Late Night Discoveries

Just a couple of recommendations on bands that I've been listening to lately, typically discoveried late at night as always :-). All bands that I find very interesting and different in their own ways. I guess I'm in a sort of post-rock mode at the moment so many of them have aspects of that.

Gregor Samsa

So first up, is this post-rock act from Brooklyn, NY, US.

A very nice and clean sounding dream piece, with focus on simplicity and pure vocal harmonies.

This is what makes them quite different from many other post-rock acts.

The usage of vocals, to this extend, that this band do, kind of makes them come closer to some of the nice lush & dreamy sounds you hear in for example Slowdive, The Zephyrs and even some Sparklehorse.

The music really don't stop at guitar arrangements, but in fact lifts to a higher peace of organic wellness, when the other part of the band kicks in, namely the strings.

So with Gregor Samsa you get an ouverture. It lends from Sigur Ros but does have it's own feel towards building excellent songs.

Listen to a song from their album "55:12" here :

Gregor Samsa - Young & Old



Gregor Samsa is releasing their new album "Rest" digitally around start of April 2008, and the physical version which comes in 3 different flavours will be available around May 2008. But already now you can listen to the album in full, streamed on their Myspace page.

The Besnard Lakes

Next up is Toronto based The Besnard Lakes.

This band is in my opinion very experimental with the sounds they do.

Sometimes it sounds like some psychedelic stuff taken from the 60's/70's and sometimes you're brought back to the present day by the way they arrange and use noisy guitars, blended together with samples.

In general The Besnard Lakes lives for details and putting together elements from all around into their music. It makes them hard to categorize and I like that a lot. The reason I think there's a little post-rock in it as well is because they tend to have these long evolving songs with lots of repetition. But where most post-rock bands goes on same theme for a long time, The Besnard Lakes constantly evolves.

There is a bit of the "Arcade Fire" feel around, but this band is just more towards experimental music.

To give you an idea what I am talking about I have put this live bootleg video of the band playing an excellent and beautiful song called: "Because Tonight"



And a more "regular" video : For Agent 13



This is the essence of The Besnard Lakes.

Our Broken Garden

Last one up this night is Our Broken Garden, a danish act, which in it's essence only comprises of the singer Anna Brønsted, which normally is found together with the danish act Efterklang.

Even though its just Anna in "Our Broken Garden", she has recorded the debut with a nice lineup from the danish scene, counting for example Moogie Johnson on bass and Lise Westzynthius on Piano along with Peter Sommers backing band.

Our Broken Garden is nice and quiet, eternally warm, but also kind of dark music. Crossing in between the country sounds of Munck/Johnson and some of the more beautiful pieces by Nick Cave and at times Heather Nova.

This is in it's essence very nice background for a moody piece of relaxing music, but what really makes this music fly, is the vocals of Anna Brønsted that makes everything rise to a higher level.

Currently "Our Broken Garden" is touring UK with Efterklang and has recently been signed to the nice UK label : Bella Union

Listen to a song from the debut EP "Lost Sailor" :

Our Broken Garden - When Your Blackening Shows