Moon Duo – Occult Architecture Vol 1,
Meaning all things magick and supernatural, the root of the word occult is that which is hidden, concealed, beyond the limits of our minds. If this is occult, then the Occult Architecture of Moon Duo’s fourth album – a psychedelic opus in two separate volumes released in 2017 – is an intricately woven hymn to the invisible structures found in the cycle of seasons and the journey of day into night, dark into light.
Offering a cosmic glimpse into the hidden patterning embedded in everything, Occult Architecture reflects the harmonious duality of these light and dark energies through the Chinese theory of Yin and Yang.
In Chinese, Yin means “the shady side of the hill” and is associated with the feminine, darkness, night, earth. Following this logic, Vol. 1 embraces and embodies Moon Duo’s darker qualities — released appropriately on February 3rd, in the heart of winter in the Northern Hemisphere.
According to guitarist Ripley Johnson, “the concept of the dark/light, two-part album came as we were recording and mixing the songs, beginning in the dead of winter and continuing into the rebirth and blossoming of the spring. There’s something really powerful about the changing of the seasons in the Northwest, the physical and psychic impact it has on you, especially after we spent so many years in the seasonal void of California. I became interested in gnostic and hermetic literature around that time, especially the relationship between music and occult qualities and that fed into the whole vibe.”
Adds keyboardist Sanae Yamada, “the two parts are also intended to represent inverted components of a singular entity, like two faces on the same head which stare always in opposite directions but are inextricably driven by the same brain.”
Vol. 1 was mixed in Berlin by the band’s longtime collaborator Jonas Verwijnen.
Real Estate – In Mind
On In Mind, the fourth full-length record from Real Estate, the band fine-tunes the winsome songwriting and profound earnestness that made previous albums – 2009’s Real Estate, 2011’s Days, and 2014’s Atlas – so beloved. Recorded in Los Angeles with producer Cole M. Greif-Neill (Julia Holter, Beck), In Mind delivers the same kind of warmth and soft-focus narratives that one has come to expect from the band – pastoral guitars, elegantly deployed arrangements, a sort of mindful melancholy – but there is also a newly adventurous sonic edge to the proceedings.
It offers a mild shifting of the gears, positing a band engaged in the push/pull of burgeoning adulthood. Reflecting a change in lineup, changes in geography, and a general desire to move forward without looking back, the record casts the band in a new light – one that replaces the wistful ennui of teenage suburbia with an equally complicated adult version.
Surfer Blood – Snowdonia
Surfer Blood are one of the best young indie-rock bands around, and their fourth album, Snowdonia, is their most ambitious effort yet. Overcoming adversity, the band has artistically grown and thrived. Following the departure of bassist Kevin Williams and guitarist Thomas Fekete (tragically lost to cancer in May), singer/guitarist John Paul Pitts and drummer Tyler Schwarz have rebuilt a talented lineup with guitarist Michael McCleary and bassist Lindsey Mills, all four alumni of the same high school in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Pitts wrote specifically with the new band’s talents in mind: “When I was writing I was thinking more about background vocals and harmonies. Lindsey and Michael are great singers, and I really wanted that to show in the songs. There are layers of vocals on almost every track, and the call-and-response parts between Lindsey and I are something totally new.” Along with plenty of Surfer Blood’s signature hooks, the band concocted some epic and more complex songs with enormous attention to sonic detail. Pitts wrote and mixed the album alone, for the first time since their debut Astro Coast. The immediacy is intoxicating and the musical and lyrical results are fantastic. Surfer Blood get better and better with each album, and we’re sure they’ll be making great records for years to come
Weyes Blood and Ariel Pink – Myths 002
