Half-Gifts Issue 16 + New Year's Comp OUT NOW

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Includes an in-depth look back at my favorite records of the year and a handful of guest retrospectives done by my friends.

Review: Chestnut Bakery - "Diaries"

Chestnut Bakery - Diaries

(2015 BoringProductions/Full Label)

The internet has mysterious ways of bending the dimensions of time and space, most interestingly in terms of culture/subculture - in the realm of music it offers such a glut of material for enthusiasts to chew on and digest via Bandcamp/Soundcloud/Discogs that the areas and ideas within this cultural dominion that I focus on seem to be in a constant solvent state. This acidic breakdown encourages scenes to fracture into tiny pockets of influence, creating an accessible space for bold individuals to experiment with new sounds and letting fans get to know band members better as individuals (to the point where New England jangle-pop outfit Real Estate houses three solo artists who released material this year). Rapid as this solvency may be, there is always a gluey, adhesive force of equal power that scrambles to attach the scattered debris back to the Cultural Web, building infinitely smaller, more niche nodes within the web's outer border, keeping its fluctuation of size in check. This regeneration forms fascinating, small-scale collectives like Full Label, a Cantonese digital-only imprint dedicated to reviving the elegantly fragile indie-pop of early 90s UK-based label Sarah Records. The latest (and most polished) twee transmission from the Guangdong province is Diaries: the debut effort of Chestnut Bakery that's as warm and feathery as its cover art and band's name suggests. It's western-influenced guitar pop that's actually a  improvement over its British source material - a modern marvel that it exists and a greater on that I'm hearing it from the comfort of my own home a hemisphere away.

The quartet hails from Shenzhen, China's equivalent of Silicon Valley, and has dubbed themselves "the most 90s shoegaze band in [the country]", a claim that they back up with substantial evidence: Diaries acts as a sampler platter of late 20th century dream pop textures. The band uses a generous hand with reverb on "Saturday Afternoon", flooding the atmosphere with glistening guitar while letting its nimble basslines handle the brunt of expression - the gentle twang of strummed six-strings paired with frontwoman Rye's hushed delivery recall a creamier version of The Sundays' prickly punch of c86 pop. 7-minute centerpiece "Moon Palace" explores the dreamy psychedelia of Slowdive - perhaps even Julee Cruise(?) - slowly building from a muffled, phase-shifted drone to a post-rock fireworks display of explosive lead guitar theatrics. "Tunnel Party" and "Cream Soda" ratchet up the distortion, crafting Melberg-ian punk soundscapes. Though much of Diaries is noticeably derivative, I find the amount of the Cultural Web's surface area that it covers to be quite impressive: though Chestnut Bakery holds firm to a single guitar tone and overall aesthetic, no two songs of theirs sound quite alike. That's what makes Diaries such a satisfying and polished debut. Definitely worth a listen and multiple replays. 

Retrospective: Earl Sweatshirt - "I Don't Like..."

Earl Sweatshirt - I Don't Like        I Don't Go Outside

(Columbia 2k15)

Whether under or above ground, hip-hop was dripping in gloomy melancholia in 2k15, and none of the year’s releases personifies the genre’s funereal sub-aesthetics more than Earl Sweatshirt’s IDLSIDGO – his flow brusque and his self-production ramshackle. Tinny kick drums squelch like death rattles while the occasional piano sample or splash of chord organ whines in the background. Dark ambient loops haunt “Grief” like a wintry draft through the crack between a window’s pane and sill. Chopped-and-slowed jazz trickles through clumsy percussion on “AM // RADIO”. The record’s instrumentals are centered more around the empty spaces they leave behind than the sounds they create. Earl seems to emerge from these empty shadows rather than jump into them with enthusiasm – he lives inside the beats. Each new track is a vouyeristic look into the worlds he inhabits. They’re high-school diorama projects. We peek through the portal and catch him mid-breakdown on “Grief”, an introspective, realistic portrayal of anxiety that finds Earl “stranded in a mob”, retreating from the crowd of “snakes” to take refuge in a Xanax canister. He prays for his phone to break on “Faucet”, a track birthed from the tension between Earl and his mother after leaving home as a teenager. He and RATKING’s Wiki reminisce about childhood on the aforementioned “AM // RADIO” before Earl expresses his apathy towards his raving cult fanbase. This record is a perfect portrait of the sort of anxiety that stems from the vast interconnectivity of our day-to-day lives, be it online or in real life. The distinction between the two is getting blurrier, anyhow. In an interview with Pitchfork back in 2013, Earl expressed his disgust with Twitter, but to this day he’s quite active on the site. For the socially anxious, the pull away from social interaction is often weaker than the forces that pull us back into the realm of communication. IDLSIDGO demonstrates that feeling of frustration, of bitter aloneness perfectly. I am part of the first generation to have no memory of a time when the internet was not in widespread youth and I'm looking quite forward to analyzing more of the sort of art that stems from this new paradigm.

