After a couple of false starts, demo recordings, line-up changes and gigs played under different names, this EP finally kick starts a career in fine style for No Vacation, a five piece dream pop collective from San Francisco. The pieces of music captured on ‘Intermission’ – representing their first full trip into professional recording – are things of beauty. These tiny nuggets of other-worldly pop will almost certainly appeal to those who miss Elastic Sleep or perhaps wonder what happened to London indie poppers Honey Moon.
Watch ‘Soulmates’, the new video from The Desert
A collaboration between singer/songwriter Gina Leonard and producer Tom Fryer, The Desert take folk and pop melodies and wrap them within dark and dreamy electronica, coming back with a sound that evokes the more spacious end of 90s triphop and dream pop.
Hear ‘River Takes The Town’, a new track from The Wood Brothers
Featuring Chris Wood (of Medeski, Martin & Wood fame) The Wood Brothers will be unleashing their sixth album, ‘One Drop of Truth’, on February 2nd 2018. Chris, along with brother Oliver, landed a recording contract with the legendary Blue Note Records back in 2006 and the Wood Brothers subsequently attracted a following in folk and blues circles, concurrently with Chris’s jazz-based career.
DARKFLIGHT – The Hereafter
Darkflight first took form in 2000 with a mission to create harsh, doomy sounds. Over the course of various DIY releases combining heavy as hell riffery with fantasy themed lyrics, they carved themselves a space in the world of Eastern European extreme metal. By the time of 2008’s ‘Perfectly Calm’, their atmospheres had grown to include elements of medieval folk metal, but generally speaking, their main concerns leant very much towards the heavy.
Fast forward to 2017’s ‘The Hereafter’ and Darkflight is just the product of two men: multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Ivo Iliev and bassist/clean vocalist Milen Todorov. The apparent lack of full band has had no impact on either Darkflight’s sense of vision or their abilities to absolutely crush with a riff, although Milen’s contributions of clean and gothy vocals certainly go a long way towards making this album as enjoyable as it is.
PURE – J’aurais Du
Switzerland isn’t always known for it’s metal bands. Celtic Frost are arguably the country’s finest hard rock/metal exports, closely followed by Krokus, but compared to neighbouring Germany, they’ve never been the biggest players on the musical map. Obviously, size is a factor. That said, black metallers Pure make more noise than about fifty metal bands playing simultaneously and their 2017 release ‘J’aurais Du’ is a frightening experience to say the least.