Here it is...
This is the first single from Echo Lake.
It was released in July of 2011, before the first album was released. As I was
not sure at the time that I wrote about Wild Peace this is the single from the
album.
The A side of the single, Another Day, is included on the
new album Wild Peace. The song has a heavy hand with echo but the vocals still
seem to float up to the top over all of the music. Although you can’t
understand the lyricist is still a very pretty sound and that is what is most
important in the music.
Ths B side track, Breathe Deep, is only found on this
single. This song has the light and airy/dreamy vocals that I love so much. The
background vocals are just oos and ahs but they overlap the actual words that
are being sung making for a nearly breathless sound in the vocals. It is really
cool to listen to.
This was an interesting hunt into the background of Echo Lake.
I liked the album so much that I had to find more from them. The only other
collections that are out there from this group right now are the first EP,
Young Silence, the first single as seen here and their first album, Wild Peace.
This is her first EP but her second release ever. This Ep
was released in the summer of 2012. The EP was released as a 7” vinyl with
three songs or as a download with five songs. I bought the 7” and downloaded
the two tracks that were not included on the physical release. The record label
that is supporting her is called Neon Gold. This is the same record company
that put out Passion Pits’ first single, Sleepy Head. They are a very small
record company.
The first release from this EP is called Warrior. I heard it
through an email that I get that promotes indie bands, I think it is called
Rcd-Lbl. I don’t keep the email after I have read it so I can’t be sure about
that name. She has a beautiful voice and the backing music is usually slow and
deliberate with lots of emotion. The music is electronic in nature and has some
big beats that boll you over.
The second song, The one that I heard from Rcd-Lbl, called
White Coats, has some really cool digital backing vocal samples that are very intriguing.
It has that mountainous feel with tympani drums used in the chorus and the
sampled vocals having a nice clear echo on them. She sort of has a bit of a
whine in her vocals. Some people may not like this sound. For me, listening to
Thom Yorke for so long, it is all right.
The third track from the EP is called In Her Arms. This
track has a really awesome big distorted bass drum sound. The melody of the
song sounds like it is coming from a set of pipe bells that are all bent out of
shape. They have a slightly out of tune sound that works so well with the song.
This track is one of the two that are only available on the download version of
the EP
The other two tracks are a demo of Let Go For Tonight, download
or vinyl, and Warrior done as a live acoustic version, download only.
This was Foxes first ever release. It was released early in
2012 on Neon Gold as well. The graphic on the cover reminds me of porcelain artistry.
It is very pretty.
The A side of this 7” single is called Youth. The song start
out with her vocals only with the music fading in slowly. There are lots of
synth strings and a low under current bass line and light drums. It builds into
a bass driven track with glitch drums that sound really good. The song drops
this all off with only her vocals about half way through the song. The piano
comes in slowly and then everything picks back up. It is a great song with
great song craftsmanship in my opinion.
The B side of the single is called Home. This track is much simpler.
It starts out with her vocals and a music box sounding melody behind. The drums
pick up with a slow big sound. There is also some synth parts that support the
music box sound that continues through the verse. There are some strings that
pick up in the chorus to pick up where the music box leaves off. It reminds me
of a child moving with his or her parents from town to town. The child in the
story almost never gets to make any friends. It is a heart wrenching story that
rings true to me through some of my friends who have had to live like that.
Both versions of this collection are long out of print. They
were released in 1993. I was lucky to find both of them recently for cheap
prices. Not many people know of this group so, if you look around, you can find
them for cheap. The EP, which is a CD, has a different track listing from the
vinyl single which is why I had to track down both versions. I was lucky to
have tracked down the red vinyl version of the vinyl single.
It is called Asleep but they are in support of the song MostlyI Sleep, the A side of the single and lead track for the EP. The guys have
younger sounding voices than what I have gotten use to on the new record
Enterprising Sidewalks, There was nearly 20 years between this release and the
new album that just came out. The song has a smooth beginning that slowly
deteriorates into a staccato stutter. It really reminds me of something that
Sunny Day Real Estate would have done. I like it a lot.
This leaves four songs that are not found anywhere else but
on this EP and single. The B side to the single, called Float My Bed, starts
out as an average song but bursts into a distorted mess at the end of each
verse. It is an interesting way to craft a song, I will give them that much. I
would not want them to float my bed away on that noise with me in it though.
The second track on the EP is called The Sky Is Falling. This
is a slow song that doesn’t seem to do anything. There is so much dead space on
the beginning of the song, I am just not sure that it is going any where until the
second third kicks in. it is still slow but it does fill in the spaces better.
The song goes back and forth between this dead sound and the full sound. It is
a good song but really looses me in those dead parts.
The last two songs, Caterwaul and Stale Houses, are
interesting but not tracks that I would sit down and listen to because I wanted
to be enveloped in happy warm music. I will just put it like that. I will say
that you need to be in the mood to listen to both the EP. I could probably
listen to the single and be happy with that though.
This was a split single put out by K records. It was
released in 1996. I got this as a freebie when I bought the Lorelei Single. I
did not order it nor did I know that it was in the package when I got it. I was
not even going to listen to it. I ended up cleaning it and putting it on as I
was recording all of these singles for conversion to digital. There is one
track from Heavenly and two from Bis.
I did not know what side was the A side or the B side as it
was not labeled. I looked it up on Discogs to find that the Heavenly track was
the A side. I listened to the Heavenly track, Trophy Girlfriend, and fell in
love with the group instantly. The song has the classic 90s distorted guitar
but has the clearest English accented female vocals. It was new and old to me
at the same time. The song reminds me of something that Lush may have done on
their last album, i.e. Lady Killers. I loved it. I am going to try to get some
of their full length albums after hearing this song.
Bis had two songs on the B side of this single. The first
song is called Keroleen. It has the licks of straight up punk. The problem that
I have with the track is there is a slowed down sounding background vocals that
is very distracting from the song. If they would have done that background as a
normal voice I think that I would have liked it better.
The second song that they have on this single is called
Grand Royal With Cheese. This song is just music, no vocals. The song is a very
cool drum driven track. I think that this track is so much better than
Keroleen. This is mainly due to the fact that there are no vocals and that it
is mainly electronic/drum driven.
I don’t know who Other Lives are honestly. The 12” single
was released just recently in 2012. I bought it simply because Atoms For Peace
is Thom Yorkes’ solo band.
The A side of this single is written by Other Lives but
remixed by Atoms For Peace. The song is called Tamer Animals. There are sound
clips of the lead singer from the group but I can’t tell how much of the
original song is in this remix. It is an interesting glitch styled remix of the
song which is indicative of Thom yorkes’ style.
The B side is a remix of the song Other Side. The remix is
labeled Stuck Together Remix. This is significant because Thom did a song
called Stuck Together for some modeling thing a while back. This is another
electronic track from Thom and reminds me of the Radiohead remixes that were
put out over the summer of 2011. It also reminds me of the sounds that I use to
make when messing around with the old windows music software called Rubber
Duck. You would make a loop and just mess with the loop over and over seeing
what kind of new sounds you could come up with. It is an interesting song but
at eight minutes it gets a little long in the tooth.
There is always more to come...
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