Posts tagged ‘review’
Cover Art Painting, Layout and Design by Kyrie Kristmanson
Haunting. That best describes the sound of Paris-based indie rock trio Filago. Compelling. That captures the effect of the five deceptively simple micro-epic works of shoegaze art that are the five songs on Filago’s new EP, Fetish. Sway helplessly in a trance to Odd Ode as you try to decipher the spare yet sophisticated lyrics that remind you of The Smiths, while you rest satisfied to the instrumental solo made only of bass and drums.
Sarah’s Laughter, the first single off the EP, pulls you helplessly onto the dance floor to move like nobody’s watching. This enigmatic story-song’s irresistible up-beat groove starts high energy and only goes up from there with layers of sound growing into an exciting electro pop trance eargasm. An exotic ’60’s jazz James Bond smoothness underlies the low tones and intricate rhythms of Ocean Roar. You see yourself standing on a balcony overlooking a rugged Grecian coastline lined with white ruins, sailing ships far in the distance. Take a break from dancing and reflect on life for a moment with Candied Sun, as violins fill your heart with sustained, yearning, loving harmonies as a voice floats over them as on an ocean wave, singing dreamily of hope and freedom of the soul. Say goodbye with gentle determination just like Mimosa, the last peculiar and most experimental track on this collection of sound art, as it comes to a final, sparkling resolution. This is the stuff dreams are made of.
Fetish EP is now available under Lilystars Records.
Listen on Spotify
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More info about FILAGO HERE.
They’re back (…were they ever really gone?)
“Above the City,” the much-anticipated eight album from Swedish electro pop duo Karolina Komstedt and Johan Angergård – better known as Club 8 – is easily worth the wait. There’s hardly a dud in the 11-track album (not counting three breakers dubbed “Interlude,” “Interlude#2,” and “Instrumental”) released by Lilystars Records.
It starts with an unsettling, haunting, trippy tune speaking of natural predation (“Kill, kill, kill,” with Komstedt channeling Julee Cruise) – if you watch the video, you get slaughterhouse visuals in sepia – that gives you goose bumps in time to the heart-blips in the beat. It’s the perfect song for the blue hour of encroaching night, if you want to be entranced (and slightly disturbed).
This new album captures the spirit of the darkened urban cityscape effortlessly. It offers a revved-up, synth-heavy dance-pop tune for the impatient (“Stop taking my time,” ear-candy with a slight edge); a perfect theme song for someone eager to be cloaked in anonymity, to be just another face in the crowd (“You could be anybody”); and even a track for the moment you get a little light-headed from party noise and hope for a respite from the mayhem, but still feel compelled to linger (“Run”).
Kill song notwithstanding, this is an easy album to listen to – it doesn’t demand very much of you but to be in the moment. It’s often an explosion of joie de vivre (“A small piece of heaven”), or a nostalgic sound-trip to the 80s (“I’m not gonna grow old” and “Less than love,” the latter with a snippet of a cant reminiscent of Fiction Factory’s “Feels like heaven”), and occasionally a somber introspection that weighs in, slightly, the so-called “breath of air on a sigh,” cut abruptly (another synth-heavy tune in “Into air,” “Hot sun,” and the quieter “Travel,” this last bittersweet song’s soothing cadence something to put on loop).
There’s something about Club 8 that you can’t really pin down. They’ve been making music since 1995, but unless you’re a true-blue fan, it would be hard for you to grab a song of theirs from memory (so if you’re a newbie listener like me, the a-ha moment is when you realize you were actually introduced to them via the twee pop tune “Missing You,” or the breezy “The Friend I Once Had,” circa 1998).
We often hear artists say that their music is constantly evolving; with Club 8, that appears to be a given. The only common denominator would be light, sometimes breathy and ever-pleasant female vocals, and a dexterous instrumental experimentation that can flip their sound in several directions (from twee to trip-hop, bossa nova to dance-pop, club to afro beat), dependent on their current predilection. .
It’s been a meandering journey musically for this duo, and today’s youth are best introduced to them via the indie pop tune “Straight as an arrow” on this particular album – it has that syncopation that the popular indie bands of today seem to be enamored of, and is easily accessible. And yet, it doesn’t even begin to show what this band is all about.
Pop it in; see what you like. It’s best listened to when driving out into the night. Then do it again… and again.
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“Above The City” will be available at selected FULLYBOOKED record outlets in Metro Manila this June.
