Фирма Where It's At Is Where You Are

Iron Eye

This Candle Is For You

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For fans of Low, Pan American, Movietone, Carla Dal Forno, Múm. (300 copies pressed Cargo have 150 only). Shifts is the debut album from Sea Glass, a new band featuring The Leaf Library's Matt Ashton with Melinda Bronstein. This is a set of ten spectral, melancholy songs that combine the minimalism of Young Marble Giants, the acoustic drone of Broadcast's folkier moments and Liz 'Grouper' Harris's forests of reverb. Sparse guitar, ebow drones and fragile synth tones carry Melinda's layered, repeating vocals over music that is elemental, unhurried and possessed of its own uncomplicated resonance, yet still detailed and engaging. The songs are rooted in the pair's love of ambient and esoteric modern pop music, sounds made with whatever instruments are to hand, unselfconscious and effortless. The album's outwardly contained and assured personal space belies a lengthy and fragmented journey to fruition, with each element recorded over large distances of time and geography (Walthamstow, Wood Green, Peckham, Dungeness, Tenerife). The songs began as improvised, instrumental sketches with no destination, recorded by Matt at home in between working on Leaf Library material. The music, mostly first takes with mistakes still intact, was then sent to Melinda to see if she could find a way to work with them, part experiment, part challenge. Her outpouring of words, built in painterly layers over the bare shapes of the music gradually, over the course of many months, gave the songs a life of their own. Mike Cranny, from dream pop band Firestations' crystal clear mixes and arrangements provided the essential final part, turning the album from a simple collection of songs into a cohesive, glassy whole. This disjointed (and prescient) method of production gives the album its title, as well as suggesting the endlessly moving coastal drifts that deliver the band's titular glass gems.

PINK VINYL

It's the taking part that counts - a global pop sportsday is a compilation of 26 exclusive tracks, by 26 indie, folk and electronic artists, one for each of the 26 Olympic sports... it includes exclusive tunes from (among others) Saint Etienne (athletics) Record Label: Where Its At Style: Independent