Category: dream pop

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Blue Foundation Shares Yearning “Close to the Knife”

Founded back in 2000 by Danish singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Tobias Wilner, Blue Foundation was inspired by The Fall’s Mark E. Smith‘s method of forming bands — with Wilner recruiting a rotation lineup of musicians over the years to fuel creativity. But since 2010, the core lineup has been Wilner and Bon Rande, working between Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Copenhagen.

Throughout the transatlantic project’s two-plus decade history, they’ve been renowned for crafting immersive soundscapes with emotive vocals and intricate production that draws from dream pop and electronic music that evokes melancholy and reflection while touching upon introspective themes.

The band has cemented their distinct sound through a series of critically applauded albums including 2007’s Life of a Ghost, 2012’s In My Mind I Am Free and 2016’s Blood Moon, while collaborating with an eclectic range of artists and producers, including Mew‘s Jonas Bjerre, Au Revoir Simone‘s Erika Spring, Findlay Brown, DJ Krush, Sara Savery and Wang Wen among a growing list of others.

Adding to a growing international profile, the band’s work has been featured in Michael Mann’s 2006 Miami Vice and The Vampire Diaries. The band’s “Eyes on Fire,” was included in the Twilight soundtrack. Additionally, their work has been sampled on Lil Durk‘s “Fly High,” feat., French Montana and Young Thug‘s “She Notice.” They also cowrote Machine Gun Kelly‘s “Taurus.”

“Close to the Knife” is the first single from the transatlantic outfit’s forthcoming album. Written by Wilner and Rande and performed by Helena Gao and Wilner, “Close to the Knife” is one-part Scott Walker-era orchestral psych pop, one-part dream pop anchored around a lush yet atmospheric arrangement featuring mellotron flute, soaring strings, strummed guitar and gentle bursts of feedback pared with yearning and dueling girl-boy vocals, which gives the song a fittingly old-timey feel.

The song tells a familiar and bittersweet tale of love and longing for a connection that for can never fully materialize and will always be a bit unrequited. For both narrators, their lover disappears as quickly as they appear, adding a subtle sense of frustration and heartache to the song.

Directed by the band’s Wilner with cinematougrahy by Hannah Bertram and Erma Feng, the video showcases parallel stories of yearning: We see Tobias Wilner wandering the quiet and desolate late night streets of New York City while Helena Gao explores the vibrant yet isolating alleys of Shanghai. The video emphasizes the ache and longing at the core of the song.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Hot Pink Sauce Shares Woozy “Don’t You Wake Me”

Hastings, UK-based musicians Evi Vine and Steven Hill have worked together in several different projects together, including EVI VINE and Silver Moth, a collective founded by Mogwai‘s Stuart Braithwaite.

The duo’s latest project together Hot Pink Sauce released their debut single, the  A Storm in Heaven-era The Verve-meets-Slow Air-era Still Corners and Beach House-like “Feel.”

Hot Pink Sauce closes out the year with “Don’t You Wake Me,” a woozy bit of synth pop anchored around Evi Vine’s expressive delivery and primal drumbeats that sounds like a synthesis of Beach House, Stevie Nicks and Kate Bush that evokes the conflicting sensation of heartbreak, loss and resiliency, which comes in the aftermath of a bitter end of broken relationship.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The background world Shares Anthemic “it goes like this”

Skövde, Sweden-based indie outfit The background world was founded by primary songwriters Martin Platan (lead guitar) and Hanna Leijon (vocals) back in 2018. The pair met at a local bar and shortly after meeting, decided to start collaborating on a musical project. As they began amassing a collection of songs, they started playing live shows together. But they quickly began to realize that the material they had written — and had been writing — needed to be further fleshed out to fulfill their vision. The duo first recruited two old friends, who the pair had worked with in different projects over the years, Oscar Hjerpe (guitar) and Mikel Åkerman (drums). The band’s first lineup was completed with the addition of high school friends Edwin Muratovic (bass) and Tove Håkansson (backing vocals).

The band went on to release their debut EP 2022’s, It’s about a band. Paradise takes, Live at NSL, which they followed up with a handful of standalone singles that included 2022’s “Gasoline”/”I love you,” and last year’s “Love ends,” along with a list of others. This early batch of material saw the band crafting songs that thematically touched upon addiction, mental health, the search for something better and just the simple things in everyday life.

