Maybeshewill

But maybe she will…

A friend introduced me to this band. There’s nothing particularly awesome about them in fact, they’re just a very good post-rock band, that can remind you of many others but thinking, hey these guys have some variety. And they did make The Paris Hilton Sex Tape song worth its title.

download Sing The World In Four-Part Harmony (latest album)

download Japanese Spy Transcript EP (debut, should be yout first listening) + Not For Want Of Trying

band website

Julian Plenti Is… Skyscraper

There are always only a few rock singers that can sing something like “Shake me… shake me… skyscraper” and have us listen like it’s not really important because you really feel the music and perhaps it’s more about the background or something. In any case, Paul Banks of Interpol has become one of those. Some of these songs remind me of the band, not so much on the surface because this is largely a solo experiment, there are finger picking acoustic guitars crossed with atmospheric beat loops, but the way he sings and the song flow and layout. And it works, because he is really good at making simple sound great.

download // artist page

Bibio – Ambivalence Avenue

To me previously unknown British artist Stephen Wilkinson aka Bibio made one excellent album that’s, as all good ones, kinda hard to describe – it’s largely electronic music but at the same time it floats back and forth between folk and funk let’s say. Mellow but experimental, it grows on me on each listen. I don’t associate the music to a perfectly ordered street with identical cars parked on the side… rather to an afternoon out on a hill.

download // artist page

The Aliens – Luna

A great release from The Aliens, whose members stem from Beta Band. The album goes on for more than an hour, two songs over ten minutes, but this album is in fact a constant stream of different musical ideas – sometimes they’re pieced together in one song, sometimes they split, lose the focus a bit and wander off. The essence of Luna are vocal harmonies in differrent styles, from glam, funk and ballad to Syd Barret-flavoured pop psyche, with lots of effects and layered instruments playing behind. Would be a great live experience I imagine.

download

band website

Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

Merriweather Post Pavilion is one of those albums which, after you’ve listened to it for the first time, you don’t really remember a lot, it leaves you overwhelmed with sounds but you just know that you’re gonna love it as you listen to it again and again. My ticket to the strange world of Animal Collective was the adorable Panda Bear’s solo album.

The songs here are a constant overlapping celebration, odes to joy wrapped in synthesized sounds. Most of the sounds actually come from various electronics, yet there is no sense of artificial or alienation – on the contrary, it is so much more human than anything. Like our thoughts and feelings, they unpredictably meander and twist between familiar (the sky-high melodies) and unknown (the psychedelic electronic sounds). It’s most likely one the albums which will mark the year ahead of us.

download

band on myspace

Jaga Jazzist – What We Must

Oh finally I get a chance to check out the ten Scandinavian jazz outcasts Jaga Jazzist. I love it! This is awesome, probably as good as it gets at the moment when you mix jazz with one or two rock people in a band exploring electronic sounds. And it fits the winter time.

This is a FLAC rip of a limited double CD edition in cardboard slipcase with a bonus CD “Spydeberg Sessions”.

download

band web site

Fennesz – Black Sea

An album that sounds like a human response to whales. A soundtrack to a transformation, a texturized loop into eternity. Will keep an open eye on Fennesz from now on, happy to have discovered him.

download

artist web site

Hauschka – Ferndorf

Volker Bertelmann aka Hauschka is a pianist and composer from Germany exploring the possibilities of prepared piano – where one plays a piano that had its sound altered by placing objects between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers. So what he’s doing is:

Clamping wedges of leather, felt or rubber between the strings; preparing the hammers with aluminium paper or rough films; placing crown corks on the strings, weaving guitar strings around the piano’s guts, or pasting them down with gaffa tape – his resulting tracks are composed both originally and charmingly. The results are vivid, unconventional pieces made in a spirit of playful research-enthusiasm.

And the last sentence there holds true – often together with a string duo, the compositions on this album actually grow into each other as an orchestrated daydream – on a distant village (Ferndorf) indeed.

download

hauschka on myspace

Beck – Modern Guilt

Dunno why I never posted about this; I often return to it these days. It’s such a juicy beat box with psyched vocals and vintage collage sounds. Yet it’s all very modern. It often happens with Beck, but I haven’t been into none of his albums this much. The important factor this time must be the album’s length – about half an hour, just right for each idea to have its own time and leave space for another, all equally good. Catchy and thoughtful at the same time.

download

Edit: this torrent’s track 6 can’t be played, it has a virus it seems. Somethign more awesome can be found on Demonoid, a vinyl rip.

One Day As a Lion EP

No matter how hard you try… Yeah so we now have Zach De La Rocha’s solo album where he’s in a duo with an ex-Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodore. I don’t know, maybe we don’t need a RATM reunion after all?

download

official website