Hante. - Morning Tsunami (2021)

Hélène de Thoury, better known as Hante., is one of the artists who mix heavy and deep electronica with ethereal vocals, probably the best one too. Two years after her last album, she released the fifth one entitled Morning Tsunami and, as it is being commented, this may be her best one yet.

The album is "more electronic and brutal" then her previous works and "full of raw and dark emotions, this new production is a silent scream in our sick world". And when you go through de Thoury's social media, it becomes apparent that she is boiling with emotions indeed. It's always a good thing to transmute them into art which usually turns out to be genuine and touching as a result. In her music the feelings are expressed by the deep electronic sounds with very heavy, very dominant beats that bring the atmosphere of nervousness and anxiety rather than fun and joy. This is a particularly dark music in fact, the ambiance is suffocating thanks to the deep layer of electronic sounds with only subtle vocals laying on top. 

There's no wonder that it's true what the label says about Hante. that she's "one-woman powerhouse of electronic might and pulsating energy". This mighty music contrasted with extremely melancholic vocals results in such beautiful compositions like Wasting Time that "reflects some of [the artist's] most intimate thoughts and insecurities" in an extremely catchy way, or my favourite and the most ethereal Catharsis.

Morning Tsunami costs 7 EUR.

Check: Catharsis

Country: France

Genre: heavy bass darkwave

Label: Synth Religion

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WatchCamp July-August'21 with Arctic Bay, dER & Murat Ertel, Martes Niebla, Paul Good & Kirsty Wood, Teletape

Arctic Bay - Someone, Somewhere

A new post-rock band from the Eastern Europe, the Kyiv-based artists play some traditional post-rock with a hint of heavier music. This is their first single ever and it's very, very promising. The single costs 1 USD.

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dER feat. Murat Ertel - 64​/​B

dER is Herman Taşçıoğlu from Turkey, who joined forces with multi-instrumentalist Murat Ertel and together they presented this long soundscape filled almost exclusively with electric guitar sounds. There's depth, there's calm, I like it. The track costs whatever you want to pay.

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Martes Niebla - Helsinki I

The Sevilla-based dreamy music band released an EP back in 2018 but there was no LP follow-up. Now, as they showed some new singles, including this one released by El Genio Equivocado, one can hope for more dream pop content from their side. The song costs 1 EUR.

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Paul Good and Kirsty Wood - No Regrets

Good and Wood are a highly artistic duo from London, their website shows their visual and video art as well as impressive performances. The new act comprises of drone-y ambient pop with calm and  warm spoken word vocals released by Tremolo Projects and mesmerizing companion video. The two tracks cost 0.5 GBP.

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Teletape - Стрела

The "Moscow dreamers" make some fun-and-joy indie pop music with a touch of ethereal atmosphere, especially in the form of the airy (but also lively) vocals. This is another single they produced and perhaps it's time for something longer. The song costs 3 USD.

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LATE - Far North Eleven (2021)

Emil Mitov, the Sofia-based electronic music artist is better known as LATE and, after two EPs, he showed his experimental and poignant at the same time music on the debut LP called Far North Eleven, courtesy of, as always, Amek Collective.

The audience can find here the "deeper and lengthier descent into thick atmospheres and sparse, contemplative melodies, soaked in despair". This is not a soothing soundscape inspired by the Far North, it's definitely coarser, sharper, uncomfortable in many places just like the rocky side on the cover art is not a white sheet of smooth polar ice. The electronic bits are harsh and unheralded, taking a lot from industrial heaviness and rapidness but also made a bit tender with the ethereal voices appearing from time to time in the backgrounds. Or some neoclassical traces like in my favourite track here: Evocation.

Far North Eleven costs 5 EUR.

Check: Evocation

Country: Bulgaria

Genre: industrial electronica

Label: Amek Collective

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Ylva de Lune - I (2021)

Ylva de Lune is Ylva - singer/songwriter from Germany, together with Alpha who is responsible for the music part of the project. Their cooperation results in a blend of dark folk and metal music that they show on the debut album entitled simply  I.

