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Midas Fall

Cold Waves Divide Us

    Scottish alt/post/progressive-rock outfit Midas Fall release their Fifth studio album, ‘Cold Waves Divide Us’ worldwide on Monotreme Records. Michael Hamilton joins founding members Elizabeth Heaton and Rowan Burn for the follow-up to their 2018 Prog Magazine Awards ‘Limelight Award’ winning album, ‘Evaporate’. ‘Cold Waves Divide Us’ sees Midas Fall at their most confidently visceral, each song moving beautifully between quiet and loud, gentle and crushing.

    “This album is a heavier and bigger experience than the last album”, says Heaton. “We kept the atmospheric strings and 80s synths of Evaporate but wanted to add heavier layered elements, to represent more what we sound like live.” Opener ‘In the Morning We’ll Be Someone Else’ starts quietly with serene piano and vocals, ominously ratcheting up the tension to walls of crashing guitars and Heaton’s soaring vocals. ‘I Am Wrong’ thunders along on pounding rhythmic drums swirling around heavy swathes of low and delicate melodic highs.

    On ‘Monsters’, the band are more contemplative, with an ethereal beginning making way for gorgeously syncopated guitar and drums, whilst ‘Cold Waves Divide Us’ builds slower, allowing Heaton’s voice to gracefully float over the growing force beneath it. ‘Avalanche’ is a bittersweet lullaby showcasing Heaton’s heart-rending vocals in one of the quieter moments on the album. ‘Point of Diminishing Return’ sees a more electronic influence, with glittering shimmered synths taking the space where guitar melodies were, but with all of the Post Rock beauty that the duo are known for, something ‘Little Wooden Boxes’ showcases perfectly, expertly hovering between gentle clean guitar and piano, and exhilarating, uplifting full-band, full-bore epic. 

    TRACK LISTING

    1. In The Morning We'll Be Someone Else
    2. I Am Wrong
    3. Salt
    4. In This Avalanche
    5. Point Of Diminishing Return
    6. Monsters
    7. Atrophy
    8. Cold Waves Divide Us
    9. Little Wooden Boxes
    10. Mute

    Barzin

    Voyeurs In The Dark

      Four years in making, Voyeurs In the Dark is Toronto artist Barzin’s fifth studio album. That the album is more cinematic in its scope and conceptual in feel than his previous studio albums can be attributed to the time he spent over the past several years composing the soundtrack for the independent film, Viewfinder. Voyeurs In the Dark retains that cinematic quality, and at the same time infuses the music with elements taken from Jazz, electronica, rock and pop. Having primarily explored the quiet side pop and folk in his previous four albums, Barzin has expanded his musical palate, broadening his sound towards a more an experimental direction, while still retaining his preoccupation with exploring the internal landscape. The uniformity of sound that characterized the previous albums has been abandoned for the expression of differing aspects of the self that at times hold opposing views and desires.

      This is best represented in the image chosen for the cover of the album, which depicts three figures in one body. The album seems to be the expression of not one unified self, but the various aspects of the self. Voyeurs In the Dark sees the artist plot a seductive, contemplative route through city haze, shuttling between graceful glimmering interludes, with wonderfully atmospheric songs at every stop. From opener Voyeurs In the Dark’s first guitar strums and the fizz of its drum machine, the record envelopes itself in a glorious shadow, as shown in the slow waltz of I Don’t Want To Sober Up, dancing around its own swirling guitar chords. On Watching, Barzin plunges himself deeper into a wash of cyclic bass, guitar and synth riffs, as the gloom grooves into light. It’s Never Too Late To Lose Your Life has a much more affirming and urgent tone, shade turning into shapes and motion, while To Be Missed In the End builds its own smoke in a cloud of saxophone and sparse guitar notes, closing out a record full to the brim with scatterbrain beauty and eclectic dusk.

