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Gross Kevin Smith Film Inspires Unexpectedly Beautiful Music

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Feb 132018

The first review quoted on Tusk‘s Wikipedia page calls it “the most disgusting and pointless movie I’ve seen.” Another reads: “Kevin Smith has lost his mind.” Even the supposedly positive reviews include quotes like “I’m recommending Kevin Smith’s uniquely twisted Tusk, but there’s a part of me that wishes I could un-see it.”

So learning that a band named themselves after Tusk might not inspire much confidence. If they channeled the movie’s tone, they might sound obnoxious, unpleasant, or divisive at the very least. So consider it a shock that the artist known as Full Walrus sounds like an adjective used exactly nowhere to describe their namesake movie: beautiful. Continue reading »

The Best New Songs of January 2018

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Jan 312018

I try to write about as much great music as I can here, but I inevitably fail to get to everything deserving. So I’m inaugurating a monthly-ish series rounding up Vermont’s best new songs. It’s not ranked and I’m not aiming for any firm number; it’s just some songs that were still rattling around my head as the month came to a close.

A few of these I wrote about already, but most I didn’t get to. Either way, whether you follow the site or just stumbled upon this, whether you’re a Vermonter yourself or have zero local connection, this collects some of the best music the state’s been producing recently.

Also, full disclosure: This series is starting with a lie. A few of these actually came out in December, after I’d finished my Best Songs of 2017 post. Close enough. Continue reading »

This Album Might Put You to Sleep (And That’s a Good Thing)

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Jan 252018

If you’re a churchgoer, your first association with the organ might be someone guiding tone-deaf congregants through “How Great Thou Art.” If you’re a soul-music fan, you probably jump to Booker T. backing the Stax greats. Either way, I can almost guarantee you won’t predict the organ sounds that composer Henry Birdsey produces on new album CONCERTINA – WIRE.

Rather than channeling gospel or soul, Birdsey’s organ playing is ambient music at its ambient-ist. Brian Eno’s Music for Airports sounds like dance music compared to this. If you’ve ever seen that video of Justin Bieber slowed down 800%, it sounds kind of like that.

I mean all of that as a compliment, by the way. Birdsey’s beautiful, haunting, molasses-moves-fast-compared-to-this album echoes artists like Tim Hecker or Julianna Barwick. Ambient music often gets derided as “boring” and, sure, there aren’t lyrics or melodies you could sing along with here. But it takes you on a journey nevertheless. Continue reading »

Guthrie Galileo’s Song “Labor Day” Reminds Us Why the Holiday Exists

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Sep 012017

The electronically-influenced soul and R&B on Vermont singer and producer Guthrie Galileo’s majestic new album Modern Day Ripples generally sounds timeless. One track, however, is more of-the-moment: “Labor Day.” The album came out a few weeks ago, but this song offers a lot to think about this weekend in particular.

Over a bed of piano, synthesizers, and field recordings (more on those in a minute) that echoes James Blake or Frank Ocean, Galileo explores the ironies of a holiday meant to celebrate workers. “”Labor Day” was written on and in the days following the workers holiday [last year], a time when I was coming to understand the world with a class-based perspective,” Guthrie explains. “I was remarking to myself, as I went about the motions of my day job, about the fact that all the people I know worked during the holiday. The bosses and the management at work, however, were nowhere to be seen!” Continue reading »

Jinxbox Sings Upbeat Dreampop About Downcast Depression

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Jul 192017

A few months back, Vermont songwriter Tyler Daniel Bean released a music video that uses haunting imagery to show what it feels like when depression takes over. The heavy music matched the mood, loud and unrelenting like it was closing in on all sides.

New Middlebury dreampop trio Jinxbox tackles similar themes on their new album Relief, but through a very different genre. The sun-drenched melodies deliver earworm after earworm, but the lyrics stem from a much darker place. Nine Inch Nails could easily have written the opening lines of the song “Static”: Continue reading »

Standing Rock and Native Heritage Inspire Powerful Electronic Protest Music

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Jun 162017

“Amelia Devoid” is a great handle for an electronic musician. In Devoid’s case, though, the name is no pseudonym. And discovering the history behind her unusual last name started Amelia Devoid down the path towards her magnetic new album.

