end of Night Flower as well, it was like I could have got a lot more from the track if the instrumental at the end was just trimmed down.

Thankfully, Vapour Night manages to hold interests for the rest of the album as the other clean tracks are gripping, like the gorgeous guitar and vocals of Natali. Natali very much feels like the token acoustic track, but enough is going on, especially towards the end to keep my ears interested with it’s bittersweet sound of pretty guitars and quietly sobbing strings. I also really liked the track, Until We Fall Away, which feels like an incredibly chill neo-lounge track – the guitar here is just wonderful.

This is something that deserves touching down on – the use of guitar tone on this album is great. On tracks like Knowing It’s The End, Until We Fall Away, Natali and The Pulse all have amazing sounding guitars. However, with these fantastic sounding guitars comes another gripe about the sound – the vocals can at times sound stale from time to time, the drums too. Thankfully, it doesn’t happen to often and Murray really pulls it out of the bag, vocally, on the later moments of Wings Ablaze, The Pulse and Natali. Otherwise, the drums and the bass are mostly forgotten on this release, which is a shame, since I think it could really buff out some of the songs on here.

Final Notes:

I did like this album and it is worth a listen for the incredible atmosphere that Murray is capable of conceiving in tracks like Until We Fall Away and Cruel Weather (opposite ends of the sonds spectrum too). If you’re into experimental post-rock, shoegaze music that dances a very thin line between sounds, then this album is for you. It’s brave, at times and it sounds consistently strong through the guitar.

New Music Review – Efferat – Benzaiten

Band: Efferat
Album: Benzaiten
Genre: Noise, dark-ambient
Social-media: Facebook/Bandcamp

Listen:

And:

Efferat are Philadelphia based experimental, electronic, dark ambient project who have released a new album, which has probably been one of my hardest listens yet. Efferat released, Benzaiten on November 3rd and it was just as hard to listen to, as it was to look at the album-art (so many colours, my fucking eyes!) But, as you all know, I try to review everything that gets sent to me, because I’m just a nice guy that loves music.

Let’s start, as you should, at the beginning of the album, with the title track, Benzaiten. The slow build-up of these dusty, lo-fi synths is interesting and textured rather nicely; it feels like there should be an intro to some horror movie playing. As the track goes on, there are strange sounds that bare some resemblance to actual instruments, like the sliding up of guitar strings and some cleaner (slightly) synths. This track is likely the hardest track to listen to, as the other two have some resemblances to music that is easier to follow, it’s also the longest track, clocking in at practically eleven minutes!

The other two tracks share a closer semblance to structure, where the Benzaiten just felt like a collage of sound and madness. That’s not to say that Aka Manto and Yukonna are down to earth examples of sanity. In fact, Yukonna seems to be the flag bearer for painfully elaborate and long winded breakdowns, as the track plods along with a brief tinkering of some metallic noise, until it eventually erupts into a vicious onslaught of metal noise/feedback (?). Despite all this incredibly difficult to listen to noise, there are some very well-done sections that feel distinguishable against other noise music – the instrumentation works very well. I think the most notable example is the slides and guitar plucking’s of Aka Manto.

Despite some clever use of sound, noise and structuring on this album, I do still constantly struggle with how lo-fi this record is. This low-quality does add to the challenge of trying to piece together what everything on this album is, but it honestly seems like such an uphill struggle for a limited pay-off. I think at the end of the day, this album is all about interpretation and I interpreted it to give me a headache at most parts. Although I do like the fading off the last track Yukonna.

Final Notes:

Efferat and their album Benzaiten are a drugged fuelled romp into challenging sounds and listens that will leave you clutching at your ears, throwing your headphones aside, getting a drink of hooch, grabbing your headphones again and then trying again. I honestly think the best way to describe their music is with the email they sent me:

Our band is basically a Dark Sounding ambient with black metal and Dark Sounding Post rock talking about ancient Japanese folklore to LSD trips to witch craft.

Noel and The Pandas Set To Release New Album

New Video From Italian Rockers as well!

Red Light Obsession is the new music video from Italian rock band Noel and The Pandas, it’s off of their debut album, ‘In The Art Of Doom’.

The song itself goes through a few different movements and while there is an obvious chorus, the verses seem quite organic in the way they’re played- you’ve got a sad little piano intro that eventually gives way to percussion, vocals and some tremolo guitar. That being said, Noel and The Pandas add slight element changes to each verse and chorus to keep things from getting stale. The guitar solo at the end of the track is also nice and gives the track a darker sound than I was initially expecting.

The sound as a whole is very pleasant, the guitars sound very clean and they do give off the same impression of a dark rainy night – the exact same image you get in the video. It all sounds rather dreamy, from the twinkles of piano in the chorus, the mellow plucking of the guitar verse and the occasional splashes of synth.

With the vocals, I’m not sure that I got what the lyrics were about. On the one-hand, they could be incredibly personal, or just deceptively simple, but either way, I don’t think I’ll dissect them too much. Unless it’s as simple as someone’s different personal interpretations of what the colour red means to them. To me, the vocals sound rather default, just like typical rock vocals from a not so rocky band – they’re not bad, but they’re just there, but the back-up female vocals work nicely.

If you like what you hear, you can buy the single Red Light Obsession, from here.

Updates #12

Hello all,

Just a quick update to let you all know that I will be away from the internet from Friday to Monday, because I’ll be in Glasgow seeing family. I say I’ll be away, I mean, that only my phone will be available for me to use the internet one – cause I’m a sausage and lost my laptop charger. At the time I’ve writing this, I am also trying to get a few other articles written so that the blog doesn’t collect too much dust.

