[engl] Kindling is comprised of my good buddies Stephen and Andy who also play in WMass hardcore outfit Ampere, as well as Gretschen (who plays guitar and sings) and Andrew, who plays bass. I can tell you these people have the most solid musical knowledge I know… While it would be easy to compare them to My Bloody Valentine, a closer listen will also led you to find evident traces of Superchunk guitar riffs, Teenage Fanclub and Jesus & Mary Chain melodies to serve a very personnal and unique sound… They blur they dreamy melodies into a wall of a massive fuzz sounds with a a pop sensibility rarely found when the volume and attack ends up this far in the red. While they spent a week at Sonelab in rural Easthampton, MA with Justin Pizzoferrato (Dinosaur Jr, Pixies, Speedy Ortiz, Sonic Youth, etc.) to record their first full length Galaxies for the amazing No Idea Records in Florida, they cut 6 extra songs for this euro-only release ! Adagio 830 and Echo Canyon team up one more timeto bring you this amazing EP for you! Those songs will also be released on tape in the US on Old Flame records !

[engl] When L.A. Takedown hovers over your ear hairs the first time, so much is communicated without a word - there are patient, capable hands at the wheel as we phantom through a neon Los Angeles of the mind, a Los Angeles that only three harmonized electric guitars can conjure, with a sunset so infinitely variegated in color that only synthetic washes of synth could serve as your fainting couch. Studio magic dust seems to drip off these android dreams projected against the wall - in person it defies logic that such a sound is coming from humans, but as you watch their hands it’s unmistakable - these are calm warriors sallying forth these sweeping, swooning epics, crowned with triumphant tripartite thunderbolts of wail. For a few fleeting moments, things seem right with the world; our hero has prevailed, the race was won by a hair, the unmanned drones levitate & strafe the coast, rending the coral sky with a psychic boom, shaking loose a few palm fronds and setting off some car alarms but otherwise leaving the sprawl unchanged and teeming. While produced and performed by Aaron M. Olson, Our Feeling of Natural High was engineered and mixed to glossy perfection by Jason Quever and (we hear) it benefits greatly from the seamless contributions of John Herndon, Jason Quever, Marcus Savino, Miles Wintner, Mose Wintner, Nicholas Krgovich and The Musical Tracing Ensemble. We’re even treated to a city-hum lullaby to humanity as a nightcap, with Nedelle Torrisi and Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Yukihiro Takahashi on vocals, truly a mint on the pillow of this fantastic soundscape. For fans of Michael Rother, Top Gun, later Tangerine Dream, convertibles and long walks on the beach.

[engl] La femme is a conundrum. A resounding expression. An episodic band with various faces. La Femme shows up and it’s all of her grimy spleen that stains the city’s grey pavement, in a synthetic rain beamed by livid burstings. La femme was born during the X years in Biarritz, when Sasha and Marlon started composing on their guitars music they recorded on Garage Band. Together they ride surfboards, pianos and synthetiseur as they gave a try to various styles, from 60s yéyé French pop to Californian surf music. Marlon moved to Paris, and there he met Sam, who played bass. Together they formed SOS Mademoiselle along with Olivier Peynot, and played vintage French rock, as Sasha was practising his scales in reverb feed surf band « Les redoutables! » After getting his grade, Sasha joined his friends in Paris, where they discovered French cold wave and synth pop, Marie & Les Garcons being one of their favourite. They polished a style that could be described as one of these following : Surf wave, Bizarre wave, strange wave, weird witch wave, silly mental wave or Psycho tropical Berlin ». In fact anything you want as long as it ends with « wave ». And the boys created LA FEMME. La Femme has no frontier, neither in her style nor in her voice. She’s always on a quest for new sounds, images and sensations. Joined in 2010 by drummer Noé and female singer Clémence, La femme formed its first live roster in few days after French rider and artist Pandora Decoster asks them to play on stage for a big surf contest in Biarritz. From her hazy and changing background, La femme takes shape and release that same year its first anthem « Sur la Planche », a song that was made to be hummed and whistled while ridding a board. La femme uncovers, boys, girls, plenty of option, a bit of mystery, loads of energy. Later she released her second EP, Paris 2012. In the music video she produced for this song, she blows down the effeil tower as a symbol, it’s time to go ans see something else. After swilling Paris bars, La femme goes for a tour in USA, en mode journey, and come back in France with improved reputation where they play for various festival. Soon joined by fancy rhythm drummer Nunez Ritter Von Merguez aka « La Sauterelle » and gorgeous singer Clara Luciani, La femme takes for a ride around Europe : from beyond the grave to Berlin, by London, Bruxelles and Roubaix. Cryptic and Mysterious, La femme is in perpetual motion and the band, based around full time and up-to-date boys (Sasha, Marlon, Sam), invites over the course of its wish and needs in studio a whole cast of female singer : Clémence, Clara, Marilu, Jeanne… Sooner this year, La femme released a self titled EP, that went by along with a 11 minutes long psychedelic music video, an epic and baroque short film for tracks « La femme, Hypsoline », preceding the release of her first album in April : « Psycho Tropical Berlin »: It’s the story of a couple who slipped chaos and survives by watching each other. Le Danger est partout - Peril is all around as written in the booklet. Rock and pop, rococo bahaus, fed from multiples influences (Krafwerk, Elli & Jacno) La Femme just want to please you. Generous and welcoming, she stretches you her white hand in the dark, if you grasp it, it could be the shiver of you life.

