acoustic-electronic – Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: Rewilding (homespun instrumental)

The overall effect is a singular type of unsophisticated sophistication—it feels both homespun and skillfully assembled.

“Home Shore Highlights” – Rewilding

The oddly inviting instrumental “Home Shore Highlights” intermingles the organic and the electronic with idiosyncratic aplomb. Listen, for instance, to how the synthesizer takes the lead at some moments, a homely glockenspiel at others. The overall effect is a singular type of unsophisticated sophistication—it feels both homespun and skillfully assembled. On the one hand, the song is little more than a variety of recurring, related melodies on top of an unhurried tropical beat; on the other hand, things feel ongoingly off-kilter and endearing. As different sounds take turns in the spotlight, one consistent underlying element is the hands-on percussion, mixed with a bashy spaciousness that adds three-dimensionality to the aural landscape.

What might be the song’s signature moment, if not an actual hook, is that repeating place in the unfolding melody in which we get an even-tempoed march up the scale: a full, eight-note ascent that, in fact, occurs in pairs—when it happens once, it happens again a few seconds later (first at 0:43/0:51). Once this progression gets in your head, you tend to anticipate it in a variety of spots in which it doesn’t show itself. This makes its final appearance, at 3:04/3:12, seem particularly gratifying

“Home Shore Highlights” is the first single available from Rain Patch, the second Rewilding album, which is due out in April. Rewilding is masterminded by the Philadelphia-based musician Jake McFee, who wrote and recorded the bulk of the album in Glacier Bay, Alaska, where he decamped for a few summers starting in 2017.

You can pre-order the album (digital, vinyl, cassette) via Bandcamp.

Free and legal MP3: Juana Molina (spritely, rhythmic parade of sound)

Leave it to the mistress of mysteriously appealing electro-acoustic experimentation to find such a lovely, hypnotic groove in 7/4 time.

“Cosoco” – Juana Molina

The world would be a plainer, paler place without odd time signatures. Leave it to the mistress of mysteriously appealing electro-acoustic experimentation to find such a lovely, hypnotic groove in 7/4 time. Propelled by some of the most softly satisfying percussive sounds I have ever heard, “Cosoco” is a sprightly off-kilter dance that blossoms, at 1:40, into an even tighter, richer, more intriguing parade of sound and rhythm, led by Molina’s charming, multi-tracked vocals. The effect is of something at once complex and free-spirited, intricately woven and yet easy to follow. On the one hand, we get a “solo” from the sort of loopy electronic sound that is her ongoing signature (2:20) (even as each song seems to present us with a different variation). But then, straight away, arrives a short, plump bass solo (2:42), pretty much its ambient opposite. The bass stays front and center through the next section of the song before steering us into one more iteration of our main musical setting.

Then, at around 3:48, a magical mystical coda begins, with the entrance of a swirly, wind-like effect that emerges in tandem with the drumming that now sounds more and more organic. “Cosoco”‘s closing minute is as engaging as it is amorphous: there are no particular melodies, or even any chord progressions, just the ever-energetic pulse of the 7/4 rhythmic riff that has provided us with the song’s foundational characteristic from beginning to end, accompanied by the curious synthetic squiggles that Molina manages to rope into pop coherence.

Once upon a time a sitcom star in Argentina, Molina, long ensconced on the Fingertips “Most Often Featured” list, has been written about here three previous times: in June 2003, May 2006, and September 2008.

“Cosoco” can be found on Halo, Molina’s seventh album, released in May on Crammed Discs. You can listen to the whole thing and buy it via Bandcamp. Thanks again to KEXP for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: Find the Others (powerful electronic-acoustic amalgam)

“We Stared at the World” begins as a gentle song oscillating mysteriously between the electronic and acoustic.

“We Stared at the World” – Find the Others

“We Stared at the World” begins as a gentle song oscillating mysteriously between the electronic and acoustic. Front man Andy Sheppard fills our head with his conversational tenor. Listen attentively and you may begin to hear a variety of openings in the muted landscape, soft sounds implying larger worlds. Urgency arrives un-urgently: halfway through the song all sorts of things start happening, and the layers of instrumentation become more overtly fascinating and gratifying–guitar sounds, string sounds, a determined parade of clicking-clopping percussion sounds.

