bella union – and so she thinks

Drab City – Troubled Girl

admin — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 10:27:04 +0000

Dream like with a heady air of dislocation, Drab City’s new track Troubled Girl is a tells the story of a misunderstood and belittled teen girl’s angst and her dreams of escape. Dreamy and ethereal, a foundation of flute, vibraphone, and jazzy guitar chord melody switch to drum machines and pop in fleeting moments. There’s a slightly trippy vibe, with a nod to the Shangri-Las going down, as though filtered through samples and beats. It’s the new single off their album Good Songs For Bad People out 12th June via Bella Union, which features songs of innocence and experience merging with dub, hip-hop, dream-pop and jazzy soundtrack vibes to intoxicating effect. Simultaneously catchy, yet unfamiliar, it’s a beguiling mix.

Marissa Nadler – Said Goodbye To That Car

admin — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 11:51:01 +0000

Marissa Nadler has shared an entrancing black and white video for Said Goodbye To That Car, the final track on her recently released album For My Crimes, (out now on Bella Union) of which she says: “It’s a song about a car but the car is never shown in the video. Instead, snippets of memories associated with the time period in the song go through in a haze. Memories can be surreal and non–linear and more impressionistic than realistic. This video aims to capture that fleeting feeling of life’s experiences being marked by certain vivid memories. Much of the footage was taken out of car windows.’ There’s a strength to the song, even in its tenderness. Brooding, eerie, and spellbinding, there’s a shimmering and potent vibe that threads throughout. Beautiful.

Hilang Child – Crow

admin — Fri, 20 Jul 2018 08:38:55 +0000

Soaring and enigmatic, Crow is the new single from Hilang Child. Ed Riman, the half-Welsh, half-Indonesian, London-based singer-songwriter and soundscape-ist who records as Hilang Child, is releasing his new album YEARS on Bella Union. With rich and lush textures, flickering multi tracked harmonies and expansive choruses, it’s an epiphanic debut.

Beach House – Dive

admin — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 15:07:45 +0000

Hot on the heels of the announcement of their UK shows in October, and ahead of their first full length album release, 7, in May, Beach House have shared the video to Dive. A gloriously transcendent offering of rhythmic shimmer, it’s a glorious effort from the Baltimore duo. 7 will be released 11th May via Bella Union in the UK/Europe and Sub Pop in the US.

Laura Viers – Everybody Needs You

admin — Tue, 30 Jan 2018 16:15:57 +0000

A charming piece of folk pop taken from Laura Viers’ tenth album, The Lookout, released 13th April via Bella Union. With gentle rhythm pulsating underneath beautiful looping melodies, and high dulcet tones, Everybody Needs You is a charming hello back to the world. Catch her on these shores in June.

(photocredit Jason Quigley)

Lowly – Deer Eyes

admin — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 19:15:49 +0000

Mesmerising is a word bandied about a lot by music journos and bloggers, but it truly applies to Lowly. Textured, oneiric, shifting and mysterious the Danish band’s latest track Deer Eyes is full of cascading synths and panoramic sweeps of rich keyboard melodies that synthesitically meld together. Restless and shifting yet also calming, the five piece have blended together the influences of their own musical backgrounds in an inventive way. Their debut album is out next year, and they will be popping to the UK in October.

https://soundcloud.com/bella-union/deer-eyes

Promise & The Monster – Feed The Fire

admin — Mon, 18 Jan 2016 18:03:32 +0000

Walking along dark roads listening to Feed The Fire, the latest album from Promise & The Monster is something of a haunting experience. I feel like the star of a film noir. Billie Lindahl’s voice is sometimes sweet and mysterious, like on Slow & Quiet, at others bold, evocative of Kate Bush – see Hunter, and as the classically dramatic Time Of The Season builds the scene is set. Glacial and expansive delicate skating often falls into an urgent rush of burning intensity, pulsing and shifting through tempo and style. The weepy Erhu, gothic organs, thumping drums and horns add a sensual and vampy air to the record’s grooving chords, in which Scandanavian folks song merge with a steely sixties guaze. N.B. Listening in the dark is not compulsory.

