8LIS5 – Faded Wisdom
Creativity has always been, possibly, the greatest form of therapy. It is certainly the least harmful. As ol’ Bob Marley used to say, “When the music hits, you feel no pain“. Perhaps, even greater than this is the fact that when someone really tries to deal with their personal issues through creating art, the likelihood that others will feel connected to the work increases.
Music is a medium that absorbs ideas very easily. It is also a place where there are no real rules. Of course, you expect a pop song to include a chorus, verse, a bridge, perhaps, but there’s nobody to call and complain to if the structure is not followed.
Faded Wisdom is not a song I have been able to fully decipher. Yet, like hearing a song in a foreign language, I am taking my cues from the heartfelt nature of the performance. 8LIS5, a multi-national group formed via sharing documents across the internet, produces an ambitious, layered indie-rock sound that is both emotional and ambitious.
New Candys – Twin Mime
There’s music that looks for an audience to join, and there’s music that looks to swallow up an audience. New Candys make the latter. It’s a sound developed from artsy rock and garage sensibilities and created in dark, cavernous rooms by people wearing leather jackets and shades.
It’s a style that embraces song structures but makes them a secondary element to a near drone, a fuzzed-out sonic element that makes this particular brand of psychedelic rock sound as if it is made by someone who is either in a cult or on the verge of starting one.
New Candys’ Twin Mime is a tune that bristles with the confidence and arrogance that only a group that knows they could blow their audience away with a sonic assault of fuzz-guitar and feedback can produce. It’s the kind of music that best accompanies the slow turn of the day into darkness. Classy, simple, cool. Like Marlon Brando riding a motorbike to work.
