15-09-2018 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX

15-09-2018 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX [from the recent past] # Thao & the Get Down Stay Down, Cigarettes After Sex, Halo Maud, Palm, La Luz, Tunng, Maston, Quilt, OCS aka Orinoka Crash Suite, Gorillaz, Cowboy Junkies

M U S I C

pres_perf_mix # The player always plays the latest playlist tracks. / A lejátszó mindig a legújabb playlist számait játssza. 

LISTEN THE PLAYLIST ON DEEZER.COM

Folk-informed indie pop guided by Thao Nguyen, whose songwriting tends toward the musically playful and lyrically heavy-hearted. 
Thao & the Get Down Stay Down
Fool Forever 3:08
Nobody Dies 3:48
from A Man Alive 2016
Having constructed prior albums with the likes of Tucker Martine (the Decemberists, Camera Obscura) and John Congleton (St. Vincent, FFS), bandleader Thao Nguyen enlisted longtime side project collaborator Merrill Garbus to produce her band's fourth LP, A Man Alive. A match that sounds as good on the final product as it does on paper, Garbus brings the musical moxie associated with her tUnE-yArDs outfit and reinforces that same quality in Thao & the Get Down Stay Down for an especially muscular outing...

Ambient pop collective started as a recording experiment in an echoey hallway.  Ambient pop collective Cigarettes After Sex were formed almost accidentally in 2008 by songwriter and bandleader Greg Gonzalez. While living in El Paso, Texas, Gonzalez was experimenting with capturing the spacious sounds of recording songs in a four-story stairwell at the University of Texas.
Cigarettes After Sex
K 5:20
Flash 4:34
from Cigarettes After Sex 2017
After a slow start, Cigarettes After Sex saw their fortunes swiftly reversed by a whirlwind of YouTube hits. Although they formed in 2008, CAS waited nearly a decade to release their debut record, and rather fittingly it unfolds at a lethargic pace. The music that Greg Gonzales and his fellow bandmates produce is slowcore in the extreme. The shimmering guitars, placid percussion, and wistfully delivered vocals also reveal their debt to dream pop and shoegaze. More than anything, early supporters of the band have praised Gonzales' unashamed sentimentality and dyed-in-the-wool romanticism. You don't have to venture beyond the opening track to experience his hazy passion...

Psychedelic pop with touches of proggy and space age indie played by French musician Maud Nadal and friends. 
Halo Maud
Wherever 5:23
Je Suis une Île 2:3
Dans la Nuit 4:11
from Je Suis Une Île 2018
Lots of bands were making ethereal, hypnotically drifting, modern psychedelic pop in 2018 and lots of them were really good at it, especially those fronted by women, like Death and Vanilla and Gloria. Add to that female solo artists like Gwenno, Jane Weaver, and Melody's Echo Chamber and the field starts to get a little crowded. To make a record that stands out next to all the high-quality work of those artists, one would need to go a little outside the lines to add something extra. On her debut album, Je Suis Une Île, the French artist Halo Maud (known to her parents as Maud Nadal) does just that. With the help of producer/multi-instrumentalist Robin Leduc, Pablo Padovani from Moodoïd -- a band she played in in the early 2010s -- Benjamin Glibert from Aquaserge, and the members of her live band (Olivier Marguerit, Stéphane Bellity, and Vincent Mougel), Nadal crafts a sound that is indebted to the epic psych-pop of the '60s, but also adds some oddball prog touches, a little bit of electronica here and there, and a hefty dose of the kind of space age indie that bands like Broadcast and Stereolab did so well in the '90s...

26-08-2018 10:47 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX [from the recent past]

Belle and Sebastian

26-08-2018 10:47 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX [from the recent past] # Belle and Sebastian, Chicano Batman, PJ Harvey, Moon Duo, Samara Lubelski, ShadowParty, Prettiest Eyes, Thao & the Get Down Stay Down, Cigarettes After Sex, Halo Maud, Palm, La Luz

M U S I C

pres_perf_mix # The player always plays the latest playlist tracks. / A lejátszó mindig a legújabb playlist számait játssza. 

