Here’s how this segment works:
I’ll listen to as many albums as possible throughout the week, break down buzz worthy choices and then stamp them with either;
Unripe
(intriguing),
Ripening
(gratifying) or
Ripe
(choice of the week).
Iron & Wine – Ghost On Ghost
- Released : April 16th, 2013
- For Fans of: Great Lake Swimmers , Andrew Bird or Alexi Murdoch .
- The Harvest: Unripe
I approach every
Iron & Wine
album release with caution that
Samuel Beam
will finally take an uninspired misstep.
Full length album number five Kiss
Each Other Clean
proves I should probably stop that, however as enjoyable as its inclusion of calmer jazz influenced moments are, this album also provides a few of his careers weaker lyrical moments and because of folk musics traditionally nominal dependence on the lead singer, putting the lyrics under the microscope is a logical procedure.
On ‘
Low Light Buddy Of Mine
’ when he sings “I love you and you love me”, he may as well of concluded with “I love you and you love, we’re all one big family” and the vapid
‘Joy
’, where he sings “I’m only fighting because you gave me something to lose” on top of a uncharacteristic prosaic melody.
At the same time though, it’s nice to see him genuinely merry throughout the albums recording and it provides one of his most consistent accessible releases to date, with worthy gems such as ‘
Caught In The Briars
’, the
Beirut
influenced ‘
New Mexico’s No Breeze
’ and the first released single ‘
Lovers’ Revolution
’ that commits to incorporating that jazz touch he hints at occasionally throughout the first half of
Ghost On Ghost
.
It may not be as indelible as
Our Endless Numbered Days
or
The Shephard’s Dog
, but Samuel Beam still hasn’t lost his compassionate touch, just yet.
The Haxan Cloak – Excavation
- R eleased : April 15th, 2013
- For Fans of: Holly Herndon , Vessel or Raime .
- The Harvest: Unripe
Bobby Krlic
doesn’t make you dance, sing, angry, happy or sad. Instead he puts you on the set of
Stanley Kubrick
film using twisted gloomy noises to challenge and scare you.
It only takes one look at the album cover, to prepare you for this English mans take on drone ambience that you would find on a
Jesu
record, but with the rock aspects and vocals stripped and replaced with the dooms-day sounds from
The Terminator
.
If you find the compositions on an
Oneohtrix Point Never
album provocative,
Excavation
will galvanise dark, yet similar thoughts.
Not all the sounds are consistently monopolising though, especially if you’re listening to it via an mp3 format. This would be far more advantageous in a vinyl format, played loud, alone, in a dark room on a stormy Friday night.
One very impressive aspect on this debut album is the unquestionable order of the tracks and in particular the placement of the haunting closing track ‘
The Drop
’. Utilising a simple keyboard melody, the song contains rare emotion, reminiscent of a convincing horror movie where you’re frozen in fear expecting the monster at every turn, only for him to creep up slowly behind the main character during the final scene.
Although this isn’t the most creative ambient album of the year, it’s by far the most uniform and if ‘The Drop’ is an expansive sign of what to expect on the next album, The Haxan Cloak is a rotation keeper.
Sau Poler – A Soundless Echo
- R eleased : April 11th, 2013
- For Fans of: Dauwd , XXYYXX or Koreless.
- The Harvest: Ripening
The Spanish are truly dedicated to authenticated details, from
Deloreon
’s big glo-fi sounds to
John Talabot
‘s ability to bring micro reverb samples to life, they set the production standards continuously high and now Barcelona’s
Sau Poler
is the latest act to join these ranks.
Often a common theme among well informed electronic artists on current music trends is they focus too much on trying to cover their influential tracks, causing them to lose directional focus along the way and even though Sau Poler’s post-dubstep influences from
Dauwd
,
Holy Other
to early
James Blake
are clearly evident throughout this six track EP, the end product is convincing because he commits 100% to what he’s aiming to reproduce here.
His commitment doesn’t lie just in the albums consistency either, it’s also within the unusual amount of house layers found on every track, as he challenges himself to develop multiple hooks on top of what each following track already provided, that builds the EP’s moods up and down seamlessly all the way to albums signature single ‘
Rutes
’.
But despite challenging himself to create several hooks within every track, he doesn’t challenge himself to create them from any new interesting angles or textures and it suffers from being too well perfected and lacking surprises in the end.
But overall while
A Soundless Echo
doesn’t draw the territorial line as uniquely as the other two previously named Spanish artists, it does firmly establish his credibility as a promising electronic dance producer and a force to be reckon with.
Oblivion – Oblivion Soundtrack (M83)
- R eleased : April 9th, 2013
- For Fans of: Joseph Trapanese , Tron: Legacy soundtrack or Transformers soundtrack.
- The Harvest: Unripe
Anthony Gonzalez
from France’s band
M83
finally scoring an American blockbuster film is the equivalent of the NBA’s
Lebron James
taking his physical skill set to the AFL. We may be accustomed to both perfecting their larger than life approach to their current professions, but if they both grew up in different countries, those two careers make more sense. The only difference is Lebron James still may not know what the AFL is, while Anthony Gonzalez has been writing M83s music in front of muted movies for years, dreaming of the chance to score a major film.