[engl] Since the mid-1990s, Stockholm’s Last Days of April have created a succession of luminous, hook-laden LPs, earning the band’s lead vocalist, guitarist, and all-around auteur, Karl Larsson, a reputation as a bonafide songwriter’s songwriter. With EVEN THE GOOD DAYS ARE BAD, Larsson and Co. return with their 10th long player (following 2015’s Sea of Clouds), a shimmering collection of eight new Larsson-penned songs that show him at the apex of his craft and LDOA achieving new levels of strength, honesty, and brilliance.

[engl] Back in the heady days of 2007, long before social media was the reigning king of entertainment, when people still picked going out to live shows over streaming movies, there was a band that made a little blip on the heart monitor of the Medway music scene before disappearing almost as quick. The Lovedays were a British pop band, in the retro meaning of the word "Pop". With influences ranging from Brian Wilson and The Who, to Steve Winwood and Roy Wood, The Lovedays aspired to be part of the next generation of classic pop purveyors. Their eponymous debut received 5-star notices as far afield as the US, with only self-distribution and promotion, along with noted appearances at The Cavern Club in Liverpool and Kennys Castaways in New York in 2009. They took hiatus in 2010, for pastures new. Ben Jones, the frontman and leader of the band, moved to Austin, TX, where he is part of the roots duo, Beat Root Revival.

[engl] Marietta is the new project of Guillaume Marietta after The Feeling Of Love.

[engl] Sophomore album by Marietta, La Passagère follows Basement Dreams Are The Bedroom Cream (Born Bad Records, 2015), which was lauded by French daily newspaper Liberation, magazines Les Inrockuptibles, Magic, New Noise and online magazine Noisey. After touring with his band for two years and playing well-received concerts at Villette Sonique, Rock en Seine, Levitation Festival, Musiques Volantes, Bars en Trans, laureate of leading French development prize Fair 2017 Guillaume Marietta has come back with nine songs written in French for the first time. The album was recorded in Los Angeles by Chris Cohen, singer-songwriter and producer extraordinaire, with two albums signed on Captured Tracks and past member of Deerhoof and The Curtains. Mixed by Kenneth Gilmore, permanent member of Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, who counts in his mixing catalogue Front Row Seat To Earth by Weyes Blood and My Dreams Dictate My Reality by SOKO. A carnal, sensual, hallucinating and melancholic record, fed by representations of the woman, the modern city, self-abandon, paranoia and redemption. La Passagère is inhabited by the ghosts of Syd Barret and Lou Reed, and nods to contemporary productions by Kurt Vile, Cate Lebon, Tim Presley, Kevin Morby, and of course Chris Cohen.

