Pretty Lights - A Color Map of the Sun [2013] [DELUXE]

The album is the first of Smith's to be composed from his own originally produced music in its entirety. Smith's recordings were pressed as samples to vinyl and then mixed using modular synthesis. In describing why he chose this requirement, Smith has stated: "I was trying to think of something that would be a massive challenge for myself and just a really cool project. I wanted to also prove to myself I could do it."

VIDEO Pretty Lights - Yellow Bird - A Color Map of the Sun

Yellowbirds - Songs From The Vanished Frontier (2013)

Yellowbirds, once the solo vehicle of Sunshine Apollo’s Sam Cohen, has developed into a fully-fledged band with the sophomore release, Songs From The Vanished Frontier. As songwriter, singer, and guitarist you still get the feeling that this is very much Cohen’s gig, but the additions of drummer Brian Kantor, vocalist/bassist Annie Nero, and her multi-instrumentalist husband Josh Kaufman have brought further refinement to Cohen’s schtick.

Yellowbird - Stop Tonight

Yellowbirds - Mean Maybe

Selebrities - Lovely Things (2013)

Brooklyn's Selebrities return with their anticipated second album, Lovely Things. Known for their ability to capture the sound of neon New York, the band shows a softer, subtler side to their songwriting with the new material.


Selebrities - Temporary Touch


Selebrities - Baroque


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Tesla Boy - The Universe Made of Darkness (2013)

Russian pop music has undeniably come a long way since its shy development over the last 20 years, and has only just started to make waves within the international consciousness. Enter Tesla Boy, a quintessential Synth-pop/New wave project created in 2008 that was not only spawned from an era of hungry youth in ‘80s and ‘90s Moscow that eagerly sought out new and experimental pop music from abroad, but is leading the next generation of Russian electronic artists to take on the global scene with force.


Tesla Boy is charismatic frontman and producer Anton Sedidov, who from an early age learnt to speak the international language of music through his father’s old vinyl collection that included Ray Charles, Prince, Stevie Wonder and Blondie. From here, a clear affinity with ‘80s pop and soul from the US and Britain emerged, and has since played a strong role in crafting the Tesla Boy identity. From their beginnings with the release of debut single Electric Lady and first LP Modern Thrills in 2010, the sounds of Tesla Boy’s global influences are immediate, with their acclaimed follow-up single Split, produced to a high level with deep catchy melodies and disco undertones.

Tesla Boy - Dream Machine

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Cloud Boat - Book Of Hours (2013)

"Apollo present the beautiful debut LP 'Book of Hours' from Cloud Boat aka London duo Sam Ricketts and Tom Clarke. This deep and dreamy debut brilliantly showcases them as part of a generation for whom electronic production and songwriting are far from separate worlds similar to childhood friend James Blake. Soft-edged but monumentally huge bass tones in 'Youthern' support Sam's Ennio Morricone-esque guitars and Tom's velvety folk lament. 'Drean' is even more bare, a fingerpicked acoustic ballad with insidious waves of background guitar that well up, sounding both ancient and sci-fi despite having none of the obvious signifiers of 'futuristic' electronica. On 'Wanderlust' Tom hits a liturgical tone, a hymnal yearning filling the song as a cloud of Burial-like crackles rise up around it creating pressure despite their delicacy and showing how it's possible for Cloud Boat to maintain intensity with the most unlikely source materials."

Cloud Boat - Wanderlust

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Portugal. The Man - Evil Friends (2013)

Portugal. The Man have made their new album.
Produced by Danger Mouse (Gnarls Barkley, The Black Keys, Broken Bells), Evil Friends showcases an even stronger psych-rock influence than the group’s previous work. It also marks the band’s second release on a major label.

Portugal. The Man - Plastic Soldiers

Portugal. The Man - Evil Friends

David Lemaitre - Latitude (2013)

"As musicians, we have to travel a lot," David Lemaitre sighs calmly. "Goodbye is a word we are forced to use on a daily basis. My younger brother just got a tattoo that says, 'The idea is to be in a state of constant departure while always arriving', and I really don't feel I actually belong somewhere. But I like that. Take the best from all the places and people you mingle with. I don't define myself through where I'm from anymore. It's more important where you're going."

David Lemaitre - MEGALOMANIA

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Young Man - Beyond Was All Around Me (2013)

Beyond Was All Around Me is Caulfield's last album as Young Man; he'll move on to another moniker and project after it. The record is out April 9th on Frenchkiss, and Young Man will tour the United States from April 8th to May 10th.