Myths 002 brings together Natalie Mering – aka Weyes Blood and Ariel Rosenberg – aka Ariel Pink – for the second installment in Mexican Summer’s collaboration series. Composed and captured in Marfa, Texas during the annual Myths music and arts festival, Mering and Rosenberg inspire each other’s inner pop madrigals to mythological heights for Myths 002. In the middle of March 2016, over a week-long musical residency in the desert, two weird planets went conjunct. Both bore a bright colour palette: Ariel Rosenberg (aka Ariel Pink), an underground icon known for his stylized, subversive pop, and Natalie Mering (aka Weyes Blood), bold bringer of a future cosmic folk realm. They composed and captured the EP, Myths 002. As West Coast singer-songwriters with a shared sensibility for mood, Natalie and Ariel have been collaborating artists, mutual admirers, and friends for years. Mering appeared as guest vocalist on Pink’s 2013 album Mature Themes, Pink produced the infectious Drugdealer song Suddenly featuring Mering. Mering’s third album, Front Row Seat To Earth, was released in October 2016 on Mexican Summer. The atmosphere and auras of these two pop artists assemble as new hues on Myths 002, their distinct voices inexplicably, effortlessly folding into harmony. The four songs capture musicians at play – speak-talking dramatic interludes, twisting up songs strangely before releasing them assuredly in New Romantic resolves. During the annual Marfa Myths festival, Mexican Summer and Ballroom Marfa brought these two musicians together for the second in a record series that promotes collaboration between artists within the label crew and kindred musical spirits from outside the catalog. Marfa is small town known for its remote desert locale in Texas, its arts community, and its strange heavenly lights.
Ron Gallo – Heavy Meta
Heavy Meta is 11 tracks of lyrical confrontation and laughter for cynics laid down roughly on a bed of fuzz, chaotic structures and primal sounds evoked from a red Fender jaguar electric guitar – there is bass, there are drums and not much else besides the occasional icing (no artificial colours or dyes).
Communions – Blue
Communions are a four-piece from Copenhagen, made up of brothers Martin and Mads Rehof, Jacob van Deurs Formann and Frederik Lind Köppen.
‘Blue’ is Communions’ debut album, following a series of singles over the last two years. ‘Blue’ makes the most of everywhere Communions have been. Through all of this the stakes have changed but the sensitivity and craft with which the band takes risks has bloomed. An eloquence now shines through and you can take it or leave it.
Discarding some of the moodiness found in their previous recordings, ‘Blue’ tells us what was always natural to Communions. It’s about love and taking chances. It’s about trying something and it still doesn’t matter if there’s apprehension.
The Besnard Lakes – Are the Divine Wind
Early in 2016, The Besnard Lakes released their finest album to date, the magisterial A Coliseum Complex Museum and toured worldwide throughout the following months. Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas, the couple at the heart of the band, had spent the previous summer on their annual retreat to their namesake Besnard Lake. In a place with so much personal significance, they spent time writing the music that was to form the album. Culling the tracks down to an album proved a difficult task and inevitably there were tracks they loved that just didn’t quite fit with the overall album. So it is with delight that almost exactly a year on, the band are able to release this 12″ of two brand new, exclusive tracks written and recorded at the same time as the album. Laura Lee is a sibling track to the album’s illustrious first single, The Golden Lion – spacious reverb-y drums echo around an almost sci-fi vocal line sung by Olga Goreas. Meanwhile, the title track The Divine Wind is the Besnard Lakes at their expansive, psychedelic best: a sustained keyboard building through to a bombastic coda, complete with Lasek’s unmistakable falsetto. If you ever needed a reminder of just how unique, beautiful and far-reaching this band is, then The Besnard Lakes Are the Divine Wind delivers.
Mumford and Sons – Dust and Thunder
Chronicling the first meeting of South Africa with its favourite British band, Mumford and Sons, award-winning director Dick Carruthers gets to the very heart of what makes Mumford and Sons such a special act. Filmed live against the beautiful Pretorian outback, the band performs their most recent material and classic hits in front of an exhilarated crowd. Filmed in stunning 4K and mixed in 5.1 surround sound.
The Fat Angel Sings 