Soft Landing: Soft Landing

    Brooklyn based band, Beirut, seems to have so many faces that it is hard to keep track of them all. Soft Landing is now sort of one of them, in addition to 1971 and Realpeople. Beirut is also closely tied with Alaska in Winter and A Hawk and a Hacksaw, two folk bands with Balkan influence as well and whose members perform with each other at times.
    Multi-instrumentalist, Zach Condon, is often the man behind the curtain. He started Beirut after traveling to Europe at the age of 17, became fascinated with Balkan musical culture, and began writing music on his own before enlisting the help of a number of musicians to record and join his band. But, in this case, Paul Collins, a member of Beirut is actually who started Soft Landing. In fact, Soft Landing was a project started while in school and was cut short when Collins joined Beirut to tour the world (with the hit success of its first album, Gulag Orkestar in 2006. Soft Landing was finally recorded and subsequently released by Ba Da Bing Records on October 12, 2010.
    Even so, I should say rightly so, you will hear a lot of folk influence in this LP, Soft Landing. The band's MySpace describes the group as being folk, easy listening and healing; but, I prefer world electronica folk as a more accurate characterization (but am only tagging this as world folk as the electronica takes a back role in terms of definition). For one, this is not really easy listening, elevator type music. It is quite different than anything you may have every heard before. One blog even called Soft Landing "pastoral jams". Seems fairly accurate to me.
    The album announces itself like a marching band arriving from around the corner, with drums and cymbals that mimic a drum line or Napoleonic era army band. There is this constant driving acoustic rhythm backed by the drum set, a myriad of electronic synthesizer sounds raining down melodies and interesting rhythmic material sometimes too, and Paul Collins trying to raise his voice through the somewhat cacophony--at least that is what it may seem like until you listen to it a few times. Do not get me wrong, there is a quiet moment here and there, especially the track "Pendelton Woolen", a very simple folk guitar song with bass. Then, "Papaya", the next track builds slowly until the driving alternating chords fall back into stride. A few different electronic sounds play key roles in the next track, "Awkward Flower", one especially obnoxious or ingenious (you decide) that stays on one pitch, repeating itself for a good bit (obnoxious), even becoming a pedal tone (ingenious). The LP ends with a dance remix type tune that is slightly out of character to the rest of the album, but it definitely shows the eclectic world nature Paul Collins and how far his influences stretch.
    So, just a preview description of the last few tracks, I think I will now actually let you decide, and upload "Awkward Flower" into the MixPod. It contains slightly more pastoral, along with the jam sections. Let me know what you think!

Scattered Trees: Sympathy

    I guess Scattered Trees is a very fitting name for this group, as all the members had but gone their separate ways in life, when the front man, Nathan Eisland's father died and he started writing a new album, Sympathy, yet to arrive April 5, 2011. For some reason, trees cannot really move. Maybe it is because their roots are stuck in deep, and that is how it is with the members of Scattered Trees, feeling that they could never replace any one of the group of six, so they all came back together for this project.
    Apparently Nathan Eisland moved to Chicago in 2003, and started writing one song a month, naming each song after each month. The resulting album was called Hollohills, completed in 2004 after returning to Minneapolis. I have not been able to find this online even to purchase, let alone listen. Then, again, Nathan moved to Chicago and started adding permanent members to Scattered Trees, who then became a part of their debut LP, Song for My Grandfather (2005). You can listen to this album in its entirety on their MySpace page, here (EDIT: no longer available on their MySpace). Heart of Glass EP came out in 2007 under the 4AM Record label, which can be listened to here if you sign up for a free 14-day trial (which I did not, so I have not listened). Scattered Trees also recorded a track, "Sparrow", for the Starbucks Off the Clock, Vol. 1 sampler.
    You might have noticed that Sympathy is not set to release until April 5, 2011, and wondering how I have a copy of it? Well, it seems as though it is fully available as a free download on Scattered Trees' Bandcamp website. Interestingly, however, if you attempt to go to their url (scatteredtrees.bandcamp.com), it comes up as saying there are no tracks there yet... But, if you add this to the end of the url, "/track/bury-the-floors" (minus the quotation marks), you can not only listen to that track, but download it for free by signing up for their mailing list! Also, each track can be retrieved this way by substituting its title (each word separated by hyphens) after: "/track/". If this is a glitch, and consequently illegally obtained, then I fear it is not my fault for point out what is clearly available on Bandcamp, which is controlled by the band. EDIT: Apparently, this was some sort of glitch, as each link to each successive tracks has been removed/fixed. You can no longer retrieve/listen to this album this way.
    Scattered Trees is sort of an emotive folk rock, as I have read, and so agree--though it is slightly folk. I suggest slightly, because not every song even hints at having folk elements. They are often merely acoustic guitar and not necessarily of a folk style, but more so typical of every solo artist that likes to pick up a guitar and create songs by themselves. The emotive aspect could be considered Emo, because the lyrics are very thoughtful and heartfelt, especially concerning the death of Eisland's father, revealing personal sorrow. The group as a whole has related in interviews that making this album has been much more of an emotional experience, in the sense of the depth of emotion the music requires and has created simultaneously.
    At their core, Scattered Trees is simply another indie rock band, making some waves in Chicago. I hear some really cool ingenuity in their soothing ballades and laid back gentle style, while a few songs delve more into the normal realm of rock and subsequently are not as potent. The "slower" songs are definitely where Scattered Trees shines. They've also been compared to the band Ours, which I've never heard (sadly I admit that without taking the time to check up on this fact), but I hear Barcelona somewhat in there, in the singers voice and the melodies.
    I've uploaded "Five Minutes" (yes its 5 minutes long too), the closing track, which reveals a good bit about the style of their music: the slight pulse, the slight ambiance, the mellow vocals, the building sound, the bit of rocking out and the fade at the end. I hope you enjoy this band many are raving about, but few people seem to actually know about.