And, actual drum sounds. It took me a while for it to register but this halfway point is where we begin to hear what sound like real drums being smacked with real sticks. It’s a sound that I think gives the song such a satisfying climax, during the final iteration of the chorus, beginning around 2:47. There’s something about the various juxtapositions on display right here (the organic vs. the electronic, the gentle vocal vs. the percussive accompaniment, the melodic vs. the beat-driven) that together strike me as both powerful and poignant, but also fleeting: in 12 or 13 seconds everything’s gone, replaced by 30-plus seconds of ambient tinkling and droning, a kind of sonic after-image, rendering everything previously heard abruptly dreamlike. I like that a song ostensibly about staring turns out to be so indirect, even inscrutable.

Given the band’s name, Find The Others is an ironically elusive project. It appears to be a one-man operation (the album credits Sheppard as the only performer), even as the press photo features two people (and a blank third). Web resources identify Sheppard’s location alternately as either Toronto or British Columbia, so let’s at least assume he’s Canadian—even as he shipped himself off to Iceland to work with Valgeir Sigurðsson (Sigur Rós, Björk, Feist, Nico Muhly, and then some). The end result was the album Empire of Time, on which you’ll find this song. The album was released back in April 2015; I heard it much later in the year via Insomnia Radio.

Free and legal MP3: Chelan (martial clarity meets windswept moodiness)

Often the acoustic and electronic are mixed in a song in blatant juxtaposition; here the analog and digital mingle with unnerving ease.

“Pretend We Live Forever” – Chelan

We’ve got the snap-to-attention drumming on the one hand, and echoey industrial background washes on the other: martial clarity meets windswept moodiness. What’s not to like? And check out the sneaky way that swells of actual stringed instruments press their way into a sonic landscape that feels at once intimate and expansive. Often the acoustic and electronic are mixed in a song in blatant juxtaposition; here the analog and digital mingle with unnerving ease.

And then there’s the matter of how this thing, well…swings. Underneath the rat-a-tat snare is a deeper, swaying, gut-level beat, and this, I think, is what really nails “Pretend We Live Forever” together. (If you’ve got any desk-dancing inclinations, this song all but requires some kind of awkward-looking but satisfying upper-body gesticulations.) Another somewhat hidden strength here is singer Jennifer Grady’s voice, which has a lovely, limpid tone and is allowed to hit our ears with gratifying directness, even as a variety of layered effects swirl around her. But she’s also oddly easy to miss since so many songs that aim for the kind of ambiance we’ve got going here seem not too often interested in presenting a clear and unadulterated voice. Which kind of trains our ears not to hear. Which is another matter for another day.

Chelan is the duo of Jen Grady and Justin Hosford. She teaches music; he is a TV and film composer with a studio in the Mojave Desert, where they converge to write and record whenever they can. “Pretend We Live Forever” is a track from their forthcoming album Equal Under Pressure, to be released later this month. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Dive Index (gentle-assertive electro-acoustic composition)

“Pattern Pieces” – Dive Index

Music that combines the acoustic and the electronic offers a lot of potential enticements (as well as some potential pitfalls) but one of the nice things it can do is create a sonic environment at once gentle and assertive. Which is hard for either the purely acoustic or the purely electronic to do on their own, and which is pretty much what “Pattern Pieces” has going here, aided handsomely by singer Simone White’s intimate whisper of a voice and some breezy finger picking.

But the big “acoustic” secret here—acoustic in quotes because I may not even be right about this—is the central role played by percussion that sounds very organic and natural. Lord knows that technology has long since transcended my capacity to tease apart electronic from three-dimensional beats, but the larger point is the nature of the sound achieved. Central to the percussive heartbeat in “Pattern Pieces” are sounds that feel very close to the ear and belly in the way that drumming in actual physical space feels.

The other thing this song does is cycle us adroitly through a series of shifting electronic sounds. Towards the beginning, with the organic (maybe) drumming and natural vocals, the electronics we hear are generally subtle background gestures, the type of which come a bit more to the fore in the instrumental break at 1:00. Note how these are quickly followed by the entrance of a pure acoustic guitar, to keep the electro-acoustic balance flowing. A similar break at 1:50, meanwhile, leads to a more diffuse vocal section than previously which in turn migrates us to a new sonic palette (beginning at 2:30) featuring heavier electronic sounds and processed vocals. This heavier section registers as both a definitive shift and a natural-seeming progression, especially given how easily, a minute later, we are delivered back to the earlier vibe.

