OndaDrops Vol. 6

Today more than ever, trying to fully define the concept of musical psychedelia is a difficult task. Perhaps even an impossible one. A supremely refined exercise in learned revivalism? A hodgepodge of hollow visionary suggestions? Wide-eyed nostalgia for a distant childhood? Undeniably, within the ever-shifting borders of today's psychedelic domain, a multitude of sonic traditions, stylistic variations and compositional idioms thrive, intertwining over time into a vital tangle of pulsing, layered forms. The sixth installment of the OndaDrops saga thus sets out to grapple with the rough edges and illusionistic games of this elusive universe, charting original paths of sonic research that shed a curious, preconception-free light on the unexplored potential of a psychedelic contemporary scene as eclectic as it is secretly coherent in its enchantment and its promise of poetic rapture. Following the Ariadne's thread of an "affective" fidelity to the song (whatever that name may designate), the fifteen unreleased tracks that OndaRock shares exclusively with its readers each illuminate a possibility of a psych-pop language that never stops being reborn in the hands of those who know how to wield it with the necessary imagination: from genuine sixties suggestions, through bold flirtations with baroque pop, all the way to sumptuous miniatures and enigmatic riddles beyond all logic, this anthology will delight the little Nemo that dwells within each of us, gentle and courageous traveler of a dreamworld that asks not for interpretation but for a tender surrender.

Dedicated to Bill Doss.*

FLL

A rectangle with a fold. It's to this curious geometric figure that Swedish musician Fredrik Forell now traces the string of letters that make up the name FLL, originally derived from a contraction of his surname. It's 2009 when Forell, then a university student, half-jokingly recording some of the songs he'd written over the years in his living room, begins to bring this project to life. Little by little, various bandmates and friends from the different groups Forell played in join the adventure, gradually shaping it into a full-fledged musical ensemble. Bedroom folk-pop with a certain fondness for "toy-like" sounds: this is the foundation from which Forell's music sets out, before venturing into varied musical territories, experimenting with playful curiosity in a music-box of sounds and noises. After debuting in 2011 on his own label, Esplanaden Fonogram, with the album "Skipping Stones", Forell will return after the summer with his second work, from which he's given OndaRock an enchanting preview.

FLL – Kerosene Lamp [download]

The Spinto Band

Born almost by divine appointment (following the chance discovery in an attic of musical scores penned by a departed grandfather, Roy Spinto), Spinto Band has, from the very start, defended and cultivated by every means the quirky, oddball yet elegant eccentricity of its inspiration, blossoming in the quiet outskirts of an imaginary town to which, after a brief flash of unexpected popularity, it has returned to dream, with no particular regrets. Their latest, most delicate album, "Shy Pursuit", came out only a few months ago and confirms the discreet, whimsical and surreal genius of the Wilmington band, who for the occasion don the guise of a little foxtrot orchestra and give us a wrinkled, "dried-out" demo version of the splendid "Take It", a metaphysical lullaby, a bittersweet chant floating with a light breath over memories of old seaside funfairs and drive-in nights spent counting the stars in a clear August sky. Spinto Band thus crafts a perfect serenade, one that steps out of its out-of-tune gramophone to give us the timeless enchantment of lives we never lived.

The Spinto Band – Take It (Demo Version) [download]

Le Man Avec Les Lunettes

Among the brightest (as well as internationally acclaimed) names in Italian indie-pop, Le Man Avec Le Lunettes can boast an enviable résumé, packed with illustrious releases, collaborations and appearances piled up with flair over the years. While waiting for their new full-length, the four-piece take on a dazzling cover (recorded at the Us Random Calculator Studio) that condenses within itself all the prodigious qualities of free reinterpretation. The chosen track is "The Youth" by MGMT, from "Oracular Spectacular", a manifesto album that, in retrospect, may well deserve credit for boldly and recklessly redefining the aesthetic canons of Noughties psych-pop. Wrapping the original melody in a pensive epic of cosmic flashes and crumbling luminescence, the band sublimates its own cosmetic artistry into a composition that weaves together rhythmic lines and vocal counterpoints, poised between a hypnotic mantra and the mischievous grace of a vaguely dazed sci-fi romanticism. In a word: delightful.

