Listen Up! No.93: Swimming - Sun in the Island

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Midlands quintet Swimming’s debut release on East Village Radio records sounds like an amalgamation of the most humdrum of jargonated indie-speak and rock wittery... ‘kaleidoscopes of sound’, ‘sonic exploration’, ‘textural dexterity’, ‘waves of electronica decorating a psych-ambient canvas’ – just the kind of verbose guff you might be used to reading on these very pages, then. Thankfully, the salient information is that all of the above are sewn together with obvious melodies and an agreeable nod to the ostentatious. See, I just can’t seem to stop.

‘Sun in the Island’ is released on 7 March. This special ‘Binaural Solstice’ video version, performed live in what seems to amount to a poorly built contemporary igloo, strips back the single edit to good effect.

Listen Up! No. 67 - The Horn The Hunt - Old Town Cow

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Bedroom-electronica with an urban-folk slant, this Leeds lot borrow liberally from those Swedish masters of icy dance landcapes, The Knife. And I thought Knife crime was on the wane. Still, when they're this good at impersonations, who can blame them? Perfect winter listening.

Short Cuts! New Releases 14/12/09

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*** Brief run-down of this week’s new releases, including track recommendations from THE POPSCENER***

Former Ghosts – Fleurs

One could – and some certainly will – attempt to provide a grandiloquent celebration of this collection of ambient, murky, and occasionally noisy electronica. However, reduced to its constituent parts, this is the Postal Service’s whirs, clicks and dance-claps with Ian Curtis vocals and a similarly miserable post-punk outlook. Luckily for Former Ghosts, it mostly works, only becoming tiresome when the female vocalist is allowed to wail along too prominently in the foreground.  Free advice for Former Ghosts: don’t let her next time.

Choice Cuts: ‘Mother’, ‘Hold On’

7/10

Alicia Keys – The Element of Freedom

Where Keys’ last offering, As I Am, tentatively opened doors between her piano based balladry and a genuine pop career, this one goes one further: it moves beyond the average domain of R’n’B infused pop to create something smart and inventive. The growling synths that lurk in the background of songs like the splendid ‘Wait Till You See My Smile’ rather suit Keys slightly breathy vocals, the limitations of which mercifully prevent the seemingly de rigueur tonsil hysterics of her contemporaries. Bravo! Next task: fix the rhyming-dictionary lyrical nadirs (“Night/Right/Right/Fight/Night” from ‘This Bed’ – ouch).

Choice Cuts: ‘Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart’, ‘Wait Till You See My Smile’

7.5/10

Animal Collective – Fall Be Kind

Although armed with the same schizophrenic rhythms and scatterbrained sounds, Fall Be Kind sounds ever so slightly warmer to me than this year’s full lengther. Unfortunately, for all the kudos, I still really couldn’t care less for the band’s laboriously cluttered prog take on indie-electronica. Thanks to the hype I specifically gave this one extra spins, but it turns out I was right all along: this IS overrated pap with occasional flashes of worth – principally ‘On a Highway’, which sounds just enough like Sonic Youth for the iPod generation to appease me into giving it a bonus point.

Choice Cuts: ‘On a Highway’, ‘Graze’

6/10