great piece of work by Alex Schaaf, the man behind Yellow Ostrich (with a little help from his friends). stream or download it (for free or pay what you want) on his bandcamp. there are some really well crafted melodies on this one, gotta check his older stuff, all available on his bandcamp as well.
If you like collaborative musical tapestries with heavy acoustic influences and a plethora of musicians all adding their personal touch to the fabric, Emmett and Mary is for you. Slightly more jovial than Moldy Peaches, and all over the place in structure; it just might inspire you to do something similar. So get your music friends together and jam out people. If you want the world to hear it, submit it! The idea for the project came in 2008 while Christopher Bell was on college-break. “I had some time off from school, and I just said that’s what I wanted to do. I had a plot and the lyrics, and we got together and wrote some songs,” – BellMy Idea of Fun is such a collaborative artist collective, almost every musician and artist helped record and shape the songs. Since the album’s release date we’ve been performing Emmett and Mary shows as a 12-16 piece band with props, costume changes, TVs + live/pre-recorded video playback, and live theatrics all worked into the live show.
I listened to a lot of Billy Bragg in the 80′s and 90′s, saw he live countless times, love the guy! Well, Young Rebel Set has gotten me to rummage through the music library so I can listen to it all again… all because of YRS. “The mysterious troubadours that form Young Rebel Set preach full-blooded tales of tough love, hard luck and the triumph of romance against the odds.” so that “every spit and sawdust jig is spun from the blood, sweat, tears, toil and glory of an extraordinary group and woven into a rousing patchwork of gritty urban folk.” Excellent.
Following their groundbreaking Mint debut Brigadoon P:ano, Vancouver’s brilliant, young quartet of perfect pop practitioners took a hard left in creating their followup mini-album Ghost Pirates Without Heads. With its lush, layered and complex production, and varied, unconventional instrumentation, Brigadoon garnered repeated (and well justified, we think) comparisons to Brian Wilson‘s opus Smile. While the technical differences between Brigadoon and Ghost Pirates Without Heads are easily noted, what listeners focussed on were the beautiful harmonies, the clever arrangements, and plenty of the wry, quirky wit that we all so loved from Brigadoon as well as their previous releases When it’s Dark and its Summer and The Den. – Mint Records
Have this on replay…. It gets more exciting the more it repeats itself. Listen to them and see them live!
Flight of the Crow is an apt name for the latest album from UK act Passenger (AKA Mike Rosenberg) as it is sure to go straight to the hearts of its listeners. Featuring collaborations with Australian artists on nearly every track, the album plays like pages from a diary, each entirely distinctive but helping to form part of a cohesive collection. On some tracks the influences from the guests are more apparent, artists such as Kate Miller-Heidke, Josh Pyke and Matt Corby leaving indelible marks upon their tunes, while others exert a more subtle influence such as Katie Noonan and Boy & Bear. Fans of Passenger will be overjoyed with the collection, as will most fans of the folk-indie genre, but this may not be the album to convert the non-believers. This album is a perfect example of the genre but does not push any boundaries or show us anything we haven’t seen before. But this album is far from a disappointment… Sigourney Berndt
On their third album Candle to Your Eyes Montreal-based Shapes and Sizes document a slick, dark and sensual sound, its curves draped in noir’s glamorous velvet. Fusing garage rock with elements of classic funk and R&B, the band would risk sounding incoherent were it not for their trump card; vocalist Caila Thompson-Hannant’s seductive vocals tie the rest of the sound together. Quite wisely, Rory Seydel has been relegated to secondary vocal duties. Without doubt he is a capable alternative to Thompson-Hannant, but it is the latter’s easy mastery of vocal acrobatics so often misused – not least melisma – that give the record its unifying thread. Journeying into Candle to Your Eyes‘ shadowy world, Thompson-Hannant is our temptress-guide, Seydel her sidekick, occasionally injecting his boyish counterpoints into the proceedings…. tlobf
A year has past since our last record; it has been times following times of satisfying travel journal and re-enacting life’s simplest desire for change, something that seems too familiar to many. Some came along provoked by the loss of a loved one, selfish lies, and foolishness. Some unlocked the oblivious presence of fondness and tangible infatuation. All this has each created an ode in the new record, “Silver Heart”, making it a collection of memoirs to the past, present and future.
Written solely at home, “Silver Heart” drives the striving needs to heal and relive the lost and found. A combination of piano tunes and strumming guitars that despair, embracing melodies and echoes of voices plunged by misguided pain, here’s yet another improvised release from Weaker. With our last record, “Candle White”, which received a fair great amount of response from online blogs and magazine to radio broadcast, we hope this too will share its compelling stories as it did before.
After one year of silence and recovering, one of the most well-established and best bands in the whole netlabel scene are back with a new EP. Azoora from London, UK.
