Monde UFO, the LA-based duo comprised of Ray Monde and Kris Chau sign to Fire Records. Monde UFO are a monochromatic sunset for the senses. A sonic journey through aeons of psychedelia, space rock and jazz. A cosmic place where Spacemen 3 meets Vanishing Twin by way of Sun Ra
The genre-defying Welsh group define their vision with a breath-taking new album, Islet’s ‘Soft Fascination’ is an ecstatic experience in music, an explosion of emotion subsumed in sound. The album is filled with high energy cadence and meditations on collective joy, a balancing act underpinned with glorious melodies and Emma Daman Thomas’ evocative vocals that swirl in the symphonic surf.
Recognised as a purveyor of dreamier pop with folky leanings, this new album is a departure; a unique marriage of traditional stylings and very modern melodies; a breath-taking soundtrack which underpins her gorgeous vocal. Filled with personal tales of offspring and grandparents, the lovelorn and the lost, it’s the essence of re-imagined folk music, from the traditional intro and outro that act as bookends.
Italian singer songwriter Marta Del Grandi returns with ‘Selva’, her most intricate and shimmering effort yet, a refined devotional suite of astute pop that flows effortlessly, uniting emotional complexity, divine organic arrangements with a sci-fi finish. Beams of choral light radiate and permeate each track, with layered vocal drones creating a cathartic collision of sharp and soft textures, as almost to guide us hand in hand across Marta Del Grandi’s enchanted universe. The ambition is blinding and the outcome is here to prove it: 12 songs of sprawling ethereal pop that is vivid, immense and fully illuminated.
Angel Deradoorian and Kate NV are Decisive Pink – Ticket To Fame is their highly anticipated debut. After teasing the single ‘Haffmilch Holiday’ the duo amassed a rapturous response, with The Guardian calling it “a space-age-dancefloor swoon that brings to mind Kate Bush’s Waking the Witch” and the New York Times highlighting the single as “substantive and thoroughly hypnotic”. On their first LP they do not disappoint, calling on Kate NV’s experimental pop leanings and Angel Deradoorian’s taste for atmosphere and otherworldliness, Decisive Pink have created a playful and abstract album designed for escape and enchantment.
Written in the early hours of the morning, still buzzed from a night out and letting her thoughts tumble out onto paper, ‘Easy Out’ takes a similarly nuanced approach to empathy and healing. The track processes her anger with someone close who hid the fact they were gravely ill to try and spare their loved ones from sharing their pain. Recalling the tangled indie-rock of Holly Humberstone, Soccer Mommy, and Phoebe Bridgers, and underpinned by spiky, surging guitars, it unearths tenderness, even as it rages.
Named for the hyper-recognizable experience of each day bearing witness to a world of private obsessions being aired out in the infinite, Brain Worms may not be wholly new territory for the Melbourne post-punk band and its lyricist/frontwoman Romy Vager, but this time around, there’s a newfound radical acceptance glistening overtop everything.
Clear Pond Road continues the juxtaposition of dark and light –dark sunshine, as Hersh puts it– that characterizes Hersh’s legendary work with Throwing Muses and 50 Foot Wave but goes even further inward as it explores the intimacy and complexity that sits alongside Hersh’s fierce independence
Listen to unearthed tracks 'Party in My Heart' / 'I Think I'd Thought I'd Nothing Else to Think About'. The Chills will be touring the UK and Europe, with appearances at this year’s Primavera Sound from June 4th, last tickets on now