So. Summer’s over. But August never seems to get the memo. Or chooses to ignore it. Most places in the US, it’s hot, balmy, stormy, and/or generally gross and uncomfortable. And, though many places will be on the gentle, breeze-filled slide down into proper autumnal weather, Los Angeles has a strange tendency (we’ve learned) to hold onto that summer heat well into October. So we’re walking the thin line between warm weather bangers here and more somber, introspective songs with this month’s mixtape.
To start, we’ve got some lo-ish-fi-ish dreamy bedroom pop from mysterious masked New Jersey musician Blood Cultures—we’re assuming he’s either horribly disfigured or a Jersey Shore cast member. Then we’re moving on to one of the aforementioned bangers from Copenhagen’s SIBA and one of our favorite tracks from the soon-to-be-released fourth album from NYC’s The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (the cool kids used to just call ’em Pains, but I’m far from up on my NYC local indie scene slang). That album, The Echo of Pleasure (maybe let’s call it Echo) is out Friday and, for the record, we like it a lot—welcome back, kids!
The we’ve got the first of three songs pulled straight from recommendations by our new friend Tessa of Amsterdam band Luwten. We interviewed her a bit back and asked in the process for new independent music we may not have heard before; she responded by putting together a really wonderful playlist for us that included, among others, songs by Sue the Night (AKA Suus de Groot), Kim Janssen, and Eefje de Visser, all included on this mix and all also from the Netherlands. PS—we totally dig the concept, art, and site for Eefje de Visser; worthy of a click. Then we’ve got a beautiful, catchy-as-hell new song from New Zealand’s Yumi Zouma; some really trippy, glitchy shit from Woodstock’s Photay featuring Madison McFerrin; a new one from Mercury Prize-winning Scottish band Young Fathers featuring Leith Congregational Choir; Long Beach’s Satica with an ode to honey whiskey; a song about getting famous in Los Angeles from Portland, Oregon’s Liyv (“I make songs for sad people who like bright colors”); some Siouxsie-esque crooning from Los Angeles’ own Happy Hollows; much more laid back crooning from Montreal’s Tops (it IS I hear); and one more from an Angeleno—the formerly enigmatic, now-non-mask-wearing Elohim. Then we’re wrapping it all up with some driving, post-emo pop from Atlanta’s Ayo River.
Enjoy and keep cool, kids.
