Week 36: Floating Points

Sometimes you just need some gentle, bleepy electronics that you can drift in and out of. My music collection has a whole selection of these, often records that I don’t listen more than once every two or three years, but just at that moment when I need it they’re there.

Floating Point are this year’s addition to that collection. What marks it out from the other records in this collection is how this record sounds a lot more organic. It’s very clearly not the work of just one person sitting in a dark room working late into the night on a computer. There is a jazzy drum rhythm driving it all the way through and, over the top, strings that melt into the whole song. On paper it doesn’t seem like it would work so well together, but it does.

Week 35: Bernard + Edith

A rather confusing name, especially on discovering that neither of the duo are called Bernard nor Edith.

Whatever they’re called, Bernard + Edith are trying too hard to sound like the Knife, but end up sounding like a less sugary Summer Camp. As a result they don’t have that edge to drive through the sound and it sounds a little bit flimsy.

Week 34: Dead Soft

*Vancouver special*

I’m in Vancouver this week, so this is a special local music selection from British Columbia.

There must be something about the Pacific Northwest that keeps grunge going. This wouldn’t at all sound out of place in the 90s and coming from just down the road in Seattle. Just like Nirvana, it’s not just noise and underneath the distorted guitars there is something quite catchy about the songs. And it still sounds like something that is recorded in a garage.

Week 33: Ex Hex

I never really got into the whole Riot Grrl thing. Maybe it was a case of just not quite developing my tastes in guitar music at just the right time.

If Ex Hex had been around just when I got into punk/pop (the music that introduced me to the indie world) then maybe it would have been very different. This is the sort of thing I would have loved at the age of 14. Catchy, pop and not overstaying its welcome (less than 3 minutes long).