Tag: Peter Kember/Sonic Boom

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Camila Fuchs’ Brooding and Uneasy “Mess”

(WARNING: If you have epilepsy, this video employs the use of constant and repetitive flashes that could be dangerous to watch. )

Lisbon-based electro pop duo Camila Fuchs — Camila De Laborde and Daniel Hermann-Collini — formed in London back in 2012. With the release of their first two, critically applauded albums, 2016’s Singing From Fixed Rung and 2018’s Heart Pressed Between Stones, the Lisbon-based electro pop duo quickly established their sound and approach: experimental electro pop with spectral vocals and avant-garde sensibilities. Adding to a growing profile, the members of Camila Fuchs have opened for the likes of Plaid, Actress, Aleksi Perälä, Starcrawler, Charles Hayward, William Basinski, BRAIDS and The Orb — and they’ve played sets at festivals like Mutek Mexico, Primavera Sound and All Tomorrow’s Parties.

Last year’s Peter Kember (a.k.a. Sonic Boom)-produced Kids Talk Sun was recorded near the sea, wilderness and misty, castle-peaked hills of Sintra, just outside of Lisbon. During the recording sessions, the members of the acclaimed Lisbon-based duo shifted back and forth between the wilderness and the studio. And as a result, the album’s nine songs thematically is an abstract meditation on childhood that touches upon the exchanges between humans and humans and nature. Imbued with a youthful sense of light and wonder, Kids Talk Sun sonically finds the duo sonically reimagining natural phenomena in sonic form.

Kids Talk Sun’s latest single “Mess” is a mesmerizing yet uneasy track, centered around brooding and atmospheric electronics, crunchy and skittering beats, shimmering synth arpeggios and achingly plaintive vocals. While sonically the song may draw some comparisons to Bjork, it manages to evoke the sensation of something creeping from out the shadows, of a slow-burning anxious dread that you can’t quite put a finger on.

“‘Mess’ brings the shadows. It’s the lonely place from where to watch. A social heartbreak where one doesn’t fit in and is always shifting trying to find connections,” the Lisbon-based electro pop duo explain in press notes. “It’s about the lack of communication and the possible void that it can create. It’s about language as the way to get to know each other. It’s such a precise tool. If we don’t use it, are we truly getting to know each other? ‘Love is where we go first with the word but it’s not just about something light and happy and pleasurable. The word calls us deep, deep responsibilities,’ said Elizabeth Alexander. This song is about a place where we’ve all been. It welcomes the sharing, the questioning, the urge and nature of talking, it’s about being open to actively get to know each other.”

Directed by Camia Fuchs’ Camila De Laborde and her sister Manueal De Laborde is an equally brooding and uneasy visual, featuring the duo holding weirdly shaped cut outs in rapidly flashing strobe light, split with footage of the duo standing in front of a plain brick wall. Of course, as the duo move through the flashing strobes, they move about it in a slow motion.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Beach House Release Gorgeously Cinematic Visuals for “Black Car”

Over the past few years, I’ve written quite a bit about the Baltimore-based indie rock act Beach House. And as you may recall, the duo, which is comprised of founding and primary members Victoria Legrand (organ, vocals) and Alex Scally (guitar, vocals) have released a number of critically and commercially successful, including 2015’s Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars, which were written and recorded within a two-and-a-half year period between 2012-2014. And while they were individual efforts, they were meat to be viewed as companion pieces that build upon similar themes and an overall  sound centered around sparse and atmospheric arrangements of organ, guitar and Legrand’s ethereal vocals.

The Baltimore-based indie rock act’s seventh, full-length album 7 was released last month through Sub Pop Records in North America, Bella Union Records in Europe and Mistletone Records in Australia and New Zealand, and the recording sessions found the band working with  Spacemen 3‘s Sonic Boom (a.k.a. Peter Kember) as a producer — but not in the traditional sense, as he helped the band in their attempts to start anew by shedding conventions and ensuring that the album’s material would be fresh, alive and protected from the tendency of overproduction and perfectionism.  Additionally, the album features Beach House’s most recent live drummer James Barone, who as Legrand and Scally say helped “keep rhythm at the center of a lot of these songs.”

“Throughout the process of recording 7, our goal was rebirth and rejuvenation. We wanted to rethink old methods and shed some self-imposed limitations. In the past, we often limited our writing to parts that we could perform live,” Legrand and Scally explain. “On 7, we decided to follow whatever came naturally. As a result, there are some songs with no guitar, and some without keyboard. There are songs with layers and production that we could never recreate live, and that is exciting to us. Basically, we let our creative moods, instead of instrumentation, dictate the album’s feel.

“In the past, the economics of recording have dictated that we write for a year, go to the studio, and record the entire record as quickly as possible. We have always hated this because by the time the recording happens, a certain excitement about older songs has often been lost. This time, we built a ‘home’ studio, and began all of the songs there.  Whenever we had a group of 3-4 songs that we were excited about, we would go to a ‘proper’ recording studio and finish recording them there. This way, the amount of time between the original idea and the finished song was pretty short.”