Young Man "In A Sense"

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Pick a Piper - Pick a Piper (2013)

Overseen, produced, and recorded by Caribou’s Brad Weber, Pick a Piper is his collaboration with Clint Scrivener, Angus Fraser, Dan Roberts, and others. Over the course of two EPs and a forthcoming album, the project has combined dance-music structures, a palette evocative of the natural world, and an increasingly heavy focus on electronics and production technique to create a sound poised between the organic and the synthetic.

Pick a Piper - All Her Colours

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Helado Negro - Invisible Life (2013)

Roberto Carlos Lange hizo crecer sus raíces ecuatorianas y las convirtió en frondosos árboles, hasta el punto de hacerlos transnacionales y policulturales: con la música como epicentro, se dedicó a expresar en audio, vídeo y performances todo aquello que removía sus entrañas, siempre inclinado al paso, entregado a la pausa y el despliegue rítmico en perjuicio del trote cuadrado.

En sus casas de Florida, Georgia y Brooklyn siempre sonó la música, especialmente la generada por el espíritu inquieto de un creador que se sirve de la electrónica y la ensoñación para facturar piezas impactantes. Su última creación editada es Invisible Life, un racimo de canciones con trazo grueso y elegante, que parecen flotar a diez centímetros del suelo y sortear los árboles de un bosque tropical para envolverlos en tejido ignífugo. Música que sana sin pretenderlo.

Helado Negro - Dance Ghost

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Still Corners - Strange Pleasures 2013

Riding that insatiable kinesis over the last two years has resulted in Hughes, along with singing accomplice Tessa Murray, fashioning a devastating sophomore album, Strange Pleasures, which is surely destined to usher Still Corners to a deserved place at cerebral dream-pop’s high table. Where its predecessor soared on sugared layers of shoegazing-infused retro-futurism, Strange Pleasures proffers a leaner, more acute extrapolation of ’80s-suffused song and studio craft, navigating a sinuous trajectory between velveteen Angelo Badalamenti noir-pop torch song sophistication and ethereal Cocteau Twins beauty, with exquisite meanders through the glacial but mellifluous territory first mapped by Modern English, The Cure and The Passions, with nods along the way to cool, graceful detachment a la ’80s Euro avant-poppers such as Berntholer and Virna Lindt.

Still Corners - The Trip

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Still Corners - Creatures of an Hour (2011)

Still Corners is the musical project of songwriter/producer Greg Hughes and vocalist Tessa Murray. The London-based duo signed with record label Sub Pop in 2011 and issued their first full-length debut, Creatures of an Hour.

Still Corners - Cuckoo

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Dan Croll - From Nowhere (2013)

Dan Croll is a 22-year-old, Liverpool-based songwriter that is aiming to light your SXSW experience on fire. The electronic-leaning singer will release his debut EP From Nowhere on March 12.

B3Science had this quote from the artist:

“Whatever is on around me makes it into my head. I always like to say it’s a balance between acoustic, folk and digital. I’m between two points. I don’t know what you’d call that, a genre that hasn’t got a name.”

Dan Croll - From Nowhere

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Post War Years - Galapagos (2013)

Post War Years - The Bell

Post War Years are a glorious mess of contradictions. The group’s new tracks are simultaneously complex and epic, fuzzy and clear, and all underpinned by polyrhythmic beats that could start a party pretty much anywhere. It is ecstatic indie soaked in a deep love of forward-thinking electronic music. Their new song “The Bell” begins with militant beats straight out of Portishead’s Third and evolves into a synth-laden life-affirming slice of dancefloor-friendly magic.

“We have a penchant for great pop music and we’re partial to experimentalism, so we sit somewhere in the middle,” says Henry Riggs (vocals and guitar). Take last December’s knockout single, “All Eyes” (released on new independent label Labour of Love), which featured big bad drums and a memorable synth line, offset by Tobias Stretch’s otherworldly video that starred a fearful alien called Gorky.

It’s a long way from the days of playing “standard garage rock” in Royal Leamington Spa, where they started. The four-piece have all known each other since they were kids. They did the obliging unsigned band thing, sending demos off in vain, playing circuit venues, before relocating to London, all moving into the same East-London warehouse. “It was the dream really,” says Henry. “We learned how to produce and record our own music there, just bought some equipment and ploughed ahead. You’d have Tom knocking on all of our doors in the morning telling us to get out of bed and get to work. It was a really cheap way of doing it but it did get a bit claustrophobic. We had all of our girlfriends living there as well.”

