Right about now we’re going to kick off your weekend with this new bomb from our boy Fabian.
‘Puzzle’ is actually pretty old, being Fabian’s first track under that name, but has recently come to light as the soundtrack to this GoPro video of Jamie Pierre ski cliff jumping.
Old or new, we’re glad it’s getting an airing, it’s a full-on Electro juggernaut. If this doesn’t get you going for a weekends debauchery, then I don’t know what will!
Binary Entertainment, the West Coast’s ElectroPop mafia, has for so long been a collection of seven acts (which made our Binary Week pretty convenient!), well now that seven has become eight with the introduction of Flashlights.
This Denver based duo of Ethan Converse and Sam Martin’s reverb washed ElectroPop owes as much to Chillwave as it does to Binary’s Dreamwave stable, but carves out a sound for itself apart from the two genres. Emotive and introspective, Flashlights’ songs feel impassioned, both in vocal delivery and the haunting melodies of the music, creating an atmosphere that feels at once strange yet really close to home. That’s not to say the music is purely ethereal, the band have a ear for groove in the rhythm section too. Check out their first single for Binary, ‘Glowing Eyes’, it’s a synthesizer dream!
These synthetic dreamers seem like a welcome addition to the Binary camp, you can check out more of their stuff on their Bandcamp page, and look out for an album on Binary in June!
Awesome German retro synth wizard Alpha Boy returns this month with a brand new EP, titled ‘Douce Folie’!
Alpha Boy has put the last year of writing and releasing 80’s inspired Synth tunes to good use as all his influences are poured into new EP. Inspired by everything 80’s, from Modern Talking and Phil Collins to episodes of Knight Rider, Alpha Boy would probably be and easiest fit in the Dreamwave scene, but his music stems from a more musically nostalgic place than that. Not necessarily trying to invent 80’s music for contemporary times, AB wraps up his love of 80’s synthesiser music into a style that he sees fit, and it’s a style that, although would work well on the dancefloor, isn’t exactly dance music. It would be better to say that it’s a danceable synthesiser odyssey that has as much in common with Jean Michel-Jarre as it does with Kavinsky.
Here we have the track ‘Glam’ with its intertwining melodies and slightly oriental feel (again there is JMJ as a point of reference). Alpha Boy’s goal in life is to share with his listeners “a touch of the great feeling of the 80’s”…well, mission accomplished!
Sooooo, we haven’t written about Queen Of Hearts yet. Was there a reason for that? Well, yes and no. We’ve love both her songs to date, played them a lot round these parts, especially her work with on of our favourite producers, Diamond Cut, but always felts a little suspicious of all the hype. It’s not that we didn’t love them music, it’s just that we felt there was a joke we weren’t in on. When every single music publication we admire gushes about something on the basis of a thirty second sample and the artist has been in the studio with Diamond Cut, Fear Of Tigers and Dreamtrak, three producers we love, I dunno’, the whole thing seems a little ‘manufactured to be blog friendly’ for me.
However…we could be wrong, and on a purely musical front Queen Of Hearts is, we will admit, worth a lot of the hype.
Her recent track, the Diamond Cut produced ‘Where Are You Now?’ is prefect Pop for a Dreamwave generation (maybe our suspicion cones from it being too good?). DC knocks it out the park with his dancefloor 80’s production, the slick Disco guitar riffs and massive sweeping synths would make an awesome instrumental track in their own right but work amazingly well as a backing for QoH’s sultry, if a little distant, vocals. Sounding a little like ‘Little Boots a couple of years older’ Queen Of Hearts has the potential to be something really special. On top of that our favourite Korean, StardonE, has reMixed the track bringing his cosmic Nu-Disco to the tune with some rad little funky riffs.
Young Digerati may well be the next big thing in ElectroPop, this newcomer Californian four piece make some of the sweetest Dreamwave tinged Indie-ElectroPop you’ll hear all year.
They’ve just released their début EP, ‘The Amanda EP’, for free on SoundCloud and it’s lead track, ‘The Dauphin’, is everything you’d want from a West Coast ElectroPop track. A summery, dreamy vibe with synths that shimmer over a Disco beat topped with introspective, emotive vocals. ‘The Dauphin’ is a track that sweeps right into your heart.
So, they have roped in some top quality reMix talent for the EP too. Muffin makes an appearance alongside this reMix from the almighty Ride The Universe. digitalfoxgloxe and the Fiero crew get their Filter-Disco on with a reMix that’s just gonna’ melt the dancefloor. With hints of ‘Discovery’ era Daft Punk (quite fitting this week) in the driving chords and a wicked Disco guitar lick. The groove sets the scene perfectly for snatches of the original’s vocals and a solo line that takes you that bit higher.