Since then, the band has gone through a massive lineup change — with the band currently as a trio featuring founding members Platan (guitar, bass), Leijon (vocals, keys) and Marcus Helmner (keys). They’re currently working on their highly anticipated full-length debut, which will feature “Why” and “Love ends,” a lived-in anthem about the dissolution of a relationship that’s slowly petering out to its embittering and inevitable breakup. Sonically, the song brought Til Tuesday‘s “Voices Carry” and Vancouver-based JOVM mainstays FRANKIIE to mind.

The forthcoming album will also feature the Swedish outfit’s latest single “It goes like this,” features what may arguably be the most anthemic hooks and choruses of the band’s growing catalog paired with a earnest, plaintive vocal and a crafted, classic shoegaze-meets-dream pop-meets college radio arrangement. But underneath the shimmering guitars and rousing chorus is a proudly defiant song.

The accompanying video for “It goes like this” features a super saturated VHS-styled visual that follows a woman dressed in white in a forest named
“Paradise.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 70th Birthday, Steve Kilbey!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates The Church frontman Steve Kilbey’s 70th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Diamond Day Shares Brooding and Shimmering “Tina”

Montréal-based duo Diamond Day features two highly acclaimed musicians and recording artists in their own right:

  • Vermont-born Béatrix Méthé was raised with the traditional music of rural Québec. Her family moved to Canada when she was baby, and she grew up acquiring Lanaudiere’s regional repertoire from her father, the founder of legendary folk-trad group Le Rêve du Diable. Her mother, a singer-songwriter and fine arts graduate versed in early digital media, inspired Méthé’s own aesthetic. After spending some time venturing deeper into visual art, Béthé moved to Montréal to study filmmaking, but wound up discovering indie and psychedelic folk music along the way. She cut her studies short in 2015 to pursue music full-time, fronting acclaimed outfit Rosier, whose unique fusion of Québécois folk and indie rock garnered multiple nominations and awards — and lead them to tour across 15 countries with stops at SXSW, NPR’s Mountain Stage and the BBC. 

  • Western Canada-born Quinn Bachand grew up in a home where art was omnipresent and the family’s 40-year-old record collection was on an omnipresent loop. As the son of a luthier, Bachand began playing guitars handmade by his father and was touring internationally by the time he turned 12. After graduating from Berklee College of Music back in 2019 on a presidential scholarship, the Western Canadian-born multi-instrumentalist spent time in the Grammy-nominated band Kittel & Co. His involvement in the US folk scene prompted collaborations with a number of like-minded artists, including Chris Thile. In 2019, Bachand began collaborating with Méthé and Rosier, quickly establishing himself as an influential, genre-bending producer.

That initial successful collaboration with Rosier lead to the duo’s forthcoming full-length debut as Diamond Day, Connect the Dots. Released earlier this year, the album saw the duo establishing a sound that weaved elements of folk, indie rock, electronica, shoegaze and dream pop into a unique take on alt-pop.

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I’ve written about two of the album’s singles:

  • “Noisemaker,” a song built around tape-saturated organ echo, fluttering synths, blown out beats, a sinuous bass line and lush, painterly sheogazer-like guitar textures paired with Méthé’s gorgeous vocals. The result — to my ears at least — reminded me of a mix of Beach House and Souvlaki-era Slowdive with a subtle amount of glitchiness.

  • “Fiction Feel,” a breezy, summertime dream of a song built around a glitch pop soundscape featuring vintage tape recordings, glistening synths and a shuffling organ drum machine before quickly morphing into a lush New Wave/post-punk anthem that brings Cocteau Twins and Violens to mind. 

Connect The Dots’ latest single, album closer “Tina,” is a slow-burning and brooding, Beach House and Pavo Pavo-like ballad featuring strummed acoustic guitar, twinkling keys, skittering tape saturated beats serving as a dreamily uneasy bed for Méthé’s gorgeous and expressive delivery. Arguably one of the most personal songs on the entire album, “Tina” tells a story about schizophrenia and anosognosia, a neurological condition in which the patient is unaware of their neurological deficit or psychiatric condition. it’s often associated with mental illness, dementia and structural brain lesion, as seen in right hemisphere stroke patients. As the band’s Quinn Bachard explains, “The song is super personal. It’s about my family, schizophrenia and denial.”

Directed by Robert Desroches, the accompanying video for “Tina” features the band’s Béatrix Méthé in a candy colored room playing keyboard with a DIY set up made of various bric-a-brac. As the song progresses, the videos’ protagonist goes through a deeply hallucinogenic experience.

