Studio - West Coast

turtles

in the sea
I CAN'T TELL YOU HOW MUCH I LOVE THIS ALBUM. Your head would explode, and that wouldn't be pretty.

Twisting dub-disco stoned balearic rock mega dance awesome jams! I can't take it, you can't take it, meet me at the super-beach for extended luaua-pig-roast-disco-sunrise party!

Alright alright, I'll calm down now. But if I only get to rave about one new album from this year, let it be this. Okay so it's very zeitgeist-y, what with its balearic revival vibe and all that, but hey, of all the revivals out there right now this one's definitely got the most vive in its revive.

I don't have all the touchstones right because I've wasted my youth listening to house and techno rather than whatever these people have been listening to, but I've heard mentioned arthur russell, talking heads, the cure, manuel gottsching and bunch of other good stuff. It's a bit post-punk, a bit disco, a bit dub, a bit mid-70's radio rock, and all awesome. Please tell me other people are feeling this!
 

adruu

This Is It
DUDE ITS KICKASS! I actually just heard it this morning at work. I don't have anything interesting to add other than that it jacks...hard.

I've been on a big slow-mo disco kick recently after really digging into the CBS Top 100s and the Studio stuff seems right on the mark.
 

henry s

Street Fighting Man
it's all those things, and more...but I have to say, the singer really puts me off, for some reason...I know: he sounds like Robert Smith crossed with Bernard Sumner, and I like both of them...so why I no like this guy?
 

turtles

in the sea
it's all those things, and more...but I have to say, the singer really puts me off, for some reason...I know: he sounds like Robert Smith crossed with Bernard Sumner, and I like both of them...so why I no like this guy?
It is occasionally grating I agree. When he comes in at the beginning of "self service" it does kind of put me off. But then everything else clicks and i'm happy as can be. "solid good times..." indeed.

adruu: yeah i'm totally feeling all this slow-mo disco and balearic stuff. I love love love quiet village project and all that. The A Mountain of One LP that's coming out soon should be great, their first two EPs are fantastic...though studio still takes the cake for me.
 

mms

sometimes
i just discovered quiet village project today and they're amazing...maybe i should check this album out.

i prefer the quiet village stuff, the studio stuff is rather middle aged to say the least, quite like mountain of one, i like the return of some interesting worthwhile pop at the moment, the kind of fleetwood mac/talk talk dead can dance vibe like these guys, and the stuff that's just awkward, lofi pop like misha, and architecture in helsinki, planningtorock etc both are weird cos they both touch on a slightly embarrassing guilty pleasures kinda past, they're not indie rock linage cool, they're both mining things people are a bit ashamed of i think.
 
Last edited:

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
The Todd Terje mix of Life's a Beach was a fave for ages. The Prins Thomas mix is nice too.

Check out Max Berlin's Elle et Moi, as remixed by Joakim. Classic dislo business.
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
i have a soft spot for the "concept" of a balearic revival, but no so sure about the execution

the map of africa album is rather poor

quiet village is better, but i only know the "circus of horrors" ep

and i'm unfamiliar with studio, "west coast" -- and the mixed reception it's getting here makes me leery -- does it have u.s. distribution and what label is it on?
 

secretagentgel

Well-known member
i love it, too. not sure where i came across it, some blog or other. have definitely been slipping it back into rotation for a few weeks now. let the inner-hippie out!

corey
 

swears

preppy-kei
I liked that "No Comply" tune, have heard a couple of tracks off the album, probs will check it out. Anyone into Lo Fi Fnk?
Nice to see a "proper band" doing dancey music without it sounding totally awkward and forced, unlike all these "nu-rave" chancers.
 

swears

preppy-kei
That's fortunate really, 'cause I missed them playing Liverpool recently, my mates couldn't be bothered seeing them. I showed them the video for "Wake Up" and they were like "Fuck that." lol
Are Studio any good live?
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
The pop tunes are a bit disturbingly poor (ie the opening track off "Yearbook 1" especially) but otherwise this is suprisingly excellent stuff... and comment on the mooted neo-Balearic scene? I think it also incorporates stuff like lindstrom and co, but is distinct from the more beardo/edits scene, more glistening guitars... it runs so against current minimal/french house's post electroclash techiness and tartiness... I like... somehwere between baggyish post punk and glimmering "lost generation" post rock, disco/italo and glossy yacht rock/soft rock late 70s sheen... the consolidation game of mining the past for both lost greatness and pariah tackiness and combining them into ever more intricately subtle forms continues apace...
 
Last edited:

turtles

in the sea
live set of erol alkan's balaeric outfit "beyond the wizard's sleeve" which enters into even further neo-hippy styles here.

The thing I actually really like about this movement is that it seems to be expanding to take in as many different influences as it wants, while still maintaining this somewhat off-putting combination of sleek dance production and shaggy cosmic hippy vibe. It certainly blew my mind to find out half of Quiet Village Project is Matt Edwards, who also records as radio slave and rekids. Same with with old erol there...something about dance producers just moving farther and farther into their own idiosyncratic worlds looking for influences. It's probably a very internet-specific genre too, I bet; the product of unlimited reach into whatever musical backwaters a geeked-out music producer can find. It's very free-love in it's musical influences, this balearic stuff :D

Anyway, for me, the distinction between the beardo/cosmic disco whatever scene and neo-Balearic whatever is pretty much disappearing, it's all in a spectrum of some weird cosmic stoned dance project. Certainly with todd terje and prins thomas remixing studio's "life's a beach" the link is pretty damn strong. It definitely appears to be a pretty fertile neck of the woods for interesting, cross-pollinating ideas these days, that's for sure...Godspeed you stoned disco-rock people, godspeed.
 

swears

preppy-kei
It seems very "tasteful" and precious to me, although not necessarily in a bad way. It's as if a band made music to be put in a Peter Saville sleeve, rather than the other way around.
 

mms

sometimes
It seems very "tasteful" and precious to me, although not necessarily in a bad way. It's as if a band made music to be put in a Peter Saville sleeve, rather than the other way around.

nicely put, i get the same vibe, i really like quiet village and some of what that mountain of one do, i like the fleetwood mac thing going on but it's a bit pompous.
 
Last edited:

henry s

Street Fighting Man
how many 4AD artists do you think got the Vaughn Oliver sleeve first, and were told to "make it sound like that"?
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
It seems very "tasteful" and precious to me, although not necessarily in a bad way. It's as if a band made music to be put in a Peter Saville sleeve, rather than the other way around.

The thing I like about it most is the way in which it crossbreeds fearlessly (often in the space of one record) the coolest and most obscure dance and rock genres with the basest and most profane and untouchable (in an Indian caste-sense) disposable genres of the despised 80s--- that ability to bend cool and uncool to the point where its no longer a question of po-mo irony but genuine confusion between art-sensory delight and cognoscenti-disgust: such confusion being a genuinely and perverse ultra-contemporary sentiment outside of the historical memory-games which appear to be central to this genre.
 
Last edited:
Top