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 2012 - Part 26

Here we go again! This comprises two acts that I really should have paid more attention to in 2012. The problem is that I didn't and therefore I don't have sufficient experience of their LPs to include them in any current list (except those albums that I want for Christmas). Here are two that come to mind.
This first Stealing Sheep, a three-piece, from Liverpool or thereabouts. The début album, Into The Diamond Sun, is right up there. It's diverse, somewhat electronic, somewhat folky and quite lovable.

This next is quite possibly less well known. It is the début album, Star Map, by North Wales-based duo Golden Fable and was released in September 2012.
  

It is hauntingly good. Watch out for both acts in 2013 and more links to follow.

If you think this is worth a listen several other tracks will surprise you.