“Robert had a strong vision for this one,” Méthé says of the video. “He saw something that was dark and luminous at the same time. As if one fueled the other. He pictured a colorful implosion cutting through the softness of the song, in this spooky retro-futuristic setting à la Severance.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Night Swimming Shares Yearning and Heartbroken “Five-Year Plan”

Currently split between Bath and Bristol, Night Swimming — Meg Jones (vocals), Sam Allen (guitar), Jesse Roache (guitar), Josh Nottle (bass) and Torin Moore (drums) — are a rising British dream pop quintet, whose remarkably cinematic sound draws from their collective love of film and scores, Cocteau Twins, The Cure, Radiohead, Wolf Alice, Just Mustard, Warpaint and a lengthy list of others. Meg Jones’ lyrics are often semi-veiled autobiography that draw from her own experiences and those close to her while also being influenced by Joni Mitchell, Laura Marling, Ben Howard, Daughter‘s Elena Tonra, The Cure‘s Robert Smith and Lana Del Rey. 

Unlike their contemporaries, the rising British outfit has patiently taken the necessary steps to hone both their sound and live show, while landing support slots with acts like Coach Party, L’Objectif, JOVM mainstays The Orielles, The Blinders, Sad Night Dynamite, Automotion, Home Counties and a list of others. The rising British outfit played an opening set on the Dot To Dot Festival‘s SWX stage ahead of  Picture Parlor, Mary in the Junkyard, Hovvdy and Wunderhouse.

The members of Night Swimming have have also been covered by The Line of Best Fit, Dork Magazine, Rough Trade, The Rodeo and Notion Magazine while receiving airplay from BBC Radio 6’s Emily Pilbeam and landing on Radio X’s X-Posure playlist.

Adding to a ver busy year, Night Swimming’s debut EP No Place To Land is slated for a September 27, 2024 release. Recorded at Devon, UK‘s Middle Farm Studios last year, the Peter Miles-produced EP was recorded live to tape and features industrial rhythms set against an atmospheric soundscape, deeply influenced by Beach House‘s and Slowdive’s live shows, which the band noted combined sensory elements and a deep emotional response. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about EP single “Let That Be Enough,” a song that features propulsive and thumping percussion, shimmering and reverb soaked guitars and a rousingly anthemic and cathartic chorus as a lush and cinematic bed for Meg Jones’ bewitchingly ethereal delivery. Seemingly bridging Thank Your Lucky Stars and Depression Cherry-era Beach House with Once Twice Melody-era Beach House sonically, “Let That Be Enough” thematically touches on perfectionism and obsessive thoughts with the sort of novelistic attention to psychological detail of either someone who has lived it — or has personally seen it in others. Throughout there’s a sense of aching and vacillating doubt, confusion, bargaining and then a gradually begrudging acceptance and even a sort of trust. 

“‘Let That Be Enough’ is about moving on from past experiences,” Night Swimming’s Meg Jones explains, ” as well as learning to trust yourself and accepting the choices that you’ve made.”

The EP’s final single, EP closing track “Five-Year Plan” is a slow-burning and painterly-like shoegazer take on dream pop built around a shimmering wall of sound featuring swirling and shimmering guitar textures and thunderous drumming serving as a dreamily lush bed for Jones’ to sing about the loss of a close relationship with the bitterly yearning ache of someone who’s been unexpectedly dropped.

“‘Five-Year Plan’ is about the feeling of being dropped suddenly, without much explanation, by someone you were really close to,” Night Swimming’s Meg Jones explains. “The words were written quickly and without a lot of conscious thought, compared with our other songs. I think this captured the honesty of the difficult emotions I was experiencing at the time.”

“Like all of the tracks on the EP, ‘Five-Year Plan’ was recorded as a live performance to analogue tape,” Jones continues. “We recorded the songs this way to give them their own energy and movement akin to our live shows. There were minimal overdubs on ‘Five-Year Plan,’ however we did experiment with layers such as double tracked vocals/harmonies, a synth bass and even some acoustic guitar to thicken the mix. In terms of the writing process, the track was started by Jesse bringing an arpeggio melody to rehearsal that he’d be working on, and it was fleshed out by the rest of the band to create the wall of sound that is heard in the recording. A few of us were coincidentally experiencing similar life events at the same time, in the middle of winter, which definitely impacted the writing process. The song switches metre from 7/8 to 4/4 which we felt provided a cathartic release to end the song.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Remy Bond Shares Lush, Mesmerizing “Summer Song”

Remy Bond is a 19 year-old, New York-based singer/songwriter, who spent much of her childhood living out her own version of Just Kids: She grew up at the renowned Chelsea Hotel, surrounded by music. Her obsession with the silver screen, and the washed up beauty of places like Atlantic City and Las Vegas add a nostalgic undertone to her lyrics.

