Braids - Flourish // Perish

Embarrassingly I overlooked this, same label as Grimes and Blue Hawaii. Heard it on KVRX a couple days ago. I think many of you would enjoy it. Lot of IDM and shoegaze influence, wonderful vocalist.

I completely missed this as well! I recall seeing footage of live performances from late 2012 (I think) where they were playing some excellent new tracks containing the aforementioned genre influences. I would assume (and hope) that those tracks made it onto here. Will check this out!

Speaking of 'Grimes' I recall hearing that she was recently signed to Jay-Z's label. Hopefully she maintains control over her production style as I could see someone like Jay-Z 'hiring producers' for her to get her sound up to commercial spec.

She signed up with Roc's management. (Coincidentally, M.I.A. left Roc a week later)

Basically: bigger gigs and venues and I can only assume for her it's a more financially lucrative avenue having them manage. I doubt (and I hope I'm right) she'd compromise her music. She's very interested in fashion (she co-hosted a Grammy or MTV awards red carpet gig) so perhaps that's why she signed with them.

She's halfway done with her album, no idea if she's releasing on a different label.

Anyway, back to Braids: huge embrace of IDM-esque beats and tones. Reminds me of Mum, Seefeel, and Pygmalion to some degree. There's been a lot of good shoegaze and dream pop lately but it's usually more vintage and lo-fi or guitar oriented or it's far more contemporary sounding. This is nice balance of a lot of influences imo.

Streaming a few tracks from this and enjoying it! Really great production and it is nice to hear a vocalist who doesn't sound too much like Bjork (although some of her inflection is similar) in this kind of music.

Here's the opening track:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjUIuceUWJ0

  On 1/7/2014 at 2:54 AM, Goiter Sanchez said:

Streaming a few tracks from this and enjoying it! Really great production and it is nice to hear a vocalist who doesn't sound too much like Bjork (although some of her inflection is similar) in this kind of music.

I heard that too. She also avoids the typical Bjork song vocal pattern of "whisper / quiet / whisper / normal / PAGAN SPIRIT YELL! / quiet / whisper"

I was disappointed in this because I really liked their early stuff. Last track is cool though.

I really dug that one track with the menacing kick drum on their first album (it was like, techno shades of a native american spirit ritual), but nothing else really jumped out at me. I live in the same town as them now but apparently I totally missed out on all the release shows