Posts Tagged ‘Team Love Records’

SHANA FALANA – ” Cloudbeats “

Posted: February 24, 2017 in MUSIC
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New York’s experimental dream pop/psychedelic outfit Shana Falana (Shana Falana and Michael Amari) premieres their new video for “Cloudbeats” today, sharing some upcoming tour dates where you can enjoy the live version of this magic in person. The video itself is quite beautiful, beginning with the watercolor palette of a rising sun over the horizon. It basically chronicles a day in the life of Shana, which – yes – does involve some time on the phone before even getting out of bed. Shot by Shana and edited by Michael, the video is very DIY. It brings excitement to every day tasks, and reminds us of the power in our own two hands.

Shot by Shana Falana
Edited by Michael Amari

from the 2016 LP “Here Comes The Wave’ (Team Love Records)

BENTCOUSIN – ” Bentcousin “

Posted: January 1, 2017 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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After an EP and a few singles, Bentcousin are now releasing their official debut album on Team Love. The album starts with a simple narrative indie pop song about a boy and a girl, but quickly flips the script as it moves from a Postcard Records style jangle-pop number to a disco version of a Dinosaur Jr track. By mid-record we’re gone deep with a dark dance track that skips the third verse and pivots straight into rap. Another disco-ball stunner follows, only to see the band embrace some sonic guitar drones as it bows and exits the stage. It’s not the first time the Brighton, England band, fronted by twins Pat and Amelia, have created songs that mix rap with indie pop or disco with new wave. The band have always made a seemingly effortless stand on the borderlines between genres.

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SHANA FALANA – ” Cool Kids “

Posted: October 23, 2016 in MUSIC
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Today see’s the release of San Franciscan songwriter Shana Falana’s second album, Here Comes The Wave. The album is a series of dark pop anthems, many of which were written during a burst of productivity the best part of a decade ago that accompanied her recovery from what Shana describes as, “drug-related financial ruin.”

Ahead of the release this week, Shana has shared the album’s sublime highlight, Cool Kids. A burst of daylight in an album of gritty darkness, Cool Kids is a message to her younger self, and young people everywhere, to embrace who they are and be themselves in the face of peer pressure and self-doubt. Musically it’s huge, a wall of pounding drums, multi-layered vocals and driving, bassy rumble. A euphoric reminder that being anyone else’s idea of cool isn’t being yourself, as Shana puts it, “the cool kids are the ones you forgot.”

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Here Comes The Wave is out today via Team Love Records.

SHANA FALANA – ” Here Comes The Wave “

Posted: October 1, 2016 in MUSIC
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Shana Falana

“I was pretty lost in addiction, living in Bushwick, Brooklyn, in 2006.” That’s how Shana Falana sets up “Cloudbeats,” the mist-wreathed new single from her roaring new record “Here Comes The Wave”.  She spells out that same backstory explicitly in the lyrics, sighing, “Pills I take/ cocaine, too/ call in sick/ ‘I have the flu.’” The music that surrounds the confession is drifting and dreamlike—a stark change from the thundering roar for which Falana has become known.

But the song goes deeper than mere confession, starting with addiction but gradually moving on to address loss and pain. “This is a song about looking for a home, both physically and emotionally,” Falana says. “Shortly after I wrote this, I reconnected with my father and learned he was ill. Three months later, he passed away. I feel like I’m still processing his death, even nine years later. When I went to record the vocals for this song, I became totally overwhelmed with grief.” You can hear that in her voice, the way it drifts disconsolately along, a spirit looking for a home. But, in the end, “Cloudbeats” is about more than just sorrow. “There’s a lot of closure in this song for me now,” Falana says. “It’s like I was reaching out to my future self for help and, nine years later, I was able to answer the call. That’s the underlying message of this record: It’s never too late. Never give up. Life keeps on getting better.”

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SHANA FALANA – ” Lie 2 Me “

Posted: September 11, 2016 in MUSIC
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Shana Falana lives in New York’s picturesque Hudson Valley where she works painting houses, volunteers in her community, and collaborates on music with her partner and musical collaborator Mike Amari. By the guitarist/songwriter’s own accounts, life is good, but the path to get to where she is today came with many twists and turns.

Raised in California, Shana Falana spent time in San Francisco’s D.I.Y. scene and sang in a Bulgarian women’s choir before following her heart to New York. By 2006, Falana found herself grappling with addiction and money woes when she lost part of her index finger in a work-related incident. Under usual circumstances, that might be considered entirely unlucky, but the settlement money she received after the accident provided her a period of financial stability that allowed her the time and space to finally overcome her addictions and find new focus in her life and music.

Much of the music on Shana Falana’s second album, Here Comes the Wave (Team Love) were conceptualized in the years that followed and refined over time. Produced with D. James Goodwin (Bob Weir, Whitney, Kevin Morby), the record shows the duality of Falana’s “then and now” in its diverse moods, lyrical themes, and sonic palette that incorporates shoegaze, gothic pop, and rock. But while many of its songs are at least outwardly exuberant and dreamy, its first single, “Lie to Me,” treads darker waters, starting with a trudging, bottom-heavy riff before exploding into a trippy mass of guitar feedback, Moog, and anguished, layered vocals.

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Check out the premiere of “Lie 2 Me” learn more about how Shana Falana’s background in traditional music has continued to impact her songwriting, channeling difficult times and emotions into music, and how giving back to others struggling in their lives has helped her stay centered in her own. Here Comes the Wave comes out on October 21st via Team Love Records.

