This song is just the thing for a languorous, dreamy summer filled with delicious procrastination. A heavy base lacquered upon a resonant snare-drum riff creates a dark background to set off Moonlight Breakfast’s sparkly, gossamer vocals. The track inspires mindlessness of cosmic proportions, dreamy music escapism at its best.
Presenting OtO’s most mellow post yet, Yumi Zouma bring fresh grass, blue skies and the dream-pop world of New Zealand to their track, In Camera. Known for being Chet Faker’s and even Lorde’s opening act at a point in time, the band embraces its Oceanic influences in an incredibly atmospheric way; soft, layered vocals on a backdrop of cruising, plucky guitars that have you humming. The beat gives you the feeling and image of those warm-toned, high saturated do-nothing days, lounging about in the sun.
Unabashedly huge Fleetwood Mac fans, the band’s retro inspiration in the track is subconsciously felt, tinged with the sensation of memory, as if you’d have heard the track before, but never quite caught the lyrics. The production perhaps is responsible for this, the band primarily relies on virtual synthesizer emulators accompanied by light instrumentation.
The album, Willowbank, is named after a wildlife sanctuary in Christchurch, New Zealand. It’s hard to only talk about the music without connecting to the recent tragedy in Christchurch in the past week… if anything, this post is in remembrance of that peace the band members found in their hometown, and in hope that peace can be found once again.
Read more in their interview with WhattheSound here: http://www.whatthesound.com/interviews/yumi-zouma
And an extra track just because every time I listen to this band I fall in love just a little more. I’ve never heard a track so accurately represent a color in pure sound… powder blue.
Dream-pop electronica band from Iceland, Vök create a dreamy world inspired by their bleak, but incredibly beautiful home country. Little sunlight, miles of snow, falling glaciers and terrifyingly cold, but crystal clear water are just some of the images their music seems to inspire. Often compared to the XX, the band takes aspects of the famous coolness and distance in the XX’s oeuvre and adds pulsing synths and heightened vocals to create an immense feeling of power, reminding me more often of BANKS and CHVRCHES.
The band has never played outside of Europe, yet their sound is growing to have a universal appeal. Give it a listen.
Jai Wolf will be releasing a much anticipated album on April 5th, and of course the man behind the most atmospheric and emotionally driven electronic music has turned to retrowave. With music videos of astronauts in space, vivid imagery of electric blue and neon orange, his music reflects a introspective exploration of escapism and losing control.
Day Wave, featured on this track, has also explored similar themes with his airy indie, a fitting great favorite of music channels such as Majestic Casual on YouTube. The combination is an guitar-strummed modern take on just regular old beaty-synth, a unique sound that gets me very excited about the upcoming album.
Get hyped, Jai Wolf’s single just released released yesterday, with more to come on him and his work on this blog.
The posters above were designed by Mishko, a graphic artist who also did Jai Wolf’s entire promo package for the upcoming album. His work is the very embodiment of the spirit of synthwave, and we will probably unavoidably see more of him as his style so strongly resonates with the theme.
Official video just came out: Introspective, soulful ending with a bang and a flash.
Ami
Out the Other 