THESKYSGONEOUT

MUSIC RECOMMENDATIONS 01/13/15

DARKWAVE | GOTH | ETHEREAL | POST-PUNK | MYTHIC

Mercury’s Antennae — “The Guides.”

This new project, featuring Dru Allen (Mirabilis, This Ascension) on vocals, made one of my favorite ethereal darkwave records last year, and start off 2015 with a new EP (and video). If you like dreamy, floating, otherworldly, music, you’re in for a real treat. Standouts include their cover of David Bowie’s “Letter to Hermoine,” and the eleven-minute ritualistic mood-altering “They Are With Us” (featuring throat-singing from Luku NetherThot). Check it out!

Io Echo — “I’ve Been Vaping Your Tears”

The arty fashion-forward shoegaze sound of LA’s Io Echo takes a stylistic shift on this free 4-track “mixtape,” no doubt a precursor of a follow-up to their 2013 full-length debut “Ministry of Love.” Here, working with producers TOKiMONSTA and NAR the band sport a more stripped-back and focused sound, more sinister and robotic than on their East-meets-Cocteau Twins early work. It’s an intriguing teaser, and “I’ve Been Vaping Your Tears” is an awesome title for anything, really. Download here.

Viet Cong — “Viet Cong”

There are a lot of people mining the sound known as “post-punk,” but little of it is actually fresh-sounding. Too often, we get by-the-numbers purists constructing cavernous make-work that commits the cardinal sin of boring us with its tuetonic percision. Thankfully, that isn’t the case here with the new Canadian band Viet Cong. I could listen to advance track “Continental Shelf” a hundred times, a dynamic stomper with howling vocals that reminds me how much I actually like the amorphous category called post-punk. The album is out next week, but you can download two advance tracks now. I recommend doing that! This thing is going to monsterous. Stream the whole album, here.

ODDS & ENDS (AND THINGS I MISSED)

Seattle darkwave band Nightmare Fortress released a (free) new track back in October called “The Perfect Feeling,” and it’s pretty great. Looking forward to their sophmore album this year.

Speaking of Seattle and darkwave, the band youryoungbody released a free EP entitled “Hashira” back in August. You may also want to check that out.

I don’t know if I’ll love the “Cowboy Worship” EP by Amen Dunes, but I do like his cover of “Song To The Siren,” which splits the difference between This Mortal Coil and Tim Buckley.

That’s it for now, see you around the Mixcloud.