Deer Legs - 2012 - Demo '12

Instrumental Math Rock

[FOR FREE]

http://deerlegs.bandcamp.com/

• 4 songs to download
• You name the price (min 0,-)
• You get the link if you register your email address
• Listening recommendations: Tristram

Impressions

When I started writing for wasfuersohr, I had a sound in mind that I hoped bandcamp would provide a treasure trove of. Deer Legs's Demo '12 is so far the closest any EP or LP has come to matching that sound that I've come across, and it's oh so sweet to my ears. Call me picky or finicky about my musical tastes (guilty on all counts your honour!), but I likes my math rock a certain way, and Deer Legs provides me with a hit of the good stuff. There's just enough pop sensibility to the song structure and the meticulous guitar work to keep an upbeat tone to things (“Warm Beer” has a party vibe despite it's name). The production is crisp, with everything sounding clean and polished, the guitars have a really warm, inviting quality to them, and the bass has a fullness to it that projects but doesn't overwhelm everyone else. The drums don't get away unscathed either, as they're being strategically pummelled to great affect across all four tracks. All these things combined just keeps drawing me back to this EP for multiple listens and for a demo, these are very complete songs that I don't feel need to be changed at all should they see release on a full length in the future. By this I mean 'have lyrics added to them' for no good reason, these songs work just fine sans voice. The noodling interlude on 'Tristam' for instance would probably be gone. But that isn't the case with these slick demos and Deer Legs have my full attention in 2013.

Records of the Year 2012 - Editorial Picks

This marks the end of the first year, in which we actually managed to provide music throughout the whole year! Running this website takes a bit of time and I am glad that we managed to increase the size of our team with Moses to keep up the volume of posts. We still got hit a bit by the end of the year business where a million other things creep up, but we hope you still enjoyed our recommendations in 2012 as well and will stay with us for a mighty interesting (and legally free) 2013! (Click the album picture for the link)

Marco's Top 3

I just noticed that my recommendations this year are  quite ... Indie/Pop heavy, but nonetheless, these are the recommendations I want EVERYONE to hear. In my opinion they are classics that shouldnt be forgotten, and so I list them once more to give them the attention they deserve.

Calm Hands - Somewhere June: Indie Pop/Electronica

I want to shout about the awesomeness that is this record from the rooftops of every building. Its enchanting, catchy and incredibly satisfying Electronica Pop that deserves a space in everyones music library.
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Rospoem - Carried by Crows EP: Alternative Pop

An incredible voice that will stay with me for a long time to come. Highly impressive and emotionally touching, this is an EP that one wont easily forget. I sincerely hope this was not the last thing we heard of him.

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Gulls - Down the Hatch: Indie/Surf Pop

A sideproject by one of the Magic Man geniusses. Less Electronica, more Surf Pop, this record came out to be an incredibly upbeat and easy listen for all kinds of summer moments. Pretty sure I'll dig this out next summer again.
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Matthew's Top 4

This year my musical tastes were dominated by two major influences, hard rock (mostly off the blog), and a very much metric tonne of synth music - from the trippiest synth-pop to the darkest, dankest dwellings of dark wave, it has been a feast. The records are:

Plaisance - Regatta: Synthpop

A great chilled out vibe of being out on the open ocean, like a sailing a yacht through your ears straight out the 1980's.
 
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Paralelo - Fig 1: Post Punk

Paralelo's Fig 1 (and it's two excellent follow ups) were definitely the most enjoyable come down[s] of the year, cathartic post-punk with no equal for me this year.
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MINH [MAY] - Hunt Your Own...: New Wave/Rock

Hunt Your Own swings closer to a lot of the music I listened to outside the blog, with it's harder edge guitar rock, and political leanings bared for all to hear.

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Kali Ma - SIDDHARTHA EP: Synthpop

I went in somewhat skeptical into this synthpop concept album about Buddhism. I ended up taking the best psychedelic trip of the year with Kali Ma's EP, and I didn't have to leave my chair.
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Moses's Top 3

The sheer number of outstanding releases this year didn’t make my job narrowing down my favorites to just three any easier, but I suppose it did make my job much, much more fun. If I had room, there’s at least five more releases I could have gushed about. You’ll have to live with these three, though.