Passion Pit: Manners

    Passion Pit is a relatively new group, formed in 2007 in Cambridge, MA. Michael Angelakos was the creative influence behind the band's formation, when he wrote and recorded a bunch of songs on his laptop for his girlfriend as a belated Valentine's Gift. Angelakos soloed for a bit, before being approached by Ian Hultquist about joining forces; which they did by recruiting further members. They spent seven months practicing together before their first show, and even then two members were replaced when Passion Pit joined Frenchkiss Records in 2008. The original songs written by Angelakos were later compiled on their Chunk of Change EP (2008).
    Manners was released on May 19, 2009 in the U.S. with Rolling Stone magazine describing their success as attributed to Angelakos: "what makes the record are his loose beats, shamelessly fruity melodies and breathless little-boy vocals, all pushing skyward." Passion Pit has also remixed a number of tracks since the release of Manners, including "1901" by Phoenix, "Fall Hard" by the Shout Out Louds, "Wait Up (Boots of Danger)" by the Tokyo Police Club and "Ghost Under Rocks" by Ra Ra Riot.
    I believe I heard Passion Pit first on "The Pulse of Music", WIRT, 89.7, the RIT radio station in Rochester, NY. The song I heard was "Sleepyhead", which John Mayer called "one of the best songs I've heard in a long time." I do, however, recall having seen Passion Pit remixes, just not knowing what that meant. Admittedly, until I discovered RAC, I thought that the subname on a remixed track meant a particular style, instead of the group that remixed it, though they are obviously linked as well.
    Passion Pit is eclectic, you will hear funky brass, saxophone additions, and soaring strings, but all their songs maintain the upbeat, high pitched vocal style--which strikes me descriptively as a crystallized sound. They are clearly not Owl City, and should be more closely associated with the grungy Electro Pop and chorus singsong-yness of MGMT, but they have the same constantly optimistic style. Angelakos's voice may be the only drawback to Passion Pit, as it can grow a little tedious to listen to, sightly abrasive, never relaxing. I believe it is his high pitched voice that has caused the group to be considered Wonky Pop, which is mainly reserved for an 80's (which I can hear in the beat at times) female vocal style. There is also just a lot of sound, wavy and metallic, because of the synth and clear dance electronica influence.
    Enjoy the first track "Make Light", on which I love the synth sound and more Indie beat (less 80's) than most of the rest of the album, in the MixPod!

Gold Panda: Lucky Shiner

    I was just introduced to Gold Panda today through an old blog post from IndieRockCafe.com, and I immediately felt after only listening to one song that Derwin Panda had struck gold. Derwin was born in Peckham, London, and lives in Chelmsford, Essex (eastern UK). OK, so what is so interesting about yet another electronica group from Britain? Gold Panda studied and lived in Japan for two years, studying at the School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS), and this influence can clearly be heard through the use of Chinese, Japanese and Indian melodic material and instrumentation; which can be considered neofolk.        
    Other influences for Derwin include: working at record stores and compiling countless hours of samples and various genres of music; "B movies on his VHS", to quote his website; minimal techno and hip-hop (hip-hop being pretty much the historical basis for all electronic music).
    Exploring Gold Panda's genre a little more, it is clearly Electronica or IDM (Intelligent Dance Music), the latter being a term not so readily accepted by many British artists. Aphex Twin, for example, minimized IDM as "peculiar to the U.S.". Either way, IDM arose out of techno and emphasizes individual experimentation more than a set of genre specific characteristics. So, it is more expansive. The term, IDM, came from an electronic mailing list back in 1993, which was started in order to discuss music between mainly English artists who were included on the compilation album Artificial Intelligence (1992, Warp Records). Electronica has largely become the replacement term for IDM and is similar in meaning, because of its emphasis on multiple genres instead of any specific one.
    Glitch is a genre that was popular in the 1990s, and is basically what the word means, electronic glitches of any sort, except intentionally used as part of the music in this case. Some sites I saw considered Gold Panda to be lo-fi, and I think glitch would better describe their style.
    Proceeding, briefly, with experimental, downtempo and neofolk, I will suggest that the first two are fairly self-explanatory and I will not say anything about them; but, neofolk, I feel obligated to say that I do not necessarily agree with this label, partially because Gold Panda is so heavily electronica, but also because neofolk suggests more of a classical or even acoustic style.
    I will leave the reader with one last thought, without much being said about any individual track or the music itself--more so a framework to approach Lucky Shine within--, that the album cover is so fitting. The horizontal color stripes of different shades point themselves out like glitches, the fireworks and Japanese influenced art reveal the folk inclusion, the sublime blue hue suggests the downtempo, and the city scape and collection of visual thoughts as a whole produce the experimental-slash-industrial (or electronic) nature of the album--along with the journey the road bridge will take the listener on.
    There are three digital bonus tracks, if purchased on Gold Panda's Ghostly International record label's website here. I have uploaded the track, "Same Dream China" from their September 2010 full debut, Lucky Shiner to the MixPod. Normally, I hate uploading a track that you can find streaming on another site, but in this case it was the first I heard and thoroughly hope it will have the same impulsive pull on you. Enjoy!