      TRACK LISTING

      1. Voyeurs In The Dark
      2. Born Yesterday
      3. Knife In The Water
      4. Watching
      5. Golden Stairs
      6. I Don’t Want To Sober Up
      7. Impossible Voice
      8. It’s Never Too Late To Lose Your Life
      9. Forever Arriving
      10. To Be Missed In The End
      11. Distant Memories

      Thee More Shallows

      Dad Jams

        Three-piece US experimental indie-rock band Thee More Shallows released three albums and a couple of EPs back in the early 00’s, garnering widespread critical acclaim and a cult following before the band disbanded. Each of the members moved into new phases of their lives. Now, frontman Dee Kesler has emerged from the wilderness working under the Thee More Shallows moniker again with the help of some previous band members and some new musicians. ‘Dad Jams’ is an indie-pop ode to waking up middle aged with kids. Musically, it retains the adventurous, experimental edge of previous Thee More Shallows albums, but it is also rooted in a stronger pop sensibility, with plenty of bouncy, hooky melodies that burrow into the mind for days. First single ‘Ancient Baby’ rockets the album open with an invigorating blast of psychedelic hippy-infused pop, its weaving flute refrain becoming more and more embedded in the mind with each return. ‘Boogie Woogie’ builds around a restrained synth groove that surprises and delights with crystalline harmonies in the sort of way bands like Foster The People and The Temper Trap combine sensitive emotive themes in a tightly packed indie formula.

        Elsewhere on the album the catchy warped acoustic melodies of ‘Drinking Tang’ expand into bubbly synths and ice-cream sweet reflective heart-tugging goodness, and ‘Hey, Come On!’ moves more sparsely with a distant drum machine underpinning melancholic lyrics. Each track on this record unfurls in its own way, with more and more sonic gems to find on each listen. ‘Dad Jams’ is probably the coolest album anyone’s ever written about fatherhood. The album’s playful melting pot of sounds combines eccentric experimentation with perfect epic pop moments, achieving the mysterious feat of merging electronic, experimental and indie rock genres seamlessly for an intriguing set of incredibly engaging earworms

        TRACK LISTING

        1. Ancient Baby
        2. A Mummy At The Lake
        3. Boogie Woogie
        4. Cold Picture
        5. Copy Body
        6. Drinking Tang
        7. Little Brave Friends
        8. Hey, Come On!
        9. Hocus Pocus
        10. A Strobelight On A Dumb Dancefloor
        11. Wizard Wednesdays

        Following the release of their debut collaborative EP, Chasing Honeybees, in February 2014, UK producer Stumbleine (aka Peter Cooper) and vocalist/songwriter Violet Skies deliver their first full-length album, Dissolver. In it, the duo continues to explore the fusion of Stumbleine’s electronic beats and dreamy, shoegaze guitars with Violet Skies’ soulful pop / R’NB vocals. From the slow-burning soul of opener Thunderdome through the catchy melodic pop of Sunset Boulevard and Heroine, the propulsive R’NB of Her Touch and Whirlpool and the swirling shoegaze-infused balladry of One Step Closer and Sleeping Through The Day, Dissolver delivers a welcome progression to the pop genre that seamlessly blends classic pop sensibilities with modern R’NB, contemporary electronica and 80’s shoegaze indie. The music still retains the trademark lush production that Stumbleine is noted for, with strong melody lines and compelling lyrics penned by Violet Skies.

        With Violet now involved in the songwriting, Peter affirms that she’s given Stumbleine a face and stamped his music with her personality. “She makes the music stand out and has opened the door to a wider audience,” he says, “I’ve pushed myself much harder over the past year to create something a bit different”. With Dissolver, Peter has added Violet’s vitality to the dreamy essence of Stumbleine and the results are breathtaking. Violet Skies has recently launched her own solo career, with the recent debut of her first track “How The Mighty”.

