Tag: Amnesiac

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Over the past 15 years, singer/songwriter and musician Jordan Geiger has developed a reputation for being incredibly prolific — he’s been a member of several renowned indie rock acts including Shearwater, The Appleseed Cast, Des Ark and Minus Story, and he’s released three albums with his solo recording project Hospital Ships. Geiger’s fourth full-length Hospital Ships effort, The Past is Not a Flood is slated for a March 11, 2016 release through Graveface Records, and the album features a myriad number of Austin, TX-based collaborators including longtime friend, Swans‘ Thor Harris — and is Geiger’s sixth album with renowned producer John Congleton, best known for his work with St. Vincent, The Walkmen, Modest Mouse and others.

Thematically speaking, The Past is Not a Flood reportedly draws from Geiger’s own battles with mental illness, anxiety and depression, which will arguably make his fourth full-length album his most personal one to date. The album’s first single “You and I” possesses a gorgeous painterly quality as layers of twisting and turning piano chords undulating and chiming percussion and ominously ambient electronics are slowly added like brushstrokes upon a canvas — and then they’re paired with Geiger’s achingly tender vocals expressing vulnerability, shame, regret and confusion over a dysfunctional and fucked up relationship that’s at an impasse. While sonically bearing a resemblance to Amnesiac-era Radiohead, Remember Remember and Mogwai‘s most recent ambient experiments “You and I” manages to feel like a lingering and anxious fever dream.

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Just in time to close out the year, the members of Radiohead announced that last year, they were approached to write a theme song for the latest James Bond film, Spectre. Knowing that the studio and the film’s director went with Sam Smith‘s “Writing On The Wall,” it’s pretty obvious that someone decided that Radiohead’s “Spectre” just wasn’t going to work out — although to be honest, “Spectre” is a gorgeous,moody and dramatic jazz-inspired composition that sounds as though it could have been on Amnesiac or King of Limbs. To my ears, what makes the song so strange is that Radiohead’s theme song as though it could have been part of an art-house film about consumerism, greed, alienation and regret, while capturing the tone and feel of a Bond film.

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: David Bowie’s Creepy, New Video for “Blackstar”

More than enough ink has been spilled on David Bowie‘s lengthy career as a singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, arranger, actor and painter, so delving into any significant backstory will be largely unnecessary for the scope of […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

With the release of their first two singles “Brontos” and “Snowboy,” Emmecosta, a Gothenburg, Sweden-based electronic trio have quickly received attention across the European Union and elsewhere for a dreamy, jazz-based electro pop sound that evokes the sensation of being half-awake and walking home from the club as the sun is rising. And over the past few months, the Swedish electronic trio’s profile has been on the rise as they’ve received praise from several internationally recognized websites and publications including Clash Magazine, Vice’s Noisey and Complex — and they’ve seen increasing radio play from Scandinavian radio stations P3, P4 and YleX, as well as several others across the globe.

“Thousands of Me,” the third and latest single from the Gothenburg-based trio is a moody track consisting of handclaps, stuttering and skittering drum programming, sparse piano chords and a mournful horn line. Sonically speaking the song seems to draw influence from Portishead, Amnesiac-era Radiohead and Chet Faker — and much like the work of those acts, “Thousands of Me” has confessional and deeply personal feel, while delving deeply into the psyche of its narrator.

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

The UK-based duo of Luca Santucci and Ben Fitzgerald, a.k.a. Stubborn Heart, from London and Oxford respectively, have developed a reputation for a soulful and yet atmospheric electronica which has been influenced by the likes […]