Sam Healy (North Atlantic Oscillation)
After a brief hiatus Unknown Pleasures returns, so join Getintothis’ Mike Stanton as he unveils three more under-the-radar belters to help you into autumn.
North Atlantic Oscillation have been creating dreamy, washed-out and infectious pop for around fifteen years now, emerging onto the scene with their first album Grappling Hooks way back in 2010. It’s kind of old-school art rock but beamed through a bright and shimmery lens, and it totally works.
Fog Electric took this style onto a higher plain with gorgeous falsetto vocals and close-harmony backing. Playing around with motorik beats and a gleaming kosmische jacket of prog guitars, vintage synths and ethereal vocals, North Atlantic Oscillation have managed to eek out a small but verdant spot beneath the forest canopy and continue to produce some beautiful winsome songs.
Driven by the multi-talented Sam Healy and ably assisted by Ben, Chris, Bill and Pete, North Atlantic Oscillation had seemingly retreated into an indefinite hiatus following the release of 2016’s The Third Day as Healy pursued his side solo project Sand, dealing in equally blissed-out and velveteen sonics.
However, a new song has emerged and it’s a reassuring trip back into the blurred sounds and dream-woven psychedelic trips of previous releases.
Low Earth Orbit is a hazy, lo-fi electronic-psych trip into fog-swept valleys of glimmering sound and melodic dynamism. Multi-layered and hypnotically dreamy, Low Earth Orbit touches on shoegaze, krautrock and dream-pop while maintaining an art-rock vibe that keeps pulling the song back from becoming too indistinct.
Low Earth Orbit is out now and is from the forthcoming album Grind Show due out November 16th on Kscope.
Tombstones In Their Eyes (Photo: Cathryn Farnsworth)
Los Angeles’ indie psych-rockers Tombstones In Their Eyes have just released their new Nothing Here EP and it’s a collection of sonorous and hazy stoner lullabies that descend into post-rock soundscapes all wrapped up in dark shoegazing dreamscapes.
Lead single Silhouette is a grinding, monolithic doom anthem, all detuned and textured guitars that almost collapse under their colossal mass. A languid pace allows for much head nodding as the reverb-cloaked drums and vocals swirl and tumble into the shimmering space.
“Silhouette was created one lonely night in the basement recording studio. It’s a song about losing yourself. The catharsis is in the creation of the song and the release of the painful feelings,” says frontman John Treanor. “In its three songs, this EP incorporates the Tombstones sound, even though the songs do not follow the same recipe and include a morose rocker, a shaking blues and a soundscape.”
Taking musical cues from the likes of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Elliott Smith and The Melvins, the four-piece’s sound embraces a wide range of genres – from the stoner rock of Kyuss through the warped neo-psychedelia of Spacemen 3 to the cavernous and doom-laden sounds of Electric Wizard and beyond.
Nothing Here is out now on Send Me Your Head Records.
The Pull of Autumn (Photo: Matthew Darrow)
Closing out this week’s Unknown Pleasures is a pastoral and romantic ballad from Boston-based The Pull of Autumn. Having just released their eponymous debut LP, the super group (including members of Fashion, Johanna’s House of Glamour and Throwing Muses), have previewed lead album track Laurasong, a winsome and melancholy neo-folk song.
The Pull of Autumn was born through experimentation and extensive collaboration between the members, often writing by correspondence as the sound and ethos was honed. The bulk core of the songs on the album evolved through the partnership between Daniel Darrow from Johanna’s House of Glamour and Luke ‘Skyscraper’ James, frontman of Fashion. Skyscraper would send basic ideas with Darrow creating more elaborate soundscapes to ornament this sound.
Darrow says, “I think of this music as post-rock informed by electronic and experimental music, but also taking elements of a simpler sound as an acoustic guitar. Bowie’s Berlin trilogy was also an inspiration. The chance to meld together different elements of music such as electronic, acoustic, avant-garde and pop is at the core of what we want to achieve with The Pull of Autumn”.
The Pull of Autumn LP is out now on RBM Records
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