Le Man Avec Les Lunettes – The Youth [download]

The Chromium Heart

“Out in the light/ The sparrow never lies”. The dark hues of the riff in “The Sparrow” creep in with a shadow of unease. John Abella's drumming marks out the contours, but it's Chris Jacks's voice that takes centre stage within Chromium Heart. Having been part of the post-grunge outfit Fly in the Nineties, Jacks went on to play in various bands on the Los Angeles scene (most notably MeMeMe) and devoted himself to writing music for film and television. His guitar has backed Will Ferrell in a commercial and Sandra Bernhard on stage. But it's with Chromium Heart that his artistic vision seems to have found its fullest form, with occasional accompaniment from his wife Mary Beth Abella and her brother John. “The Sparrow” continues along the path traced by the band's debut album (released in 2010), weaving small deviations into a solid pop framework.

The Chromium Heart – The Sparrow [download]

Vadoinmessico

“One evening, in the summer right before I moved to London, […] we passed a bus travelling in the opposite direction to ours. On the front panel where drivers display the destination was written “Vadoinmessico” (“I'm going to Mexico”). […] That word became the emblem of what I was about to do: leave.” So says Giorgio Poti, frontman and co-founder, alongside Mexican musician Salvador Garza, of this cosmopolitan band (two Italians, a Mexican, an Austrian and an Englishman) based in London. Purveyors of a lively, psychedelia-tinged folk-pop, Vadoinmessico recently released their debut album, “Archaeology Of The Future“. On May 9th, during a concert in Turin, the band recorded for OndaDrops an old American lullaby, made famous in the version by Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch from the film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?“. Sweetness of voice and accompaniment, laced with a touch of electricity, come together in Vadoinmessico's “Didn’t Leave Nobody But The Baby” for a truly special goodnight.

Vadoinmessico – Didn’t Leave Nobody But The Baby (Live) [download]

The Ovaltines

Is Ovaltine a lysergic drink? Listening to the music of the Ovaltines, the doubt seems legitimate… Dave Echo and Jaime Piacente are a duo from Princeton, New Jersey, with an innate flair for fuzz-pop. Lifelong fans of Slumberland and Creation records, they don't hesitate to name influences ranging from Velvet Underground to Crystal Stilts. “We make the music we wish we could have heard when our favourite bands stopped making records”, Echo states firmly. And a distinctly Velvet-like flavour permeates the atmosphere of “Let Get Far Away”, with a clattering gait and a languid vocal delivery that harks straight back to the golden days of Yo La Tengo. The Ovaltines' debut full-length is out right now (on vinyl) via Blurry World, a small New Jersey underground-pop label. It's titled “Inside Our Heads”, and the preview promises “washes of feedback, angelic voices and Nineties-style jangle guitars”.

The Ovaltines – Let Get Far Away [download]

edu

The name Tally Hall won't mean much to most people here in Italy, but cross the ocean and you'll discover that in the United States this irresistible pop quintet with the colourful ties, active since 2002, is the object of a small but genuine cult following. While the band is in the midst of a hiatus, the “green tie” Andrew Horowitz, the group's keyboardist and songwriter, has launched a solo career under the moniker “edu” (pron. ee-doo). The same sense of intimacy and sweet candour that came from what was Andrew's childhood family nickname is now reflected in Horowitz's music, a pastel-toned lo-fi pop occasionally dusted with the faint, vaguely unsettling vapours of psychedelia. All of this can be found in the atmospheres of “Tomorrow And Today”, a song originally written for Tally Hall's second album (“Good And Evil”) but never included on that record. “I tend to treat songs like aged meat”, Andrew confesses to us. “I let them rest and tenderize until they reach the right maturity”. And the right moment to fully savour the delightful “Tomorrow And Today” has finally arrived with OndaDrops.

edu – Tomorrow And Today [download]

Monorail

The music of Mattias Oskarsson, aka Monorail, seems to hold something magical within it: just close your eyes while listening to a track by the Swedish artist and you'll suddenly find yourself immersed in the set of a different film every time, amid car chases aboard gleaming Aston Martins, elegant receptions on billionaires' yachts, romantic stolen kisses at the school dance, or tension-laden silences during a cowboy duel. Oskarsson's cinematic alt-pop took shape in 2011 with the release of the album “Bedroom Recordings“, one of the most interesting and accomplished records of last year. Currently working on tracks for his second album, likely to be released by the end of 2012, Oskarsson offers OndaRock an unreleased instrumental that opens with a nod to the sounds of “Bedroom Recordings”, overlaid with anxious breaths, before catapulting the listener into the dark, terrifying vortex of an (unmissable) horror film. Enjoy the show.