The Germans took doom metal with its slow pace and monumental vibes and created a kind of its acoustic version. The vocals are clear and extremely airy but also have this vibe characteristic for female vocalists of metal music. There's a lot of heavy guitar noise in the music layer but there are also parts of contemplation and peace, (almost) no sign of metal's crazy drums means that the whole thing tastes more melancholic and depressive, simply speaking, it's what autumn could sound like if it was music (and the cover art only makes it obvious). Especially that the musicians don't hide their inspirations taken from shoegaze and blackgaze that result in the airy backing vocals that add to the release's ethereal atmosphere.

But the music is able to climb towards post-metal and even doom metal level, surprise the audience with very loud and somewhat rapid parts in the best way possible (a good example is Les ombres du Monde that, towards the end, brings a lot of noisy guitar fun or 11:55 with the most intriguing use of the metal-like automatic drums). And generally, the further into the album, the more visible the metal nature of the artists is, the higher the pace, the more crushing the sounds. You should like this album no matter if you're more into melancholic dark folk or impressive doom, as do I.

I costs 6 EUR.

Check: 11:55

Country: Germany

Genre: ethereal doom metal

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Feral Atom - I Dream in Blue (2021)

I was watching Ola Beręsewicz's beginnings as Feral Atom since the first single Love. I, nomen est omen, loved it so much that every new track seemed to me slightly worse, it's a bit paradoxical. But now, as her EP debut I Dream in Blue is finally available, I can see that whatever she does is simply brilliant and together, the songs create a well-leveled and coherent whole.

You can hardly say this album is not focused on the atmosphere. The way she uses the slightly higher-pitched and airier backing vocals adds to the album's surreal ambiance while her beautiful and very dark voice sets the whole in the eery and fairy-tale-like place that inspires both awe and fright at the same time. The same is true about the ever-so-slow pace and some guitar solo accents all over the album. I'll still argue that Love is the highlight of the release. It is the most atmospheric and the darkest track here and I will not deny that when I heard it for the first time, I baptized the artist "the Polish Chelsea Wolfe". Now I can see that Beręsewicz goes in her own direction but some similarities are still there and it makes for the best compliment in my eyes. She sings about love mostly, but this darker, well-thought-through take on the topic makes it so much profound - also in Czas ("Time"), the only song with Polish lyrics here - one about love and nature and the feeling of longing for both of them.

Feral Atom debuted on stage during the recently held Soundrive Festival and everyone who was there saw that she showed no trace of a debut stress while her music sounded as mysterious and climactic on the festival's Secret Spot stage as it does on this EP.

I Dream in Blue costs 2.5 EUR (10 PLN).

Check: Love

Country: Poland

Genre: dark dream pop

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Greenwald Lads Club - It Is Safe Now (2021)

Best known from being a vocalist of the post-punk/surf rock band Syndrom Paryski, Wojtek Filipowicz has just surprised his fans with a so-much-different solo album. The EP called It Is Safe Now shows a huge turn from the lively and positive rock'n'roll-like music of Syndrom... and focuses on dark and heavy ambient sounds that are only a thin wall from turning into drone metal-like madness.

The EP shows music born from the artist's pandemic time's explorations of "the atmospheric electronic music". This epic notes reflect the concept behind the album: a post-apocalyptic vision of the world without humans, with crumbling buildings and nature reclaiming the centres of the cities. When you take this under consideration, the album's title shows so much of the modern social anxiety and nihilism towards the humanity's fate. This is also very much tangible in the album's music, it's nervous and bleak atmosphere. 

The artist admits to inspirations from Boris' music and you can hear it well in the album's turns toward the airy, diluted black metal that stems from the synth and ambient backgrounds, blossoms for a while and comes back to the subtle noise of the rest of the album (as it is in the title track It Is Safe Now). However, most of the release is set in the noisier, synthier kind of ambient. There's some irregular beats but they die very quickly, there's some drums and melodies but, just like the human civilization, they seem to be bound to fall. Everything ends with a beautiful but also kind of scary soundscape.

It Is Safe Now costs 2.5 EUR (10 PLN).

Check: It Is Safe Now

Country: Poland

Genre: post-metal ambient

Label: Opus Elefantum

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Syupeo Jenjang - 슈퍼 젠장 (2021)

This album is such a mystery. A short album available only on Bandcamp, released by an unknown artist from Korea but at the same time surprising with the quality of music inside, it is something that has to be mentioned on the blog. Syupeo Jenjang's debut EP called 슈퍼 젠장 shows everything the fans of noisy music may want.