Consider Monumental Moments a home for loose ends by Snailhouse. Outtakes, live tracks and rarities are all collected under one roof and brought to you as a gift. In return we ask that you support the independent music you love, simply by going to the shows and buying music. Keep it alive. Thanks for listening. Enjoy!
bandcamp heroes is a new feature on Bolachas. most of these posts won’t have a download link or a big review, because well.. you can just go to the bandcamp page (clicking on the bandcamp logo below the album cover) and stream the hell out of it with decent quality. why waste words when you can just listen to the whole thing and make up your own opinion?
band of horsesy oohs, built to spilly melodies – do you really need something else from this world?
backwords’ quilt is a perfect record for classic indie rock lovers and you could tell it from just listening to the lead track, which they give away on their website. check the tags on their bandcamp page to see a comprehensive list of their influences – they’re all there!
still on their bandcamp, you can order quilt on crystal clear 12″ vinyl, limited to 300 copies on a recycled sleeve!
The Sleepy Trees hail from the Johnstown, PA area and are on the My Idea of Fun artist collective. They have played with bands such as Arrah and the Ferns, Dangerous Ponies, Busman’s Holiday, Spoonboy, The Lampshades, Endless Mike and the Beagle Club and Algernon Cadwallader.
Their new album is entitled “Young Joseph” and is a more comprehensive full band attempt. It was recorded by Dane Adelman, who has worked with such artists as The Lampshades and Endless Mike and The Beagle Club. It’s 10 songs full of emotion and story telling. Including topics that range from finding new love and boredom to apocalypse and suicide.
Davy Mooney, a seven string virtuoso jazz guitarist from Astoria, NY, has been releasing instrumental music for years now. Ghosts of Music, Past finds Mooney recording actual songs. Songs. With lyrics on them. Wait, wait. Contemporary jazz vocalists tend to suck, we all know that for sure. So why should you bother listening to this? Because I’m telling you, Ghosts of Music, Past is that good. I wouldn’t be wasting my time writing about it if it sucked, right? Right.
Ghosts of Music, Past is a collection of songs written by Mooney between 1995 and 2003. Specialized in instrumental music for his entire career, those songs were not recorded until 2008-09 and finally find the day of light two years later, with the help of fellow musicians Scott Bourgeois (alto sax), Vadim Neselovskyi (piano, melodica) and Rex Gregory (alto sax, clarinet, bass clarinet). My unconditional love for the clarinet makes me want to pick tracks 1, 10 and 11 as the highlights, but the sweet sax line on track 3, “The Noisy People” is the element that would definitely send this album upward in your books. I’m clearly focusing on the instrumentation, but to make clear – Mooney’s voice is really good and blends well with the instruments. The lyrics, available for reading on his website, are pretty decent too.
You wouldn’t expect a bad album from the first local grad from the Thelenious Monk Institute of Jazz, would you? The spirit of old man Thelonious wouldn’t allow it. If you’re into folk music but you’re looking for something more than a bearded guy wailing and strumming an acoustic guitar; if you dig jazz but can’t stand most jazz singers, look no further – maybe Ghosts of Music, Past is the right album for you. Even if you hate both flannel shirts and well ironed suits.
Genre: A little bit of everything from the Summer of 2010 TrY
This again is a good compilation that covers the main musical notes that resonated throughout the summer months. A bit nostalgic
,a bit sad and a lot enjoyable. Enjoy.
Artist: Yuni in Taxco
Genre: indie rock, surf, psychedelic
Download: hotfile
Buy limited edition tape/FLAC version with four exclusive demo tracks: bandcamp
Yuni in Taxco was formed in the fall of 2009 after escaping the gray skies of Seattle for the beaches of Mexico. On the last night of an epic holiday, a storm swept through Puerto Vallarta that sent curtains flying out windows and caused boats to spill oil into the bay. As the storm died down, a fire broke out on the street below. Black smoke filled the sky and Yuni in Taxco was born.
Influenced by Beach Boys era psychedelia and Brazil’s Os Mutantes, Yuni in Taxco is currently turning heads in Seattle with its swirling blend of world rhythms and surf pop: their debut EP was an instant hit with the DJs at
Seattle’s influential radio station KEXP. The band is currently recording material for their debut full length – due out in 2011 – with a series of singles planned for the end of 2010.
Formed in September 2008, The Shilohs (Dan Colussi, Ben Frey, Mike Komaszczuk and Johnny Payne) present their first EP, recorded on Steve Bays’ (Hot Hot Heat’s front man) Vancouver studio, Tugboat Place.
The result of those sessions is displayed on The Shilohs, their selftitled debut EP: a collection of beautifully crafted pop songs, evoking the late 60s/early 70s golden years of American pop rock, from straight rock and roll catchy melodies to slow, pleasant ballads and sing along friendly pop songs.
The Shilohs are currently recording their first full length with producers JCDC (Destroyer, The New Pornographers, Tegan & Sara).