“It was quite an amazing period of time,” says Simon. “We’d often stay up until four in the morning recording, or we’d just wander around getting to know London. I’m not sure that many people in Leamington completely understood what we were trying to do, so it felt like starting again.”

Chess Club Records pulled them out of obscurity after checking them out at the End of the Road Festival. When the DIY label released the house-inspired track “Black Morning”, the press started to stir and the band soon self-released their first album The Greats and the Happenings.

Listening back to their debut now stirs up mixed emotions for the band. “It sounds like what it is – a lo-fi album that we recorded and produced ourselves,” says Simon. “We were only just beginning to learn how to use our instruments at that time and were recording in a small box room in the warehouse. It was an interesting period of time. We weren’t earning any money and we all started to fall out. Relationships started to fracture.”

Did the band think about splitting up? “There were a few depressing moments. I’d never physically hit anyone in my entire life, but I hit Fred around that time. When things like that happen you suddenly realise the desperate nature of the situation, it was quite horrible actually. But you fall out with the people who are closest to you, don’t you?”

Out of the blue during the summer of 2009, European promoters started getting in touch after the band had – unbeknownst to them – been getting a lot of radio play across the continent. Playing the resulting shows in Europe was the game-changer for the band’s future. “Suddenly we were playing in bigger venues, and festivals with really good audiences,” says Simon. “We were used to basement venues and small clubs at that time, so it just flipped everything around, and it felt like a worth-while project again.”

The most influential stop-off in terms of the band’s new direction was Germany. “We started getting into German electronic music like Modeselektor and Pantha Du Prince,” says Henry. “Doing things like Sonar in Barcelona opened our eyes to the fact that there was all this incredible electronic music around that was distinctly European sounding,” Simon adds. “We came back and started the new record. It was like a new beginning.”

To bolster the confident new direction, the band enlisted the talents of Philadelphia’s far out animator and filmmaker, Tobias Stretch. “We’ve been big fans of his work since we saw an Efterklang video that he created a few years ago – he’s a really talented artist” says Simon. “At first, I sent him a really self-deprecating email about our first album, he didn’t get back in touch. A few months later we sent him our new songs, and he did.”

Tobias has duly bestowed his brand of dream-logic surreality upon the band. On top of making the video for “All Eyes”, he has designed striking cover art for the “Glass House” EP and the forthcoming “The Bell” EP and will be involved with the band’s videos and artwork for the foreseeable future.

Over the last year and a half the band have been working with producer James Rutledge on the material for the second album, creating songs bursting with an explosive sense of sonic freedom, yet tied together by a strong pop sensibility. “With this record we wanted our songs to sound more immediate and urgent, so James was perfect,” says bassist Tom. “He’s interested in soundscapes, synthesized textures, and sampling, but he is also quite pop-minded. The four of us created lots of ideas and noises that maybe didn’t sit together at first, but he instinctively knew which ideas to run with. He’s really good at knowing when to keep certain things really simple.”

For these four old friends, the next 12 months look set to be as mind-bendingly bright as the colourful music they make. So just how far can take their free-flowing electronic prog-dance party? “To be able to do it for as long as possible without ever repeating ourselves is the ideal,” says Henry. “We’re older now, and perhaps we lost that romantic idea of what being in a band is about. Now we’re closer to understanding the reality of it, it feels more real…” says Simon. “...we started making this record because we felt we had to create something, not because we want people to be screaming our names.” That might be the case, but armed with tunes like these, it’s an outcome that feels inevitable.


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Millionyoung - Variable (2013)

Millionyoung - Lovin

Millionyoung's sound is often associated with fellow "chillwave" acts including Washed Out, Memory Tapes, and Small Black, however, Diaz seems more inclined to speeding things up in favor of sound that is much more kinetic than what the genre is known for. On January 19th, Millionyoung released the long awaited Be So True EP via Arcade Sound Ltd. The 5 track cassette (limited to 200 copies) included tracks "Cynthia" and "Mien", both of which have been receiving generous acclaim across several blogs. In addition, 2010 will also see the release of Millionyoung's first full length release which he is currently recording at home in Coral Springs, FL; where the project originated. Eager to make "feel good" music, Mike Diaz began writing, recording, and performing as Millionyoung in early fall of 2009, and armed only with a laptop, keyboard, guitar, and vocals, he has managed to turn his live shows into energetic dance parties complete with driving bass and strobing lights. "Diaz uses the movement's familiar elements-- the gauzy synth lines and faraway vocals-- but ratchets up the BPM to underscore a more hedonistic mindset."