The album's title translates to... "Super Damn" if you want to believe online translators. But yes, this exactly reflects my feelings after listening to the release. It is amazing how noisy in the best way possible it is. The light and airy vocals are sparse and almost instantly get lost within the storms of guitar noise that dominate the EP. You can easily hear inspirations from My Bloody Valentine (especially in the album's opening in 슈퍼 젠장) but in general, the artist is more into heavier, more poignant guitar music (just listen to the finish of Day and its drums) with very much rock-like vibes while it doesn't mean they give up on the airy feeling around it. 

It is particularly impressive in the last track. Enough Performance to Educate makes an almost-15-minutes-long passage of noise rock soundscape with long, satisfying solos but also quite surprising changes of pace and melody. What a great debut it is.

슈퍼 젠장 costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Enough Performance to Educate

Country: South Korea 

Genre: noise rock

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Wil Bolton - Above the Neon Glow (2021)

Wil Bolton, an ambient musician from London, is known for creating "warm and emotive melodies" of delicate and beautiful electronica. His new album, released with Hidden Vibes label, Above the Neon Glow is a perfect example of his Modus Operandi.

The album is "inspired by moments of shade and tranquility in the blistering heat of a New York summer". I really like music like this: the pace is slow, the music quiet, but when you pay attention, there's so much going on. It's like a peaceful surface of a water body that, when peeped under the waves, reveals so much life and motion. And, what a coincidence, Riverside is a track that's the best example here with its steady movement and a lot of tiny sounds within it. The New York spirit is also depicted in field recordings like the train sounds in Sidewalk Diary that are somehow extremely fitting to the relaxing whole. But maybe I just like trains.

Above the Neon Glow costs 5 GBP.

Check: Riverside

Country: UK

Genre: lively soundscape

Label: Hidden Vibes

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Cool Heat - Levitate (2021)

Cool Heat is Eden Sierotnik from Chicago, member of a dream pop band Color Card and an artist who  creates very dreamy but also lively sounds. This year's Levitate is his second solo EP )as far as I found out) and it's a lot of airy fun. 

The release is filled with fun and creative indie pop with a big dose of tropical-like, carefree tones (the cover art picture is no coincidence here, that's for sure). The electronica in the backgrounds sets a fast pace of the songs while the overall dreamy ambiance makes it relaxing and easy to listen to. You can feel the sun through this music as if it was on your face and everything problematic in your life seems to lose importance. Sierotnik's voice is another thing, it is so airy and oneiric, no matter how fast the pace, the music is bound to be soothing and ethereal. I especially like Drift, a song with the most outstanding electronic "riff", one that stays in your mind for a while after the song ends.

Levitate costs 4 USD.

Check: Drift

Country: Illinois, US

Genre: tropical dream pop

Label: Spirit Goth Records

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Rosa Vertov - Day In Day Out (2021)

The Warsaw-based band Rosa Vertov debuted in 2017 with an album Who Would Have Thought?. This year, they first released the follow-up in the form of Day In Day Out and very, very soon, they will appear on Soundrive Festival, the biggest off-music festival in Poland this year.

In their music, there's "distorted guitars immersed in reverb, resonant, vibrating bass, trancey drums" with dreamy vocals on top of that. On the not too broad Polish dream music scene, the band stands out with the ability to create some ethereal atmosphere in otherwise quite fast and joyful songs that open this release. I especially like the organ sounds that are present in the backgrounds, adding sacral, church-like notes to the already dreamy and spacious music. However, the band sounds best in slower ballads where their airy potential peaks up (so beautiful in Until Blue in the Face or in my favourite, spoken word and noise-filled Scolding Myself II). In most places, it is still indie rock/pop music but the layer of oneirism is so thick, you can easily get lost within the album.

And it's those noisy, hazy parts is what I love about this album. Songs like Scolding... and Years Gone By are what every fan of dreamy music should reach for. And I have to mention the beautiful cover art created by Wiktor Malinowski. This is some top-notch dream music visuals, world class.

Day In Day Out costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Scolding Myself II

Country: Poland

Genre: dreamy rock

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DeLaa Fargis - Collapse of Meanings (2021)

Poznań-based Grzegorz Zwierzchowski creates a unique, neoclassical take on prog/post-rock music and releases it under the moniker DeLaa Fargis. Last time he appeared on this blog it was just after releasing his album Paralax Markovian Denigrate. Now, after two years he's  back with Collapse of Meanings.