That being said, please feel free to contact me, I’ll still be checking my email every now and then, so feel free to send hate mail, music submissions, hateful music submissions – the works.

Until then, I love you lot, have a good weekend x

The Familiar Reveal New Video For ‘World Ends’

Ice Chill Electropop Duo Release New Video

The Familiar are an electropop duo from the not so sunny world of Norway and the USA – let me explain this: we have one member, Mads(the gentleman that makes the sounds), living in Brooklyn, NY and we have Ruth (the lass singing), who lives in Norway. Back in May, they released their debut EP, Rooms. Even more recently than that (about one day ago to be exact), The Familiar released a video to go with their single, World Ends, that features some rather darkly imagery to go along with their sinister sounding tune.

World Ends, itself is a heavily synth based track that revolves around one main synth hook and a few others that waver into existence every now and then. There’s also some fitting and minimal percussion in there, but takes a back seat, like, waaaaay back – they’re so back-seat, that they make the seats at the back of a cinema look close. That doesn’t mean that they’re bad, I just don’t think it would be practical to have some strange, erratic drums featuring in a track like this.

The song really comes together with the ending and the lovely vocal performance of the singer. The ending in itself is nicely put together and everything swells in without sounding like a mess of synthetic bleeps and bloops – everything feels very controlled, the percussion steps up its presence and it works.

Like what you hear? Why don’t you buy their material? Or follow them:

Facebook/Bandcamp/iTunes

Wonderful Humans (band) Cover ‘Shake It Off’

Taylor Swift Taken In New, Darker, Direction

Wonderful Humans are a NYC based electro-pop duo that have recently decided to cover one of the bigger songs from the last few months. I am of course talking about Taylor Swift’s August hit, Shake It Off.

The first major change you’ll notice is the change in tempo, mood, and instrumentation – so basically everything. What we have is, not quite a complete re-imagining (atleast not in the same way that a band like Biffy Clyro might re-imagine something), but rather a slight fiddling with, which is totally cool with me. However, it is rather odd, considering that the rest of their music has a great variation in sound and moods about it, Edge Of The Night is especially groovy.

Everything here is incredibly stripped and it does work, for the most part. Like the when the song comes alive during the chorus and some synths start to ripple away over the limited percussion – it’s a nice sounding track, I just wish there was more to appreciate, because at times it can feel a little too bare-bones. But I guess, that’s the direction Wonderful Humans wanted to take the track.

The vocals here are easily the high-point of the track, they fit perfectly with the instrumentation and feel like they could be very versatile in any other situation. I really like the way that the vocalist, Amanda Carl, rolls out the ‘shake it off’ line.

Still, these guys are an interesting duo that are just starting to grow into their shoes and it’s probably for the best that we keep a close eye on them. How do you do that? With social-media, obviously!

Facebook/Twitter/Soundcloud

New Music Review – Arnold Savary – L’Autodidacte

Artist: Arnold Savary
Album: L’Autodidacte 
Genre: Minimal, neo-classical, ambient
Social-media: Facebook/Bandcamp

Listen:

And:

Arnold Savary is a French composer, bedroom producer and musician that released his debut album, L’Autodidacte, which (Babylon has told me) means the self-taught in French. The album was dropped on October 4^th and is available from Bandcamp, for a name your price, price. The album itself is a very minimal release that focuses mainly on some pretty piano work and a few tinkerings in other bits of instrumentation, such as guitar, strings, you get the picture.

There are a lot of beautifully constructed piano arrangements on this album, while I do think that Savary makes great use of other instruments, it’s clear that he is most at home in front of a grand piano, occasionally popping behind his computer to get some mixing done. Everything sounds dreamy, blissful and at ease – no tricks her to catch you off guard, just a very gorgeous and delicate album of minimal music.

It’s an absolute joy to hear Savary branch out form just the piano, even if it’s slowly and surely. The tiny electronic elements (actually, it sounds like a glass harp or something to that effect) of Contempler, are so miniscule and subtle, that you could miss them and that’d be an awful shame. However, the fact is, is that if you’re giving this song the attention it deserves, then you’ll hear this small nuances. I think every track on this album that doesn’t focus on just the piano makes a glorious job of standing out, L’imagination, is a prime example, it’s a short piece that starts with this piano arpeggio and then all these other elements start filtering in and it’s just lovely.

Then there’s the track Rouages, which features the only guitar, that I’ve been able to pick out, plucking away a delightful tune with some light synth in the background. Tracks like Rouages and L’imagination, almost instantly remind me of the gentle composer Akira Kosemura and his Polaroid Piano album – both are very delicate, although Savary does not focus on field recordings like Kosemura

I can see that a lot of thought goes into Savary’s work, but it would be nice to see more variety on this album. The piano tracks are stunning, but it’s clear that he excels in other areas as well. Now, I know this is a mainly piano focused album, but it just seems a shame that this peacock isn’t flourishing more often. L’Horizon Éthéré (orchestral), feels like a track where Savary is really getting into his stride as a composer that can move between moods elegantly and without faltering – Horizon (orchestral) feels like it should be on a soundtrack for some cute French movie.

Final Notes:

Arnold Savary crafts serene piano movements and some interesting orchestral based music that will tantalise your ears with its beauty late into the night, or the morning. L’Autodidacte feels complete and relaxing in every sense of the word, so stick it on an immerse yourself in the new soundtrack of season x,y or z.