Bond’s work sees her combing modern elements with her deep rooted love of the past — specifically Golden Age Hollywood — where she often retreats to write, which creates an anachronistic nostalgia, while exploring what it’s like to be a young woman — right now.

The rising young singer/songwriter’s latest single, the Jules Apollinaire co-produced, Air co-written “Summer Song” is a lush and narcoleptic bit of nostalgia-inducing bit of dream pop anchored by Bond’s silky delivery, glistening keys, twinkling synths. Written in Paris, recorded in London and finished in Los Angeles, the song specifically evokes the long bygone era of 60s glamor — but with decidedly modern sensibility that reminds me of Pavo Pavo.

“It’s very much an American song lyrically, reminiscing on the essence of the late 60s and early 70s,” Bond explains. “I have endless love for Sharon Tate & the American sweethearts of the time, but I didn’t want it to be so super apple pie, so I reached out to AIR, which bought in rich new elements and sounds, as well as my British producers, who really brought a seasoned perspective to the project.”

Directed by 16 year-old Jagger Blue, produced by Olivia Violet, and a cast of high schoolers recruited by Bond, the video is spot-on ode to the imagery and vibe of Valley of the Dolls, The Virgin Suicides and Hairspray that opens with Bond leaving her fiancé at the altar for another man.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: JOVM Mainstay Washed Out Performs “Wait on You” in Bandera, TX

Back in 2021, Washed Out‘s creative mastermind Earnest Greene left Atlanta and returned to the countryside he knew when he grew up. Where escapism once flooded his thoughts, today, he’s preoccupied with the universe of wonder in the reality around him. 

He named the former horse farm he moved to “Endymion,” after the John Keats poem about a lovesick shepherd. It has shaped all that he’s created there, from his music to his albums’ creative direction to his planned large-scale visual-art experiments. 

Greene’s fifth Washed Out Album, Notes From A Quiet Life officially came out today through Sub Pop. The album is arguably one of Greene’s most audacious efforts to date, and is anchored around a purity of vision. It’s also the first album of his catalog that Greene wholly self-produced with mixing assistance from Nathan Boddy and David Wrench. 

In the lead up to the album’s release I wrote about three of the album’s singles:

“The Hardest Part,” a bit of classic Washed Out with subtle refinements. The atmospheric and achingly dream-like and nostalgia-inducing production is anchored around twinkling and arpeggiated keys, glistening bass synths, bursts of strummed guitar paired with Greene’s penchant for crafting catchy hooks and swooning choruses. And much like the JOVM mainstay’s most recent work, the song has Greene’s vocal front and center, with the song’s tale of love lost being the heartbroken star of the show. 

“Running Away,” a cinematic yet intimate and deeply vulnerable track anchored around an alternating quiet verse, loud chorus, quiet verse song structure paired with Greene’s unerring knack for soaring and catchy hooks paired with a lush arrangement of glistening and twinkling synths, skittering and thumping beats that furthers the album’s overall aesthetic. 

“Waking Up,” a track that features glistening and burbling synth arpeggios, dreamily strummed guitar, finger snap-driven percussion and skittering beats serving as a lush and cinematic bed for Greene’s intimately cooed delivery. Fittingly, the song evokes the sensation of waking up from a pleasant dream — and the wistful desire to go back to sleep to experience just a little bit longer. 

Notes From A Quiet Life‘s fourth and latest single “Wait on You” continues upon the album’s overall aesthetic — the classic Washed Out sound that has won Greene fans and acclaim everywhere but with subtle refinements: a chopped up vocal sample is paired with skittering beats, glistening Rhodes serve as a lush and satiny bed for Greene’s gently vocoder’ed, plaintive delivery. The result is a subtle house-leaning take on the Washed Out sound that also manages to feel both earnest and deliberately crafted.