The main characteristic of his music is that despite the prog rock attire (the artworks, the titles, even the project's name), Zwierzchowski's music is fueled by piano keys. There's guitars, there's a bit of noise and drums of course, but the main thing are the keys and I love it. Another thing is that the artist cleverly introduces other Polish classics to the audience, like this album is accompanied by Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert's poem, one that has some eery lines that could be applied to the nowadays situation here ("it’s like a vast depression/hanging over the country"). And although the title of the album suggests a work about some kind of ending, some kind of apocalypse, the music is honestly too pretty to deliver the nervous atmosphere that may have been the point here.

Collapse of Meanings costs 7 USD.

DeLaa Fargis - Paralax Markovian Denigrate (2019) EN

Check: Noyade

Country: Poland

Genre: piano-driven post-rock

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Qualia - Wise and Otherwise/A Monster Grown/Will No Light (2021)

Dan Leader and his lo-fi, extremely atmospheric project Qualia are back. And this year, the artist managed to release already three fantastic albums: Wise and Otherwise, A Monster Grown and Will No Light, increasing the number of his releases on this blog up to five now. Let's cover them in this post as each of them is definitely worth visiting. 

The signature sound of Qualia is clear: the acoustic guitar (or single electric one)-based compositions with airy vocals and heavy atmosphere. The slow pace of the songs makes the whole thing always utterly melancholic while the artist's voice only deepens this feeling. I love it when he creates so dense and so captivating sea of noise, everything else sort of disappears inside, including the audience (like it is in Parasite for example). Wise and Otherwise is finished with its highlight, the lengthy Ruminations starts as one of the slowcore, melancholia-induced songs but finishes as a full-fleshed, solo-post-rock sadness madness. And it is a teaser of what was to come, as A Monster Grown is made of very much similar tracks.

Those long pieces are filled with quiet but very noisy post-rock. And as the post-rock parts were more or less ornaments of the first album's dreamy slowcore, here the slowcore functions as ornaments of guitar-heavy instrumental compositions. And finally, Will No Light sounds like the best quality of sound one while still having tons of the same, tear-jerking and intimate ambiance. Curse is probably my favourite track made by Qualia this year, however, who knows if Leader is not going to give us some more music, there's still several months left.

Albums cost whatever you want to pay.

Qualia - Lost (2020)

Qualia - Hopeless Optimism (2018)

Check: Curse

Country: UK

Genre: noisy slowcore

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O SAALA SAKRAAL - Heven (2021)

Three years after the album Etmaal, the Dutch collective O SAALA SAKRAAL is back with a much shorter release. The mysterious band creates a unique, innovative take on dark ambient/electronica and showed it on Heven, released by the great people of Cyclic Law label in July.

The album is meant to be an act of rebellion against religions as complex organizations of mind-altering ideology, a way of "cleansing and expulsion of the dogmatic metaphysical corruption that is dominated in today's mass religions". There's so much to the messages of each of the tracks and I'm not going to lie I understand all of this, you are welcome to read about those on the Bandcamp page provided. However, to achieve all that, the musicians serve a complicated and multi-layered mix of tribal-paced industrial electronica and dark ambient with a big chunk of sacral music (the project's name is not a mistake) within. The latter is achieved by including a four-piece choir that adds to the uniqueness of this project that consists of an ever-changing (sometimes this means "textural changes, sometimes organic and evolving, sometimes abrupt and overwhelming"), meaningful music.

Heven costs 6 EUR.

Check: Apokatastasis

Country: The Netherlands

Genre: sacral dark electronica

Label: Cyclic Law

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Slowly - Reverse (2021)

Slowly is the moniker of Charlie Berger, also known as With Hidden Noise (and with this project he appeared on the blog two years ago). As Slowly, he makes very dreamy and airy indie pop with this intimate mood characteristic for solo projects. We can hear that on his new EP called Reverse.