LISTEN THE PLAYLIST ON DEEZER.COM

A band that takes its name from a French children's television series about a boy and his dog would almost have to be precious, and to be sure, Belle and Sebastian are precious. But precious can be a damning word, and Belle and Sebastian don't have the negative qualities that the word connotes: they are private but not insular, pretty but not wimpy; they make gorgeous, delicate melodies sound full-bodied. Led by guitarist/vocalist Stuart Murdoch, the seven-piece band has an intimate, majestic sound that is equal parts folk-rock and '60s pop, but Murdoch's gift, not just for whimsy and surrealism but also for odd, unsettling lyrical detail, keeps the songs grounded in a tangible reality.
Belle and Sebastian
I'll Be Your Pilot (Belle and Sebastian) 4:15
Best Friend (Carla Easton / Belle and Sebastian) 3:41
from How To Solve Our Human Problems (Parts 1-3) 2018
On the eve of launching Belle and Sebastian's project How to Solve Our Human Problems, leader Stuart Murdoch explained his band's decision to release a series of three interlocked EPs instead of a long-player with this: "I think these days when an LP comes out, it's kind of disappointing. Nothing seems to happen, and I thought, 'We've got to do something different.'" Murdoch's way to combat the digital grind harks back to Belle and Sebastian's earliest days, when the group released a series of three EPs between 1996's If You're Feeling Sinister and 1998's The Boy with the Arab Strap, but those releases were spaced out over the course of 1997, where each of the installments of How to Solve Our Human Problems arrived in succession in the first months of 2018. Consequently, all three Human Problems EPs feel cut from the same cloth, all buzzing to a stylish good vibe pitched halfway between '60s modernism and '70s disco...

Alternative Latin band with a psychedelic hybrid sound who have opened for Alabama Shakes and Jack White.  Chicano Batman source their high-spirited alternative Latin synthesis from tropicália, West Coast psychedelia, and late-'60s/early-'70s soul, among other styles. Eduardo Arenas (bass, vocals), Bardo Martinez (lead vocals, organ, guitar), and Gabriel Villa (drums, percussion) made their recorded debut in 2009 with a self-released, self-titled album.
Chicano Batman
Passed You By (Chicano Batman / Bardo Martinez) 3:27
Freedom Is Free (Chicano Batman / Bardo Martinez) 4:03
The Taker Story (Chicano Batman / Bardo Martinez) 5:27
from Freedom Is Free 2017
Hitting the good groove may seem like a simple thing, but it's not. (If it were, anyone could have been James Brown, and a quick spin through his catalog confirms that's impossible.) And the ability to move the crowd can be used to say any number of things. Musical shape-shifters Chicano Batman have drawn from a rich variety of sources for their third album, 2017's Freedom Is Free -- Brazilian Tropicalia, Latin funk, vintage American soul, and R&B, shades of Afrobeat, and psychedelia of all sorts. But the way the band gracefully navigate the nexus between the passionate and the laid-back sides of their musical personality is what makes Freedom Is Free stand out. Just as Funkadelic's classic early albums indelibly merged rock guitars with funk grooves, Chicano Batman make music that makes your hips sway, but with a purposefully easy tempo. They give their music a vibe that's powerful and sensual all at once, merging their influences in a way that doesn't cancel out any of the elements...

The most challenging singer/songwriter to emerge in the '90s, her brutally honest lyrics match well to a progression of raw musical styles.  During the alternative rock explosion, several female singer/songwriters rose to prominence, but few have proved as distinctive or as widely praised as Polly Jean Harvey. Over the course of her career, Harvey established herself as one of the most individual and influential songwriters of her era, exploring themes of sex, love, and religion with unnerving honesty, dark humor, and a twisted theatricality.
PJ Harvey
The Community of Hope (PJ Harvey) 2:23
The Orange Monkey (PJ Harvey) 2:47
The Wheel (PJ Harvey) 5:38
from The Hope Six Demolition Project 2016
On 2011's Mercury Prize-winning Let England Shake, PJ Harvey connected World War I bloodbaths with the 21st century world in harrowing, moving ways. Its follow-up, The Hope Six Demolition Project, feels like a companion piece with a wider focus and more urgent mood. For this project -- which also includes the 2015 book of poetry The Hollow of the Hand and a film -- Harvey and her Shake collaborator, war photographer Seamus Murphy, emphasized documentation: The pair spent years researching in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington, D.C.; later, Harvey was literally transparent about the recording process, making Hope Six at a recording studio behind one-way glass for public audiences at London’s Somerset House. Befitting its origins, the album's sound is blunt and raw, mixing rock, blues, jazz, spirituals, and field recordings into the musical equivalent of photojournalism...