Greene teamed up with director Jonah Haber to film a one-take live performance of “Wait on You” which was filmed on location in Bandera, TX — the same location where Greene’s live performance of “Waking Up” was shot.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: London’s Remember Summer Share Dream Pop-like Cover of “Wrecking Ball”

Remember Summer — Northern Irish-born, London-based Paddy Conn, a member of Swimming Tapes and English-born vocalist Angelina Dove — can trace their origins back to 2016 when the duo worked at a Forest Gate, London-based cafe. The duo started making up songs to pass the days toiling in a hot kitchen. “Summer of ‘16 became the year of collaboration for Paddy and I. We started swapping ideas at work,” Dove recalls. “It all started as a bit of fun really, sort of a distraction to stem boredom but when the cafe went bust the following year and we both got fired we realised that we’d started something we missed more than frying eggs. Since we live 5 minutes away from each other we’ve kept it up.”

Bonding over a mutual indulgence for worlds gone by, the London-based duo pair dusty synths and wistful poetry to create nostalgia-drenched take on dream pop.

The London-based duo’s latest single sees them tackling Miley Cyrus‘ 2013 hit “Wrecking Ball.” Dove and Conn pairing the original’s cathartic and rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses with a brooding and dusty soundscape of strummed, reverb-soaked guitar, glistening and atmospheric synths serving as lush bed for Dove’s pop star wailing (whci is also doused in a bit of reverb). The end result is a Still Corners-meets-Stevie Nicks-like take on a familiar song, creating a vintage hue to a modern pop anthem.

“Metaphorically spot on; I think I’m an ‘exploding doormat’ personality type. A really long fuse, but once it’s lit…Wrecking Ball resonated with me, I feel like I’ve been there,” Remember Summer’s Angelina Dove says of the cover. “The explosions, the disappointment, indifference even.”

Edited by Baby Dove, the accompanying video for Remember Summer’s “Wrecking Ball” features clips from 1967’s Bonnie & Clyde superimposed over some gorgeously shot footage of Dove in a gorgeous white dress in the desert.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Washed Out Shares Shimmering “Running Away”

Back in 2021, Washed Out‘s creative mastermind Earnest Greene left Atlanta returned to the countryside he knew when he grew up. Where escapism once flooded his thoughts, today, he’s preoccupied with the universe of wonder in the reality around him. 

He named the former horse farm he moved to “Endymion,” after the John Keats poem about a lovesick shepherd. It has shaped all that he’s created there, from his music to his albums’ creative direction to his planned large-scale visual-art experiments.

Greene’s fifth Washed Out Album, Notes From A Quiet Life is slated for a June 28, 2024 release through Sub Pop. The album, which reportedly is Greene’s most audacious effort to date, is anchored around a purity of vision. It’s also the first album of his catalog that Greene wholly self-produced with mixing assistance from Nathan Boddy and David Wrench. 

Earlier this month, I wrote about the album’s first single, “The Hardest Part,” a bit of classic Washed Out with subtle refinements” The atmospheric and achingly dream-like and nostalgia-inducing production is anchored around twinkling and arpeggiated keys, glistening bass synths, bursts of strummed guitar paired with Greene’s penchant for crafting catchy hooks and swooning choruses. And much like the JOVM mainstay’s most recently work, the song has Greene’s vocal front and center, with the song’s tale of love lost being the heartbroken star of the show. 

“Running Away” the album’s second and latest single continues a remarkable run of synth pop that’s simultaneously cinematic yet intimate and deeply vulnerable. Anchored around an alternating quiet verse, loud chorus, quiet verse song structure paired with Greene’s unerring knack for soaring and catch hooks, “Running Away” features a lush arrangement of glistening and twinkling synths, skittering and thumping beats that continues to be classic Washed Out — but with super clean production that places Greene’s gently vocodered yet plaintive delivery at the center.

“Starting a new album often means a lot of failed experiments,” Greene explains. “Basically, I’m just waiting around until I stumble into something new that I can build an album concept around.  For NFAQL, that song was ‘Running Away.’  It had all of the ingredients that ended up shaping the aesthetic for the album: a more minimal arrangement, sonic clarity, and more of an emphasis on classic songwriting technique.”
 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Currently split between Bath and Bristol, Night Swimming — Meg Jones (vocals), Sam Allen (guitar), Jesse Roache (guitar), Josh Nottle (bass) and Torin Moore (drums) — are a rising British dream pop quintet, whose remarkably cinematic sound draws from their collective love of film and scores, Cocteau Twins, The Cure, Radiohead, Wolf Alice, Just Mustard, Warpaint and a lengthy list of others. Meg Jones’ lyrics are often semi-veiled autobiography that draw from her own experiences and those close to her while also being influenced by Joni Mitchell, Laura Marling, Ben Howard, Daughter‘s Elena Tonra, The Cure‘s Robert Smith and Lana Del Rey.

