I’ve been following Brightly for a while now, not in a creepy way, but because these guys make really enjoyable music. The Melbourne three piece have a definite electronic basis, with folk and indie pop tendencies; heck there’s even a saxophone at some points. Brightly’s music is adventurous and refreshing, and to top it all off they are pretty dam tech savvy too. Having marketed, distributed and made a film clip for their debut album Beginnings & Endings by utilising the realms of twitter and other wondrous functions of the internet.
Recently, the band launched their single ‘
Preflight Nerves
‘ via an innovative distribution strategy called
The Beginnings & Endings Project
.
The project gives users a free download of ‘Preflight Nerves’ and then encourages them to share the track amongst friends on Facebook, Twitter and email. Once ten of your mates download the track, your reward is a free download of Brightly’s debut album. The downloads are pinpointed on a huge
interactive world map
which also tracks how far the single has traveled. So far the single has traveled 651,033km around the world from Nashville to Cape Town and hundreds of cities in-between.
Beginnings and Endings was released this week with previous singles ‘ Sarah ‘ and ‘ Doubt ‘ reappearing and holding their ground on the eleven track album . Charlie Gleeson sings over a distorted electronic soundscape, supported by the undertow a mellow acoustic guitar in ‘Sarah’. While ’Doubt’ mixes the sleek sax of Marcus De Fazio with a buzzing background of reverb and sizzling sonic bursts of sound, making it one of my favourite songs off Beginnings & Endings.
The single ‘Preflight Nerves’ also has its own twitter-powered film clip. It’s an unusual concept, but it basically involves matching the lyric from ‘Preflight Nerves’ to tweets that occur live, which is then layered upon vintage footage of aeroplanes. Some of the tweets are funny, others strange out of context but the clip somehow brings these snippets of peoples lives together in a coherent whole.
Brightly aren’t affraid to experiment with a broad array of electronic manipulations and sounds, but it doesn’t seem excessive since the electronic is combined with familiar timbres of soft drums, guitar or a raw vocal. The albums single instrumental track ’ Soundtrack ‘ epitomises the weaving of sounds these guys generate, with the keys heavily drenched in warped effects while drummer Josh Barber explores rhythmic pulse. Brightly even sample children chattering and laughing on ‘ & Then We Woke Up ‘ and it works. Harmonies by Private Life ‘s Renee Cassar makes for a welcome addition to ‘ Fox ‘. While the track ‘ Hood ‘ contains an echoed lyric, light and dreamy chords are smoothly laid out in the synth keys, drum effects.
Brightly launch Beginnings & Endings at the Northcote Social Club May 9th. Check out their website , or follow them on and r for more.
WORDS BY Leah Phillips
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