'Molten Young Lovers' is Airiel's second full-length album following their 2012's 'Kid Games' EP. The band, which hails from Chicago, IL., does not need many introductions among shoegaze fans. Jeremy Wrenn often describes their music as:"It's loud. It's pretty. You can dance to it."; it's a description that fits perfectly this album. 'Molten Young Lovers' instantly engages its listeners into an alternating array of uptempo (This Is Permanent, Sharron Apple) and downtempo songs (Your Lips,My Mouth, Molten Young Lovers, Song Of You). This album sounds like an ode to love and is full of captivating melodies permeated with Airiel's magical ability to turn the audio into visual with their lyrics. It's safe to say that it's among our favourite albums of 2017 (and not only). 'Molten Young Lovers' came out on October 13th on double LP and digital formats on Shelflife Records. Do not miss it!
There's a term in literary theory called 'intertextuality', which has to do with the interrelationship between texts that have influenced a writer to create a work or the reader to understand a particular piece of writing. The case of Fimbria's album 'Eternal Return' is one in which the artist uses his influences to create something unique. Fimbria is the solo electronic project of American-born composer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter Brian Castriota (earlier composing as 'Earth First') who released a 5-track EP 'Northern Winds' in 2014 on FMT Recordings. His music bears influences from the more wistful moments of The Radio Dept. as well as new age and electronic music pioneers, such as Suzanne Ciani, Harold Budd, John Kerr, and Enya. In 'Eternal Return' Brian worked meticulously to assemble and combine a particular palette of synthesizers: the lush pads and leads of the Juno-106, the breathiness of the M1, and the Gregorian chants of the VP-330. The album has been described as the soundtrack to "the last few shots of a movie that had a pretty unhappy ending, one of those achy coda endings that's mildly hopeful but it just seems that way relative to how grim the conclusion was in the penultimate scene." It is officially released today on Cadent Records, a label co-operated by Brian Castriota and Ethan Wells (Ebn Ezra), who both have a sense that their music belongs to and comes from another time and place, hence their fondness for Romantic painting, early MIDI- and voltage-controlled synthesizers, and megalithic earthworks. The painting by 19th-century German painter Caspar David Friedrich on the cover adds to the overall feel of the album. It is entitled 'Evening Landscape With Two Men' and Brian explains its purpose: "I like the ambiguity of it - the relationship portrayed, whose perspective it's from, and whether they're looking at a sunrise, sunset, or nuclear explosion." 'Eternal Return' is a multifaceted album and invites the listener to effortlessly dive into its various layers of depth again and again. It is available digitally and on limited edition cassette and CD. Check it out below!
