Sleepwalker - Demos 2009/2010

velvet cacoon, deafheaven, altars of plague. slow and drunk and shimmering.

will continue to bump until someone listens to the first demo.


First:

http://www.mediafire.com/?2w12vocgo70843e

Second:

http://www.mediafire.com/?5vj5w89q2s5g4b9

Rosetta/Junius - Split 2011

TMA-3 sounds....

sounds...

i___________i


for the record, if you are examining your rosetta collection, they didnt forget TMA-2. it was released as 'so warm a solitude'.


1. Rosetta - TMA-3
2. Junius - A Dark Day With Night
3. Rosetta - 4th of July
4. Junius - Fire Head

http://www.mediafire.com/?1g3xxagb68brsab

The Gentleman Losers - Dustland 2009

apparently this reached a lot more people than i thought it did. two finnish brothers. this isnt the proper cover, i guess, but i like it more.

descriptions are hard. it has just...this fucking sickening washed-out tone (and in the way i mean it, that is an extremely high compliment) that sounds like earth - hex as made by amphetamines and keyboards (not that it even remotely sounds like amphetamines or keyboards, but it occupies a space near to hex but chunky, quicker, and less riff-based). its probably drone under a lot of umbrellas, but very segmented, like tim hecker before he started making songs with 'part 1, 2, 3' (additional research suggests that there was never a tim hecker that didnt segment songs). only quieter than tim hecker. more like a soundtrack, but to what i cant exactly say...

the song that pinpointed the sound for me was midnight of the garden trees. very tor lundvall, but without the city, and requisite night sound. it could be anywhere. it's a fucking incredible sleeping album, although just that alone makes it shoot up through the ranks for me.

dustland is a great title, but it's much more lush than you might imagine. it's too fluid, even with the pronounced lack of continuation between tracks that is common with this sound (which is why i threw in 'post-rock'), and much too powerful, to just be dust.

1. Honey Bunch
2. Silver Water Ripples
3. The Echoing Green
4. Ballad of Sparrow Young
5. Bonetown Boys
6. Oblivion’s Tide
7. Lullaby of Dustland
8. Midnight of the Garden Trees
9. Farandole
10. Spider Lily
11. Wind in Black Trees
12. Pebble Beach

http://www.mediafire.com/?vgydmzinzzl

Korouva - Sleepwalker 2009

this one seems a little...dazed? sleepier (hopefully, if the title's a clue)? it sounds like movie music, if the movie was your adult life in second person. more instruments and more vocals and more varied directions than shipwrecks, with a cleaner production.



another description:

"It sounds like the middle of the night in a sparsely populated bar, or the last hour of full nighttime before an overcast dawn."



the second part hit the 'calm parts of Brick' scenes the songs conjured for me, especially near the end of the movie.









http://korouva.bandcamp.com/





http://pinefloat.tumblr.com/

1		Marusja
2		Close At Hand
3		Im Abendrot
4		Ghosts
5		Stray Dog
6		Dream Of The Wolves
7		Some Bloodsuckers
8		Bone Dance
9		Titles
10		Interim
11		Are You A Daysleeper?
12		Sleepwalker

http://www.mediafire.com/?0wrydjjycx3

"Velvet Cacoon" - "How The Last Day Came And Stayed Then Faded Into Simulated Rain" 2005

This, as you should know, is actually most of an album called Shipwrecks & Russian Roulette, by Korouva. Below are the VC titles, which are made up. After Atropine and P aa opal 'came out', Josh and Angela started Clair Cassis; I'll let you know how it is (update: well, i made it 13 seconds in before turning winterglow back on; maybe tomorrow). The picture they had originally used as cover art was also stolen, but I can't seem to find the one they used, so here's an alternative.



more info



The reasons I'm posting this, and the reasons I'm posting it as Velvet Cacoon, are a little muddy at the moment. But it's really nice, and there's no reason everyone shouldn't hear it. I'm looking for the original, which obviously has all of the tracks and as they should be (you'll hear how they are supposed to flow together).



I wanted to believe that this was actually them for fucking years. This one, more in contrast with the also-stolen "dizzy from eternity", was pretty believable. Both of them made up one of the first CDs I burned for Sanchez ('Big Mioco And The Chairs' was the first, and I think this was the 4th, of about 160 that ended with Sanchezes engine block immersed in acid. Thanks Obama).



