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The Slow Music Movement Blog
Occasionally something comes along that inspires us to put pen to paper. Maybe some great audio, an inspirational character, record label or event that we feel the need to shout about a little bit? We also put our daily recommendations here for the RSS feed crew.

31/5/2020 0 Comments

Various Artists - Sounds & Pressure Volume 8 (Pressure Sounds)

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WHAT WE SAY:

Despite my general preference for moving with the times and since digital reggae lost its way, it's the evergreen, classic sounds of Jamaica that continue to delight me. So give praise to Pressure Sounds for the constant reminders of those golden ages.
WHAT YOUR EARS SAY:
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30/5/2020 0 Comments

Various Artists - Kiwi Animals: Future/Primitive Aotearoa (StrangeLove)

WHAT THE COVER LOOKS LIKE:
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WHAT WE SAY:

Rejoice, another StrangeLove compilation is here. Check out their deep dug collection of NZ eighties oddities. From joyous proto house (extended edit someone please!), eclectic electro funkiness, deviant digi dub, Kiwi & Pacific folk freakiness & all sorts of post punk experimentation to rival anything from the UK or US at the same time. Essential.
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WHAT YOUR EARS SAY:

WHAT THE RELEASE NOTES SAY:

‘Kiwi Animals’ is a personal catalog of local oddities; affectionately recasting the 1980’s New Zealand Top 40 in a parallel universe of misfit pop, gonzo-tronics & voodoo-waves.

Channeling South Pacific gothic sensibilities and edge of world melancholia, the album highlights unexpected electronic tangents from iconic NZ groups Blam Blam Blam & Headless Chickens.

It dredges the C-90 revelations of art avante-gardists’ Drone & Kim Blackburn, along with the bittersweet pop of Rupert & Norma O’Malley. There’s the infectious minimal wave of Ballare and a reprised dance suite from Tom Ludvigson & Graeme Gash.

The furthest depths of Flying Nun’s catalog are also plundered- a brilliant earworm from Stiff Herbert and a mysterious Roger Knox birthday promo. Mining the various disparate seams of a local indie label awakening, ‘Kiwi Animals’ congeals with future/primitive ingenuity and an underlying Antipodean pop mischievousness…


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30/5/2020 0 Comments

RECENT SINGLES & EPS ROUNDUP - May 30th, 2020

HEADLAND - On Top of the World (Bandcamp)

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Four lovely extended versions of dreamy acoustic folk and languid, cinematic  strumming from HEADLAND. These cuts originally appeared on the soundtrack for On Top of the World, a film documenting the adventures of hardy, artic water surfers.

Ryley Walker - Mirror Of The Lowlands (Bandcamp)

It sounds like Ryley Walker got a mushroom kit in for lockdown, as these acid folk experiments will testify in court. Great to hear the boundary nudging folk rocker push things even further out there.
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Bochum Welt - Seafire Remixes (Central Processing Unit)

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Apart from the atmospheric James Zabiela banger, this is a lovely set of ambient and dreamy electro remixes of Bochum Welt's recent release on the ever dependable Central Processing Unit label.

Jabu + Daniela Dyson (do you have peace?)

Really cool 50 minute hypnogogic mixtape of meandering electronic soundscapes, spoken and sung words, occasional beat excursions and general experimentation from Jabu & Dyson for do you have peace?
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Nailah Hunter - Spells (Leaving Records)

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Leaving Records have been on fire in 2020 and this 6 track EP from Nailah Hunter of short but sweet, harp led, parallel dimensional ambient dreamscapery is another stunner.

Piksel - Some Silver Burns (Bandcamp)

A lovingly crafted, highly atmospheric, drifting, experimental electronic and neo-classical field recording collage, originally for a multimedia dance performance from Piksel.
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India Jordan - for You (Local Action)

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This EP of repurposed classic dance music tropes from India Jordan for Local Action is a joy. Your Berlin crowd will cry cheese, but I say they should get some colour in their wardrobe and smile a bit more. Get your hands in the air and wave them like you just don't care.
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29/5/2020 0 Comments

Dylan Henner - Flues of Disappearing Sand (Dauw)

WHAT THE COVER LOOKS LIKE:
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WHAT WE SAY:

