Electronically Yours

The talented Claire Boucher aka Grimes has allowed a new track from forthcoming album Visions to be available online coinciding with her signing to label 4AD. It's 'grimesy' basically; kind of hard to pin point, rather layered with a solid synth bassline, reverb saturated percussion and undulating vocals, at times muffled and indecipherable murmurous undertones that skip effortlessly along Claire's surprisingly varied range.




Pretty memorable indeed and another taster of what’s to come from Visions which so far has teased three tracks, 'Oblivian', 'Nightmusic' and 'Genesis' and if you missed in my related post predicting sounds for 2012, 'Nightmusic' is up there as a favourite clip along with Emika's 'Pretend live' and so soon in this new year, she's everywhere. I highly recommend Geidi Primes that was re-released in the latter half of 2011 after debuting in 2010. Visions is out just in time for my birthday in March, not that I drop major hints or anything lovely people...

Grimes Facebook
EY - May 2011 - Introducing...Grimes

Gazelle Twin - The Entire City

Talking of which, I manifested, with a little suggestion, Gazelle Twin's album from my music Santa this year, the album was out in the autumn and quite mysteriously brilliant and innovative, ranging from filmic epic proportions, to eerie Fever Ray styling of electronic bonkersness. Simultaneously tribal and pulsating, crushing operatic melodrama, nature-centric clashes with technology and urban scapes, hauntingly trickling over your consciousness without the jarring glitch that some button pushing eccentrics make you jump with.

Brighton's Elisabeth Walling's avante garde approach as her pseudonym Gazelle Twin is now popping up all over blogsphere with her unique brand of music and art project transfigured through the inspiring 'The Entire City'. Every song is progressive and modernistic without being too way out and of course it’s hard to pick a track to prick your ears with but I'm going to go with the debut single from last year 'Changelings'. It is so beautifully transfixing and her genius is a multi sensory experience that you would be silly to pass by, all enmeshed in this enigmatic video. 2012 is looking like a year for innovative female artists whose cutting edge talent won’t need the usual industry tricks to get women to the forefront and create interest, an antidote to the superficial marketing of the more mainstream. Enjoy below.

Gazelle Twin official site

Austra - Spellwork video

And finally...the long awaited video for Austra's 'Spellwork'. It is, what I call affectionately 'a load of comedy pish posh'’ but at the end of the day, the track is fab and still holds sway a year after first mentioning Katie Stelmanis' newest project here. If you've followed Katie's career as I have, pre-Austra, you will recognise straight away the prototype for this video in her solo effort with 'Believe Me' from 2009, more humour of the broomstick variety.



Nice horse but shame they didn't use the same prop cupboard, I would like to see those plastic witch hats on the Tasseomancy twins. If I were you, I'd play the audio for 'Spellwork' (which also makes a great ringtone) and stick on the video for 'Believe Me', it’s kind of funnier but still retains that feel of an undergraduate film student's late homework assignment.

Austra official site

Emika - new video for '3 Hours'

I said finally...and then a video for Emika's new single from her self titled debut popped up in my radar and had to be added on. The opening track '3 Hours' is rather unsettling with lyrics like'Hit me when you wanna and I'll take the blame' and the five minutes of depiction of this darker side of a claustrophobic relationship definitely, for me, confirms the suffering of obsession and censure hinted at when listening as audio only.

The video shot in black and white has the same benumbed pain echoed in her repeated line 'hit me, hit me, hit me, anyway' as Emika's seemingly shackled face makes a plea to a man intermittently blindfolded (on a lighter note, didn't he look like Prince at that point?) Great debut album with videos to match. Very much looking forward to more from Emika in the coming year. Out Feb 13th, probably not one for your Valentine though.

Over in the States, Billboard Magazine is predicting Emika (winner of our 'EY Tunes of 2011') for the 'Next Big Sound' of 2012 - check out their countdown here.

Emika Facebook

For Babooshka's review of 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' that features a soundtrack from NIN's Trent Reznor plus thoughts on the opening eppy of 'Sherlock', please jump here.