Astral Loop – Star Seeds
Similar artists: Tame Impala, Melody’s Echo Chamber, The Nude Party, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Lazy Eyes
Genre: Psychedelic Rock
The “Artists You Might Also Like” featured on Spotify or similar streaming services always seem insulting both for the listener and, I would imagine for the artist. You mean to tell me that if I like The Beatles, the most famous band in existence, I should also like Billy Joel? That’s a stretch. And if I do enjoy some of Mr. Joel’s songs, I might also fall in love with the gentle sounds of Chicago? Yikes.
But the fact is that music labels, music stores, and, now, music streaming services love to box bands and artists up. They sell more that way. And, they help listeners get over their potential decision to just not bother investigating new music. But do that for too long as a listener, and you’re building a cage for yourself that you’re unlikely to get out of very easily.
Astral Loop’s “Star Seeds” is music that fans of spaced-out alternative rock might easily learn to enjoy. But it also doesn’t sound anything like it. Astral Loop sounds like the work of someone who spent years learning the craft of making poppy alt-rock and then spending just as much time looking to forget those skills and trying to, instead, build up their unique voice in the way that a child might do.
The Third Sound – Another Time, Another Place
Similar artists: Golden Hours, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The House of Love
Genre: Shoegaze, Psychedelic Rock
There are few places that love rock n’ roll, the image associated with it, and all of its numerous myths, such as Northern Europe. And, of those lands frequently hit by blizzards, storms, and the occasional volcanic eruption, there is no land quite like Iceland when it comes to taking on those myths and contributing to them. How fascinated are people with Icelandic musicians? Well, for a while, many were convinced that the folks in Sigur Ros, with their made-up baby-talk language, were musical geniuses. Strange world.
But don’t get things mixed up. Living in isolation can breed some wonderful things. Most islands get their news slowly. And that is why the people who are most anxiously waiting for the news have to fill in the blanks themselves. Back in the olden days, people who couldn’t get a hold of many musical records because of censorship or as a result of isolation had to make up their own pop music to fill the hole.
The Third Sound’s “Another Time, Another Place” tries to approximate what cool, psychedelic-rock revival bands might sound like, what they might dress like, and what they might talk about. But in doing so, in using their imagination to estimate what American psych-rock might be, The Third Sound arrive at a unique point, at a jangly space-rock rock sound that is their own.
