Tag: The Magnetic Fields

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Athens-born, Barcelona-based singer/songwriter, classically trained pianist and visual artist Evripdis Sabatis is the creative mastermind behind the solo recording project Evripidis and His Tragedies. The project, which finds the Athens-born, Barcelona-based multimedia artist crafting devastatingly confessional, self-deprecating and often darkly humorous pop songs centered around a queer sensibility can trace its origins back to 2004. When Sabatis relocated to Barcelona, the Greek-born multimedia artist started playing solo sets, accompanying himself on piano in small local bars before becoming a fixture in the local underground scene as a performer, DJ and independent promoter.

Since 2004, Sabatis has been rather busy. He has released four albums 2007’s self-titled debut, 2011’s A Healthy Dose of Pain, 2016’s Futile Games in Space and Time, 2019’s Mia Triti stin Cantina and an EP . . . And It Was Good While It Lasted Baby while also writing scores for short films. Those releases were primarily melancholy, piano-driven indie pop with a joyous beat, unconventional song structures, lush chord progressions and vocal harmonies that found Sabatis collaborating with an eclectic and diverse array of local and international artists, including Sarah P., The Magnetic Fields‘ LD Beghtol, and fellow Greek artist Nalyssa Green.

Sabatis has opened for internationally acclaimed artists like John Grant, Jens Lekman, Peter Bjorn and John and Arab Strap. Adding to a growing profile, he has toured internationally, playing shows in Spain, the UK, Germany, France, the US, Portugal, The Netherlands and his native Greece. The Greek multimedia artist has also made the rounds of the international festival circuit making stops at Primavera Sound Festival, FIB Festival, Indietracks, Eurosonic Nooderslag and Synch Festival.

The Athens-born, Barcelona-based multimedia artist’s fifth album Neos Kosmos reportedly finds Sabatis crating material that goes in a much more decidedly straightforward and sparse synth-driven direction with lyrics written and sung in English, Spanish and Greek while still displaying his immense love of Doo Pop, 60s girls groups, New Wave, indie pop and bedroom pop. The album’s latest single “Bitter,” which features guest vocals from The Ballet‘s Greg is a decidedly 80s inspired synth pop confection featuring shimmering synth arpeggios, a propulsive motorik groove, and a razor sharp yet infectious hook. Interestingly, “Bitter” reveals a songwriter, who has an uncanny ability to write a song that’s centered around complex and contradictory emotions: through heartfelt and earnest songwriting dripping with a bit of campy sarcasm, the song points out the fact that that love — and the search for love — can be fleeting, capricious, embittering and exhausting. And yet, love is so necessary that you can’t quite give up on it either.

“I wanted to convey a little bit of the feeling that The Smiths‘ songs gave me when I was younger — this mixture of romanticism, cynicism, and humor that is kind of camp, but also deeply heartfelt.,” Sabatis explains in press notes. “I am, after all, bitter and hopeful, grumpy and funny, all together at the same time, and I wanted to connect with those who feel these strong contradictions. I invited Greg to sing with me because I imagined an encounter of two like-minded souls who never give up on love. “

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Born to Welsh and Polish parents in Stoke-On-Trent, the rising British singer/songwriter and guitarist Benjamin Belinska relocated to Newcastle when he turned 17. He didn’t settle in Newcastle for very long; eventually he drifted around Europe, spending stints in Glasgow, Berlin, and Paris, supporting himself through a series of menial jobs, ranging from museum cleaner to estate gardener. During that period. he wrote music on borrowed guitars and stolen notebooks, garnering praise from the French press and the BBC along the way.

While in Paris, Belinska met E.A.R. and the duo started the band Paris, Texas, which released two Kramer-produced albums before deciding to relocate to Newcastle together. Two things happened to Belinksa, which may have altered the course of his life:

“Rushing to get a connection, I left a suitcase in York station. It was never recovered. Most of the early songs disappeared,” Belinska says in press notes. “Some months later, I was walking from home work and was randomly assaulted by a gang of four in broad daylight. During the recovery, I decided to stop drifting once and for all. As a first gesture, I would record a new album.”

The new album Belinska recorded, his solo, full-length debut Lost Illusions was released earlier this year, and the album’s first single, the Palace Winter-like “Young in Baltimore” reveals a songwriter, who can pair breezy and shimmering radio friendly soft rock, earnest, lived-in songwriting and an unerring knack for crafting an infectious, pop-leaning hook. But underneath the song’s breezy radio friendliness, is an achingly bittersweet lament evoking the inevitable and unstoppable passage of time, of nostalgia for seemingly simpler times, the uneasy compromises that every adult has to make and live with, the forced upon conformity to make a living and survive.

“The song is about regret, nostalgia and conformity,” Belinska said in an email. “It was inspired by Robert Frank’s photo-book The Americans and The Magnetic Fields. I played and recorded it myself and it was mixed and mastered by Giles Barrett and Simon Trought at Soup Studio, London.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Closing Eyes · You Can Have Everything

Oslo’s Closing Eyes — Eirik Asker Pettersen, Magnus Asker Pettersen, Emilie Lium Vordal, Anders Emil Rønning and Jørgen Bjella — are a rising indie act, who has developed a sound and approach that’s inspired by an eclectic array of influences including Yo La Tengo, Stereolab, Spiritualized, The Velvet Underground, The Electric Prunes, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Gilberto Gil, The Magnetic Fields, and The Soft Bulletin-era The Flaming Lips. 

With the release of 2014’s debut EP Melodies for the Contemporary Mind, which led to them opening for Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier — and their full-length debut, 2018’s Soft Years, the act started to receive quite a bit of attention from the Norwegian press. Adding to a growing profile, the act played several showcases in their native Norway and they opened for The Brian Jonestown Massacre. They ended a big 2018 with the the 12-inch effort Reworked, which featured remixes from Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas, Young Dreams and Serena Maneesh.

The members of the rising Norwegian indie act spent last year writing and recording their recently released Emil Nikolaisen-produced sophomore album Eternal Fidelity.  The album highlights a band that has grown more confident while crafting material that’s nostalgic yet modern, centered around big chords and sentimental melodies.  “Sometimes I try very hard to hold on to something but it just feels like it’s slipping through my fingers. Ideals, dreams, identities or friendships are all things that live so strongly and easily when we’re young but often seem to lose footing as we grow older,” the band’s Eirik Asker Pettersen says of the album’s overall vibe and themes. “Convictions that seem so solid can suddenly dissolve and become unresolved issues. I don’t think we’re too good at dealing with that. Mostly, Eternal Fidelity is about those feelings. It’s about trying to hold on, let go and make sense of it all. It’s about clinging to what’s important even though it might not be easy all the time.”  

Eternal Fidelity‘s latest single is the woozy “You Can Have Everything.” Centered around shimming and arpeggiated blocks of keys, boom bap-like drums, fuzzy power chords and an rousingly anthemic hook, the song manages to a woozy and achingly nostalgic song that evokes the rapid passing of time, as well as the constantly changing priorities and responsibilities of adult life. Life changes you after all; it does that very well.