Hello! We're back with more Bandcamp Friday recommendations. In the Part One Post from May we ran through a bunch of material by The Ocean Party, and we're following up here with recommendations ahead of August 1st: Pop Filter, Snowy, and more!
After many years of hounding Peter Hughes about his own music, one of the things I try to use Claremont Cometh for is recommending music he likes & would like to see get some more attention. In service of that, here's some Bandcamp Friday recommendations for some musicians both geographically and chronologically distant from the 90's DIY scene of the Inland Empire. But as we go, maybe you'll see what I mean when I say: Peter explained these guys to me, and I got déjà vu.
| No Words | We're back to Bell City after stopping by for "Give Up" in the first post. As the title says, this track is an instrumental. | |
| Coast Road | Now, if you liked the tone and the saxophone particularly in "No Words", you'll want to come down to this, presented by the outfit Snowy Band which is Snowy and some other musicians. | |
| House Red | Across The Rest of Your Life a young woman tells an anecdote between songs about the misfortunes of a budgerigar. Songs like the title track and "Straight Back" are more straightforward, but I offer up two favorites in the more pop-electronic mode. "House Red" has a groove to it, plus some ear-catching sampled screams. | |
| Killed A Man | There is also this from The Rest Of Your Life. "Killed A Man" is the kind of jaunty, morbid, sample-over-catchy-loop material I would usually turn to Furniture Huschle for. Small caveat that there is a mild sonic attack at 0:26-0:27, but if you're willing to brave the beep, this is a fun one. | |
| A/V | I'll impose on your time here and ask that you listen to this whole thing, end-to-end. A pitch-shifted voice comes to us with ascending and descending phrases on guitar and piano, repeating itself, distant and at times barely intelligible. It's as if A/V comes to us from an unreachable place where you can hear ghosts, if you first offer them the sequence of tones they mean to speak in. Modulate, adjust; listen closely; was it here? Was it this? Repeating, repeating... anything, anything... | |
| DVD Menu Screen | Here are Pop Filter again! Tons more from them in this post. I'd advise listening to this whole record. Back in the first rec post I pointed you to the first two tracks on it. Here's two more. First, this one from the middle... | |
| It Never Hurts | ...and then this, from the end: I gotta make a move / I'm all alone again | |
| habit (do what) | Overall fax is some more soft stuff from solo Snowy, but "habit (do what)" sticks out. Less constant acoustic murmur, more chatter. A thoughtful voice drops in over an electric guitar, the claps follow along, and some more wandering acoustic plucks seem to be talking back. Do you have that one friend who comes out on a walk with you, and does a little imitation of a bird calling from the trees? Back and forth... | |
| In A Dream | Pop Filter put interesting track transitions all over Donkey Gully Road, but I'll let you go through the whole thing on your own. The pair of songs of interest here are "In A Dream"/"Paradise", which come back-to-back and should be listened to as such. Don't listen to "Paradise" first. You'll see why. You should also read the Part 1 Post about why & when The Ocean Party changed, if you haven't yet. When their songs talk about all being on tour together again... | |
| Paradise | in a dream. in a dream. in a dream. in a dream. in a dream. on repeat. on repeat. slice of paradise. on repeat. on repeat. | |
| -quintet | If you like Refrigerator, especially those 90's uncompiled 7"s, report to this immediately. Listen to the guitar dragging into those slightly off notes. Listen to that drumming. I heard this on a walk at night and lost my footing. I got that thing where your breathing is way off its cadence. Dizzying. | |
| Pop Filter: Live! | I changed this recommendation about 4 times, because this record is great. I settled on two. This one is a standout. | |
| Undertow | Go outside when it's sunny. Turn this one up. | |
| Don't Want To See You (Again) | Those of you who listened to A/V will want to stop by and listen to this, from another Snowy Band record. | |
| Blame It On The Seasons | Lachlan & Snowy with some easy breezy tunes. | |
| Zac | Lachlan Denton has more solo work, too. If you haven't figured out from the links in the Part 1 post, he's that sweet straight-at-you sonorous voice on some of the Ocean Party/Pop Filter songs. Well, mostly. You can tell from videos of the band that every so often, Zac could sound like that too. | |
| Q.C. (Snowy MAX Remix) | Back in time a bit: I recommended a track from this in the first post, but I have to reiterate, Nolo Contendere is such a fun batch of stuff. No Local was Zac and Snowy's side project. I find myself walking around humming this one for days after I listen to it. | |
| Society | While we're visiting with Zac and side projects, hello: here's Zac and Ashley Bundang making some post-punk dance-pop type material. This side project was called Pregnancy. They had another release called URGENCY which has fascinating cover art that I don't think I could mirror here for... ah, well. Go and find it. Great tunes, though! | |
| Duel | Y'know, I tried to leave it at 2, but I just keep coming back to this one on Donkey Gully Road, it's fun. It shows up between two slower sincere songs. The percussion is too good. Just stop by and give it a minute & 15 of your time. (This rec has changed repeatedly on my spreadsheet between "Duel" and twangy earworm "Waiting To Be Now" to give an idea of how many bright spots this record has...) | |
| Falling In Love | A great record. One of those songs where I think, "my god, I would go crazy if I could see them play this live. are you kidding me" | |
| Dealer's Choice | This record has so much groove to it. Please put out another record soon, Pop Filter. | |
| Buried Alive | Snowy with some brilliant stuff. A bit of lo-fi charm and artful autotune. | |
| My Friends | I think all of Philharmonic is great. | |
| God Texted Back | A great Snowy single. Just solid stuff. Friend of the site Peter Hughes played this one on his radio show awhile back, which was my first point of contact with this whole scene. | |
| Head Down | Sorry, sorry. The Ocean Party again? I know. But I want you to listen to it, and then go and watch them play it together. Any of these will do. Just get eyes on them as they were once. I think it's sweet. Keep an eye on Zac Denton back there. All right. That's all from me. Thanks for coming by, and look forward to more Pop Filter and Snowy news. | |
any images, lyrics, song titles, etc are property of the original artists, hello nice people of wagga wagga i am a small friendly website and hope some new listeners will follow this to you so it's not a problem to have the album art thumbnails here i hope. sorry i STILL didn't get to cool sounds but there's so much of it. didn't get to pencil or body type or deuce or partner look either. thank you and if theres any issue with this page just email away. thanks