Bulgarian Cartrader – LAB
Genre: Bedroom / Lo-fi Pop, Indie Electronic, Indietronica
Most musicians doomed to a life of playing clubs and recording demos on cheap equipment had something even more important in common with each other. Everyone collected records. Usually, the more time these people would spend in their bedrooms or in the company of similar-minded people listening to this music, the more bizarre the records that were being collected would become.
Of course, they all dreamed of making music that would somehow make use of all those separate sounds. But there were limitations, of course. In the past, music had to be collected, gifted, or stolen. One couldn’t just research Turkish pop music whenever one was in the mood. Secondly, few of these folks actually had the musical ability to play everything they heard on record. Technology and samples would soon ease this burden.
Bulgarian Cartrader’s LAB is a gently psychedelic dance tune that sounds like it was made by someone that spends their evenings researching the very depths of the internet for strange world music and novelty pop tunes. It’s a little too sweet and a little confidently performed. But, make no mistake, this is the dream of generations of musicians coming true.
Marcus Paquin – Something Beautiful
Similar artists: The National, Stars, Local Natives, Broken Social Scene, Metric, Feist, The War on Drugs
Genre: Indie Rock, Indie Pop, Alternative Rock
You’d have to be demented, screwy in the head, or just plain nuts to make art about just how beautiful life is sometimes. A lot of people would just plainly hate you for it. You might even get threatened. How dare you disturb the misery under which most people are living. It would take a whole lot of guts or a complete lack of self-preservation.
Fortunately, pop music is a laboratory for controlled craziness. It’s a place where mistakes have no real consequences, while any success can potentially change the lives of those who happen to hear it. With this in mind, it’s worth taking a leap of faith and possibly making a fool of yourself. It might just change somebody’s life or at least improve their day.
Marcus Paquin’s Something beautiful is, I bet, the silliest, most forward-looking, joy-seeking song you’ve heard in a while. Ain’t you glad that someone dared to do this? It’s a song that might make a bearded, cigarette-smoking critic wonder what would’ve happened if Lou Reed had mixed his drugs. It’s New York cool, dressed in a shiny jumpsuit instead of a black motorcycle jacket. It’s the sort of song that helps start a cult or that endangers the livelihood of the performers. Either way, it might as well brighten your day.