Retrospective: Belle and Sebastian - "Fold Your Hands..."

Belle and Sebastian - Fold Your Hands Child You Walk Like a Peasant

(2000 Jeepster)

Belle and Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch has the uncanny knack for writing Salingerian coming-of-age tunes that grow alongside the listener. I’d first encountered the Scottish twee-pop outfit’s work in my early elementary school career through my parents’ small but gem-riddled CD collection that followed our family on minivan expeditions to school or church. Even among the likes of Cocteau Twins’ Heaven or Las Vegas or a Simon and Garfunkel hits compilation, it was Belle and Sebastian’s If You’re Feeling Sinister that always demanded my attention, its cover a brooding, bruised red and its title vague and cryptic. The music swirled in my dreamy child mind, Guaraldi-esque jazz arrangements accompanying the cozy imagery of “foxes in the snow”, “boys on bikes” and the uniformed valor of high-school track and field stars. They bobbed and danced through my imagination like shadow puppets across a blank wall, magical and innocent. One of my most vivid childhood memories – age 8 - places me in the living room of my current home, empty, save for a television and a Gamecube that sprouted from the wooden flooring like an art gallery installation. My sister and I played Kirby Air Ride as mom and dad maneuvered couches and mattresses through the front door. All the while, I whispered the lyrics of the album to myself. Nothing felt so comforting.

As I aged, the album’s warm, flannel-ly imagery became somewhat tainted as teenage world-weariness seeped into my bloodstream. I began to see the “sinister” nature that loomed beneath the façade of its woodland animals and schoolyard rhymes. Murdoch’s songwriting dealt with dejection, deviancy and experimentation as much as it did the excitement of a snow day or the hum of insects on a muggy summer evening. It was all-encompassing, microcosmic even. There’s a quotable lyric tucked away in the liner notes of Sinister for by someone of any age or mindset.

Perhaps it’s the childhood nostalgia I reflected on back in issue 15 of my zine, a fear that I’ve grown up too fast, that sends me back to Belle and Sebastian in 2015. The twee playfulness that oozes from Murdoch’s tunesmithery allows me a sense of childlike wonder, while there’s enough rich subtext to keep my late-teenage mind properly stimulated. Lately, I’ve been revisiting the band’s 4th effort, Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant, 15 years after its original release date. It may lack some of the consistency and coherence that makes Sinister so legendarily satisfying, but it makes up for it in creativity and sheer pluck. Most notably, it contains standout cut “The Model”, which charges forward on nimble harpsichord melodies and a groovy rock n’ roll rhythm section. But there are many other highlights. Guitarist Stevie Jackson strums out an awkward-yet-tender ballad on “Beyond the Sunrise” while cellist Isobel Campbell lends her feathery vocal to “Family Tree”, a lovely bit of chamber-pop doo-wop that leads into the record’s triumphant closer, “There’s Too Much Love”. Though often overlooked, Fold Your Hands is a beautifully collaborative effort that stands up strong in a B+S catalogue filled with hits - it's the sort of record that may not top a list of your all-time favorites but will always remain a constant in your rotation, sneaking into your conscious when it's most needed

Taking Submissions For Christmas Compilation Vol 3

It's that time of year again! This year's holiday season will mark the third anniversary of the Half-Gifts Christmas Compilation and the series' most interesting installment to date - this time around, rather than collecting your covers of traditional Christmas tunes, I'm looking to curate a collection of ambient soundscapes that clock in at 90 seconds or less. Whether your track is a sound collage, field recording or vaporwave loop, just make sure it's laced with winter frost and falls within the time limit. Get creative and try to bottle the essence of December in your compositions.

Deadline for submission is December 21. Email me at jude.noel3@gmail.com when you have something to send my way!