The EP consists of polished versions of tracks recorded when the artist created his last album Reveal, back in 2019. Now they function as an aperitif before his third long play that's coming soon. The four tracks re made of lively music in which there's a lot of going on (psychedelic guitars, interesting drums, a lot of dreamy haze) and which make the whole compositions pretty complex for a dream pop. I like how it works in Watermark with its lengthy guitar parts that stand out within the ethereal whole (and those changes on the quiet/loud spectrum, I'm a fan of those). And the airiness is no doubt created mostly with the soft and dreamy vocals that, on the other hand, don't lose anything from the melodies' catchiness - I like how catchy this dream pop is and how easily the artist seems to achieve the balance between the ethereal and the melodic.

Reverse costs 2 CAD.

With Hidden Noise - Beside the Sea (2019)

Check: Watermark 

Country: Canada

Genre: psychedelic dream pop

Label: Lossleader Records

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White Flowers - Day by Day (2021)

White Flowers are Joey Cobb and Katie Drew, a Preston-based duo (the geographic aspect is not without meaning here as the artists point to the North England's atmosphere as one of the biggest inspirations) who is called, and it's hardly an exaggeration, "one of the most exciting young bands in the UK right now". Their long-play debut Day by Day is bound to make some noise on the dreamy music scene.

There's some of Beach House's dreaminess, some of The KVB's industrial ambiance and some of Still Corners' warm and tropical beauty in the duo's music. It is fueled by Drew's exceptionally dreamy vocals and tons of reverbs and layered sounds. The melodies may be simple but the point here is to make an ocean of dreaminess and this is a goal the British definitely reached (just listen to songs like Night Drive or Day by Day to feel like sinking under the airy waves  of this wonderful dream pop). It is also kept in a particularly dark atmosphere, no wonder that among the tags describing the album, one can find noir pop as well.

The story says that the album was being written and polished for years while the artists learnt how to create their music from zero. This resulted in a release you can feel was carefully composed and treated with love in every second of its runtime. Another thing is that it depicts the couple's feelings from teenagehood to their twenties and all of this time's uncertainty, doubts and weirdness or, in Drew's words: "it’s come of age in this weird apocalyptic time".

Day by Day costs 7 GBP.

Check: Day by Day

Country: UK

Genre: dark dream pop

Label: Tough Love

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seizure sister - witness (2021)

If the Texas-based artist's moniker is a reference to Scissor Sisters, the music doesn't show it in any way. He makes a slow-paced but heavy take on noisy but ethereal music. And shows his creation to the public on his debut EP called witness.

His music is built on the heavy guitars - soft voice opposition. The airiness of the artist's voice soothes the roughness of the backgrounds, creating a really well-shaped dreamy soundscape.  Regarding the guitar music itself, you can more or less hear that it's a one-man project. This sense of minimalism doesn't take anything from this music, quite on the contrary, it's somehow more genuine this way. It also goes along with the feeling of grunge/stoner rock vibes the album gives and, similarly to the last week's Day Aches, this is what is fairly unique and definitely attention-grabbing in his music. Especially when particularly coarse sounds of the guitars are soften by particularly dreamy backing vocals (like in the finish of pinpoint). The album is kept in a rather slow tempo, however, when the artist feels like it, he can create a really involving, fast  but still airy composition (yes, under you is something you can't miss here).

witness costs 5 USD.

Check: Fawn

Country: Texas, US

Genre: dream grunge

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Violent Dreams - Fall (2021)

Violent Dreams is a moniker of Matt Suter, a London-based artist mostly inspired by the dreamy music genres of the last couple of decades. I know him from 2017's Scared of the Dark and I'm so glad that the new EP, Fall, is as good, as moody and as worth listening to.

Although the name of the project is the same as one of the iconic songs by Crystal Castles, the music here couldn't be more different. It is subtle and dreamy, sounding like Fireflies or Ruby Haunt with all of their love towards slow ballads kept in the intimate atmosphere that is warm, nostalgic and simply beautiful. No wonder that the album is called after the moodiest of seasons, with the fittingly coloured cover art which together with the music makes one, utterly nostalgic whole. The songs are not super melodic but they were not supposed to either; instead, the artist uses repetitive phrases that create the most psychedelic and ethereal parts (like the finish of Holy Ghost). It's really difficult to describe how delicate the vocals and the noisy backgrounds are: if music was matter, Violent Dreams would be spider web at most.

Fall  costs whatever you want to pay.

Violent Dreams - Scared of the Dark (2017)

Check: Holy Ghost

Country: UK

Genre: dreamy slowcore

Label: Altered States

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