Elephant Castle – Caught In A Twilight Zone
Genre: Psychedelic Rock, Indie Rock
Elephant Castle makes disco music designed to be appealing to lovers of all things psychedelic on Caught In A Twilight Zone.
Almost every style of music, no matter how adventurous or avant-garde, has a tendency of eventually turning into disco. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But, if you don’t believe me, just think about it. Nearly all of the classic troubadours of the late 1960s produced a light Euro-dance album along the way.
Even the ambitious prog bands of the 1970s eventually succumbed to trying to write pop songs that could be played in discotheques. And, the fancy, modern EDM that makes such ample use of clever, cutting-edge technology could be boiled down to, well, disco.
Elephant Castle is ahead of the curve. This is 60s psychedelia that feels produced in the studios of Frank Farian. Caught In A Twilight Zone is a song about managing to overcome traumatic experiences, and naturally has an upbeat feel about it. Of course, the best style of music to celebrate cheating death is disco, as songwriter Phil Danyew well recognizes.
Geographer – Giving In
Genre: Indie Folk, Folktronica, Indietronica
Geographer’s music sounds like 80s heavy-metal ballads being rewritten for a deadline by an overworked folk troubadour.
Music listeners have a lot of stimuli to process. As much as older people would like to shame the younger generation for their supposed shallowness and inability to focus, things have been heading in this direction ever since Elvis Presley started shaking his hips.
It continued with pop stars making statements about the war and poverty in the papers. The transition to around-the-clock music videos was a natural one. And, if glanced through that perspective so is the 24/7 flow of personal information with which stars treat their fans on various social media platforms.
We listen to what we see. Geographer makes a really tender statement with the single Giving In. You’ll have no trouble finding this on indie-folk playlists and, if society returns to familiar ways, of hearing it in cosy coffee houses. But, this is a power ballad, make no mistake about it. David Coverdale could cover this beautifully, with or without beautiful models dancing on the hood of cars, and nobody would bat an eye.