Even though he scores Oblivion with
Joseph Trapanese
who produced all of M83s cinematic tracks on their latest album
Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
,
Universal Pictures
are still family traditionalists and were never going to let him produce this soundtrack in the exact form of M83 and it’s unfortunate because unless you’re told Anthony Gonzalez wrote these pieces, it would be impossible to differentiate the music style between any other overly dramatic blockbuster, with big string sections and cymbal crashes like a transformer has crashed into the Pacific Ocean.
Despite the limitations brought upon Anthony, all 17 tracks comes off inspired, fulfilling, committed to the theme and yet diverse just enough to cover the arrange emotions played throughout the movie.
They’re are also a couple moments containing complex drum patterns and noises buried in the backgrounds often not found in family movies such as ‘
Earth 2077
’ and ‘
Radiation Zone
’, but only on ‘
Oblivion (featuring Susanne Sundfar)’
do you get the best of both worlds, where you can finally hear Anthony’s signature M83 sound unaffected by the orchestra.
But more often than not, he’s forced to build around those generic tense violins found during Lightsaber scenes in
Star Wars
.
This is not the game-changing soundtrack for Hollywood movies I was hoping for, but it’s still a very impressive debut-impersonation of classic blockbuster soundtracks, that’ll hopefully lead to Anthony scoring more films where he can really stamp his signature sound on to a $100 Million dollar movie.
James Blake – Overgrown
- R eleased : 9 April, 2013
- For fans of: Antony And The Johnsons , Perfume Genius or Hercules And Love Affair .
- The Harvest: Ripening
James Blake had all the momentum going for him by the time he dropped his full-length debut in 2011. He had already gained online respect for his post-dubstep EP during the height of the counter bro-step, then the first two highlight singles of his self-titled album revealed he had a classically trained voice. This surprising element left the rest of the album to be thought of as just an added bonus for someone adjusting to incorporating this new weapon. Since this however, his harmonic entwining techniques have been reproduced to death by countless fans and it turned out that the cover ‘ Limit To Your Love ’ wasn’t the only non-original single, as ‘ The Wilhelm Scream ’ was a re-work of his father’s material. Those issues together with England’s decline in producing trend-setting new artists left James Blake with a lot of unreasonable pressure for Overgrown . For the most part, he handles it admirably on ‘ Overgrown ’, ‘ Retrograde ’ and ‘ To The Last ’, where each track has had time to simmer, develop a natural progression and conclude satisfyingly. There are moments, however, when he attempts to push the boundaries of the album’s arc with incomplete results. Take ‘ Take A Fall For Me (feat. RZA) ’ where he successfully tackles a hip hop influence, except RZA takes over the track to the point where the track would be more suited for RZA’s next release under ‘title-produced by James Blake’. Thanks to Brian Eno , I applaud ‘ Digitial Lion ’ for its broad textures and progression, except it comes to an early end, with the same anti-conclusion as on the Metronomy influenced dancefloor track ‘ Voyeur ’, where he coalesces a four-on-the-floor kick drum, cow bell and eerie mechanical noises, only to build these layers to nowhere in the end. But I’m taking James Blake for granted here, because despite the album’s in-completion, overall it’s a very amiable piece of work, by an exceptional musician, who’s leech is being held by none other than himself.
Kurt Vile – Waking On A Pretty Daze
- Released : 9 April, 2013
- For fans of: The War On Drugs , Woods or Deerhunter .
- The Harvest: Ripe
MP3: ‘ Waking On Pretty Day ‘
I still ponder; what if Philadelphia’s Kurt Vile and The War On Drugs - who both broke out internationally in 2011 – didn’t part ways three years prior in 2008. The upside was Kurt Vile, who was just the lead guitarist, was able to release his charming signature vocal slur on the world. His breakthrough Smoke Ring For My Halo displayed his ability to write traditional singles, that are still as enjoyable today in ‘ Baby’s Arms ’ and ‘ Jesus Fever ’, however his latest album Waking On A Pretty Daze explores the expansive territory of the prior album’s closing track, ‘ Ghost Town ’. It’s a bald and yet wise decision. The industry is full of dull artists popping up with short catchy singles and not much following substance; this is what makes Kurt Vile special – his charisma’s ability to capture and keep your attention throughout an album containing average track lengths of over 6 minutes. For first time listeners, this may be a slightly challenging descent, as Kurt Vile loves to strum his guitar a split second off the drums and then sing another split second off that guitar strum, but once you adjust to his loving nature, he’ll have you questioning every structural technique in the book. Overall Waking On A Pretty Daze succeeds conceptually by manifesting the importance of being comfortable in your own recording space, and not being writhed into self doubt. It’s one thing to chill out in controlled short doses – it’s another to lose yourself in it forever, as Kurt Vile has embraced.
WORDS BY Marcus Rimondini
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