One of my favorite parts of running a blog and a label is the entire process of looking for new music and artists. Even though myspace is taking in it's last dying breath I still enjoy signing on and checking out the artists that have friend requested us, checking out their music, scoping out their friends, trying to understand their "scene". It's amazing what a small world we live in and that's particularly true when it comes to this music scene. So it was about a few months ago that some crazy coincidences occurred that really let me appreciate one of our favorite artists and friend even more for his foresight and for a refreshing reminder that life really does go full circle.
Stephen Falken - Shadow Of The Wind
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It was some day after mid-September of 2009 when Stephen Falken's EP "Visions" was released on Flexx Records. I had been hearing about it from our friend TNUC for a couple days and was listening to the record when I thought, "I KNOW this song from somewhere...", but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. The song is called "Shadow Of The Wind" and it's a great dreamwave track in the most traditional of meanings. This song makes me think of walking down a gray beach on a hazy and overcast day.
There is a light drizzle of rain misting on you as you walk barefoot through the sand, and the waves slowly lap up onto the shore. It's a thoughtful piece.
I had known about Stephen Falken for quite awhile, both from the always quality advice of TNUC and from our friendship here at Binary with our Valerie brothers in France. Falken is half of the Valerie group The Outrunners, an early favorite of ours from the French collective. It was years ago that I remember first coming across Valerie on myspace while sifting through the top friends of San Francisco-based retro dreamwaver Loose Shus. How I first found Loose Shus, I have no idea. But without it, things definitely would not be the same today, and you wouldn't be reading this blog, at least not in its current form. I remember the day I came across Valerie and how I spent hours sifting through all their music and their artists and figuring out what they're all about. I remember finding Anoraak and falling in love with "Nightdrive With You"...a song that is still to this day at the peak of Mt. Dreamwave. Unmatched and unaffected by the passing of time, some seeds were planted the day I heard that song, and things have never been quite the same.
Thinking back to that time, it made me realize..."I know where I've heard that Stephen Falken song...it was on Anoraak's mixtape!" At some point after Josh and I were listening to Anoraak and as much dreamwave as we could get our hands on, Brooklyn's No Love Lost Records continued their mixtape series with a mix by Anoraak. From what I can tell it was released in May of 2008. "The Anoraak mixtape", as it's come to be known around here, was really the soundtrack of a summer and beyond. I think that is what fully immersed us in dreamwave. It immersed Josh and I, it immersed everyone around us and all our friends.
It was the soundtrack to beer pong tournaments on hot summer days, and the soundtrack to drives out to the beach on cool summer nights.
It basically never ended. I think I have probably at least four copies of the mix burned onto CD's. I don't think I've heard a better executed mixtape than this one, and I don't know if I ever will. Check out the mix on No Love Lost Records' myspace page.. the download link should still work.
So it was nice getting a blast from the past hearing that Stephen Falken track. It was later that same day that I was sifting through some promo emails that always pile up for the blog, and I came across one from the trusted source that brought us The Diogenes Club. The band was another UK band by the name of Relation. There were a couple tracks highlighted by the band for us to check out, one of which was a cover of the classic Pixies track called "Here Comes Your Man".
Relation - Here Comes Your Man (Album Version)
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I like these guys. They definitely sound UK to me, and they have a pretty vintage feel to them. I feel like they have a blue collar sound to them...like I picture them in Manchester or some industrial city in England feeling glum and dancing around for a sense of community in the worker's overalls, much like the Dexy's Midnight Runners video for "Come On Eileen". Weird thought? Yes...but I mean it as a compliment. The rest of the record has a similar sound and you should definitely pick it up off of Urban Torque Records. The other track that was highlighted in this promo email also definitely caught my attention.
Relation - Your Tiny Mind (Lifelike Remix)
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Who doesn't love Lifelike?? The dude is a master. I remember finding him very early down the road as well, primarily because I think he was already a legend to a lot of the artists we were looking at and therefore and influence of theirs. I remember Coachella a couple years ago listening to the Does It Offend You, Yeah? - Epic Last Song (Lifelike Remix) at a sweet party condo in Palm Springs, drying off my boardshorts in the hot desert sun while once again playing beer pong. So when I listened to this Lifelike remix of Relation I was pretty taken aback when I realized, "holy shit, this is the second track I've heard today that has JUST been released, that is ALSO on Anoraak's mixtape!" Like, they're just pushing these songs out now, but Anoraak had them on his mixtape over a year and a half ago. That's badass.