Bit Bit Orunge – Orbit: Cosmic electronic

Bit Bit Orunge wrote Orbit in six days, but it’s surprisingly rich with detail: he has a mastery of songwriting that carries over well into these understated but gorgeous epics. Soft electronic blips and piano lullabies play side-by-side, sometimes wandering in lonely nothings for a while, sometimes fading into the distance—and sometimes exploding into brilliant sparks of light, and if only for those precious but rare moments of reaffirmation, I can wait out these chilly times.
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Shnabubula - Free Play: Improvisational Piano

Chiptune musician/jazz pianist Samuel Ascher-Weiss is an absolute chameleon. In just one short year, he’s released four albums, all of them different but spectacular in their own way. Of the four, the wide-eyed, free-spirited Free Play remains my favorite. Though the diverse array of instruments layered on top of Ascher-Weiss’s piano improvisations here was only added in production, every piece fits so well that you would hardly notice—and even when it seems like he’s boxed himself into a corner, he has a knack for melody that proves resilient. If you’re convinced that musical inspiration doesn’t exist anymore, this is a much-needed antidote.

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sun cellar - Abstraction: Experimental/Math Rock
This album will go down as the most immediate experience I recall in my time reviewing for wasfuersohr. Usually, you have to listen for around a minute or so before you get an idea of what an artist is trying to do, but with Abstraction, I was thrown headfirst into one of the most intense, cathartic, and catchy jam sessions in recent memory. That’s all I can say, to be honest: you’ll just have to hit play on this one to find out what I’m talking about.

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Franch - 2012 - Orsini

Electronica

[FOR FREE]

http://franch.bandcamp.com/

• 4 songs to download
• For free
• Direct Download
• Listening recommendations: Ravachol

Impressions

If you wanted experimental electronica, this is the album you were waiting for. Taking excellent beats and riffs and then repeating them ad nauseum is usually not a good idea for an interesting or enjoyable listen, let alone one in a genre that relies on them so handily. And yet Orsini never got boring or annoying in its repetition. This is sounding a lot more strangely negative than I had envisioned, because believe me, Orsini is an EP I really enjoyed. It's just that the song structures Franch employs seem so counter intuitive – take an ambient keyboard loop, repeat the fuck out of it for an obscene amount of time, do the same with [an admittedly intense, if funky] drum and bass, adding only the occasional extra element from time to time to make sure the audience is still actively with you (the bridge on “Dieu et l'Etat” for instance; where the low end drops out completely and is replaced with synthetic-sounding horns/wind instruments of some kind (sax maybe?)). Maybe I'm full of shit and there are entire subgenres of music built around this idea that Brian Eno created at some point in the 70's or 80's I'm just not familiar with (likely). To me, this record is greater than the sum of its parts, as cliche as that might sound. Franch have made exceptional use of their bag of tricks, even if on paper it might not seem like it should work. There may even be a story of 14/15^th century Italian aristocracy tucked away in here. Yeah, Orsini's rabbit hole is a lot more complex than it seems. And you'd be remiss to turn it away.

Sun Cellar - 2012 - Abstraction

Experimental/math rock

[FOR FREE]

http://suncellar.bandcamp.com/

• 5 songs to download
• You name the price (min 0,-)
• You get the link if you register your email address
• Listening recommendations: Light Leaks, Jacket

Impressions

Structure is an absolutely essential in any great piece of music: even experimentation, in a sense, is just a transgression of what's already been established. Take Abstraction, one of the finest EPs this reviewer has ever heard. The ingredients here should be recognizable to any fan of music, but there isn’t a band that puts them together in the intricate yet immediately striking way that Sun Cellar manages to.
It all begins with "Light Leaks", an impeccably crafted slow burner that finds all sorts of ways to transcend its tried-and-true blend of earnest vocals, rock-hard guitar lines, and relentless but nimble drum rhythms. "Jacket" brims with surprises, charging out of the gate with a guitar-driven interlude (boasting a bit of a progressive rock flavor) before the tension relieves, letting the chords soar a bit—and just as abruptly as it booms to life, the guitar drops out in the chorus and the blisteringly raw vocals take over, less bombastic but just as captivating in their own way. Whether quiet and melancholy or LOUD and MENACING, the music never fails to surprise.
The really surprising thing about Abstraction, though, is how easy it is to get punch-drunk off of this cocktail: there isn't a single song on here without the potential to rush up the alt-rock charts right now. Even the odder diversions, like a weird foray into waltz music on "Card Sharp", are played with bravado and that sense of undeniable force hanging over all of Sun Cellar’s music. This is a captivating listen throughout from a band unapologetic about battering their way into your heart before settling there for the long run.

