On The Geeks’ Stereo
The finest new music from the corners of the internet.
This article is basically an excuse for me to do in a more public forum what I do to my friends, which is saying, “Listen to this! I think it’s great! ”
What is great that I’ve discovered this week you may be altogether wondering? Well the first thing that I found was none other than a band named Cults.
Cults are the latest mysterious duo to crop up on the internet - they have no MySpace, merely a bandcamp website. There’s the single image available and all the information I’ve been able to gather is that they’re called Brian Oblivion and Madeline Follin, they’re from San Diego and both are now studying film in New York. It’s also rumoured that they’re to be signed to a UK popstar’s new label, possibly Lily Allen’s new venture.
Their music is quite frankly all sorts o’ gorgeous – light, catchy and simple. It’s twee pop at its very height. From all three tracks on their EP, Cults 7, you can see that there’s a heavy ’60s influence in their music though it’s most evident on the track, Most Wanted. This isn’t anything too new as we’ve seen a spate of groups doing the whole twee pop, lo fi, ’60s influenced harmonies thing. What makes Cults special is the reason behind the utterly mad outcry the blogs have had to their free three track EP. Cults show a focus on melody that others seem to lack.
Some folk may be worried that it’s a tad too light, a bit too airy, so I feel I should point out that it’s not entirely light melodies and summer time sing-alongs. The last track on the EP is like one of the darker tunes that Beach House did on Teen Dream, in fact the last track has a very Beach House feel with the organ contrasting against the sharper guitar. Another freaky little contrasting note on the album is that Go Outside opens with a quote from Jim Jones (the fella who was behind the dreadful Jonestown Massacre).
Now onto the wonderfully talented Toro Y Moi a.k.a Chazwick Bundick. Toro Y Moi is a somewhat nerdy and hipsterish looking gentleman who has released some very interesting electropop and chillwave EPs and now a wonderful chillwave album. In case you aren’t entirely familiar with the term chillwave, it’s a horribly silly genre made up by bloggers to describe a style of laid back electronica and sometimes low fi music.
I’ve been thoroughly enjoying his latest single which you can hear here and there’s a great video of him showing that he’s more than just a fella behind a laptop and that he can play actual instruments which hopefully I will successfully embed in this here article:
TORO Y MOI “YOU HID” from Yours Truly on Vimeo.
Finally the most recent thing I’ve been listening to is a talented London based artist called Konntinent. This electronic artist has produced a wonderful ambient album, an album that at the same time as being ambient and blissful is also at times dark and somewhat melancholy.
I’ve yet to hear a better use of interesting squeaks, hisses, pops and clicks, so I’d encourage you all to give it a thorough listen, you can of course hear some great tracks on his MySpace.