First published on London In Stereo

Lanterns On The Lake – Beings

admin — Tue, 29 Dec 2015 18:00:59 +0000

Lanterns On The Lake’s third full length album, Beings sees them sparkling with arresting dexterity and orchestral atmosphere as well as making a comment on society, austerity, and the ‘fractured lives like faultlines’ (Faultlines) that they see around them.

There’s no attempt to hide the frustration, anger and hurt in Hazel Wilde’s voice as she speaks of a sense of something broken in life, whether its being ‘done with the creatures online’ and entreating her friends outside on Through The Cellar Door, walking the streets in ‘a world of plastic souls’ on I’ll Stall Them or finding solace in a bottle, as she tells of how ‘last night I passed out on the kitchen floor / with a drink in my hand’ in opener Of Dust And Matter. The sound is forboding and dense, but also gloriously expansive, triggering of tremors in the soul and a sort of blue ecstasy of emotion.

Crescendos of brass and drum cacophonies follow tender lilting vocals and gentle flickering piano solos, before breaking out again. It’s an album that sweeps as high as it does wide, and delves deep into the darkness of life and all its grittiness, but never forgets the beauty within.

Potent and powerful, Lanterns have always excelled in the kind of cinematic sounds that they continue to perform on Beings, but as well as being a soundtrack to the wider social and political situation in which they find themselves, it’s personal and reflective – if self deprecating and sometimes painfully self destructive. As she sings about disconnection and brokenness, Wilde connects, her voice embraced by simmering drums from band mate Ol Ketteringham and the brutal luminescence of guest Angela Chan’s work on the violin, cello and viola.

Beings is an easy album to listen to, in that it sounds beautiful and splendid, but also challenging, dragging you through emotional tumult and tender loss, and leaving you much in the same state as the music: raw and battered, hollow and overwhelmed, but striving and seeking.

As Hazel sings on Green & Gold, a song reflecting on a broken relationship ‘this was the part where you picked up and started again’ – because as broken as we are, that’s all we can do.

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First published on Subba Cultcha

John Grant – Down Here

admin — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 16:05:23 +0000

John Grant‘s latest album Grey Tickles, Black Pressure has been doing pretty well in the end of year lists, it’s amusing, awkward and infectious music making it something of an instant hit. Today he has unveiled an equally idosyncratic video for new single Down Here.
Directed by Lisa Gunning, and set in London suburbia, the video features a teenager who dreams of becoming a synchronised swimmer. But will his gender prove to be a barrier, or will he be able to fulfil his dreams? So many questions as the protagonist learns that ‘what we got down here is oceans of longing / and guessing games, and no guarantees’ – like Grant before him.

MONEY live at The Lexington

admin — Sat, 14 Nov 2015 11:58:00 +0000

November 10th 2015
The Lexington is a small venue, a proper pub with a hipster sensibility. MONEY make big songs, expansive and grandiose. So tonight, it seems a fitting place for a warm up show ahead of the release of forthcoming album Suicide Songs and gigs next year at London’s Village Underground, a step back into the music business of gigging and performing, without a fanfare.
The room is pretty much empty for support Tony Volker, a few people sat around the edges of the room awkwardly as if at a school disco, but his finger picked melodies, electronic underscore and affable personality saw us eager ones happily entertained, if bewildered as to the wherabouts of everyone else.

They soon swarmed in for the main event; Manchester’s MONEY. Opening with new single You Look Like a Sad Painting on Both Sides of the Sky, and working through new songs and old, including the bass heavy Letter To Yesterday and a chunky version of So Long (God Is Dead) they are a captivating live act, matey banter and bright eyes juxtaposed with what can seem lofty and elaborate lyrics. Bleak and beautiful, their melancholy verses morph into the most epic of choruses, textured and explosive at the same time as being intimate, and despite the sombre nature of their songs, Billy Byron’s drum pulse over Charlie Cocksedge’s ambient keyboard and Scott Beamen’s intelligent bass makes it sound hopeful. They continue to be the sound of experience, rather than achievement, emotive and intense. It’s compelling, forceful, but still playful and warm. The last couple of years have apparently been hard, as Jamie Lee tells us at the start, but this time out being introspective and creative has been time well spent, if tonight’s show is anything to go by.
Suicide Songs is due for release on 29th January via Bella Union