ISO50

RSS

Archive for the Stream Tag

ISO50 Presents: Gardens & Villa Stream

Posted by Jakub

sc294.11183

Scott and I have been huge fans of Gardens & Villa since we heard them at a bar in Denver, CO during a Tycho tour so we’re happy be able to share their new album with you in full on ISO50. There’s always a place for a new act that will grow to the size of a band like Grizzly Bear and I think Gardens & Villa could be that band. I remember running across the Sasquatch Festival with some urgency a few years back and stopped in my tracks hearing “Star Fire Power” being played live, it felt like they should have been on the main stage with Bon Iver and Beck.

On a similar sound tip i’d say they sound like Small Black and the meat and potatoes of Youth Lagoon, maybe a sort of city born cousin of Midlake. Dunes has a drive to it but not for pop radio or just indie, they’re some sort of heartthrob that sits in between that is honest to themselves.

Dunes is out now on Secretly Canadian

SUPPORT VINYL / CD

Photo credit: Neil Favila

Photo credit: Neil Favila

Top 5 Overlooked Albums of 2013: #3

Posted by Jakub

artworks-000057027407-jasssk-t500x500

I saw Italian trio Soviet Soviet last week in Brooklyn, I was super attracted to the quickness of getting in and out of the hooky driving songs. They obviously have their similarities to old bands but they deliver it with youth and catchy basslines. I highly suggest checking out “No Lesson” first and then streaming the album

SUPPORT, BUY VINYL or CD/DIGITAL

BZFPo-EIEAAYys_

ISO50 Premiere: Nitemoves Themes

Posted by Jakub

Nitemoves_Themes0c57db

I know some of you have been bugging me for this stream so i’m happy to be able to share the Nitemoves Themes LP on the blog. Rory is one my dearest friends and the talented man you see on stage with Tycho and Com Truise and the one that posts the great vintage motor posts here. I hope you enjoy and give feedback, i’m sure Rory will stop in here and answer any questions below in the comments.

BUY DIGITAL

Like a dusty memory whose vivid nostalgia renders you powerless to resist smiling, the newest full-length from Nitemoves, Themes has a certain power to flood your mind with imagery, but not without reminding you of your frame of reference in the now. Setting out to refine his sound following the release of his Moodgadget debut, Longlines, Rory O’Connor, who over the past few years has been touring the world as the drummer for both Com Truise and Tycho, has left us speechless over how far things have advanced. A colorful collage of live instrumentation, modern technology, and analog recording techniques, Themes holds the listener from start to finish.

Opening with the frenetic Polypel, the tone of Themes is established in subtle details that shimmer as the horizon comes into view. Not long into the second track, Veaquis, the listener is engulfed in warm synth-drenched nostalgia that washes over the ears, punctuated by live drums. Drawing on decades bygone, Themes continues to flutter like the reflection of light off water, giving in to raw emotion that plays out in syncopated drums, F1 screams and ambient swells, fading away to gently return the listener to their childhood bedroom with a music box at their feet.

ISO50 Exclusive: Stream Gold Panda Album

Posted by Jakub

"Half Of Where You Live"

“Half Of Where You Live”


We’re proud to be allowed to be streaming the new Gold Panda album for the ISO50 readers. If you love the record be sure to support it physically, this one should be around for years to come. Below is a more detailed description/story around the album but if you want just the music then enjoy above.

SUPPORT:
BUY VINYL / CD / DIGITAL

Nearly three years after the release of his debut album Lucky Shiner, Gold Panda returns with his second album Half Of Where You Live, to be released on Ghostly International and his own NOTOWN label (UK). The album is the product of a period spent touring the world multiple times around, absorbing influences and probing potential new avenues of creative exploration.

Half Of Where You Live represents a stylistic and thematic advancement from Gold Panda’s previous work, expanding on the ideas he presented on 2012’s Mountain/Financial District 7” and this March’s Trust EP. It reflects its creator’s nomadic existence — you can see the influence of his travels in track titles like ‘Brazil’ and “Enoshima,” in the oriental textures of “My Father In Hong Kong 1961” and “We Work Nights,” and in the sounds of “Junk City II,” conceived as a hypothetical soundtrack to ’90s anime and the films of controversial director Takashi Miike.

“These films depicted a post-economic boom Tokyo in the 1990s”, the producer explains, “and there was a last days feeling in them. [The feeling] still lurks [in Japan]. I saw a return to that possible dystopia. I’ve seen people in Osaka walking around, jobless, mental, stricken. I think real desperation and poverty is returning; it’s quite scary.”

The whole album, in fact, is described as a “city album” by its maker, and it’s easy to see why — each track possesses a different aesthetic and reflects a different environment. Gold Panda describes it as “a jump from location to location… I felt like I was stealing a piece of each place I went to.” ‘Community’ is a house-tinged reflection on cultural divides in London, while “Brazil” catalogs Gold Panda’s arrival in Sao Paolo: “I wanted to make a track that soundtracked my ride from the airport to downtown” he explains. “The [vocal] sample is kind of like an excited chant, bigging up the place, then it all gets confusing to replicate the traffic and buildings.”

Taking on this loose concept has meant a more considered approach for Gold Panda, and the music has harsher edges than his previous work, and an almost hauntological feel at times. Crucially, though, this new approach hasn’t compromised the producer’s creative freedom, and the album still flows with his trademark organic vibrancy. “I’ve tried to really focus on just a few elements,” he explains. “I tried to avoid chopped up female vocals this time around, as it’s become pretty well done, and anything that was too solid structurally. Ultimately, though, you just you find your groove and settle into a sound and realize you only really need to please yourself.”