Monday, April 6, 2009
Monday Music #14 (Cake Pusher, Perplexa, Sonia Brex)
I am terminally incapable of remembering that spring has been here for quite some time now. Every time I step outside and it's warm, it bowls me over anew. Where is this heat coming from? Why is there sun and from whence came these birds? Hasn't the world been in an ice cocoon for a few months? It's April. It's been April for some time. I shouldn't think nature is playing an elaborate April Fool's joke on me.
But as it turns out, this week's music is all in a similar flux between seasons. Or at least it sounds that way to me. I wasn't planning this. It started out, as most of these do, as a Myspace wiki-walk starting from the group Litmus's page, also well worth checking out. So in retrospect, it makes a bit of sense, since I discovered *them*, in turn, through Stina Nordenstam.
See, everything I've read about Stina associates her music with winter. I can't have that association. It won't stick. I can appreciate the arguments, but when I first really starting to listen to her, it was a rather warm summer. Her songs played in my car driving to and from work, to the pool and back, and under hours and hours of sun. Even though the song's called "Winter Killing," it means July.
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Cake Pusher is a project by Berlin artist Edie Fuchs. She has a solo page too, but most of the songs available there are partial. It's a shame - they're really good, some of them more-or-less straightforward (but still good) piano-based pieces, others more experimental - but I must abide by my self-imposed rules. Luckily, there are full songs on the other pages, and they're great.
"Hold On My Love" sounds like what might have happened if Amelia Brightman wrested creative control of Gregorian away from Nemo and company. - Edie Fuchs' voice bears an uncanny resemblance to Amelia's, carrying the melody and circled by two or three male voices - maybe not chants per se, but certainly classical, almost choral. It's mournful and lovely; I can't think of a better way for it to end than the string part at the end.
Listen here.
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Perplexa's from the States (Michigan, actually. Funny timing, that.) And the songs they have up are excellent. There's the poised "Hunt," with its spooky vocals and what sounds almost like an emergency siren, and the sprawling "Sleep," which turns frantic and haunting and calm until it's encompassed about four REM cycles.
They're also songs which, while listening, give me chills. Literal chills. This is usually a sign for me that something is good.
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I thought I'd close with something apropos to theme: "Winter in Summer," by Sonia Brex. She has several songs up, most of them quite excellent ("Iceberg" in particular is great), but, again, theme. (Although maybe that doesn't apply to Iceberg...) The lyrics - well, the ones that aren't "winter in summer" - are all about solitary listening, by one's self, in one's room, presumably when there are pools and beaches and people out there.
Sounds like it could get into Polly Scattergood territory, but there is very little that's unhappy about this. It's breezy and it wafts. Even when the synths collide into each other in ways that aren't quite major, they resolve within seconds.
Listen here.
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