Devoid’s heritage is a Native American tribe called the Abenaki. Based in New England and northeast Canada, the tribe came together during the continent’s colonization out of the splintered remains of other groups. Like so many Native tribes, their history over the past several centuries can be a painful one. Devoid even learned that her home state’s University of Vermont practiced eugenics on the tribe all the way up to the 1930s. “Researching this history has informed a large part of my identity, and has helped me in part make sense of my unusual last name,” she says.

The recent pipeline protests at Standing Rock drew Devoid back to her heritage and inspired her wonderful new electronic album, Hypogeum. Songs like “My Ancestors Died Here” and “Hopeless Call for Peace” tie directly into the recent conflict. Continue reading »

Wren Kitz Finds Beauty in Sewage Treatment on New Song

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May 152017

NNA Tapes is probably Vermont’s best-known record label, an über-hip curator that has helped spearhead the recent cassette revival. Their catalog of experimentally-minded musicians extends from the out-there to the way-out-there. And their latest signing, fellow Vermonter Wren Kitz, can operate in both modes.

His first release with the label, Dancing on Soda Lake (out June 2), counts as relatively conventional – for him. Unlike some of his more experimental releases of ambient rumbles or Eraserhead nightmares, Dancing on Soda Lake is reasonably song-based. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t weird. Continue reading »

Japanese Synth-Pop and The Little Mermaid Inspire Haunting Electronic Album

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May 012017

Back in 2011, the soundtrack to the Ryan Gosling movie Drive updated 1980s synth-pop for the 21st century and became a big hit doing so. Songs like “Nightcall” and “A Real Hero” brought a film-noir darkness to the genre’s supremely catchy melodies and on his new album Pax Romana, Vermont-based producer Ebn Ezra aka Ethan Wells does the same.

Though Wells calls the Drive soundtrack “iconic,” he draws from further back in the history of synthesized music. He cites as his album’s biggest influence a Japanese artist named Chinatsu Kuzuu, who recorded medieval folk songs backed by MIDI compositions (similar in a way to a recent album of electronic Gregorian chants). But Kuzuu recorded back in the early 1990s, when MIDI – a primitive form of electronic music – was a new frontier. “It sounds like the most bizarre thing,” Wells says, “English folk by way of a Japanese woman in the ’90s using no more than a computer. So I thought, if she can do it, so can I.” Continue reading »

Soundcloud Breakout David Chief Makes Cassettes Cool Again on New Beat Tape

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Mar 312017

In the so-called streaming wars between Spotify, Apple Music,and the rest, Soundcloud often gets forgotten. Perhaps part of the reason is that it traditionally has not offered ads or any real way for an artist to monetize their work (though that’s changing), so bigger stars avoided the platform. As a result, it’s developed an ecosystem filled with up-and-coming experimentalists, particularly in hip-hop and electronic music.

One of the more recent Soundcloud breakouts is David Chief. A 22-year old producer in Burlington, he’s only been recording music for a few years, but a recent track called “roots” has racked up almost 40,000 streams on Soundcloud, and others aren’t far behind.

“I’ve been teaching myself producing/beatmaking for 4 years now, ever since moving to Vermont in 2013 for college,” he says. “I started as just a fan who liked Soundcloud for the underground & independent artists, and eventually fell in love with the chill, boom-bap stuff and decided to try it myself. I really liked how the beatmaking scene was like a little community. When I first started out, nobody wanted to collaborate or drop a follow, but as a really active user of Soundcloud, people began to take notice of my page.” Continue reading »

Ambient Producer Foamek Channels Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada on Two Haunting New Tracks

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Feb 272017

Last month, Pitchfork posted a massive list of “The 50 Best IDM Albums of All Time.” That stands for “Intelligence Dance Music” for those not in the loop, and it’s one of those genres like “emo” where few of the category’s musicians think much of the label. But many of the greatest electronic artists – Boards of Canada, Autechre, Aphex Twin – fall under IDM’s amorphous umbrella, blending ambient music with (sometimes subtle) dance beats.

Vermont producer Foamek aka. Jake Davis also works in the IDM wheelhouse. On a pair of new singles, he sounds like a synthesis of all 50 of that list’s albums and some other influences besides besides (he loves Scottish post-punk band Cocteau Twins). Like the best IDM music, his new songs “Someone Has Died” and “Growing Up in the Woods” are thoughtful headphones records that might just make you move. Continue reading »