Frontier Sounds SoundCloud Selections

Some distinctly 60’s sounds was Gap Dream with 58^th St. Fingers, taken from their self-titled release on Burger Records.

With Valentines Day fast approaching I’ve got a great date idea for any cash strapped romantics out there. Take some nice cutlery, a tablecloth, a few candles and boom box down to a fast food joint somewhere and lay up a table for your lover, seducing her with this track Garden from Croatian jazz musician Praline & Fast Food. She’ll think you’re so wacky, innovative and romantic and you’ll have saved money because you’ve only had to fork out for a happy meal or if you’re really spoiling her, a bargain bucket.

Here is the bluesy, Romance Is dead from That Handsome Devil.



This one I missed in regards to a singles selections last month and it's too good to ignore again.

Frontier Sounds Singles Selections

In a complete contrast to last week where I was struggling to find singles I liked, this week there was an absolute abundance. Straight to it then, with some delightfully playful house from a young duo by the name of Disclosure. I hope this will put the sunshine and goodness back in your heart, love that Barry Wight, “Sexy lover,” vocal. This track Tenderly is released on what is fast becoming my new favourite label, Make Mine. 

Make Mine have an other release out this week in the form of Idiom Wind by Zammuto, must be a play on Dylan's Idiot Wind. 

To something a bit more poppy now with Know Me by Frankie Rose, a track which manages to be both up lifting and Smiths like in it’s melody and depressing and downbeat like Morrissey at MacDonald’s with lyrical content a delivery. She features also on a mix I just made which you can download for free just scroll down the blog page.

Distorted Cymbals is the latest release from Washington based Mount Eerie, otherwise known as multi instrumentalist Phil Elverum. This track is beautiful in it’s simplicity and highlights the effectiveness of panning in Stereo sound, as the cymbal crashes and electric guitar chords swap from left two right, tickling you senses like popping candy on your tongue. 

To my single of the week which quite rightly is being played everywhere and is one of the finer, cross over, broad appeal singles I’ve heard in a while, it is of course Goyte with Somebody That I used To Know. Believe it or not this was originally sung by fellow Aussy Danni Manogue and has been a forgotten masterpiece on her back catalogue un till now. Just to spice things up this is Starfuckers remix and my Single of the week, Somebody That I Used to Know

New Mix, as Promised

1) Vincent Parker - Cryrilian
2) Pictureplane - Reali Is A Feeling (Grimes Remix)
2) Frankie Rose - Night Swim
3) Hourglass Sea - I Wanna Be Down (Brandy Remix)
4) ThEESatisfaction - Do You Have Time
5) Blondes - Wine
6)Vato Gonzalez - The MoomBahstard
7) Picture Plane - Body Mod (Extreme Animals Remix)
8) XXYYXX- Eclipse feat Ruddy P.
9) Crystal Fighters - Champion Sound (Psychemagik Remix)
10) Laid Back - Bakerman (Soul Clap Remix)

New mix to follow, watch this space

Wistful is pretty much the only way I can describe this track, an elastic band ball of nostalgia which bounces higher and higher the more you play with it. The home-movie style video is not helping here either, it's the type of thing you would dread coming on the telly after a particularly brutal night before, leaving you sobbing in shame at your complete and utter slobbery, too idle to grab the remote that fell just out of arms reach and too brain dead to leave the house and communicate with others. 



This sounds like the Thunderbirds took a wrong turn somewhere in the Pacific and, drunk after a few too many celebratory Appletinis, flew into the cave with the weird trippy pagans from Indian Jones and The Temple of Doom, thinking it was Tracey Island. 



Bit of an old one, well a year or so but I thought I would share it after stumbling upon it again the other day.



For my headphone moment of the day, defiantly not an idea I stole off Lauren Laverne's 6Music show, is Essay and CoMa. This is a free download, so fill your boots. I'm keeping a close eye on Essay as i'm really enjoying the ambient, soundscape coming from this producer in the last few months. 



Something a little more upbeat now, with an Opiou, funky instrumental hip hop flex to it. Imagine if that half-real human, half-CGI bloke from that lame car advert was kidnapped and transferred into a Tron like world where the music was actually decent. Coming to terms with his new environment (i.e. a place where the music is good and people don't respect lines about cars that make pasta) he has to break dance his way to freedom, learning some real skills and ditching his twat like attitude on the way, un till finally, like a twenty-first century Pinocchio, he transforms into a real boy and gets a desk job at a bank.



Even if you don't listen to this track you have to appreciate his name. This is a frightening piece of music, it's like a Michael Flatley based nightmare where you're the only normal sized person in a world of tiny Leprechaun children, who in a monotone droll chant "I don't like you," or maybe "I love you" or "touch you," arhhh no, don't touch me, please, no, no anything but that, i'll dance, i'll be that bloke that runs up the wall and flips over it and hope that I slip and break my neck, escaping this hell. 



Reminds me of a more depressing, realistic, lo-fi Ladyhawk.

Well isn't this lovely without his sister, slash wife, slash child bashing about in the background on Baby's First Drum Kit. Obviously immensely talented his first solo debut album is out in April I believe. The first few bars of this sounds like Son of A Preacher Man; just an observation if you had the name dancing on the tip-of-ya-tounge. 



