Tag: Single Review: Today

New Audio: Los Angeles’ Reindeer Flotilla Shares Wistful and Brooding “Today”

Los Angeles-based duo Reindeer Flotilla — Neal Harris (vocals, keys) and Josh Brown (guitar) — started jamming together in the basement of an Atwater Village wine store, playing covers of John CarpenterBrian Eno and Elliot Smith. Those early days playing covers helped the ban develop their own sound anchored around synths and guitar, which they’ve managed to further refine through the release of a batch of singles and two studio albums.

The duo’s latest single “Today” is a swaying and shoegazey bit of New Wave or a New Wavey bit of shoegaze featuring glistening synths, reverb-soaked guitar textures paired with Harris’ wistful croon. The result is a song that seems indebted to Yes‘ “Owner of a Lonely Heart” and Avalon-era Roxy Music.

New Audio: Copenhagen’s Taxidermy Shares Urgent and Uneasy “Today”

Copenhagen-based experimental noise/post-punk outfit Taxidermy — Osvald Reinhold (vocals, guitar), Toke Brejning Frederiksen (guitar), Joachim Lorch-Schierning (bass) and Johan Knutz Haavik (drums) — have quickly established a sound that draws from math rock, No Wave, post-hardcore and emo among a list of others.

Thematically, the Danish quartet’s work sees them exploring the unease and disquiet of contemporary existence through delving into the cryptic and disorientating, the claustrophobic and the surreal. Crafting material anchored around unpredictable arrangements, raw and visceral textures, broad dynamic range and intense emotional delivery, the members of the Copenhagen-based outfit actively challenges the listener to confront the discomfort of the unknown. 

The Copenhagen-based quartet’s forthcoming EP Coin will feature the previously released “Rot,” a slow-burning bit of noisy post-punk that evokes the narrator’s sanity fraying at its edges with the song being built around an arrangement of intricate layers of dissonant guitars, swirling feedback and a propulsive rhythm section serving as an uneasy and stormy bed for Reinhold’s desperate wailing. Sonically, seeming to channel Disappears/FACS, as well as Radiohead and The Smile, “Rot” not only captures a narrator who’s drowning in their own vacillating and self-flagellating doubt and hatred, but one who does so in a world that’s mad and cruel to him, as he is to himself. 

Coin EP’s second and latest single “Today” features an uneasy and intense slab of post punk-meets noise rock that seemingly pairs angular and fragmented Entertainment-era Gang of Four-like groove with the sort of feedback-driven skronk and squeal reminiscent of Nirvana and Sonic Youth with frenetic and propulsive drumming. Reinhold’s desperately wailing vocal floats uneasy over the hypnotic, machine-like arrangement, seeming to rage against a brutal and unceasingly mad world.