Just when you though the world couldn’t get any smoother Ride The Universe come back with another smooth supernova!
I wanted to quickly share this College track that went up on the Valerie site recently.
It’s Stephen Falken’s reMix of College’s first single ‘Answers’, which has pretty much been the soundtrack to my chilled weekend. It’s an organically evolving synthesizer Dreamwave treat. Not a party tune by any means, but chuck this on your headphones, sitback, and enjoy!
I doubt NightWaves need much introduction to readers of electronic rumors, they are the heart and soul of the Binary family.
As NightWaves Josh Legg and Kyle Petersen, besides founding Binary Entertainment and inventing the term ‘Dreamwave’, make the kind of music that epitomises everything that Dreamwave should be. Optimistic and aspirational, their songs conjure up memories of loves and losses, heartbreaks and sunsets, the best times in your life revisited, the times when nothing else mattered.
From their first single ‘She’s Electric’, through compilation appearances, to last years ‘Sweet Carrie’, NightWaves are evolving at a rapid rate, yet keeping this evolution organic sounding. The duo’s début offerings were pretty straight ElectroPop. Their 80’s inspired melodies and vocals stood-out amongst the emerging retro synth scene as being particularly true to the classic SynthPop sound. Their most recent single ‘Sweet Carrie’, though, was a dreamy Indie-Electro summer soundtrack that came a both a shock and a gift. I will admit that I’m always a bit weary of synth bands who start using guitar (in an ‘another one bites the dust’ kinda’ way, but that’s my problem, I’ll deal with it!) but within seconds of ‘Sweet Carrie’ opening you could tell that this was such a natural progression for NightWaves, it sounded so right. The track blew up online, and rightly so. Synth and guitar blended in to a whole that was so much bigger than the sum of it’s parts. ‘Sweet Carrie’ encapsulates, I think, the Dreamwave philosophy, good times and a summer that never ends.
While working on their début album NightWaves has kept their fans happy with remix after blog destroying remix that have gained them DJ support and radio play all over the world.
NightWaves, ambassadors of Dreamwave, here’s what they had to say:
ER: So how did you guys get together, where you in other bands previously?
J: Yeah Kyle and I have both been musical our whole lives. I played cello for a number of years and Kyle can play the trumpet quite well. We both dove into being in rock bands in our teens. I was a bit of an acoustic singer songwriter in the early 2000’s, as was Kyle (and a hell of a lot of other young males). Its a bit corny to listen back on, but I do believe it broke our songwriting chops to be stripped down to just a guitar and voice. I think it gives NightWaves a big leg up to have written so many songs that way while a lot of other electronic producers are just starting to learn how to construct a song well.
ER: And what came first, NightWaves or Binary?
K: Binary came first, but not by much. Josh and I started Binary in early 2008, and then by mid-2008 we were moved into our office with Binary being our main priority. Since we had some space in our office, we thought it would be a cool place to bring our music gear and have a little space dedicated to being creative and making music. So within the first few weeks of the full launch of Binary, NightWaves was born in some early moments of free time. It was a pretty spontaneous beginning that started with some pretty amateur sounding early demos, haha.
ER: Who are your heroes and influences, both musically and otherwise?
K: Hmm, well that can probably be split into a few groups. There are a ton of musical influences that shape the music I try to make, ranging from pop punk groups like Saves the Day, to Phoenix, Daft Punk of course for their amazing ability to create a spectacle, Miike Snow is influencing how I want to make music now…there are a ton of random past influences. My heroes in music relative to my life are people like Busy P and James Murphy that have built very unique entities and had the resilience to stay at the top of their game and make a lot of the right moves to build their own brand of sound and scene in their towns. And I’d have to say my parents…both are very musical and always supported me in music and inspired a lot of my taste in music and I wouldn’t be able to do this now without them.
ER: ‘Sweet Carrie’ introduced us to a slightly more guitar oriented sound, more of a chilled summery indie vibe. Was this a natural progression for you?
J: Absolutely. I think we would’ve incorporated more live instrumentation into our earlier songs if we could have. Its pretty difficult from a technical standpoint to incorporate live instruments into a mainly electronic mix and it took some time for us to get ‘good’ enough to make it work. We grew up on guitar music and I think it was very natural for us to start to include more guitar in the songs. You’ll definitely hear more guitar on our record, although in a lot of cases the style won’t be quite as out there in the mix as the guitars were on “Sweet Carrie”.