This just released is a cover of Roxy Music's Avalon which features an equally banging funk remix of Love Is The Drug on the B Side, bound to bouncing around dance halls all over the country this weekend.

Frontier Sounds SoundCloud Selections

Read more about Hourglass Sea by following the link below.

http://www.kmag.co.uk/editorial/blogs/dubstep/hourglass-sea-readies-new-single.html

Something to really demonstrate the diversity of SoundCloud now, this is what the internet was really invented for. With human beings, especially in the spheres of music, seeming to need to categorise everything, our composer here DJ Dinner, has come up with an ingenious new genre name for his unique sound, a sound which blends a vocal technique native to the Alps region with contemporary, electronic sounds. So, ladies and gentlemen boys and girls, may I introduce to you the latest craze to be sweeping skiing chalet across region any day now; Yodel Step. That right, Yodel Step, remember you heard it here first, so here is DJ Dinner, with currently the only example of it’s names sake Genre, Yodel Step. 

On the subject of genre this next track describes itself Eclectic Alternative Rock, which I think is way too tame. If I were forced to give this a label I would have to go with Electro Funkidelica for it’s elements of Syd Barrat twisted into a modern form via a plodding double base. This is one of the more civil cuts available, so if you like it trippy check out his SoundCloud.

Featured on my blog before the end of last year this is one of the those discoveries in music that gets you giddy in a mild frothing rage and like a wild rabbid dog you forget to eat and become phobic to hydration, savage and brutal in attempts to infect others with this inconsolable passion. So here is me metaphorically biting you and I hope for your sake Mode Moderne, with the Smith’s inspired sounds, Morsey-esq poetic lyrics and soaring choruses, infects you thoroughly. This is my SoundCloud selection of the week, Mode Moderne with Real Goths. 

Frontier Sounds Singles Selections

Not to start things on a negative note but good singles were, in my opinion, slim pickings this week. There are two factors that can sum up this unfortunate occurrence which have been beautifully illustrated in two recent articles in the Guide section of the Guardian. 

The first is the immergence of the New Boring, the likes of Ed Sheeran and co making unbelievably dull, ambitionless pop music for the mass market (see the excellent article here). 

The second factor is the unknown popularity (well it’s Radio One's fault) of what I like to call popstep, that is rubbish, annoying, obnoxious sounding dubstep, which is what Radio One plays whenever they mention "New Music." Or as the guide describes the phenomena, it's like "Meathead dance producers across the country have been developing a new style of dramatic, largely unlistenable dupstep in a bid to soundtrack the Beeb's Olympics coverage and make a fortune. So far the it’s been a two horse race between Nero and Chase and Status. The winning track will be decided by a k-holing Kelly Holmes at a Peckham house party later this month"


To Illustrate this collective point. above are just two of the dull and, or obnoxious singles out this week. 

Okay so that Youngman track isn't quite the grating popstep of which we speak, it's saving grace being Skream’s on production, but it still serves to illustrate a point. That is the occurrence of this turgid, music-churned-out-to-a-formula position that pop music finds itself in and is leaving the whole scene stagnating. Dub step base, R and B body, last 16 bars drum and bass, equals Radio One airplay and singles sales. Yawn.

To something I do now like in the from of everybody's favorite Tamil fringed female rapper M.I.A. I know George likes this one being a huge Paper Planes pusher. This is her latest single, Bad Girls and it is a tune!

To counteract my somewhat negative start, my single of the week is a somewhat wholesome and pleasant affair and reminds of a fleeting, youthful summer romance, the pang of being apart during the honeymoon period where all you want to do is see each other all the live long day; I could listen to this all the live long day. 

Frontier Sounds SoundCloud Selections

TACLA EP by We are animal

Regular readers of this blog will know that these guys, We Are Animal, are my new favorite band, so sorry if this is a bit monotonous but I just couldn’t resist an opportunity to play that track 19:19 on the radio. Taken from the Tactla EP, it is available for download from ITunes. 

FRIGID. Dust & Debris ( Resurrection ) by FRIGID

My next track, by the hilariously named Frigid, I found on a recent SoundCloud trawling mission. It has a very distant tribal “he,” noise, that runs through the course of the record, making it sound like a jam session between the PlayStation character Crash-Bandicoot and his tribe and a group of evangelical missionaries sent to save their heathen souls. 

St Joe Louis- Slipping Into Darkness Feat Kasim by St Joe Louis

Another trawling find now, this one from Rapper St Joe Louis, who is American rather than the French his name might suggest. This pleasantly produced track Slipping Into Darkness Feat Kasim is available as a free download from www.soundcloud.com/stjoelouis. 

Black Casino and the Ghost - Falling Into Pieces by indiepatico

We started with my new favorite band and I want to end with my other new favorite band, Black Casino and The Ghost. With a similar structure to the earlier track by We Are Animal, it initially suggests something entirely different from the screaming, swaggering chorus that jumps in and knocks the breath out of you, causing you to screw up your face and pout out your lips.