“Dust” by You’ll Never Get To Heaven

Canadian duo You’ll Never Get To Heaven released an unusual and dreamy album of minimal experimental dream-pop last month. Here’s “Dust” from the album as your exploration entry point:

You’ll Never Get To Heaven is Alice Hansen and Chuck Blazevic, and “Wave Your Moonlight Hat for the Snowfall Train” is their fourth release. It’s a sparse album of minimalist dream-pop songs and instrumentals, employing melodic fretless basslines and harmonics, watery piano and marimba, hushed vocals, and a lot of tape echo delay effects. It’s an unusual but fully-formed and accessible collection of ethereal dream-state music.

The highlighted track here “Dust” reminds me in some ways of UK post-punk duo A.C. Marias around the time of their mesmerising 1986 single “Just Talk” (with it’s equally mesmerising video).

A. C. Marias (which was Angela Conway and Wire guitarist Bruce Gilbert) also used a combination of minimal repetition and dream-pop vocals to similar effect, pre-dating shoe-gaze and dream-pop and out of step with the cool harshness of much post-punk, and jangling nostalgic guitar pop of the mid 1980s.

Here’s another A.C. Maria video for “Just Talk” performed live on a TV show.

“Pacha” by K2K

Day 15 of PopLib’s 31 Days of May  marathon for New Zealand Music month comes from Auckland based producer K2K (Katherine Anderson) and the dub-tastic dreamy dance music of “Pacha” –

“Pacha” is from K2K’s 4 track “Sugar” EP released on Margins.  If you like House, Techno, or any kind of leftfield dance/ electronic music this EP is an absolute treat.

All the EP tracks are heavy on the dense fog of atmosphere. Woozy tones weave fever dreams across the beats, while disembodied vocal melodies are beamed in from another solar system and all kinds of unexpected aural delights drift in and out of focus. Classy.