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Gliss – Langsom Dans (2013)

Gliss - "Weight of Love"

Danish/American three-piece: Gliss, are late night fucked up art pop. They’ve toured w/ Glasvegas, The Horrors, The Raveonettes, Editors, and more. Blending Scandinavian cool with American experimental soundscapes.

Members:
Victoria Cecilia
Martin Klingman
David Reiss

Gliss is set to release their much anticipated new album “LANGSOM DANS” in early 2012 / mixed by Michael Patterson (Beck, Ladytron, The Social Network) / Mastered by Henrik Jonsson (Fever Ray, Lykki Li, Peter Bjorn & John).

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Laurence And The Slab Boys - Lo-Fi Disgrace (2012)

Laurence and the Slab Boys are a noise-pop collective based in Manchester-via-Berlin-via-Glasgow. Their sound is a lyric-driven sonic-tapestry of fuzz-guitar, dulcet feedback and contorted, echo-soaked vocal harmonies.

Debut album, Lo-Fi Disgrace (released June 2012), was recorded during the harshest Berlin winter in memory. Its songs are layered with tape-effects, haunting found sounds and abstract electronics. Live, the band strip back and fill any gaps with a more primal guitar adrenaline.

Lo-Fi Disgrace has already received repeated airplay on Radio 1 and BBC 6 Music (Steve Lamacq / Tom Robinson). The band will play a handful of festivals over the summer, before returning to the studio to begin work on their next record.


Laurence & The Slab Boys - Space Dream #2

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VA - Education Francaise (2012)

France
Year Of Release: 2012
Genre: Electronic, Synth Pop, Acoustic, Folk Rock, Electro, Indie Pop/Rock, Chanson

St - Michel-Katherine

Lescop - La Forкt

The Popopopops - R'n'r

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Some Army - EP - 2012

Genre: Indie-Rock

Country: usa

Year: 2012

Some Army - Under the Streetlights

INFO


"Some Army's songs are sprawling, spacious things that bear impressive emotional weight. With a tantalizing 10 minutes of music on its January 7-inch, Some Army anticipates releasing an LP this year or so. Let's hope it's soon." -- Corbie Hill, THE INDEPENDENT


"All hail a simple triumph of songwriting here from North Carolina's Some Army. Smouldering chamber pop par excellence. " -- ELECTRIC SOUND OF JOY


"As Russell Baggett’s prior band, The Honored Guests, faded into a period of inactivity after a pair of 2010 releases with suddenly prescient titles (Into Nostalgia and Please Try Again), and its members started families and new bands, Baggett’s songwriting bug didn’t quit gnawing. And with the formation of Some Army last year, Baggett’s music has taken a steady step forward. The band’s three-song debut is an assured and ambitious 10 minutes, deftly casting nuanced atmosphere and running between bleary melancholic slow-pop and barely-restrained arena-rock vamps. Textured with shoegaze guitars and dreamy keys, Some Army’s debut is an artful and accomplished opening salvo. Luckier still, these three songs have been promised to reappear with the company of others on Some Army’s eventual LP." -- Bryan Reed, SHUFFLE MAGAZINE


"When seven-inch singles include more than two songs, the music between the grooves is generally spasmodic and short—breakneck hardcore, blasting noise, bursting power-pop. But the three tracks on the debut release from Chapel Hill scene-vet sextet Some Army are more concerned with the romantic, slow-build-and-burn side of psychedelic rock than with loud entrances and quick exits. Both "Servant Tires" and "Fall on Your Sword" open as if amid a haze, with frontman Russ Baggett leading his new band through drifts that steadily escalate into squall. Languid and damaged, "Fall on Your Sword" twinkles politely before grinding through a web of noise and sustain, like a more delicate My Morning Jacket tune with a gnarled solo courtesy of Wilco's Nels Cline. On "Servant Tires," a bed of slide-guitar hum, keyboard glow and primal backbeat diligently builds into one final exhalation, putting Baggett's world-weariness momentarily to rest like a babe at naptime.

Though the other track, "Queens," lasts for just 49 seconds, it's a very telling instrumental interlude. Sitting between the single's two anthems, it betrays a band with album-length ambitions, or at least the smarts to treat the two halves of this debut as the foundation of a repertoire that's bound, like these songs, to bloom." -- Grayson Currin, THE INDEPENDENT

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