[engl] In 20 or 30 years, we’ll talk about Guillaume Marietta the same way we talk about Arthur Russell or Robert Johnson today – people ignored by their contemporaries and rediscovered later in prestigious anthologies or picaresque documentaries. Future being rather incertain these days, it would maybe be better if you didn’t lose any time and enjoy Marietta right away. Sure, it won’t be easy to map Marietta’s journey – one of the key players of the GrandeTriple Alliance De l’Est, an anarchic scene which exploded between Metz and Strasbourg in the early 2000s, fronting bands such as A.H. Kraken, Plastobe?ton and The Feeling Of Love. In 2015 he released his first solo album, Basement Dreams Are The Bedroom Cream, an amazing collection of 4-track twisted lullabies who got him comparisons with Syd Barrett and John Frusciante. Then comes his second LP and suddenly you lose the track – footprints have been covered – no more of that sweet demo sounding folky weirdness : La Passage?re is recorded in Los Angeles with Chris Cohen and it’s a lush and mesmerizing record, like Berlin with windows wide open or a sun-drenched The Idiot. A record that gives Marietta’s music new layers of depth and complexity – even if he loses part of his audience in the process. Following this would be tough – and hazardous No studio sessions in LA, no 4-track demos, Prazepam St. has been recorded with cracked computer music software. Richer and fuller than the two previous records, this new LP is also, paradoxically, unbashed and easier to grasp. “I wanted to have fun,” says Marietta. Build a dark and bright world with my little hands and raw material, like David Lynch when he did Eraserhead “- one of the main keys to the album. It is also, more involuntarily a synthesis – there’s the raw side of the first album, that more flamboyant and ambitious of the second, but also small pieces of AH Kraken, Feeling Of Love and even Funk Police. Marietta went back to some of his teenage years fovorite records – Sonic Youth, Beck, Nirvana, the Beastie Boys, but also Jim O’Rourke or David Pajo – “Pajo” is a nod to te guitarist from Slint whose solo project Papa M is a mainstay on Guillaume’s record collection. Prazepam St. is also a dark and twisted record, as its title shows – a reference to an anxiolitic used for severe depression. “I have often tried to speak in my lyrics of the way the human mind works, of our contradictions, of our inner darkness, explains Marietta. And this time I wanted to bring the lexical field of drugs into my texts. Our body and mind are shaped by these substances that we use and abuse and I wanted to play with that. It’s a chemical album. » Proof made with « Dmpa », a molecule used as a chemical castrator on American sex offenders, transformed here into a battered folk song crushed by samples, rhythm machines and breaks from outer space. Or « Aluminum”, a solid and shiny but highly harmful element, like the incandescent ride full of rumbling synths, which opens the album – not an innocent choice: “Aluminum fairly well reflects our ability to accept all the things that we are presented with as being necessary for our daily life, concludes Marietta. Despite the experience, we always do the opposite of what is good for us. ” Like ignoring Marietta records, for exemple. Awaiting for 20 or 30 years to praise them. But you know what? He’s here. Right now. Enjoy.

[engl] Long-awaited debut album from progressive and psychedelic rock band from Pula, Croatia, offers a berserk kick start into their world of music. Influenced by Kyuss, The Mars Volta and Tool.

[engl] Weaving a fragile thread through collectible outsider genres such as acid folk, French jazz, Braziliana and world music it is virtually incomprehensible that this incredible one-off solo album by mononymous Occitan language singer, songwriter and activist Miquela has managed to evade notoriety and wider affection zover five decades. Captured via a humble makeshift studio set-up in a classroom in 1977, this startlingly crystalline recording is one of the best examples you are likely to hear, not shying from ambitious small string arrangements and intimate Gallic jazz infusions this LP represents the quiet storm erupting from the pride and protection of the ancient “romance” language known as Occitan, as spoken by less than 1.5 million people in Southern France (as well as parts of Italy and Spain). Naturally combining a wide range of influences, and fuelled by the same impassioned fervour found in privately pressed minority language records from Britanny, Catalonia and Wales, Miquela’s first and only solo record was recorded by request of poet Ives Roqueta for his exclusively Occitan language label Ventadorn. Including players from Miquela’s surrounding area of Toulon the album also enlisted arrangements from important musicians such as co-author Jean-Michel Mariou, jazz contrabass player Didier Capeille (later affiliate of Marseilles’ Etron Fou Leloublan), and guitarist Gilles Cardon, who would regularly play for Britanny based label Nevenoe (knotting the ties between both French language rehabilitation movements). Released and well-received by a supportive and emotional Occitan fan base, this would be Miquela’s only ever solo LP (preceded by a 7? picture sleeve EP, drawing similarities to Welsh label Sain) and laid the foundations for future releases with her folk rock girl group Lei Chapacans (The Vagabonds) which led to tours as far as Sardinia, Yemen and Moscow. As a vital forerunner of a maligned genre of Occitan femme-folk singers such as Estela, Nicòla, Jacmelina, Rosina De Peira E Martina and Claudia Galibert, this LP marks the start of a journey that would eventually find its beloved protagonist at the heart of the galvanised Occitan language media.