The first taste of new releases and a grassroots deep dive for new artists.
Words by Karl Johnson
With summer seemingly in full swing and parks providing the perfect escapism to a society still finding it’s feet, we’ve dug deep and chosen our favourite new tracks from our favourite new discoveries. Dead Slow Hoot are the cover artist, impressing with their brand of emotionally cutting alternative rock. There’s new music from art-pop newcomers Pushpin, high-octane post-punk with Bristol’s The Pleasure Dome, “dream-kraut” from Swedish outfit End of Fun and lo-fi psych grooves from New York City’s Cave Paint Make Fire. Dig in, we hope you find something to enjoy. Check out our Hard Of Hearing Top Tips playlist for a more expansive look at what we’re listening to at the moment.
Dead Slow Hoot
‘Until Your Breathing Drowns It Out’
The new release by Dead Slow Hoot is one to loose yourself in. While hypnotic in it’s drifting passages of guitar and it’s rolling drum textures, it’s the subtle vocal hooks and melodic delivery that tugs the heartstrings most. Until Your Breathing Drowns It Out is mantra-like in it’s chorus, and perhaps crafted somewhat as a personal self-care manual, we certainly all need one at times. The soundscape is one of deep daydreaming, as the track progresses it washes away any sense of time and location and replaces it with a sense of warmth. Look out for Dead Slow Hoot‘s upcoming EP in 2021.
Pushpin
‘Garden Cities Of Tomorrow’
The glitchy, knotted and highly addictive intro to Garden Cities Of Tomorrow is all part of the fun for Pushpin, one second the joyous art-pop constructs dance before your eyes, the next moment they’re contrasting perfectly with heartfelt harmonies and may I say it, an underlying sadness. Such is life. The London band have already blessed us with their third track of 2021 – recorded, produced, mixed and mastered in-house by the band – and it’s their most ambitious and accomplished to date. Knowing when to push and pull the mood in music is a real skill, cascading drums and angular guitar parts duck out when the more delicate and flowing textures ask us to drift into a subtle psychedelic daydream, a real treat.
The Pleasure Dome
‘Pretty Picture’
Ripples of barbed guitar lines, pounding drums and a guttural bass groove flow through Pretty Picture with the pent-up energy and tangible tension of the waiting room at the dentist. The Pleasure Dome take aim at lifestyles for sale on social media and how the addictive nature of these poisonous platforms are strangling our souls, one influencer and product placement at a time. The Bristol band’s new single is a riot, the angst-filled vocal performance rises with a tide of repressed emotion and floods over your senses, recalling TV Priest turned up a few notches. In the end the warped dreams, sleeplessness and paralysing fear will find us all.
End of Fun
‘Thelma and Louise’
Cutting and drone-esque electronic textures skid across the surface of End of Fun‘s self-described “dream-kraut” landscape, drums and a tense bass groove are interlocked and the band harness a collective spiritual energy that lifts their debut single Thelma and Louise into heavenly territory. The dreamy vocal presence of Michaela Åberg is truly mesmerising and flows waterlike through the mix, holding out a hand to help pull us through a growing mist of sun-scorched psychedelia. Recorded by the band in their studio, Thelma and Louise is the first taste of the Swedish outfit’s debut EP which arrives June 18th via Something Beautiful.
Cave Paint Make Fire
‘Mountain’
The rigid beat and elastic bass feel on Mountain presents us with a lo-fi paradise, sparking visions of long drives on hot roads through dry desert plains. Taking the tightly-wound groove and minimal feel of Texan masters Khruangbin, New York City-based project Cave Paint Make Fire mix story-telling vocal samples with searching guitar sequences. All in all Mountain is a mini-masterpiece in minimalism, the psychedelic feel and subtle instrumental shifts make for a perfect fusion of sounds. The project gained traction from their unmixed tracks being played at underground art shows on the West Coast of America, now fully-formed, Cave Paint Make Fire will be releasing their debut EP on June 11th.
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