Unlike their contemporaries, the rising British outfit has patiently taken the necessary steps to hone both their sound and live show, while landing support slots with acts like Coach Party, L’Objectif, JOVM mainstays The Orielles, The Blinders, Sad Night Dynamite, Automotion, Home Counties and a list of others.

Coming off the heels of their appearance at this year’s Dot To Dot Festival, opening the SXW Stage, on a bill that featured Picture Parlor, Mary in the Junkyard, Hovvdy and Wunderhouse, Night Swimming will be releasing their debut EP No Place To Land on September 27, 2024.

Recorded at Devon, UK‘s Middle Farm Studios last year, the Peter Miles-produced EP was recorded live to tape and features industrial rhythms set against an atmospheric soundscape, deeply influenced by Beach House‘s and Slowdive’s live shows, which the band noted combined sensory elements and a deep emotional response.

“Let That Be Enough” features propulsive and thumping percussion, shimmering and reverb soaked guitars and a rousingly cathartic and anthemic chorus serving as a lush and cinematic bed for Meg Jones’ bewitchingly ethereal delivery. Sonically bringing Thank Your Lucky Stars and Depression Cherry-era Beach House, “Let That Be Enough” thematically touches on perfectionism and obsessive thoughts with the sort of novelistic attention to psychological detail of either someone who has lived it — or has personally seen it in others. Throughout there’s a sense of aching and vacillating doubt, confusion, bargaining and then a gradually begrudging acceptance and even a sort of trust.

“‘Let That Be Enough’ is about moving on from past experiences,” Night Swimming’s Meg Jones explains, ” as well as learning to trust yourself and accepting the choices that you’ve made.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 43rd Birthday, Victoria Legrand!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Beach House’s Victoria Legrand’s 43rd birthday.

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Trentemøller Teams Up with Disa on Fragile and Breathtakingly Gorgeous “A Different Light”

Copenhagen-based producer, multi-instrumentalist, producer and electronic music artist Anders Trentemøller, the creative mastermind behind the acclaimed electronic outfit Trentemøller has a long-held reputation for creating extraordinarily memorable melodies paired with dark soundscapes. While many artists follow a pattern of invention and reinvention, the acclaimed Danish artist’s career arc has tended to be a series of points along the same curve, playing the low game, with each release representing a new chapter in constantly evolving series. Throughout his career, Trentemøller’s work frequently explores contrasts, paradoxes, reminiscence and remembrance but while eschewing nostalgia.

Back in 2006, following a run of EPs, Trentemøller released his full-length debut, The Last Resort, an effort that eventually topped several end-of-year lists while exposing him and his work to a larger audience.

Since assembling his first full live band back in 2007, the acclaimed Danish artist has embarked on several world tours, playing over 500 shows and regularly selling out venues and clubs. Through his own label imprint, In My Room, Trentemøller released:

  • 2010’s Into The Great Wide Yonder, an effort that continued where its predecessor left off, further exploring previously minded textures of suspense, tension, release and noir with a tighter focus.

  • 2013’s Lost expanded upon the first two albums while firmly establishing the atmospheric and darkly Romantic qualities that he’s now been a part of his long-held reputation.

  • 2016’s Fixion showcased the Danish artist’s penchant for experimentation with the material meshing his various influences and inspiration while anchored in polyrhythm.

  • 2019’s Obverse was initially conceived as an instrumental album, not bound by the need to be performed live. And with that notion as a launching point, Trentemøller chased down every idea and explored every tangent. He eventually decided that half of the album’s songs could be better served with lyrics and vocals. So he recruited Lisbet Fritze, Jehnny Beth, Low‘s Mimi Parker, Blonde Redhead‘s Kazu Maikino, Warpaint’s Jenny Lee, Lina Tullgren and Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell.

  • 2021 saw the surprise release of “Golden Sun” and “No One Quite Like You,” a stripped down production that featured vocals from the equally acclaimed Tricky.

  • 2022’s Memoria thematically touched upon impermanence, from mortality to relationships, as well as light and dark, turbulence and serenity, piercing chill and comforting warmth with the material seemingly informed by life in the Nordics. The album was supported with a tour that featured a new live band lineup, which included Icelandic vocalist Disa, who later contributed to “Into the Silence,” as well as a cover of The Raveonettes “Cops On Our Tail.”