        TRACK LISTING

        1. Thunderdome
        2. Sunset Boulevard
        3. We’re Shadows
        4. Her Touch
        5. Heroine
        6. Whirlpool
        7. One Step Closer
        8. Baby Don’t Go
        9. XYZ
        10. Sleeping Through The Day

        Holy Vacants, the fourth album from Trophy Scars, sees the New Jersey quartet deliver their magnum opus as they continue to evolve their sound. The album was initially worked up as a 35-page screenplay by vocalist/lyricist Jerry Jones and is even more ambitious than 2011's Never Born Never Dead, which took reincarnation as its theme. Holy Vacants uses as its springboard a bizarre cocktail of mythology, ancient religion, and conspiracy theory surrounding the Nephilitic gene. The album revolves around Jones's tale of two lovers who have discovered not only that the blood of angels contains the fountain of youth, but also the formula for Qeres. This ancient Egyptian perfume is claimed to be the only substance that can kill angels and Nephilites, who are the supposed offspring of angels/human unions. Armed with this knowledge, the couple embark on a killing spree, drinking spilled Nephilitic blood to stop growing old. The narrative may be conceptually out-there, but it doesn’t fence the album in and stands as a metaphor for far simpler and more widely recognized issues – the idealization of youth, loss of identity and corrupted innocence.

        It’s also Jones’ personal way of drawing a line under an intense past relationship: “The album was about being so in love with somebody that they literally destroy you,” he explains. “I had to write the album as a way of exorcising this person from my mind and soul. I wanted a Bonnie and Clyde-type story, because I’ve always loved that. There’s something beautiful about the idea of rebelling together against something and losing yourself in the rebellion to the extent that it destroys your life. It’s the doomed romanticism thing.” Holy Vacants was intended the band’s final album , but instead constitutes a complete rebirth. “I thought we had one more record in us and we wanted to go out with a bang”,says Jones. Guitarist Ferrara, who Jones calls “an unbelievable composer”, sent the singer some bare-bones riffs and he found himself connecting with them immediately, hearing how they might work with strings here, a Moog and organ, maybe some brass and an all-girl choir there. And listening to the likes of opener “Archangel” and “Qeres”, with its free-wheeling but complex and cathartic, psychedelic blues, it’s obvious the band have moved light years away from their post-hardcore early years. They reveal their admiration for fellow New Jersey son Springsteen, circa Darkness on the Edge of Town with “Crystallophobia”, “Everything Disappearing” and “Extant”, and for Jimi Hendrix via “Hagiophobia”, while elsewhere there are echoes of Guns N’ Roses and The Mars Volta. But what might sound like an unworkable agglomeration of disparate parts is an intense and cohesive, hugely compelling whole, with powerful contrasts that make for a visceral immediacy.

        TRACK LISTING

        1. Extant
        2. Qeres
        3. Archangel
        4. Crystallophobia
        5. Burning Mirror
        6. Hagiophobia
        7. Chicago Typewriter
        8. Vertigo
        9. Gutted
        10. Every City, Vacant
        11. Everything Disappearing
        12. Nyctophobia

        The Low Lows

        Elizabeth Pier

          Athens, Georgia trio The Low Lows return to Europe in February to promote their new single, "Elizabeth Pier". The title track is taken from their forthcoming album, "Little Tigers". Backed with B-side "Raining In Eva", and the video for "Dear Flies, Love Spider". Their debut album "Fire On The Bright Sky" was released in October. It's a radiant, desperate prom-night of a record, in which stark southern sweetness gives way unexpectedly to great storms of guitar noise. Sheets of dissonance and singer P.L. Noon's arcing wail conjure Galaxie 500 or "Electr-O-Pura" era Yo La Tengo, while bright walls of country narcosis à la My Morning Jacket crumble into climactic, stomping feedback and lush, sad balladry.

          Cerberus Shoal

          The Land We Believe In

            Cerberus Shoal come from the state of Maine in the USA. They exist as an ever-evolving collective of musicians, who have, over more than a decade, produced 11 releases, which are quite varied in style. "The Land We All Believe In" is an exhilarating journey through the weird and wonderful realms of twisted avant-folk-pop, combining psychedelic, African, Arabic, Eastern European and other forms of music with some truly unique vocal performances.


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