Shnabubula - 2012 - Fading Light

Improvisational Piano

   [FOR FREE]

http://shnabubula.bandcamp.com/album/fading-light

• 10 songs to download
• You name the price (min 0,-)
• You get the link if you register your email address
• Listening recommendations: Turning Point, Sunny Days Again, Kittens And The Moon, Looking For Answers

English

Jazz-influenced pianist and chiptune musician Samuel Ascher-Weiss, better known as Shnabubula, has always done excellent work with layers. Free Play, the first of four (yeah, four) albums he released in 2012, took energetic, dramatic piano improvisations and built meticulously crafted ensemble pieces on top of them, effortlessly bridging his raw, personal playing with explosive dynamic power. Fans of that album will likely be taken aback by first by Fading Light, his first purely acoustic work: the only instrument to be found here is the piano. Considering the quality of this work, however, they certainly won’t be disappointed.
In the words of Ascher-Weiss, this album represents a difficult period of his life in which he handled the pressure by recording improvisational pieces. The emotional power, as a result, is the most intense he has ever been, the sparseness of the instrumentation allowing the veteran pianist to be as passionate as he wants without fear of incorporating other layers. The mood of the album swings wildly from euphoria to despair and everything in between: the solemn “Drifting Gently” is followed immediately by the innocent, bright “Time For A Picnic”. Standout piece “Turning Point” encapsulates the entire emotional spectrum of this work perfectly; the glassy, fragile melodies that carry the first half of the track are soon injected with a jolt of energy that lifts them into a lighter key and allows them to soar over the second half…and before things get too light, we get that melody from the beginning again, the one that sounds like it’s one bump away from shattering, and the notes gradually get softer and softer. As much as the listener might like to escape, Ascher-Weiss realizes that that awakening and catharsis are always but temporary, and this truth characterizes the direction of his wayward playing—and the emotional subtext they carry.
Sometimes the album’s volatile shifts border on capricious, but they lend the entire work an electric unpredictability that speaks both volumes about Ascher-Weiss’s struggles and his ability to channel that pain into beauty. He certainly has quite a bit of fun, too; “The Bewildered Swordsman” stabs and swoops as dramatically as any cut on Free Play, while “Kittens and the Moon” plays with the listener’s expectations, bleeding pathos and melodies of loneliness before shifting from andante to allegro, casting aside its weighty melodies for more hopeful ones as it swoops upwards into the night sky.
Some musicians spend years perfecting a work, fine-tuning it, thinking about its significance, what they want to say. Others are more prolific, but what they have to say seldom transcends the cheapness of novelty. Samuel Ascher-Weiss falls into neither camp: for him, music is just life itself, constantly evolving and never finished; enlightenment never able to be grasped but only to be glimpsed for a fraction of a moment. And if all of his therapy sessions sound this good, we should definitely stick around and listen.

Wilf - 2004 - The Horror

Ska

[FOR FREE]

http://wilfmusic.bandcamp.com/

• 11 songs to download
• For free
• Direct Download
• Listening recommendations: Casket Party, Yellow Eyed Princess 2, Cadaver Girl

Impressions

This all kinda started more as a little gift for my roommate than it was for myself. She loves ska, anything even tangentially related, she adores it. My appreciation for Wilf's The Horror grew from this, starting out as a “yeah she'd like this” growing into “This record is really catchy, where has ska been all my life?” A bit shallow perhaps, but the point here is to bring you guys good music, and Wilf have got themselves some fine musical flavour for you all to enjoy.

With a knowing wink, The Horror is ska up to it's eyeballs in schlocky, pulpy B horror (the cover artwork is a dead give away), from the song titles to the Corman-esque stories they're telling, Wilf are having a righteous old time here, and that enthusiasm is palpable. The bass boogies along at a shoulder rocking, head wagging tempo, the driving force behind everything. The tenor sax adds some space to the harmonies, wailing above the cacophony, so everything sounds just a bit bigger than it really is. (the sax and bass make an excellent duo – 'Cadaver Girl' deserves a gold star). The guitars are here to add texture and occasionally a bit of punk attitude, as on opener 'Here Comes The Dead'. They aren't the focus, understandably, but they provide when called upon ('Casket Party' for instance). The vocals, oh the vocals match perfectly. Deep enough to give the lyrics weight, with just enough lounge lizard intonation to keep the goings on light, sleazy, and playful. Given the lyrical content Wilf is bringing to the table, that goes a long way to making things enjoyable without being too kitschy. To me, the The Horror is the kind of music Only-era Misfits have been attempting for a while but fail to do so. Definitely one for Emily, and one for your discerning ears as well.