ER: The video for ‘Sweet Carrie’ seems to perfectly visually capture the atmosphere of NightWaves, who directed it? How did that vision come about?
K: We discovered this really talented filmmaker named Cody Bralts. At the time I don’t think he’d even graduated high school, but he was shooting these gorgeous little videos of his life. They really captured the innocence that makes Sweet Carrie the song that it is. We approached Cody about shooting some footage for us and he was eager to let us go through his material. Our guitarist, David Urbina is actually a film editor during the daytime, so he took the footage and really turned the video into the perfect story to accompany the song. We’re really proud of the way it turned out!
ER: ‘Sweet Carrie’ kinda’ blew up on the blogs, have you seem that blog hype translate into much in the way of new fans or sales?
K: ‘Sweet Carrie’ definitely did well for us…the sales haven’t been very inspiring but I guess that’s a good picture of the music industry these days. But I think a lot of people took notice of NightWaves because of that song and the beautiful video that Dave and Cody put together. Some labels perked up their ears, and a lot of our musician friends were really into the song. Josh heard some dudes singing the hook at the Empire of the Sun concert that just happened here in LA, haha, so it looks like people took notice a bit. The trick is following that up.
ER: What lies in NightWaves’ studio. Do you have and ‘go to’ bits of kit?
K: Lots of delay, all day.
ER: And how does the NightWaves live set up work?
J: We perform as a four piece actually. Kyle and I play keyboards and electric bass. David plays guitar on pretty much all of the tracks. We’ve had a few different drummers over the last couple of years too. We rotate around a bit on stage depending on the song, since everyone can play a few different instruments. The only thing that stays consistent is that Kyle and I sing the songs.
ER: If money was no object, what synth would you like to get your hands on?
K: A Jupiter 8…Josh and I probably both agree on that one.
ER: What does Dreamwave mean to you?
K: Dreamwave, to me, and this has some personal bias of course, represents a lifestyle more than anything else. The good life…appreciating being comfortable where you are in life, and beautiful weather, and memorable days hanging out having some drinks with your friends at the beach, and a general optimism about life and about the future. It has a very sunny feeling to me, and I know that it sounds very southern Californian, but I think the same principles can apply to anyone in their hometown. It certainly has the influences from 80’s music, but sonically that’s not really the point and it has more to do with youth and nostalgia, as we always mention. The ability to always feel young and carefree and looking forward to the next day. I think America needs (and is already starting to gain) a sense of things being alright and the future looking bright. Whether or not that will be the case is kind of irrelevant, because a positive mind can have a pretty profound effect on how we make our future.
ER: You’ve recently started writing your début full length record, how’s that going, what can we expect from the album?
K: Going out to Boston to record was a great chance for Josh and I to take some time away and really focus on the future of NightWaves and making some new music. I think you can expect hopefully a good mix of some darker atmospheric songs alongside some driving SynthPop anthems with big hooks. I want to get weird with this record, but not like, too weird. A nice eclectic mix of beautiful sounds. That’s my goal.
J: Yeah… I think we’re up to 18 or 19 pretty completed demos. We’re not quite satisfied yet, so I think we’re looking to write another batch of songs (5-10) before we’ll start the process of finalizing things. The response from friends and family has been great so far though. I think we’ve done a good job of maintaining our ‘sound’, but hopefully pushing our songwriting and production skills to another level.
ER: Are NightWaves more of a cereal or pile of pancakes for breakfast kinda’ band? Would that change the night after a show?
K: I never really eat breakfast, unless it’s a weekend brunch after a night out, at which point I’ll have some eggs benedict. That or I’ll have a bacon and egg breakfast burrito from Pete’s Burgers on Hoover and 24th St…best breakfast burrito in the city, nay, on Earth. And they have the best coke in the city too, with crushed ice, which is crucial. Were you looking for a deeper answer?
The dudes over at Trashbags ‘ave only gone and started their own record label, ‘aven’t they?!?!
Tuff Em Up’s first release will be by Chilean synth noodler Barretso and it should be pretty amazing judging by this taster here. ‘Midnight Walk’ will be featured on the ‘Bright City Lights’ EP and is almost perfectly crafted Dreamwave (If you want to call it that), washes of retro synths and arpeggiated basslines and just a hint of soaring lead all wrapped up in a smooth mix.
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