As the act admits, the societal sense of instability, uncertainty and chaos was deeply influential on the album’s material. “Looking back, there is quite a bit of chaos happening in these songs, and a pervasive dark field that we had little control over. The discussions surrounding women’s issues were a constant source of inspiration and questioning. The energy, lyrics and moods of much of this record grew from ruminations on the roles, pressures and conditions that our society places on women, past and present.” They go on to say that in a general sense, “we are interested by the human mind’s (and nature’s) tendency to create forces equal and opposite to those present. Thematically, this record often deals with the beauty that arises in dealing with darkness; the empathy and love that grows from collective trauma; the place one reaches when they accept rather than deny.”

So far, Beach House has released a handful of singles off the album — “Lemon Glow,” a jangling and atmospheric track centered around Legrand’s ethereal vocals; the shoegazer-like “Dive,” one of the most expansive and ambitious tracks they’ve released; and “Dark Spring,” a shoegazer-like single featuring woozy power chords, twinkling keys and a soaring hook. 7‘s latest single “Black Car” finds the duo pushing away from their well-known formula as its centered around twinkling and arpeggiated keys, atmospheric synths, paired with Legrand’s vocals.

Directed by Alistair Legrand, the recently released video for “Black Car,” fittingly features a black car — a Cadillac, I think — shot in a sumptuous and cinematic black and white, as it rides around desolate, late night streets. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Beach House Releases Cinematic and Feverish Visuals for “Dark Spring”

Over the past few years, I’ve written quite a bit about the Baltimore-based indie rock act Beach House. And as you may recall, the duo, which is comprised of founding and primary members Victoria Legrand (organ, vocals) and Alex Scally (guitar, vocals) have released a number of critically and commercially successful, including 2015’s Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars, which were written and recorded within a two-and-a-half year period between 2012-2014, and while they were individual efforts, they were meat to be viewed as companion pieces that build upon similar themes and an overall related sound centered around sparse and atmospheric arrangements of organ, guitar and Legrand’s ethereal vocals.

Much like countless bands before them, Legrand and Scally have written and recorded a large number of songs throughout their career, some of which have been played live or released that for whatever reason just didn’t quite fit their album-based material. Over the years, some of those songs have proven to be increasingly difficult to find and listen to, and to accommodate their fans, they released B-Sides and Rarities, a 14 track compilation of songs that they’ve recorded and released that just didn’t make their albums, and two previously unreleased singles “Chariot” and “Baseball Diamond,” recorded during the Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars sessions. As a music journalist and fan, B-side compilations can offer a revealing look into a band’s creative and editorial processes as they write and record an album. Interestingly, according to a lengthy statement written by the band that appears on Sub Pop’s website, the B-sides album “felt like a good step for us. It helped us clean the creative closet, put the past the bed and start anew.”

The Baltimore-based act’s seventh full-length album, the symbolically apt titled 7 is slated for a May 11, 2018 release through Sub Pop Records in North America, Bella Union Records in Europe and Mistletone Records in Australia and New Zealand, and as the album found the act working with Spacemen 3‘s Sonic Boom (a.k.a. Peter Kember) as a producer — but not in the traditional sense, as he helped the band in their attempts to start anew by shedding conventions and ensuring that the album’s material would be fresh, alive and protected from the tendency of overproduction and perfectionism. Additionally, the album finds Legrand and Scally working with their most recent live drummer James Barone, who as the band says helped “keep rhythm at the center of a lot of these songs.”

As Legrand and Scally explain “Throughout the process of recording 7, our goal was rebirth and rejuvenation. We wanted to rethink old methods and shed some self-imposed limitations. In the past, we often limited our writing to parts that we could perform live. On 7, we decided to follow whatever came naturally. As a result, there are some songs with no guitar, and some without keyboard. There are songs with layers and production that we could never recreate live, and that is exciting to us. Basically, we let our creative moods, instead of instrumentation, dictate the album’s feel.

“In the past, the economics of recording have dictated that we write for a year, go to the studio, and record the entire record as quickly as possible. We have always hated this because by the time the recording happens, a certain excitement about older songs has often been lost. This time, we built a ‘home’ studio, and began all of the songs there.  Whenever we had a group of 3-4 songs that we were excited about, we would go to a ‘proper’ recording studio and finish recording them there. This way, the amount of time between the original idea and the finished song was pretty short.”

As the act admits, the societal sense of instability, uncertainty and chaos was deeply influential. “Looking back, there is quite a bit of chaos happening in these songs, and a pervasive dark field that we had little control over. The discussions surrounding women’s issues were a constant source of inspiration and questioning. The energy, lyrics and moods of much of this record grew from ruminations on the roles, pressures and conditions that our society places on women, past and present.” They go on to say that in a general sense, “we are interested by the human mind’s (and nature’s) tendency to create forces equal and opposite to those present. Thematically, this record often deals with the beauty that arises in dealing with darkness; the empathy and love that grows from collective trauma; the place one reaches when they accept rather than deny.

Now, as you may recall, last month Beach House released “Lemon Glow,” 7‘s first single, a jangling and  atmospheric track centered around Legrand’s etheral vocals that possessed a subtle, cosmic glow.  “Dive” 7’s second single may arguably be one of the more expansive and ambitious tracks they’ve released in recent memory as it features a lengthy, atmospheric section centered around Legrand’s vocals, organ and gently padded drumming before quickly shifting into a buzzing power chord-based coda. Interestingly, “Dark Spring,” the album’s third and latest single is a shoegazey-like single, featuring buzzing and woozy power chords, twinkling keys and a soaring hook. Directed by Zia Anger, the recently released video for “Dark Spring” is a gorgeous and cinematically shot fever dream.