So I was meaning to write a blog post about that but it just never happened. But it wasn't the last of the fateful coincidences. A couple months went by, the holidays came and gone and we found ourselves in 2010. At some point in January the whole Binary crew was out at the Dragonfly in Hollywood as we often are on Monday nights and I started talking to our friend Michael from Vancouver. We were talking about the scene up in Vancouver, and how he gets back there a couple times a month and how we should go up and it would be a lot of fun and all this. I'm down, seems like a way chill place. As Michael and I were talking he was telling me about this band from Toronto that we would probably be into that plays in Vancouver a lot. They're called Parallels, he said, as I nodded and told him I think I have a CD of theirs, only to realize that the CD I have by a band named Parallels is definitely not what he's talking about. But it sounds cool, so I planned on checking it out the next day. Before I could get around to it, I shit you not, I woke up to a promo email in anticipation of the release of Parallels debut album. Pretty amazing timing if you ask me. But even more amazing was this track that came with the email from the band.
Parallels - Ultralight
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I couldn't believe it when I heard it, because this song is ALSO in Anoraak's mixtape. This is Parallels' debut record, yet somehow Anoraak had this track almost two years before it was out. Not only that, but I'm pretty sure that the version of this song in the mixtape has vocoder vocals in it, so it was probably an early demo of the song that found its way into his mix. I really like this track in its current form with its very rhythmic synths, its dark undertones, and the italo bassline that drives the whole song. But what I love most about the song is that it takes me back to all the times I spent listening to Anoraak's mixtape. Isn't that the beautiful part about music? A song can serve as a time capsule to our thoughts and our emotions, and to the experiences we attach to them. And in its essence, that's what we've always said dreamwave is all about, probably more so than other styles of music. Listening to the songs is like looking at an old scrapbook or photo album of your life. It takes you back to the oldest and sweetest of memories and all the people you spent them with. The power of song is really an incredible thing.
I still get a smile on my face when I think about this crazy small world we live in and how all the coincidences surrounding Anoraak's NLLR mixtape reminded me of this. Instead of the six degrees of Kevin Bacon, it's the six degrees of Anoraak. We're all part of the same community...Anoraak, the other artists, the labels, the blogs like us, the listeners like you and I. I still have an email that I sent to Anoraak as a nobody...just a passionate fan in LA saying "wow, that would be really cool if you came out to LA, and I'd love to help get you out here to play, even though I really have nothing to offer at this point". Little did I know that months later Binary would exist and Josh and I would be grabbing dinner with Anoraak and College as we threw their first concert ever in Los Angeles and we would realize that we're all brothers from the other side of the globe, fighting the same fight for dreamwave. So I'm thankful for these artists, and for Anoraak, and his mixtape, and every other artist we've talked about here on this blog, for being the soundtrack of my life, and shaping my memories with the sound of beautiful music so that I'll never have to forget where I've been and who I've been there with.
As an added bonus, here is a new remix from Anoraak for Shy Child's song "Disconnected".
Shy Child - Disconnected (Anoraak Remix)
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I put a lot of music in this post and I'm hoping that you guys can take the time to check out these releases and buy some albums if you like them to help support the artists. Check the artists out on myspace, do some digging, explore the depths of this musical world, and start to make some new memories with the soundtrack of the rest of our lives.
Anoraak Myspace http://www.myspace.com/anoraak
Stephen Falken Myspace http://www.myspace.com/stephenfalkenmusic
Relation Myspace http://www.myspace.com/relationmusic
Lifelike Myspace http://www.myspace.com/lifelikevulture
Parallels Myspace http://www.myspace.com/parallelsfm
TNUC http://uncletnuc.blogspot.com/
These songs on Hypem
Binary on Facebook
Binary on Myspace
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