Trentemøller has also released several compilations including 2007’s The Trentemøller Chronicles, 2009’s Harbour Boat Trips, 2011’s Reworked/Remixed, 2011’s Late Night Tales, 2014’s Lost Reworks, 2018’s Harbour Boat Trips 02 and a live album, 2013’s Live in Copenhagen. The acclaimed artist has also remixed work by Depeche Mode, Tricky, Savages, The Drums, The Raveonettes, Pet Shop Boys, A Place To Bury Strangers, The Soft Moon, UNKLE and Franz Ferdinand, for which he earned a Grammy nomination.

The acclaimed Danish artist’s sixth album, Dreamweaver is slated for a September 13, 2024 release through his label In My Room. The 10-song album reportedly sees Trentemøller meshing elements of shoegaze, dark wave, motorik, noise rock and somber, introspective takes on electronic ream pop but in a decidedly immersive and psychedelic fashion that’s perfect for headphones — and for discovering new layers and interpretations upon repeated listens. The album also features Icelandic vocalist Disa, who contributes vocals throughout the entire affair.

The album’s first single, album opener “A Different Light” begins with an arpeggiated and melodic nylon string guitar figure that’s quickly joined by Disa’s yearning and meditative delivery weaving together until roughly the song’s halfway point when the melodic phrase is joined by swirling and painterly synth layers. Written as a sort of musical companion to a lunar eclipse, as the moon moves against the sky with the synth melody being akin to the eclipse’s penumbra, the song’s arrangement is anchored around many of the acclaimed Danish artist’s trademarks — rich dichotomies, musical shadow play, Nordic frigidity and warm analog waves — while also being an artistic leap forward. “A Different Light” may be among the most fragile and breathtakingly gorgeous songs Trentemøller has released while evoking a cosmic sense of awe, of being struck by your smallness in an infinitely vast universe.

“I wanted something human and timeless to carry the song and vocal melody,” says Trentemøller. “The acoustic guitar gave me the exact sense of fragility and presence that I thought the song deserves. At the same time, I wanted to play with both acoustic and electronic; to get the guitar to weave in and out of the synth role that is introduced in the middle of the track. I feel the interplay between these two worlds gave the song an extra dimension.”
 

“The song considers themes of longing, healing, and the need for personal transformation. It’s also about confusion and unresolved feelings that happen during any metamorphosis,” the Danish artist explains. “I try to reflect on the transient nature of dreams, loss, and love. At the same time I recognize, and even embrace that this is part of being a human.”

The accompanying visual beings with a drone-led visual for seafoam crashing against currents, fog sweeping across a forest with a full moon ahead, dye being injected into water and similar brooding yet psychedelic imagery.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Washed Out Shares Surreal, Dream-like Visual for Achingly Nostalgic “The Hardest Part”

Back in 2021, Washed Out‘s creative mastermind Earnest Greene left Atlanta returned to the countryside he knew when he grew up. Where escapism once flooded his thoughts, today, he’s preoccupied with the universe of wonder in the reality around him.

He named the former horse farm he moved to “Endymion,” after the John Keats poem about a lovesick shepherd. It has shaped all that he’s created there, from his music to his albums’ creative direction to his planned large-scale visual-art experiments.

Greene’s fifth Washed Out Album, Notes From A Quiet Life is slated for a June 28, 2024 release through Sub Pop. The album, which reportedly is Greene’s most audacious effort to date, is anchored around a purity of vision. It’s also the first album of his catalog that Greene wholly self- produced with mixing assistance from Nathan Boddy and David Wrench.

Notes From A Quiet Life‘s first single “The Hardest Part” is classic Washed Out with subtle refinements: The atmospheric and achingly dream-like and nostalgia-inducing production is anchored around twinkling and arpeggiated keys, glistening bass synths, bursts of strummed guitar paired with Greene’s penchant for crafting catchy hooks and swooning choruses. And much like the JOVM mainstay’s most recently work, the song has Greene’s vocal front and center, with the song’s tale of love lost being the heartbroken star of the show.

Unabashed and unafraid to pioneer and incorporate new technologies within his art, Greene enlisted multi-disciplinary artist, writer, and director Paul Trillo to direct the music video for the album’s lead single, “The Hardest Part.” Created using OpenAI’s Sora, “The Hardest Part” marks the first collaboration with an artist and filmmaker to be generated entirely utilizing this technology.