Monorail – Coinage [download]

Central City Music Company

“I hate going out and spending money on drinks. I'd rather stay home and listen to the Kinks”. There's all of Sam Counsil's personality in the self-mocking manifesto of “She Can't Stand Me”. Since the early 2000s, his favorite pastime has been collecting home recordings capable of ranging in the blink of an eye from the Beach Boys to metal. First under the banner of Central Boise Library (in honor of his hometown, Boise, Idaho), then under the name Central City Music Company, Counsil has already churned out a series of proudly lo-fi collections of home recordings. “She Can't Stand Me” is no exception: a song that grew for eight years within the walls of his bedroom, telling with a smile and a spirited air the story of an impossible relationship (“She's a race car, I'm just a bike/ She likes the Stones, and I like the Beatles”). “It's more or less a simple power-pop song”, Counsil explains, “with a touch of psychedelia in the guitar sound, from feedback to backwards-recorded parts”. Easy to relate to its slightly dreamy lightness.

Central City Music Company – She Can't Stand Me [download]

Jacco Gardner

From Utrecht comes one of the most interesting young talents in sixties-flavored psych-pop. Drawn to music from the tender age of 8, twenty-four-year-old Jacco Gardner already has quite a bit of experience behind him: as a child he played clarinet in an orchestra, at around twelve he started singing in a band, playing bass and writing songs, and guitar and many other instruments followed. After founding the psych-garage duo The Skywalkers with childhood friend Hugo van de Poel, last year Jacco began devoting himself more seriously to his solo project too, a psych-pop built on extremely soft baroque textures. Gardner's debut album is expected between the end of this year and 2013, and has been preceded by a few singles that reveal its dreamy, faintly melancholic soul. Perfectly in tune with this mood is also “Puppets Dangling”, a track that reflects on the fragility of human emotions, which Jacco recorded specifically for OndaDrops.

Jacco Gardner – Puppets Dangling [download]

The Curiously Strong Peppermints

“Elliott Smith backed by the Flaming Lips playing the Beatles backwards”: that's the surreal calling card of Minneapolis's Curiously Strong Peppermints. But listening to the tart melody of “Bicycle For Two”, it sounds more like the spirit of the Fab Four filtered through the warped lens of Daniel Johnston. With Jesse Miller on guitar, Ben Swanson on bass, Mason Butler on keyboards and Sean Fahrni on drums, the Curiously Strong Peppermints already have two albums under their belt, “Endless Fields Of Poppy” from 2009 and “Echoes From The Ultraviolet Fuzz” from 2011. In their own words, “bizarre sonic frequencies emitted by an unexplained purple cumulonimbus cloud formation”. Written in one spring night and recorded in Minneapolis at the Xanadu III and Green Room studios, “Bicycle For Two” is a jingling excursion into a world of wonky colors. Listen to it on headphones, the Curiously Strong Peppermints recommend.

The Curiously Strong Peppermints – Bicycle For Two [download]

Schnauser

Swap a “z” for an “s”, and there you have it: from the misspelling of a dog breed (Schnauzer) a wholly unique band name can be born. Schnauser came into being roughly ten years ago in the mind of English musician Alan Strawbridge. Purveyors of a psych-prog that sways amiably between rock virtuosity and delicate pop echoes, the Bristol-based band has over time made a name for itself locally for its engaging live shows (sharing stages with, among others, the likes of The Zombies, Ariel Pink and Blitzen Trapper, and earning a spot on the podium of Bristol's best live bands in 2011) and has won considerable critical acclaim both at home and abroad following the release of its second album “The Sound Of Meat”. From Schnauser's third record, “Where Business Meets Fashion”, due out this summer, Strawbridge has picked the caressing “Dinner Party”, a track inspired by Mike Leigh's film “Another Year” that reflects on the “elitist” insularity of the English middle class.