Review: Alex Bleeker and the Freaks - Country Agenda

Alex Bleeker and the Freaks - Country Agenda

(2015 Sinderlyn)

I have plenty of love for the dreamy, folk-tinged "bourgeois-pop" that Martin Courtney and Matt Mondanile crank out at a robotically consistent rate when they're not working on new Real Estate material, but I do find it a shame that the sideline venture of the band's bassist, Alex Bleeker, is often overlooked by fans. Rather than searching for influence in the twinkling lead-guitar constellations of Pavement's Terror Twilight or the cigarette-stained mustiness of 70's soft rock records, Bleeker's quintet of Freaks seek to reclaim the sound of The Grateful Dead's American Beauty, seasoning the mix with just enough airy shimmer to satiate jangle pop die-hards. Their latest output, Country Agenda, is an act of careful sonic surgery that extracts the "jam band-iness" from the jam bands of yore, transplanting them into the instantly-recognizable, reverby songcraft of Captured Tracks affiliates like Mac Demarco and Wild Nothing. 

The Freaks are at the top of their game on "Portrait", a cavernous cut that seems to effortlessly form an all-consuming atmosphere of post-rainstorm summer mugginess - peals of slide guitar and splashes of jazzy keyboard drip like condensation down the edge of an unobtrusive rhythm section that provides just enough space for the sneakily pretty vocal harmonies that surface in the tune's infectious chorus, but it's outliers like the bluesy "Honey I Don't Know" and "Turtle Dove", a gospel groove that provides the record some goofy anti-gravitas, that make this record such a joy to re-visit again and again. I wouldn't consider myself a Dead Head by any stretch of the imagination, but to detect their influence incorporated into an indie rock record without a speck of irony is quite refreshing, especially at the tail end of a year teeming with post-modern pop pastiches. Country Agenda is the late evening cooldown after months of gorging myself on the futurist pop of A.G. Cook and Le1f - it's beautifully sincere.

Single Review: Wild Nothing - "TV Queen"

Wild Nothing - "TV Queen"

(Captured Tracks 2015)

Jack Tatum's 6-year career as the frontman of Wild Nothing serves as a model of artistic progression done the right way in indie rock. He seldom strays from the core influences and timbres employed in past ventures - the amorphous goth-pop gloom of Gemini; Nocturne's shimmering devotion to Rumors-era Fleetwood Mac; the forceful new-wave elegance found throughout much of Empty Estate - and continues to shuffle them back into his deck of ideas, adding new cards along the way. "TV Queen" deals listeners the better hand of the two tracks Tatum recently released in anticipation of his forthcoming LP, Life of Pause, and seems to borrow some inspiration from the mixtape of smoky Italian lounge music he posted on his soundcloud page last year. The tune is somewhat sour, coating cyclical string melodies and splashes of guitar in an acidic chorus effect. This tartness is offset, however, by mellow-yet-solid bass and lazily played saxophone that floats in the backdrop. "TV Queen" offers the satisfaction of an after-dinner dessert - patient with the build-ups to the emotional high of its chorus. The song is filled with flavor but not over-stuffed with clutter. 

Review: Beauty Camp - La chaleur de l'amour

Beauty Camp - La chaleur de l'amour
(2015 Self-Released)

Talk about your descriptive album titles: few phrases could sum up the most recent effort of French psychedelia triumvirate Beauty Camp as succinctly and accurately as La chaleur de l'amour - "the warmth of love". Though its sound centers heavily around the traditional recipe for krautrock (lumbering basslines, tight rhythms and gobs of reverb), Beauty Camp takes care to define its own trademark take on the subgenre that culls textural influence from the guitar tone of early 90's noise rock icons like Sebadoh and Sonic Youth, makes great use of sudden starts and stops to make for fractured, unpredictable songcraft, and employs keyboard in place of bass guitar to craft brooding, Doors-ian atmospheres that slowly pull listeners into the void - a surprisingly cozy and inviting void, that is. The record's fifth and self-titled cut is its most satisfying, evolving from a funky surf-pop ditty into a a towering wall of post-rock shoegazery. Its successor, "Bonne Pioche" also scores points for originality, pairing infectious guitar/steel-drum harmonies with a shuffling beat. It's a fun closing tune that reminds me of the theme song from Nickelodeon's Doug. Overall, this is a fascinating EP that re-creates the sound and atmosphere of a good house show.

Review: Blossoming Mums - "Dithering Mornings"

Blossoming Mums - Dithering Mornings

(2015 Night People)

There is a beautifully organic quality to Blossoming Mums' debut tape on Night People Records - it's as if the nebulous tufts of shoegazey ambience weren't generated by heavily reverberated guitar and warm keyboard pads, but were instead exhaled photo-synthetically by some alien breed of plant. Airy chords dissipate into the aether, warmed by trellises of noodly lead guitar and wordless mantras whispered by Massachusetts residents Robert Robinson and Amanda Freeman. Though Dithering Mornings is best consumed whole - amorphous and narcotic - it reaches its aesthetic peaks when it delves into Lynch-ian territories: "Words of Birds" sounds like your neighbor's hushed karaoke version of the Twin Peaks theme (the Julee Cruise version!) seeping through the paper-thin walls of your apartment. The dissonant intro to "Window Watching" even recalls "Laurie's Theme" from John Carpenter's Halloween score. "No Hands" is also worth multiple replays, a droney take on Real Estate's signature surf-folk approach to indie pop.