LONG BEARD – ” Hates The Party “

Posted: October 22, 2015 in MUSIC
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Sleepwalker is a fitting title for Long Beard’s new album from New Brunswick, NJ Leslie Bear’s songs often sound like the space between the dream world and waking consciousness. It’s a hushed, declarative collection of tracks that focus on small facets of our day-to-day routine, and the seemingly insignificant thoughts it produces. Bear’s voice wafts in and out of spindly guitar motifs, but its delicate nature doesn’t hinder any of her precocious observations. They’re humbly rendered, huge revelations, “Hates the Party” by Long Beard, from Sleepwalker, out on vinyl and digital 23rd October 2015

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JOHANNA WARREN – ” Figure 8 ” and ” True Colours “

Posted: October 22, 2015 in MUSIC
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Johanna Warren is a songwriter based Portland, Oregon. Her new album, n?m?n, will be released worldwide on Team Love Records May 19, 2015. In Johanna’s words, “This album is dedicated to the moon: by honoring her phases, I am restoring balance to my body and making peace with the cycles of all natural things; and to the divine feminine: by collectively cultivating her, may we restore balance to our world.”

Although Warren has lent her vocal talents to artists like Natalie Merchant and Iron & Wine, she identifies primarily as a songwriter. An intuitively self-taught guitarist, she channels powerful songs in weird time signatures and melancholic open tunings, weaving adept finger-picking with acrobatic vocal lines and carefully crafted poetry, in reverence of her patron songwriting saints Elliott Smith, Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake.

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Approaching music as a potent healing modality, Warren cultivates and honors the physically healing properties of sound and the spiritually healing powers of artistic expression. One cold winter evening in the waning weeks of 2014, Johanna and her touring partner Mitski (Double Double Whammy) passed through the Team Love gallery space in New Paltz, New York. Johanna invited the crowd to sit down on the gallery floor for her set. She requested the lights be dimmed as she lit a white candle and burned some sage. With only the candlelight to illuminate her face and separate her from the audience, she opened herself to a crowd that was swiftly transformed from unsure and vaguely uncomfortable to enraptured and mesmerized. These moments are the signature of Johanna’s live performances, in which she consciously strives to provide listeners with a portal to an alternate realm in which healing can occur. Sound and light, scent, physical space, and the web of subtle energies created by a room full of human bodies are all elements of the universe that Johanna controls and shapes.

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She performs the same delicate manipulations within the world of n?m?n, an oceanic voyage from dark to light and back that is rich in sensual language, riveting self-reflective candor and surreal sonic landscapes (created entirely with acoustic instruments and found objects played by Johanna and her engineer Bella Blasko in an empty apartment unit). However, despite stepping into the role of High Priestess for the sake of creating art and facilitating group experiences, she warns us not to attach to any divisive illusions: “You say I emanate some strange magnetic power, but don’t be drawn to me—I may be here today, but soon black moss will cover over my dead body.” Whether singing about her own mortality (“Black Moss”), updating the tedium of the party that Patti Smith first told us about (“This Is Why”) or daring one to imagine a world that transcends our notions of “the duality of wrong and right” (“True Colors”), Johanna Warren is a songwriter of daring vision. Her forthcoming album n?m?n flies into timeless space, focusing our gaze deep into the vastness of the heavens.

JOHANNA WARREN – ” Less Traveled “

Posted: October 22, 2015 in MUSIC
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All of Johanna Warren’s songs feel like they’re flying — it’s a sensation she explored on her 2013 debut, Fates, and perfected with Nūmūn, the immensely satisfying sophomore effort that brought her widespread attention this year. In addition to her engaging talk of dualities and astrology and New Age rituals, Warren is lifted up by her voice, which takes the form of a majestic and wonderful flutter

Johanna Warren’s new album, nūmūn, came out May 19th, 2015 on Team Love Records.

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SHANA FALANA – ” Second Skin “

Posted: September 22, 2015 in MUSIC
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Second Skin · Shana Falana, released 2015 Team Love Records , Experimental dream-pop band emerging from New York’s vast shoegaze scene. Combining live-looping of reverb-drenched vocals and guitar , Shana Falana is an American shoegazing band from Brooklyn, New York, currently based in Kingston, New York. They are currently signed to Team Love Records. The band consists of musicians Shana Falana and Michael Amari, who has been writing and recording songs for nearly two decades, and the easy confidence of a veteran comes through, even if this is technically her debut record. “I would have two or three bands at one time,” she admits, and they ranged from “a sludge rock band, a Bulgarian women’s choir, and a pretty, dreamy organ and guitar duo.” On this record, she’s combining all of those influences and adding one more: The addition of Mike Amari to her life as both a percussionist and a boyfriend fans Lightning Fire into a roaring, crackling blaze. There’s hints of new wave here as well, which can probably be credited to producer Dan Goodwin (Devo). On “Know UR Mine” Falana assumes various robotic vocal effects to chuckle through power plays, but during ’80s-leaning power ballad “Shine Thru” her voice is closer to Dido, or even Enya, in tissue-paper delicacy. This is an album that pivots on a resistance to any sort of central tenet, constantly moving forward, shedding skin as it goes

SHANA FALANA – ” Heavenstay “

Posted: September 20, 2015 in MUSIC
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“The quiet-loud-quiet formula has been the dynamic foundation of many a contemporary band, but Shana Falana might have perfected it.

“Set Your Lightning Fire Free” (Team Love Records), the new album from the Brooklyn duo of guitarist Shana Falana and drummer Mike Amari, certainly feels touched by ’80s and ’90s shoegaze, heavy on reverb and amber waves of feedback. However, there’s a pulse in there. The blissful “Heavenstay” wraps necks with the heavy trudge of “Go” and 4AD strains of “Shine Thru.” So many new-gaze bands attempt to hide a lack of ideas behind a wall of sound, but Falana’s voice is its own muscled instrument, which keeps the music from falling into a reverb slump.”

 

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