Christ the flow itself is...otherworldly. Impeccable. The way the songs shift, both fluidly between individual tracks and the intra-play between the layers themselves is absurd. Listen to the tape hiss bass pulses. It sounds like there's a completely separate album of sleepy noise drone occurring simultaneously, occupying the same dimensions...



She has two more albums, je pense.





"Annndd I fffound a little sheet music store, that I love, and I went in and I just wanted to curl up on the ground and fall asleep....amidst all the, all the piles of music because, I don't know, I haven't played music in so long..."



again, this interview is highly recommended









Keep in mind, especially if you are familiar with Velvet Cacoon, that this is NOT Velvet Cacoon, despite years of wishing. Like the dieselharp, live shows, DXM overdoses on a frozen lake, and Josh's suicide, the claimed reality is highly unlikely.



Which, of course, in turn lends a new level of credibility and authenticity to it for me. A pretentious statement, to be sure, but...how much of the notes I like to play are stolen? Not an excuse, but there really are several reasons why the absurdity and nihilism of stealing just fits the tone (of the actual Velvet Cacoon) so well. Again, not me excusing them. If I had found this in 2005/6 as Korouva, my opinion of the music would be largely unchanged. Maybe it's just VC seducing me in the way that some people are obsessed with Crystal Castles.



Je ne sais pas. I feel like...I wanted to believe so absolutely that the people behind the black metal, etc that I trusted weren't as despairing and misanthropic as I felt, and that maybe we didn't live in a world consumed by liars and thieves, and that anyone could be capable of such transcendent beauty and form simultaneously, but I guess we were all young once.





Update: oh my god the original is just....like....the most horrifically perfect thing I have ever heard. Infinitely superior, and the two are, + or -, the same goddamn album. So, not really + or - at all. Oddly enough, the 'interlude' tracks on How The Last Day are not Korouva, and are thus VC's contribution to the album (? maybe?), and they have actually remained more resonant in my mind. So the interludes are either Angela talking, or clips from something, or possibly the two songs from myspace mentioned in the article. Let me know if you recognize them, please.



Goddamnit just listen to the fucker, it's short. The original, proper version is here. Fucking christ the original is something else. I'm not surprised that VC chose not to include 'dne eht ton', it's pretty upbeat, relatively. Think...Cat Power playing in a bookstore on a stormy afternoon.

1. Chesapeake Tide 3:38
2. Tidal Dub 0:52
3. Lavender (Interlude) 0:51
4. Frost & Ash In My Bed 2:15
5. Laudanumb (Interlude) 0:22
6. Candlelit Constellations 2:13
7. Phantasievolle 0:21
8. Lilac Wine, Black Leaves And Me 2:47
9. Un Jour Comme Un Autre (Outro) 0:29

http://www.mediafire.com/?zzmlz2mjxwy

Fell - S/T 2006

I am almost teary-eyed with relief on finding this available. This is one I own, and am very proud of owning. This article explains it pretty succinctly; needless to say, I was afraid I'd have to upload it myself and I think my disc is pretty scratched from a couple years of driving Sanchez around near Daniel's Park and napping with Gomez in waning winter sunlight. City lights flickering off and on, you may (wont) notice, has been in several (...two?) depressing playlists around here. If you've ever hung out with Adam and parked just downrange of the runway at Centennial airport on a summer night, that's what that song sounds like.



Fell is great. Their most recent (2009) is free on bandcamp too, and the middle record (hopefully containing 'followup anxiety') is supposed to be around somewhere.

	1.	Summer 04:02
	2.	Data+Backspace=Error 03:13
	3.	End Forever 05:35
	4.	Some Rainy Day in 98' 05:04
	5.	Rusty Fields 01:36
	6.	Effigy 03:48
	7.	Solitary Transmission 04:23
	8.	Polarized Verse 04:28
	9.	Interlude 01:28
	10.	Vacant Song 07:43
	11.	City Lights Flickering off and on 03:00
	12.	Cause of Cancer 03:31

http://fell.bandcamp.com/album/fell

Jónsi & Alex - Riceboy Sleeps 2009

it's that album that chase ambler, the man and the legend, told me about a loooong time ago after soccer! that i never found! infinite hails to WFLM. it sounds like all the best parts of last days sluggishly drawn out and dozing off. it's unreal and perfect and listen to more of it. it really is beautiful.

