HOPE – OSMOSIS
Similar artists: Sigur Rós, Portishead
Genre: Alternative Rock
HOPE don’t believe that ideas just occur to you. The band believes that one has to go out searching with no pre-determined ideas of what may be found.
There’s very little about the world that is certain. There’s little about our own lives that is secure. Yet, most of the music we hear on the radio has the same format that leads toward a chorus. Most of the movies we see have a happy ending. And even most of the news stories seem to be recycled from the past.
There are some who will not stand for it. But these individuals also know that there’s no point violently standing against such ideas. Getting lost in order to get found is the technique that they use. And music, with its hypnotic potential, is perfect for implementing such directives.
HOPE’s “OSMOSIS” is a stylish meditation, designer yoga fashion, and music for dreaming while awake. Sure, there’s an air of intimidation about how this is presented, but living in Berlin will do that to an artist. What HOPE want to achieve is to experiment with just how far the human imagination can travel and what it may find on its journey.
Nausicaa – Crystalline
Genre: Shoegaze, Dream Pop, Alternative Rock
Nausicaa uses a classic dream-pop sound to paint the silences in between words of great importance.
People tend to remember the most unimportant things throughout most of their days. By contrast, it takes something really important for them to remember something that, at the time it happened, seemed really important. Blame it all on the faulty equipment that is our human brain.
Artists, however, take it upon themselves to document the moments and emotions that seem impossible to pin down. It drives some of these authors crazy while, if they’re lucky, driving them to brilliance as well. When successful, these kinds of works are the ones that people use as a way to understand their own lives.
Nausicaa’s “Crystalline” is barely a whisper of a song. But behind this familiar shoegaze sound, there’s truth. The truth in question is so fragile that it takes the singer to breathe out the words carefully so as not to damage it. This is all, of course, an incredible balancing act, but one that ends up being successful.
