TAKE TURNS – Crytomnesia Crept

take-turns-lpOn the 2014 EP ‘Animal Fat‘, Take Turns recycled many parts of 90s alt-rock and grunge, serving up cheeky nostalgia by the dustcart load, leaving behind a half dozen Pavement-esque gold sounds guaranteed to please listeners hitting those tricky forties at the time of release. The Leeds slackers brought back youth and exuberance aplenty, showed they could wield a guitar and distortion pedal with the best of ’em, but above all – and this being very much the clincher – never sounded lazy when doing so. The love for those whom influenced Take Turns cut through almost every note, making the release seem as if constructed from more than just dusty hand-me-downs

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VACATION Transmissions EP

vacation epFor their fourth EP, US lo-fi/anti-folk duo Vacation take on some familiar – and not-so-familiar – tunes by other artists.  As Tori Amos proved time and again, you can take the most rocking numbers and reduce them to a minimalist piano ballad with reasonable ease, almost to the point where the once unimaginable becomes predictable.  In some ways, Vacation play by a similar rule in that their chosen material gets stripped down and re-imagined in an echoing lo-fi acoustic fashion, but whereas Ms. Amos, Emm Gryner and countless other artists always ensure there was accessibility even within their most bizarre reimaginings, these guys just want to strip things back to their most stark.  This results in at least one tune that’s anything but predictable.

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