Schnauser – Dinner Party [download]

The Hearts And The Minds

At the start it was just Nik Snell on guitar and Andy Bracht on bass, two guys from Austin with a passion for psychedelic sounds ranging from the sixties all the way to shoegaze. Then, around their first sonic experiments, a real band began to take shape: The Hearts And The Minds, who released a self-titled debut album in 2010, alongside Tim and Terri Dittmar and John-Mike Reed. “Run, Run, Run” is one of the first songs that led them to fully conceive of themselves as a band: “The song is Nik's, but we worked on it with a lot of spontaneity right up to its final shape”, Bracht recalls. Recorded at the Las Olas studios in Georgetown, Texas, “Run Run Run” combines square-edged contours with dreamlike interference, from Terri Dittmar's flute to John-Mike Reed's thingamagoop. And if you're wondering what a thingamagoop is, know that it's a kind of little robot-shaped synth made by Texas-based Bleep Labs, with an oscillator controlled by a photocell instead of the usual keyboard. In short, a perfect piece of psych gear capable of modulating sound according to different types of light.

The Hearts And The Minds – Run, Run, Run [download]

Luna Moth

Eight albums ranging from minimalist lo-fi folk to traditional Mexican ballads, by way of psychedelic garage-rock: with a c.v. like that, you can expect just about anything from Luna Moth. The Oklahoma collective, fronted by the voice of Joey Paz, recently released a new record, "Shadows Casting Trees", inspired by none other than Ovid's "Metamorphoses". Songs that speak of "boundaries and transformations, juxtapositions of sea and sky, interactions between shadow and light, cosmic paradigms turned upside down, and the simple beauty of all things returning to their origin". "Spiraling Streams" is also taken from "Shadows Casting Trees", and Luna Moth have decided to gift it to OndaDrops in a previously unheard acoustic version. With the certainty that the human heart is the true center of the universe's spirals: "Centuries will fade away and planets will disintegrate, but there's one thing that never goes away".

Luna Moth – Spiraling Streams (Acoustic Version) [download]

Misophone

The psych-pop carousel of M. Welsh and S. Herbert is always spinning, and busier than ever. The two English artists hiding behind the moniker of Misophone, currently in the midst of promoting their fourteenth album "Another Lost Night", are already looking ahead to the September release of their next work, "Before The Waves Roll In", the duo's eagerly awaited third outing for Sweden's Kning Disk (following the two gorgeous records "Where Has It Gone, All The Beautiful Music Of Our Grandparents? It Died With Them, That's Where It Went…" and "Be Glad You Are Only Human"). For their contribution to OndaDrops, M. and S. chose to reinterpret "Walking The Cow" by Daniel Johnston, the visionary American artist who reimagined pop through his lo-fi, kaleidoscopic lens, and whom the two Misophone members hold especially dear. In Welsh and Herbert's version, Johnston's song becomes haunted by ghosts, recreating that gently unsettled, mystery-laden atmosphere that runs through the whole Misophone catalogue.

Misophone – Walking The Cow [download]

OndaDrops Vol. 6: Million Ribbons And Floating Stars

Cd: download

Heartfelt thanks to Turi Scandurra for conceiving and creating the delightful cover art accompanying this volume of OndaDrops.

All the tracks featured in OndaDrops have been made available by the artists for free download. OndaRock makes no claim of ownership over these tracks, which remain the exclusive property of their respective copyright holders, artists, record labels and publishing companies.

Thanks go to the artists, the labels, and everyone without whose support this collection could never have seen the light of day.

All songs included in OndaDrops are provided by artists and intended for free download. OndaRock makes no claims of ownership to any of the songs, that are sole property of their copyrights, artists, record labels and publishing companies.

We would like to thank the artists, the labels and everyone whose support made this compilation possible.

* Sometimes coincidences seem to carry a touch of the grotesque.

The idea for putting together the sixth volume of OndaDrops was born more than a year and a half ago, originally intended as a tribute to the sound of the Elephant 6 collective (and its surrounding orbit). After a series of ups and downs, a few months ago this project finally began to take shape, and just weeks before its release a title was chosen that ties in somehow with the compilation's main theme: a line lifted from "Green Typewriter Suite", one of the most significant tracks on "Dusk At Cubist Castle", the psych-pop masterpiece by Olivia Tremor Control, cult band of the American collective.

Upon learning of the sudden death, which occurred only a few days ago, of Bill Doss, co-founder alongside Will Cullen Hart of the Athens band, the sixth volume of OndaDrops takes on a new light and a new meaning. So, quietly and with the utmost humility, OndaRock joins in mourning the loss of Bill Doss by dedicating this collection to one of the finest souls of Elephant 6-branded psych-pop.

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