PAUW
There’s a sumptuous psych debut to be savoured, an exceptional alt-pop debutante and inky-black electronic melancholia in Getintothis’ Patrick Clarke‘s 67th round-up of the most essential new music.
I first came across Dutch foursome PAUW while sifting through the names that were then-newly announced on the line-up for last year’s Psych Fest for a preview article I was working on. Their sole single at the time, Shambhala, was one of the picks of the lot, an uppercut of thumping rhythm and glistening sitar to leave me dazed and confused in all the right places.
Late last year the band finally backed it up with their full-length debut album Macrocosm Microcosm, and it’s every bit as superlative; a wicked conoction of galactic atmospherics with a Far Eastern twist. Memories is a space shuttle of an opener, louche, assured and groovy as hell, while Glare revives that Telstar cool. Intents jabs with pin pricks of fuzz, Abyss spins with kaleidoscopic vigour, while Shambhala still stands up as a belter of monolithic proportions. I’m a little late to the party, but this record is a fucking corker, and you need to know about it.
Enough, meanwhile, the debut single from Irish-born Fraser Jane, is a serene slice of elegant alternative pop at its most truly delectable. Serene, slick and unflustered, her soft yet direct vocal enamours more on each listen, while an instrumental centres round a spine of tumbling tribal drums, swelling with sumptuous strings in a ravishing final third.
The first material to surface from Alex Bent + The Emptiness‘ sophomore record Dead, In The Water, finally, is altogether more sparse. Drawing on samples from the Wu-Tang‘s C.R.E.A.M. and Nine Inch Nails‘ Hurt, clicks of modern R&B and electronica collide with inky tinges of emo on the emotive, noirish, and really rather good Run Like Hell, the first single from the upcoming Spring release.
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