Not only does wooden percussion take us back to music's inception, it is also the most natural & warm of sounds, and the perfect choice to lead Dylan Henner's minimal, ambient electro-acoustic musings for Dauw on the joys of nature & our suppressed disquiet in the face of its relentless destruction.
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WHAT YOUR EARS SAY:

WHAT THE RELEASE NOTES SAY:

"The music is based on the environmental & ecological despair happening in front of us, particularly in reference to South India. As with most of my work, the piece started with field recordings taken on location (in this case, on the Kerala / Tamil Nadu border in South India). I had been reading about the severe erosion levels in the territory and was sitting on the beach watching these little streams of sand pour out into the sea. I was watching the tide, not erosion, of course, but it was a very powerful miniature of the sad reality. So the piece is about this little moment of aching tenderness between me and nature, sitting powerless on the sand and watching it disappear into the water." (Dylan Henner)
Credits
Mastered by Ian Hawgood
Artwork by Femke
Music written, performed & produced by Dylan Henner

Watch the tide roll away


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28/5/2020 0 Comments

WOODS - Strange To Explain (Woodsist)

WHAT THE COVER LOOKS LIKE:
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WHAT WE SAY:

If you need some sunshine to burn away life's low hanging clouds then check out the charming new LP from Woods for Woodsist, an artisanal blend of acid folk, deckchair friendly indie rock & the sort of songcraft that only old, familiar heads can deliver.
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WHAT YOUR EARS SAY:

WHAT THE RELEASE NOTES SAY:

Dreaming doesn’t come easy these shadowed days, which is why Strange To Explain by Woods is such a welcome turning of new colors. 

It presents an extended moment of sweet reflection for the 15-year-old band, bouncing back to earth as something hopeful and weird and resolute. After quickly recording and releasing 2017’s Love Is Love in response to the tumultuous events of their (and our) 2016, Jeremy Earl and company took their time with the follow-up. Parenthood arrived, as did a short songwriting pause. The band went bicoastal when Jarvis Taveniere headed west. The result is an album that not only catches and holds and shares the light in yet another new way, but recognizes that there’s still light to be caught.

A bend beyond the last bend beyond, Woods keep on changing, thoughtfully and beautifully. The colors were always there, like trees blossoming just slightly differently each season, a synesthetic message coded in slow-motion. Recorded in Stinson Beach, the California enclave where the government once tracked one of the largest LSD rings in the world only to be questioned by the neighbors as agents prowled the woods, on Strange To Explain, the familiar jangling guitars recede to the background. John Andrews’s warm keyboards and twining Mellotron rise around Earl’s songs and dance across the chord changes like warm sunlight off the Pacific. The music feels a karmic landmass away from the creepiness of the uncanny valley. 

Just dig into “Can’t Get Out” or “Fell So Hard” and it’s easy to spot the affable hooks and fuzzed-out bass and third-eye winks and fun harmonies that Woods have produced reliably since way back ‘round 2004 (which, in the buzz-buzz world of psych-pop really is a grand achievement). But listen carefully, too, to the sound of our (and their) world in transition, the ambient humming of spring peepers behind “Where Do You Go When You Dream.” Especially sink into the intention-setting opening trio of songs, emerging from (and shimmering inside) an atmosphere that could only be made by musicians who’ve been working together for nearly 20 years, as Earl and Taveniere have. It’s hardly a secret language, but you try verbalizing it.

Depending on where in the time-track one stands, it’s their 11th full length (not counting collaborations, split LPs, EPs, and singles), and the 99th release on Earl’s Woodsist label. By any standards, Strange To Explain is the work of a mature band, capable of both heavy atmospheric declarations like “Just To Fall Asleep” alongside extended-form pieces like the album-closing “Weekend Wind,” unfolding in layers of trumpet and vibraphone and ambient guitars and stereoscopic percussion.

For contemporary heads, it can be nearly a full-time job to filter out all the bad energy being blasted through nearly all media channels from every conceivable direction. But not all media channels. The benevolent, Mellotron-dabbed dream-sounds of Strange To Explain constitute some of the more welcome transmissions on these shores in a Venusian minute. They’re sure to brighten any desert solarium, LED-lit pod, portable Bucky-dome, eco-fit Airstream, or whatever other cozy dwelling your time-mind is currently occupying.

Jesse Jarnow
 


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