Before I forget some background here: OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company. Their mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. OpenAI’s Sora is an AI model that can create realistic and imaginative videos from text instructions. Although the model isn’t publicly available as of this writing, OpenAI is currently working with a number of visual artists, designers and filmmakers to gain feedback on how to advance the model to be the most helpful for creative professionals.
 
“I had the seed of this video concept 10 years ago, where we do an infinite zoom of a couple’s life over the course of many decades, but I have yet to attempt it because I figured it’d be too ambitious for a music video,” Paul Trillo says. “While the technology is experimental and cutting-edge, I wanted to do something that also felt like a classic music video that would hold your attention no matter what tech was being used in the process. I was specifically interested in what makes Sora so unique. It offers something that couldn’t quite be shot with a camera, nor could it be animated in 3D, it was something that could have only existed with this specific technology. The surreal and hallucinatory aspects of AI allow you to explore and discover new ideas that you would have never dreamed of.  Using AI to simply recreate reality is boring. I wasn’t interested in capturing realism but something that felt hyperreal. The fluid blending and merging of different scenes feels more akin to how we move through dreams and the murkiness of memories. While some people feel this may be supplanting how things are made, I see this as supplementing ideas that could never have been made otherwise. Many artists in this industry are constantly compromising and negotiating their ideas with the reality of what can be made. This offers a glimpse at a future where music artists will be given the opportunity to dream bigger. An overreliance on this technique may become a crutch and it’s important that we don’t use this as the new standard of creation but another technique in the toolbelt.”
 

“‘The Hardest Part’ is a story about nostalgia and love lost.  With the video, I wanted to bring this narrative to life in a sincere way that was also exciting and unexpected. I’ve been a fan of Paul for a long time and he is amazingly skilled at incorporating cutting-edge visual effects that elevate a story instead of simply supplementing it with shock and awe,” Washed Out’s Ernest Greene says. “He was at the top of my list of potential collaborators. 
 
“What he’s come up with is nostalgic, sad, uplifting, and often quite strange.  However, he still manages to make you feel for the characters and invested in the journey of how their lives progress.

“I think that Paul is right when he says that this video could only be made using this new AI technology.  In my opinion, the hallucinatory quality of Sora clips feels like the beginning of a new genre unto itself – one that is surreal and unpredictable and entirely unique to traditional cinema or even animation.”
 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Los Angeles-based dream pop outfit Nightjacket — currently, founding members Louis Schultz and Jordan Wiggins, along with Andrea Wasse — originally formed back in 2015. The band’s current lineup was solidified when Schultz and Wiggins met Wasse in 2019 and bonded over their mutual love of dream pop and alternative pop from the 80s and 90s.

With the release of 2021’s Following the Curve EP and 2022’s “Don’t Say a Word,” the Los Angeles-based dream pop outfit firmly established themselves in the city’s bustling music scene while firmly solidifying a sound anchored around lush soundscapes with elements of psychedelic Americana, jangly reverberated shoegaze and ambient alt-pope, pulsing beats and soaring vocals that paid homage to teenaged influences like Mazzy Star, The Sundays, R.E.M., and Cocteau Twins. Adding to a growing profile, the band’s material has received critical acclaim from a number of media outlets including Stereogum, SPIN, American Songwriter and Under The Radar, while receiving frequent airplay on KCRW.

The band’s latest single “All of My Friends” is a Laurel Canyon-like take on dream pop rooted around shimmering and twangy acoustic guitar, gorgeous, layered three-part harmonies, remarkably catchy hooks and a driving groove before ending with a dreamy slow-burn fade out with bursts of twinkling keys. While recalling FRANKIIE’s gorgeous Between Dreams, “All of My Friends” is inspired by the sense arrested development and adroitness that only comes about as you get older, and you see your friends seemingly moving on to “more adult” lives without you. Written by the band’s Andrea Wasse, a self-proclaimed queen of arrested development, the song was written as a response to the band’s friends leaving Los Angeles over the last handful of years as a result of the writer’s and actor’s union strikes, the pandemic and housing crisis. Fittingly, Wesse felt like she was getting left behind — and perhaps as though she was in a state of perpetual adolescence.

“We really tried to make the song a journey, so that it grows and has new elements that pop in and pull your attention as you listen along,” the band’s Jordan Wiggins says. “Hopefully it’s a ride for people, like rolling down Sunset Blvd., passing neon signs, peering into bars and turning in and out of alleyways until you get to where it’s bright again.”