The Los Angeles-based Dive Index is less a band than a self-described “collaborative project”; the mastermind is songwriter/producer Will Thomas, who earlier in the millennium was recording electronic music as Plumbline. The first Dive Index album emerged in 2007. “Pattern Pieces” is from Lost in the Pressure, the third Dive Index release, out this week on Neutral Music.

(If you go to the SoundCloud page you can download this file in higher-quality .wav format.)

Free and legal MP3: Armand Margjeka (brisk pace, laid-back vibe)

Combining a brisk pace with a laid-back vibe, “Hummingbird” likewise merges a warm acoustic aura with electronic effects.

“Hummingbird” – Armand Margjeka

Combining a brisk pace with a laid-back vibe, “Hummingbird” likewise merges a warm acoustic aura with electronic effects. Margjeka processes his voice in a megaphone-y way that manages to bridge all these polarities: he sounds at once urgent and relaxed, confessional and remote.

Ultimately it is the narrator’s brain being compared to the titular creature here, which explains the song’s rapid pulse and the jittery guitar sound that first surfaces in the background at 0:52 and comes back, in the foreground, around 3:10. As motion-oriented as the song is, there’s also a kind of serenity about its focused, recycling melodies and its deliberately placed sounds—again a kind of echo of the hummingbird, which flutters its wings faster than the eye can see even while floating carefully in one place. I am especially drawn to the insistent verse melody and its upturned conclusion, the ongoing repetitions of which accumulate in my awareness with an edgy kind of poignancy.

Margjeka was born in Albania, and was schooled in the basics of rock’n’roll, not to mention English itself, through recordings and videos that made their way into the country in the post-Wall ’90s. At 18, he emigrated to the U.S. and eventually settled in Birmingham, Alabama. After recording two EPs with an alt-country band called Buffalo Black, Margjeka released the solo album Margo Margo in 2011. “Hummingbird” is the title track to his sophomore release, coming out next month via both PIPEANDGUN and Communicating Vessels. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Marika Hackman (quiet, but elusively sturdy)

“Skin” – Marika Hackman

Not as wispy as it initially may seem, “Skin” unfolds with just the right amount of atmospheric oddness and melodic surprise to lend an elusive sturdiness to this deep, quivery song. I am engaged by how artfully Hackman integrates her acoustic guitar with electric and electronic sounds; there’s something satisfyingly new in this aural template, without any sign of strain or self-consciousness. Her melodies, meanwhile, feel at once strong and slippery, opting for directions that often feel unexpected. The most notable example of this comes at the tail end of the verse section, first heard at 0:51 on the words “Oh here’s my hands.” Hackman’s smoky voice and eccentric way with tone and phrasing adds to the enigmatic yet self-possessed vibe.

“Skin” is also a beautifully constructed song, employing a standard verse-chorus-verse structure but tweaking it for emotional impact. Note the way the melody in the verse is repeated twice but the second time veers off unresolved. The first time this happens, the song melts into a haunting guitar break; after the second verse, we finally hear what appears to be the chorus, and a line that feels like the song’s dramatic center (1:52): “I’m a fever in your chest.” But note too that this apparent chorus is brief and also ends unresolved melodically. And then when the chorus returns musically (2:48), it arrives with different lyrics, which reinforces the song’s underlying mystique.

“Skin” features backing vocals by fellow London singer/songwriter Sivu, and is part of a collaborative project the two musicians released in December, in advance of a UK tour together. The other song on the release was a Sivu song called “I Hold” that Hackman, in turn, sang on. Hackman to date has released two EPs, the most recent one entitled Sugar Blind, which came out last month. Thanks to WXPN for the head’s up.

Free and legal MP3: Squalloscope (affecting blend of electronic and organic)

Soft, elusive electronic parts intermingle with organic movement; the song unfolds like a skittish, intimate dream.