1. "Happiness" – 9:18
2. "Atlas Song" – 8:30
3. "Indian Summer" – 9:10
4. "Stokkseyri" – 7:08
5. "Boy 1904" – 5:09
6. "All the Big Trees" – 5:51
7. "Daníell in the Sea" – 6:54
8. "Howl" – 8:22
9. "Sleeping Giant" – 6:41

http://www.mediafire.com/?vjmmmi5yyjm

Altar of Plagues - Mammal 2011

jesus christ. i cant make it past the first song.

this wont stay up.

1. Neptune Is Dead
2. Feather and Bone
3. When the Sun Drowns in the Ocean
4. All Life Converges to Some Center

http://www.mediafire.com/?9d56dyjedea1dzr

Natural Snow Buildings - Waves Of The Random Sea 2011

HOLY FUCKING SHIT this is phenomenal. psychy, multi instrument ambidrone with some real progressions. like a quieter jackie o mixed with a positive last days and a really slow grouper. and aidan baker without a distortion pedal. and the albums velvet cacoon stole but slower and happier. and master musicians if they werent so fucking high. and this is so fucking blissed-out i want to excrete summer sunsets from every pore.

dont like ambidrone? fuck you.



constellations in sunny cement



1. The Waves Of The Random Sea
2. This Ice Fortress
3. Through Breaches In The Layer Of Fog
4. Abduction Dream
5. Drift The Water Soul
6. Still Desert

http://www.mediafire.com/?mjoqvol044oy6dp

Jónsi - Go 2010

i really wish this album was crushed into 30 seconds so the entire thing could be my alarm everyday. it is so absurdly beautiful and awesome and life-affirming in uncomfortably effective ways. i am gay for jonsi and his tiny, tiny arms.


anyway, the album is perfect, and i really wish i had gotten to see him last march. and if for some reason you dont recognize his name, hes the guy standing in front of sigur ros wearing weird shit and singing falsetto.

01. Go Do
02. Animal Arithmetic
03. Tornado
04. Boy Lilikoi
05. Sinking Friendships
06. Kolniður
07. Grow Till Tall
08. Around Us
09. Hengilás

http://www.mediafire.com/?ow31ev3h5upphmp

Deathspell Omega - Paracletus 2010

this. is. so. fucking. amazing. please get it, and quick. it is stunningly beautiful.


1. Epiklesis I
2. Wings of Predation
3. Abscission
4. Dearth
5. Phosphene
6. Epiklesis II
7. Malconfort
8. Have you Beheld the Fevers?
9. Devouring Famine
10. Apokatastasis Pantôn

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1PIMPHV3

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven!

One of the greatest musical recordings in existence, GY!BE's finest work and amazingly influential. The tracks do not come in the normal order, instead they are listed as "movements" and following in the good old post-rock fashion, are long as FUCK. Sleep is arguably (well, you'd have to argue me) the greatest GY!BE track, solely for Murray Ostril's soliloquy in the beginning, and the build up to Efrim just screwdrivering the guitar while the drums hammer out melodies akin to soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy. Bonechilling and awe-inspiring.

1.1: Storm

1.	"Lift Yr. Skinny Fists, Like Antennas to Heaven..."	6:15
2.	"Gathering Storm/Il Pleut à Mourir [+Clatters Like Worry]"	11:10
3.	"'Welcome to Barco [sic] AM/PM...' [L.A.X.; 5/14/00]"	1:15
4.	"Cancer Towers on Holy Road Hi-Way"	3:52

1.2: Static

1.	"Terrible Canyons of Static"	3:34
2.	"Atomic Clock"	1:09
3.	"Chart #3"	2:39
4.	"World Police and Friendly Fire"	9:48
5.	"[...+The Buildings They Are Sleeping Now]"	5:25

2.1: Sleep

1.	"Murray Ostril: '...They Don't Sleep Anymore on the Beach...'"	1:10
2.	"Monheim"	12:14
3.	"Broken Windows, Locks of Love Pt. III."	9:53

2.2: Antennas to Heaven

1.	"Moya Sings 'Baby-O'..."	1:00
2.	"Edgyswingsetacid"	0:58
3.	"[Glockenspiel Duet Recorded on a Campsite In Rhinebeck, N.Y.]"	0:47
4.	"'Attention...Mon Ami...Fa-Lala-Lala-La-La...' [55-St. Laurent]"	1:18
5.	"She Dreamt She Was a Bulldozer, She Dreamt She Was Alone in an Empty Field"	9:43
6.	"Deathkamp Drone"	3:09
7.	"[Antennas to Heaven...]"	2:02

They don't sleep anymore on the beach.