Review: Tokyo Karan Koron - "Go Nin No Entertainers"

Tokyo Karan Koron - Gin Nin No Entertainers

(Specific 2015)

Settling in the same remote sonic territory as high-energy outliers like Fang Island and Of Montreal, Japanese quintet Tokyo Karan Koron cleverly weave elements of prog, new wave and math rock into their sensory assault of maximalist pop. On the surface, Gin Nin No Entertainers, the band's sophomore LP re-issued earlier this year by French imprint Specific, is a colorful and aggressively catchy assortment of quirky indie-rock; a closer listen reveals layers of complexity and avant-garde experimentation so deftly woven together that it's tricky to recognize their presence. Itinerant melodies leave dissonant comet tails beyond the horizon line of "16 no Beat"'s bouncy, vaguely punk rhythm section while splashes of calliope-like keyboard tint the landscape with a pastel filter; this depth of sound wielded by the band provides plenty of room for smooth - yet drastic - shifts in tone and texure. As tension builds, the tune assumes a hedonistic, carnival-like atmosphere which explodes into a blinding kaleidoscope of Paisley positivity.

Each song on the Gin Nin No Entertainers houses its own balance of free-spirited fun and emotional catharsis - the brief moments that offer rest between the fragmented ideas and strange melodic tangents become the album's most memorable. The flimsy strand of twangy notes - played in tandem on keyboard and lead guitar - that bridge the gap between the sections of sludgy abstraction and nebulous pop on "Yubi De Kiss Shiyo" is my personal favorite of these. Like the interludes on Deafheaven's Sunbather, the short segments of minimalist ambience that act as calming pauses between blistering hurricanes of expressionist rock bear as much emotional weight as the songs they bookend. Gin Nin No Entertainers is a verdant garden filled with variety and fresh creativity that practically begs the listener to jump in and explore.

Review: Barlow/Naked Ant - Split

Barlow + Naked Ant

(2015 Self-Released)

As close to a physical manifestation of the DIY Ethos as I've ever come across, this cassette collaboration between two of my favorite garage rock outfits is a match made in post-internet heaven. Back in late 2014, Ethan Oliva - frontman of veteran shoegaze trio Barlow - dropped the titles of a few of his own songs into the Bandcamp search bar to check up on their streaming stats. Among the results lurked an impassioned cover of Barlow's "In The Air" recorded by New Jerseyan high-schooler Ben Spizuco. Though faithful to the tune from which it sprang forth, Spizuco's rendition of "In The Air" retains the signature charm that accents the entirety of his own discography - it's as raw as rock gets, unapologetically leaving splatters of sonorous mic feedback audible among a tight weave of trebly chords and a few (sometimes clumsy) lead guitar riffs. It was a perfectly punk tune made up of imperfect takes, the product of a single musician whose efforts could stand up proudly next to his those of his influencers. Impressed by the cover and flattered to witness the influence of his music firsthand, Oliva gave Spizuco a shout-out on the Barlow Facebook page.

Flash forward to November 2015: Spizuco has formed a fuzz-pop trio of his own, Naked Ant, and has joined forces with his heroes on a self-titled split tape. On the A-side of the magnetic rectangle, Barlow invites listeners to help clear out their attic, dusting off old unfinished demos. Vocals are added to instrumentals like the Hüsker Dü-esque "Ride" and "I'll See You", a brief power-pop ditty carried by hyper-melodic lead guitar that would make J Mascis proud. Alongside a handful of brand new recordings that resemble Isn't Anything-era MBV, there are a smattering of skeletal song-sketches that comprise my favorite section of Barlow's end of the split. "Down There" bobs buoyantly on the crest of a tinny guitar loop while "For All Time" coats arpeggios with warm layers of ambience that resemble the cry of a Kricketune. 

