Bandcamp Picks of the Week 10/5/16
Bandcamp Picks of the Week at it again, makin’ love to your eardrums.
DJ Lostboi – FOREVER FALLEN
Genre: “Post-Angelica”
Favorite Tracks: “angel,” “+33006 (sicko mobb edit),” “cabrona (bladee edit)”
Sweet Christ on a cracker. Every time Bandcamp hurts you, or seems like it’s not worth the effort, I promise you that it will soon welcome you back into its sweet embrace. FOREVER FALLEN by DJ Lostboi is one of the most confusing releases I have ever been fortunate enough to stumble across. If you can make it past the beguiling cover, suggesting that DJ Lostboi is a pre-teen European who exclusively dresses from 2000s Gap catalogs, you’ll find the music no less head-scratching. With nary a beat of percussion in sight (except for the strange martial pattern on the opener), FOREVER FALLEN’s self-prescribed “post-angelica” label might be the only way to describe this. Only the softest and most unobtrusive of synth pads and faux-orchestral strings comprise these tracks, with the focus being on wispy snippets of heavily edited, Auto-Tuned falsetto, presumably done by the good DJ himself. Picture the deeper cuts of the Sad Boys and Gravity Boys, but deconstructed and stretched into minimalist pieces that have to be heard to be believed. Who the Hell else could or would have the capacity to turn a few unfounded vocables from Bladee into seven-minute emotional ambience? Stop reading. Listen to this now.
Dune Rats! – SOCIAL ATOMS
Genre: Indie Rock
Favorite Tracks: “Pogo,” “F(r)iends”
Largely ignored at the time of its release, the second EP from the short lived Dune Rats! project seems like the perfect slice of naive indie sunshine five years later. Heavy on the affected delivery (think somewhat along the lines of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah), vocal harmonies (ooo-ooo-ooos abound), and crisp, punchy guitar straight from The Strokes, SOCIAL ATOMS couldn’t be more warmly pleasant for the scant ten minutes it sticks around. Predating some of the later proliferations of surf-y stoner indie that would proliferate in later years, my personal favorite part of SOCIAL ATOMS is the amateur mixing of the drums. Instead of dragging down the sound, it instead adds a crackling lo-fi bite that gives the EP just a touch of garage edginess. Indie music used to feel so full of promise! Slip on SOCIAL ATOMS and let yourself be taken back. Listen to it here.
Thomas Seraydarian
Crossfader is the brainchild of Thomas Seraydarian, and he acts as Editor-in-Chief.
