I wasn’t sure about copyright rules, so have chosen 16 tracks from new releases, reissues and preorders that were made available on wiaiwya during 2020 – it’s an ambient, drone, electro, power pop, indie pop, shoegaze, kosmische, folk and maybe even slightly prog mix that includes two James Bond covers, and three excerpts from 77-minute-long tracks!
It was a difficult year, but if you are reading this, I guess you made it through and have been enjoying all the amazing music that Ilya and I heart noise have been covering – well done, and THANK YOU – now, why not treat yourself to a record or two!
Isan – Nothing Picked and Placed Nowhere (seven-minute edit)
On the outskirts of now-deserted Hapfelzdorf in the former GXD lies the vast, abandoned Zwip-Con Mega-Fac #77. Input bays are empty of supply pods, output bays with corrugated shutters are closed.
Solar panels still glisten on the roof, a wind-farm sussurates in the constant, persistent NoSeason breeze. Non-stop power for a non-op facility.
Further Reading: Sun Burns Out
I have resurrected some things… unheard of for many years… some were never heard at all… by anyone. Some were not so good, but at least four were PRETTY DAMN. The long, multi-part adventures. I have remastered them to sound ACE.
Mild, never. Expressive, forever – the duo of Corvair, visits the melancholic and of the dark, with surprising lightness and effervescent positivity. – Come Here Floyd
Proud members of Europe, regardless of the place of the UK in the EU, and humble advocates for humanity, equity and justice in life, European Sun also make music.
Further Reading: Pennyblack
Brooklyn’s Jeanines specialise in ultra-short bursts of energetic but melancholy minor-key pop. With influences that run deep into the most crucial tributaries of DIY pop — the Velvets, the Shop Assistants, the Television Personalities, Dolly Mixture, Veronica Falls and Girl Ray — they’ve crafted a style that is as individual as it is just plain pleasurable. Frontwoman Alicia Jeanine (guitar/vocals) multi-tracks her vocals, delivering delicious harmonies, and Jed Smith (bass/drums) infuses bounce and punch. The melodies are perfect pop sugar, and the themes are melancholic with a dose of sunshine — delivered with a direct and sincere lyricism.
Further Reading: Post-Trash
Hacia Dos Veranos Limay is a masterpiece. Don’t believe me? Amor de Dias’ Alasdair MacLean said: “Their guitarist is a maestro: economical, precise, lyrical. His rolling, arpeggiated style will remind you of Felt’s Maurice Deebank or Vini Reilly, but he also possesses a faint echo of Johnny Marr, in that for all his sense of space and harmony he’s playing tunes first and foremost.”
For fans of Low, Pan American, Movietone, Carla Dal Forno, Múm
Shifts is the debut album from Sea Glass, a new band featuring The Leaf Library’s Matt Ashton with Melinda Bronstein, due out on Friday 14 August via Where It’s At Is Where You Are. This is a set of ten spectral, melancholy songs that combine the minimalism of Young Marble Giants, the acoustic drone of Broadcast’s folkier moments and Liz ‘Grouper’ Harris’s forests of reverb.
Further Reading: For the Rabbits
firestations – Dream Home (seven-minute edit)
firestations make maximal alt-pop songs filled with vocal harmonies, electronica and unusual rhythms.
Dream Home is a musical diary written and recorded in two socially distanced home studios in London during the coronavirus lockdown in March and April 2020.
Further Reading: Spectral Nights
The Leaf Library – An Edge An Ending
Kate Gibson – vocals
Melinda Bronstein – vocals
Matt Ashton – Moog Mother 32, Behringer Model D, guitar, laptop, field recordings
Lewis Young – electronics, violin, percussion, field recordingsField recordings from Dungeness, Deal and Los Tilos Forest, La Palma
Further Reading: God is in the TV
SWEET JUICE are a Father and Son music duo…
A bit like Steptoe and Son if their rag and bone yard was full of old, half broken musical equipment…
Malcolm Doherty (GoKart Mozart, Great Electric) – Drums, guitar, piano.
Calum McQ (A Lifetime with Mercury, Gabi Garbutt) – Bass, Programming, synths.
aka Rickard Berg
Red Red Eyes – Where Has Everybody Gone
These are unprecedented times
Sometimes it feels like some evil mastermind, hell bent on world domination has – well, you know – just like a Bond film. The streets, pubs, venues and stadiums are empty, every day seems to last at least 28 hours, and we have no idea how long it will go on…
And so, the time is right for a couple of new Bond cover versions – Where Has Everybody Gone?(originally recorded by the Pretenders in 1987 for Timothy Dalton’s first stab at the role in The Living Daylights) and We Have All The Time In The World (the 1969 Louis Armstrong classic, recorded for George Lazenby’s only outing as Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service ) released on the day the 25th Bond film, No Time To Die, was originally scheduled to hit the screens.
Melinda Bronstein – No Time To Die
From A Girl And A Gun compilation
Jamie Cameron – How The Solar System Was Won (Part 3) (seven-minute edit)
Freschard – Between The Ocean And The Sea
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