New Music 2015 - Part 14 - Golden Fable & Purity Ring

My only New Year resolution at the start of 2014 was to listen to more music that was new, or at least new to me, on a sustained basis. I think that it is one that I not only kept but comfortably exceeded on a week-by-week basis and without counting festivals. My intention for 2015 was to keep up the momentum and, as I mentioned recently, my January hibernation has had nothing but a beneficial effect on that. I have also been listening to a lot of stuff, old and new, that I had never really got around to before. This includes a great deal of a capella and other close-harmony music, both traditional and modern-traditional. This post has nothing to do with that at all.

It has to do with two releases, one recent and the other soon to happen, that echo in some way the idea of the coming of Spring. I can tell you that I and seemingly most others are anticipating its arrival with fervour. Both releases are LPs by a male-female duo and both are dreamily electronic pop. They are also both the second full-length from the respective artists. Logic dictates that I start with the one already released at least in the UK (Full Of Joy Records, November 2014).

Golden Fable - Ancient Blue is the follow-up to 2012 début Star Map (mentioned here).

The second LP in this post is released by 4AD on March 2, 2015 in the UK (March 3 2015 in North America).

 'Another Eternity' is the second release by Canadian duo Purity Ring.

The first track to be released from it is 'push pull' and most tracks on the album have names that are less unfathomable than those on 2012 LP Shrines, which I have on vinyl, but still hardly the kind of thing you are likely to find yourself singing along to in the car. That said the above song has been play-listed by BBC Radio1; I almost lost concentration when I heard it whilst driving home from work one day. Here is track 6 - 'begin again'.

While I'm at it, this is the playlist for the LP (capitalized exactly as it isn't):

• heartsigh
• bodyache
• push pull
• repetition
• stranger than earth
• begin again
• dust hymn
• flood on the floor
• seacastle
• stillness in woe

Just to say, that link below the Golden Fable cover also concerns another band - Stealing Sheep. It has a new album, and again its second, in the offing too. It will rate a post all of its own.

New Music - Part 23 - Canadian Electronica

It seems to have been a while since I have written much about my ongoing fascination with music from Canada. What jolted me into action is the recent release of Olympia, the second album by Katie Stelmanis and her band Austra. It was with some trepidation too...

Feel It Break (2011) was almost too good to be true, until that is I saw them touring it live, twice, at festivals; End of The Road 2011 and No Direction Home 2012. Things have, quite naturally and rightly so, moved on but from initial impressions I think that Olympia is a worthy successor. I can't wait to see Austra live once again to hear the new music but it doesn't seem that I'll get that opportunity in 2013.
What it did do however, and why I don't know for it only happened this evening, is  serve to remind me about Canadian duo Purity Ring (Corin Roddick and Megan James) and their 2012 début album Shrines. I think it is fair to say that it is rather more oblique and obscure, yet ultimately just as beautiful.

The thing is that it may require some effort to come to appreciate and is disorientating.

I rarely say this but its appeal is not immediate and possibly too much effort or trouble for some. I was tempted by the tag Eclectronica for a while. You can either be bothered or you simply don't get it. I understand that.