brooklyn – and so she thinks

Lampland

admin — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 15:30:04 +0000

Lampland is the music of Brooklyn based Tommy Bazarian, who is about to release his debut album, No Mood. All distorted melodies and broken beats, this is fractured Americana that simmers with beauty. The colourful arrangements — distorted pianos, Halloween-y synths, and chopped-up drum loops – flicker in their fragments, all linked together by narrative lyrics. Bazarian wrote and recorded the songs while working his day job as a radio producer. The stories he heard during the day seeped into the lyrics he wrote at night: a patchwork of memories, movie scenes, and overheard conversations. Like its name, it is music for the low evening light, when you feel slightly in transition and unsure. Or, as Bazarian says ‘Sometimes I feel like a stack of two kids in a trenchcoat,’ he sings, ‘guessing where I’m going.’

Sorcha Richardson – Lost

admin — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 11:25:37 +0000

Dublin born and based in New York, Sorcha Richardson sings songs of life, love and loss. So does everyone else you may well say. But in her simple lyrics of stealing your favourite tipple, summers spent in a cider haze, dancing off heartbreak and more, she stands out with the kind of clear storytelling usually only seen in the best novels, with alarmingly arresting pop music, eminently danceable on the same time as being imbued with a flicker of world weary knowingness. Ruin Your Night starts stripped back and melancholy, but then starts looping in a frenzy of chanting hooks and swooping melodies, and the barrage of brilliance lures you into a sweet excitement and before you know it you’re obsessed with Sorcha Richardson. Or at least that’s my experience. Brilliant.

Cigarettes After Sex – K

admin — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 09:47:49 +0000

Like the languorous haze of the period their name is drawn from Cigarettes After Sex create steady ambient pop that bristles away yearningly. K (a lady called Kristen) is bleary eyed perhaps, but also romantic with potent dance qualities. Led by vocalist and songwriter Greg Gonzalez and his androgynous voice, it’s a tender teaser for a full length follow up to 2015’s Affection, and evidence as to why the Brooklyn band are tipped for big things.

Tei Shi – Bassically

admin — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 19:32:00 +0000

Seductively navigating her way through delicate flecks of electro beats, the Columbian born Brooklyn based Valerie Teicher, aka Tei Shi, is a fine creator of chiming synth filled R’n’B. Bassically disintegrates with a rarified cosmic fervour to the point of ecstasy, from its regular timely opening, through a drowned echo bridge, to its tumbling iridescent ending, all the while carried on her seductive and soulful vocals. One to watch for 2015 indeed.

Half Waif

admin — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 09:14:00 +0000

Merging disparate influences comes natural to Half Waif‘s Nandi Rose Plunkett, maybe because of her Indian, Irish, Swiss and American roots, as well as classical training, love of electronic instrumentation, and a natural inclination towards a pop hook. New track ‘Ceremonial’ (streaming) might take a while to enter your system, but once it does, you’ll be transported by its grace and unexpected depth. From globules of bouncy pop to classic low string style synths, the song shifts through genres with surprising dexterity. There’s a slight off beat to the 4/4 rhythm underpinning the various sonic layers, suggesting a slight element of conflict between the inner and outer, a transience, like that of the waif. Even her voice constantly shifts – crisp enunciation falls on the beat, punctuated with chanting gasps, followed by a soaring bridge with stretched vocals. A downshift in tempo two minutes in does not seem out of place in a track only 4 minutes long, but instead augments its simple symphonic quality

Catey Shaw

admin — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 09:02:00 +0000

Isn’t it funny how what once may have been a byword for cool suddenly becomes a term with which to slate. Take Brooklyn. The neighbourhood is now pilloried for being a hipster cliche as a result of that other dirty word: gentrification. Catey Shaw was pilloried for her video for debut Brooklyn Girl, people bellowing it as the final nail in the coffin of cool. Screw ‘em. Shaw makes poppy plastic music doused with suggestive coos that sticks in your head. An undeniablely sharp buoyancy oozes throughout album ‘The Brooklyn EP’ – and you know what, she sounds happy? There’s nothing wrong with that. Sometimes being cool as fuck isn’t that cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2poC56ycWA

Lazer Cake

admin — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 09:09:55 +0000

We’re from short in music with an eighties influence, but that’s not to say there’s not room for more. Rhythmic synths throb under exultant melodies and chiming beats through songs designed for twitching nervously on the dance floor. Earnest vocals from singer/drummer Robby Sinclair are backed up by a dynamic wash of synths Alan Markley, swaying guitars from Tom Deis and Grant Zubritzky’s punchy bass. Lazer Cake are like the early hours of a party when all is a little hazy – and you’re not too late to join them.

Icewater – Bite Fresh Air

admin — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 12:40:20 +0000

Delicate and detailed, Bite Fresh Air by Brooklyn band Icewater is a song of understated dexterity, all meandering melodies exploring the soundscape, waves of colour and visions of yearning. Not folk exactly, not acoustic, it is earnest and entrancing, with shifting strains of elegant guitars and a hazy spirit that lays over rhythmic and hypnotic gentle beats. Although housing a bittersweet sound that surely must be imposed by the listener given that it was recorded before the tragic and sudden death of founder member Grant Martin in August last year, there’s a gentle warming feel to it that endures and endears throughout its wandering.

Fish Doctor

admin — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 11:05:26 +0000

It’s funny how we think that bands must have one style or be part of one genre. That would be like telling people they could only wear full evening dresses and tuxedos, never rock the casual style. Or that they could only be part of one group – family, doctor’s surgery, or blood type, but never all three. Given that most people go through numerous fluctuations of personality strain daily, what are we to expect when 6 of them are thrown together? Not only that, but when those people are ‘creative types.’ Yes, you know what I mean.
And so I wasn’t surprised to hear that Brooklyn’s Fish Doctor (Michael, Jared, Michael, Alex, Brian and Rocco) change musical direction every time the wind does the same. Sometimes surf, like on last June’s Atlantic and the lead track from their 2011 EP Summer In Wintertime, sometimes electro a la Infantry Song, and sometimes going off kilter completely on the chilled psyche Hawaiian Blizzard, complete with hazy feminine vocals. Things are never as happy go surfy as they seem, with even the simple refrain of ‘and you drown in the Atlantic’ hinting at a more sinister layer below. Fun but far from throwaway, full of confidence and frivolity that smells of experience rather than naivety.

Wyldlife

admin — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 10:51:49 +0000

Whilst some of us are wondering how on earth it is mid way through 2014 already, New York’s Wyldlife are back in 1979, unwrapping their newly purchased The Buzzcocks records and wondering when The Clash might make it over the pond. Before slicking back their hair, downing some beers, chucking on a leather jacket shredding up their six strings and having a party on the Lower East. From debut The Nicotine EP to their first full length The Time Has Come To Rock’n’Roll the band have not hidden their passion for making sweaty, scuzzy, irreverant music, and having a damn good time, fearless and thrusting as they do so. Opening track The Right from TTHCTRR kicks off with the definite and defiant statement that ‘at 10pm it’s time to party,’ not fooling anyone that Wyldlife ever stopped their rampage and reverie. Loose morals, tight chords, rocking melodies and brash attitude. Roll on the seventies.