The word “alternative” gets bandied around a lot in the music world. It’s used to describe all kinds of guitar based music – even stuff that’s found its way into the mainstream long ago – but there are still plenty of genuinely alternative bands out there. It would be hard to consider the dark moods of Decommissioned Forests, or the strange jazz meets metal noise of Kilter as anything but. Tulipomania are another act who’ve wilfully taken their own musical path within a truly alternative niche, rarely concerned about commercial success.
Tag Archives: synth
THE REAL GONE SINGLES BAR #22
Welcome back to the Real Gone Singles Bar, the place where we explore some of the individual mp3s that have landed in our inbox over the previous few weeks. As always, the amount of submissions has been staggering, and we’ve cherry picked some of our favourite tracks for your enjoyment. This time around, we’ve got a soundtrack worthy tune, some top notch power pop, a fine tribute to a Boston heroine, and more besides. We hope you find something to enjoy!
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THE QUIET ROOM – Manuscript
In 2015, singer songwriter Matt Cahill took a break from his main band Evoletah to experiment with multi-instrumentalist Andrew Muecke and create something that would be so different from everything he’d recorded before. There’s no point in having side projects if they end up being too similar to your regular band, of course, but with The Quiet Room’s ‘All The Frozen Horses’, it’s unlikely that many Evoletah fans expected anything close to the sounds that materialised. Instead of atmospheric, guitar driven rock, The Quiet Room were all about keyboards, space and a cold spookiness.
DARTO – Fundamental Slime EP
Formed in Seattle in 2010, experimental electronic act Darto have spent years carving themselves a niche in the musical underground. Their music, while always interesting, isn’t always completely accessible; that said, somewhere within its darkness – for those able to invest the time – haunting songs eventually emerge. Don’t expect big hooks, though, since Darto are all about the overall mood. On their 2018 EP ‘Fundamental Slime’ (recorded by the legendary Steve Fisk), the songs take many cues from the darker and artier side of the late 70s – a period after Roxy Music had all but abandoned art for pop sheen and Ultravox were not the worldwide hit makers known to millions, but a Roxy/Eno obsessed synth band.