Category Archives: Electronic

Mad Mackerel’s Best of the Month: April 2013

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Mad Mackerel's Best of April 2013

Better late than never, here is our monthly round-up of the best of our April downloads together with a handful of brand new tracks. More than twenty songs especially prepared for you to put together an eclectic and appealing mix to impress all your friends and bore your boring work colleagues.

Enjoy!

Wild Wild Wets – Criminal Blue
Tripped out, freaked out, psych pop.

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Hey Anna – Tiny Kiss
Intimate vocal harmonies perched atop poppy folkish melodies that meet soaring, atmospheric alt-rock.

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The Lost Souls Club – Son, You Look Like You Need Jesus
Taking its cue from the darker end of the psych-blues spectrum, this track gleefully careers off the road into the verge, happily making a home in the margins of mainstream rock’n’roll and spitting sly malevolence at anyone who comes too close.

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Owls Of The Swamp – Hypnotist
A masterpiece of elegiac fingerpicked folk, softly spun melody, and ghostly backing vocals.

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Young Hunting – Baby’s First Steps
Lush, woozy and seductive evoking a sense of back porch bonhomie and marijuana enhanced well being.

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Belle Mare – The Boat Of The Fragile Mind
Dreamspace of acoustic and synth textures, weaving folk with dream pop.

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Sunjacket – Alligator
Indie rock with a laconic, hazy chug and sweet falsetto chorus.

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Download Brass Bed – Please Don’t Go mp3 (from The Secret Will Keep You)
Three minutes of infectious indie-rock perfection with a soupçon of garage rock attitude.

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Amanda Jo Williams – 2000Hell
Idiosyncratic mix of twangy rockabilly and weird Americana

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The Baptist Generals – Broken Glass
Haunted, claustrophobic take on drunken folk.


Click through for free download.

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Torches – When You Gonna?
Opens with a tasty riff and settles into a nice, easy-going melodic groove that calls to mind The Shins or Spoon.

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Georgia’s Horse – Ginger
Dusty Americana shot through with a melancholy and sadness that is almost real enough to touch.

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Paperhaus – Helicopters
Perfectly judged psych-pop.

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Shawn Mrazek Lives! – Man In The Grass
A tale of self-discovery and freedom that snaps, snarls and sparkles in equal measure.

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Download Shannon and the Clams – Into a Dream mp3 (from Dreams in the Rat House)
Slow-dance-ready instrumental with darkly bucolic lyrics.

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The Builders & The Butchers – Dirt In The Ground
Sonically heavier perhaps, but just as distinctive dark-hearted folk as always. Wonderful.

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And new tracks to dive into from Morningbell’s experimental psych-tinged art rock to Honeymilk’s infectious indie, and two tracks of gorgeous stripped back folk from Dark For Dark. Finally, try the simplicity and honesty from Young Readers indie-folk, shot through with a dreamy, imaginary quality that (whisper it) calls to mind Sparklehorse or Jason Molina.

MM Recommends…Wampire

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MM Recommends...Wampire

We were stupidly oblivious to the diverse charms of Wampire until we were blown away by the driving drums and electronic organs of recent single The Hearse, and subsequently discovered that the duo have an album, Curiosity out this month. They have made a new track from the album available for streaming, and in contrast to the single, Trains is an excursion into more easygoing, laid-back pop territory.

Defying easy categorisation and leaping from style to style with a joyful impetuousness – from pulsating new wave grooves one minute to breezy, sunkissed melodies the next, Curiosity is a charming, addictive and wholly engrossing listen.

Try out for yourselves below. Order the album from Polyvinyl direct here.

Videos of the Day: Liars || Folly & The Hunter || Cobalt Cranes || decker

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Videos of the Day

Begin the week with videos from Liars, and Folly & The Hunter with Moth In The Porchlight from their Wood & Wires Session (grab a free download of Ghost too). From Cobalt Cranes we have a weird LA road trip and lastly another video from decker for Killing Me, their truly heart-wrenching song about tumultuous relationships.

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New Daughn Gibson Album

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New Daughn Gibson Album

Anyone who read our post on Daughn Gibson’s album All Hell, back in the summer last year will know just what an impact it had on us, as we first laid ears on what was possibly the most twisted Americana record of 2012. Since then we’ve been following the fella pretty closely as he signed to the big hitting Subpop label.

And now we have the news we were waiting for – a new album delightfully titled Me Moan (out in July), and a first taste in the shape of opening track The Sound Of Law, which they rather promisingly describe as “like a huge, but somehow cordially invited, punch to the gut“.

You can listen to it via the Youtube video below. You can pre-order the album here.

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And a reminder from All Hell…

Videos of the Day: Bass Drum Of Death || American Royalty || Airstrip || Lost Animal

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Videos of the Day

Today’s selections of videos to enjoy come from Bass Drum Of Death, American Royalty, Airstrip, and Lost Animal.

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Download Airstrip – Pleasure Center mp3 (from Willing)

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MM Recommeds…Public Service Broadcasting

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MM Recommends...Public Service Broadcasting

Having just heard this on Radio 6, we checked back through our in-box and found we’d been told about Public Service Broadcasting (aka J. Willgoose, Esq. and his drumming companion, Wrigglesworth) way back in February. Of course, in typical fashion and in complete dereliction of our duty, we’d contrived to miss just how damn good this track is – so another post filed under “better late than never”.

The band weave samples from old public information films, archive footage and propaganda material around live drums, guitar, banjo and electronics. The single in question is three and a half minutes of full-throttle head-rush called Signal 30, which is apparently one of their more post-rock/post-punk efforts. There will be a debut album, Inform-Educate-Entertain out on the 6th May.

Listen below…and play loud! You can download Signal 30 for free when pre-ordering the album.

Videos of the Day: Horse Thief || Iron & Wine || Old Man Canyon || The Soft Moon

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Videos of the Day

Watch videos for Horse Thief’s brilliant track I Am The Bear, a stunning intimate acoustic perfomance from SXSW by Iron & Wine, a gorgeous Phantoms & Friends from Old Man Canyon (free EP download from Bandcamp here), and to finish the jittery, unsettling Want by The Soft Moon gets a video to match…

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Videos of the Day: Turner Cody || Halfrican || Lightouts || Tape Deck Mountain

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Videos of the Day

Start your weekend with videos from MM fave Turner Cody, then move on to the fuzzed out psych-garage of Halfrican and Lightouts, and finish up with the sonic soundscapes of Tape Deck Mountain.

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New From Lightning Dust

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Anyone who read our review of our last visit to the End of the Road Festival in 2011 will have seen how much we were taken with Lightning Dust who opened proceedings on the Sunday and were one of the very best things we saw (amongst a whole line-up of very best things).

This is the official audio video (always a strange concept) for Diamond, the first track from forthcoming album Fantasy and indicates that there may be something of a change from the previous two albums of perfectly judged folk touched through with psychedelia.

Have a listen – should be interesting…

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Introducing >>> Belle Mare

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Mad Mackerel Recommends >>> Belle Mare

Brooklyn’s Belle Mare offer a lush and evocative debut, The Boat Of The Fragile Mind EP, which was released earlier this week. This duo comprised of Amelia Bushell and Thomas Servidone craft a dreamspace of acoustic and synth textures, weaving folk with dream pop, that showcase Bushell’s haunting vocals.

Consisting of eight tracks, check out the title track below.