Naked Ant's side of the tape is chock-full of experimentation and infused with the fun of jamming in the garage with one's friends. "School of Thought Graduate" makes use of mistakes in mixing and mastering to maximize shifts in dynamics and texture, making for a tune that ferries listeners down into the murky depths of an ocean of reverb only to send them rocketing toward the surface on the strength of powerful cymbal crashes and muscly chords. The band ventures into a combination of blues and 70s soft rock on "Sailing On The Delaware" and even delves into some slinky free improvisation on closing cut "Lisa". My favorite Naked Ant cut from the tape, though, is perhaps its most unassuming, coyly concealing the alien timbres hidden beneath its surface. "The Wait For September" starts out as a traditional acoustic strummer that hearkens back to the early efforts of Sentridoh, but slowly morphs into a haunting piece of avant-garde wizardry: distant growls of feedback pass through the mix like transient phantoms. Beautifully spooky.

Check out Barlow's side of the tape here and Naked Ant's side here 

Single Review: Blessed Gloom - "Chemistry"

Blessed Gloom - Chemistry
(Self-Released 2015)

Rising from the still-warm ashes of his defunct project 17 Years, Blessed Gloom is the latest creative endeavor of Missouri's resident dream-pop mastermind Tony Freijat. Post-rechristening, Freijat has plucked the choicest elements of sound from his back catalogue (noodly basslines tinged with icy reverb; post-punk rhythms; filtered, distant vocals) and sandwiched them between traces of 90s pop-rock and anthemic guitar riffs that could easily fit into a shonen anime's opening song. Poured into a mold of sleek, vaporous production that's - in a way - cloud rap-esque, this metamorphic layer of atmospheric bliss solidifies, emerging a polished and punchy slab of high-fidelity shoegaze.

Review: Swords/Drahla - "Split"

Swords/Drahla - Split

(2015 Self-Released)

My most memorable Bandcamp finds tend to be those free of the cult of indie-rock personality, quietly lurking in the depths of the "bedroom pop" and "shoegaze" tags. I've always enjoyed that the internet has given artists the ability to don goofy and surreal new identities, and sometimes I feel that the the most powerful persona to project is the complete lack of one. When band photos, interviews and twitter accounts are often a click away, to be faced with nothing stops me in my tracks. Even after piecing together the few scattered scraps of digital documentation I could uncover surrounding this gritty morsel of lo-fi pop, the only sort of background I can give you on this split cassingle is that it was recorded somewhere in the United Kingdom, divided between two mysterious projects that appear to consist of the same members. I don't know their names, and I'm completely OK with that. Their music speaks for itself in strange and beautiful dialects. 

Swords' side of the tape pairs an odd coupling of funky rhythms (tinny drum machine and bouncy bass) with nebulous pulses of brass-like keyboard. In a way, it reminds me of a more eerie version of Wild Nothing's newer material - at times it even gives off some strong Ariel Pink vibes. Billy Corgan-esque vocals definitely have me leaning towards the Wild Nothing side though. Though Swords' offerings are catchier, Drahla's are a bit more captivating and creepy. "Stereo Maze" plods along on a dissonant guitar riff and a spooky synth melody that resembles a goofy sound effect that might appear in an early 00's PC game for kids. "Ethernet" is a surprisingly delicate tune, forming a dreamy soundscape from crunchy drum hits and fuzzed-out keys.

Review: Walk Home Drunk - "Toulouse Moon"

Walk Home Drunk - Toulouse Moon

(Pantypop 2015) 

When he's not whipping up whirlwinds of pop brutale as the guitarist of French punk trio The Last Drop, Daniel Selig adopts the name Walk Home Drunk, crafting introspective nuggets of wiry guitar rock with the help of his friend Jérônymous Bouquet on drums. Their third EP and most recent effort, Toulouse Moon, is a terse, punchy collection of post-punk tunes that fuse the glum grunge attitude of early Dinosaur Jr with the bouncy, smartly-layered twang of The Libertines. Selig's charmingly laconic vocal delivery floats ghost-like between warbly lead guitar riffs and rumbling power chords. Though minimal and - save for a few blasts of distortion - fairly clean, it's these twangy and often dark six-string arrangements that turn out to be Walk Home Drunk's most expressive feature. The motorik percussion and hushed singing act as the mortar that holds them together. The duo's sound blends most impressively on "Old Rules" - buzzsaw chords smoothly transition into tapestries of creamy krautrock melody, forming a tunnel that fully envelops the listener. Everything is moving forward at all times.

Half-Gifts Issue 15 + "cocoon" Compilation Out Now

Half-Gifts issue 15 includes interviews with Barlow, Naked Ant, Ma Turner and Funeral Advantage, as well as reviews of recent album releases, japanese soda and a novelty fast-food product. It also comes with a rad digital compilation album, comprised of fall-themed music made by half-gifts readers. You can stream that below. 

Order your copy of the zine HERE