Old Cabin is a dude from White Horse up in the Yukon Territories (in Canada). The name Old Cabin is pretty appropriate – the stuff is folksy, mellow, a bit rustic. The vocals don’t sound that different from Robin Pecknold’s (of Fleet Foxes – and his don’t sound that different from Jim James‘ (of My Morning Jacket)). He’s got a new EP called Saturn Return dropping “later this summer.” Should be good.
Photo Credit: Corey J. Isenor
I’ve gotten really interested in synths since moving to Brooklyn. I’m not sure why, but I’ve just had a year-long craving for weird, spacey sounds.
When I was younger, back in the 90s, I associated synths with dated 80s music (think Cindy Lauper). Of course, that all changed as indie rock began reclaiming synth sounds in the mid-2000s. For a lot of kids my age it started with the “Nintendo sounds” of The Strokes‘ “12:51″. That sound wasn’t even a synth, it was just one of them playing really high on the fretboard with a good bit of chorus to make his guitar sound like a synth. But it still showed everyone that synths could sound cool in indie rock. Then when Wolf Parade put out their first album, and Spencer Krug really owned that analogue sound, I started to think these synth things were actually pretty cool. Instead of sounding big and bright, like they did on a lot of cheesy 80s stuff, Krug’s synths sounded weird and ominous.
Around this time I came across the first Black Mountain album and loved it. I found out that the so-called “Black Mountain Army” had all these satellite bands and acts. One of those acts was synth player Jeremy Schmidt‘s solo project Sinoia Caves. After a long period of unsuccessful attempts, I finally managed to hear his album The Enchanter Persuaded, and I really liked it. I’d never listened to this kind of weird, spacey, experimental stuff, or if I had, I didn’t like it. But this time I did, and through that I got into even more weird, abstract stuff like Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze.
This mix doesn’t have any abstract stuff. I wanted to put something together that might give a friend of mine more reference points for the use of synths in rock music. Nonetheless, there’s a lot of cool sounds here.