“Z-E-P-H-Y-R” – Squalloscope

Unfolding like a skittish, intimate dream, “Z-E-P-H-Y-R” is an affecting blend of the organic and the electronic. The non-organic parts are soft and elusive—a whispery synth here, chimey electronics there, and the gentlest of synthetic beats throughout. The non-electronic stuff, meanwhile, is full of movement and subtle edginess. We get a finger-picked guitar front and center, and it took me many listens to internalize the fact that this is an electric guitar, not an acoustic guitar. It’s being played like an acoustic guitar, which is more unusual than it probably should be.

Meanwhile, Anna Kohlweis performs with a commanding nonchalance, gliding deftly between lyrics that are almost spoken and those that are sung. Her voice has a pleasing richness and an engaging variation between her lower and higher registers, while the words that are half-spoken are often arriving with the velvety urgency of a whispered prayer. Her voice and delivery combine with the uncluttered arrangement to create the illusion that there is maybe not much of a song or a melody here, but that’s exactly what it is—an illusion. Listen carefully and you may see how the song’s melodic strength is hiding in plain sight, at once enhanced and obscured by subtlety and misdirection.

Squalloscope is the current performing name for Vienna, Austria-based singer/songwriter/artist/writer Anna Kohlweis. She previously recorded music under the name Paper Bird. “Z-E-P-H-Y-R” is a song from the debut Squalloscope album, Soft Invasions, which was released on Seayou Records back in March. The song was released this fall as a single and a free and legal MP3. You can download it via the link above or via SoundCloud, where you can also read the lyrics.

Free and legal MP3: Color of Clouds (lovely blend of acoustic and electronic)

With a hint of glitch seasoning its spry intimacy, “Brother” is the work of a band with a gift for uncomplicated complexity, if that phrase makes any sense. Great pleasures await here in straightforward juxtapositions. For one immediate example, listen to how the beat glides seamlessly from a chime-like electronic stutter into a cozy 4/4 with a wistful bounce, driven by the gentlest of drumbeats. And then, without fuss, enters singer Kelli Scarr, arriving as if she’d been here all along, starting the story just about in mid-sentence, in tones of bittersweet honey. She has us at hello.

“Brother” – Color of Clouds

And things only get better from here in a song blending the acoustic and electronic in a most gracious manner–the instrumental palette here is nothing short of delightful–and building towards a brilliant, light-footed chorus. I still can’t tell if that’s some sort of steel guitar in there or a nuanced synthesizer, but those are definitely stringed instruments that arrive for a first visit at 0:57, returning with the chorus to mesh almost heart-breakingly with that steel-guitar-ish sound and, most nimbly, that subtle persistent electronic glitch in the beat. And yes I’m afraid this is one of those songs that’s far more trouble to describe than to listen to. Rest your eyes and reward your ears with repeated listens.

All three band members were previously in the electronic band Moonraker, and Scarr has also been a frequent collaborator with Moby. “Brother” is a song from the debut Color of Clouds album, Satellite of Love, released digitally this week via Stuhr Records. MP3 via One Track Mind.

Free and legal MP3: Joker’s Daughter (pastoral folk pop, via the Twilight Zone)

“Worm’s Head” – Joker’s Daughter

If Gnarls Barkley can refer to themselves as the “odd couple” (as per their 2008 album), then what to make of this pairing of Helena Costas, a London-born singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist of Greek Cypriot extraction, and Danger Mouse (himself half of Gnarls Barkley)? A really really odd couple?

And what to make of this odd-couply music, part pastoral airiness, part Twilight Zoney strangeness? There are uncanny lyrics—“The horses turn into cows/And sheep lie on the edge of the road”—and an off-kilter heaviness to a beat that kind of wants to be lilting but isn’t, really. There are warm acoustic instruments and wayward keyboards and electronic effects that sound like a combination of a theremin and an old-fashioned radio dial trying to tune in a station. Through it all, Costas—a classically trained violinist, among other things—sings with an unperturbed, slightly breathy sweetness, almost as if no one has told her exactly what she’s singing about. Not that I have any idea either. And how short this is! Just when you’re ready to sink into the mystery of it all, it’s over. Rendering it all the more mysterious, I suppose.

“Worm’s Head” came out as a digital single in November, a 7-inch vinyl record in December, and will be on the debut Joker’s Daughter album, The Last Laugh, when it comes out in February, on Team Love Records. MP3 via Team Love.