This is the first time I had the pleasure of reviewing something from Start-Track, a fine small label run by our friend Filip Zemčík. Porch Kiss’ music is sparse and lo-fi, reminding me of a lot of British indie band from the 1980s with lower production values and fine songwriting. Pensive music, and a great listen.
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Maybe Mars Records out of my new home city of Beijing (I have to meet these guys one day) put out an indie rock album in 2019 that sounds as good as anything the early Cure ever put out. Brilliant work by Future Orients, indeed!
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We haven’t featured a band from Thailand in quite a few months, so it’s time to rectify this. Death of Heather are from Bangkok and offer a really well-done take on dreampop.
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One of the benefits of being in Beijing at a high-grade academy is that I run into some rather brilliant young minds who are turning me on to great local music, case in point being Mimik Banka, who listeners would compare their music favorably to acts like dream pop and pop-psych bands like Dream Academy during their less somber moments and Khruangbin in places, and something radically their own in other spots. Perhaps my new favorite Chinese indie band at the moment.
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This is some of the most fun, poppy, Beatlesque music I’ve heard in a while. Say Sue Me 세이수미 hail from Busan, South Korea, yet I would have believed it if someone told me they were out of London or Liverpool. Well done, folks.
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Rural Track are a band out of Japan who do heavy shoegaze rock, so those of you who miss My Bloody Valentine’s peak moments would do well to check this track out.
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One of the holy grails of rock music is the making of an album that defies time. The Stone Roses achieved this with their 1989 self-titled debut, a … STILL BLOOMING GOOD The excellent blog Vinyl Connection reminisces about how impactful the debut album of the Stone Roses actually was.
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The Sextones are a neo-soul band out of Reno, Nevada who are signed to the Italian label Record Kicks. The sound is a nice blend of 60’s garage rock blended with elements of Motown soul, especially if you are into the music of Smokey Robinson & The Miracles.
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We have two releases today to share with you. Both come from New Zealand’s greatest indie rock band, The Chills, and at least to my ears, should be seen as one cohesive session. The first, Scatterbrain, came out in September of 2021 is a rather lush affair, quite different from the early, stripped-down lo-fi albums. Great production, choruses, an almost proggy feel to some tracks dot the album, yet the songs still have that hallmark Kiwi indie sound. Scatterbrain-Storms: Outtakes is quite different, however. Three tracks, more stripped down and raw (well, they’re outtakes for a reason, right?), and I…
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If you’re going to spend the winter holidays listening to Gothic Christmas music, you could do much worse than hearing Thanatos doings warm and rather respectable Christmas tunes. May you, my friends who are either Orthodox, Catholic or those who participate in one way or another in Advent, enjoy a pleasant time.