“A Map of Things” by Paperghost

A new 4 song EP from paperghost has appeared out of the aether. It has the wonderful title “A Million Dead Dust Motes Hum To Life”. Here’s the opening track, “A Map of Things”

It has been three and a half years since the last Paperghost release. If this is a kind of electronic dream-folk, it is from a future in which dreams are monitored, recorded, mixed and played via some kind of glitchy synth-connected bio-ether-net, controlled by telepathic sentient insect networks.

Paperghost’s fractured yet cohesive futurist sound is a strange alternate-reality with enough conventional melody and rhythm to hold it together and work as rich and detailed subversive pop music. There is much here to explore…

“Feeling Like Helium” by Womb

There’s been a steady stream of new songs on the Bandcamp page for Wellington minimal psych-folk artist Womb. Some, like “Feeling Like Helium” here are annotated as (demo).

It’s more pop-oriented than the songs on last year’s self-titled album but the languid minimalism of this song continues to occupy an almost weightless slow-motion liminal zone between reality and dreams which was a feature of previous recordings.

Of the four new tracks “Fucking Close to Water” and “Kissing in the Dark” are the most intriguing, each being wordless atmospheric ambient pieces combining voices, instruments and sounds.

No idea if these are an indication another album is on the way, but if it is, it promises to add some fine new experimental textures and ideas to the mix.

“Don’t Send A Man” by Seth Frightening

 Day 12 of NZ Music Month continues the Sonorous Circle link from yesterday with the uneasy listening of Seth Frightening and “Don’t Send A Man” from the 2015 album “But We Love Our Brothers and Sisters”

As noted on PopLib a year ago Seth Frightening’s music is damaged ghoulish folk. Here the sparse sonic palette is busied with drums and bass as well as the trademark splatter of furtive, worrisome noises.

Seth Frightening plays a 91 Club presents show at the Crown Hotel in Dunedin this Friday 13th May along with another PopLib favourite i.e. crazy, who had this to say about her companion’s music:

“It’s a perfectly impossible marriage of folk and experimental; ranging from chaotic, crushing epics to jarringly sparse acoustic arrangements. I have little idea even now what makes this music as magical as it is.”

Read the full article “My Top 5: i.e. crazy” on The Wireless.

 

“Cosmic Dreaming” by Womb

Day 11 of NZ Music Month is the lucid “Cosmic Dreaming” from the innermost cosmos of Womb.

Womb is part of a healthy Wellington underground folk scene. The scene loosely aggregated around low-key Wellington label Sonorous Circle is not your everyday, traditional folk. It’s odd-folk, weird-folk, Gothic-folk, cosmic-folk…

“Cosmic Dreaming” is a great starting point to explore the self title debut album by Womb (Charlotte Forrester).

There’s a hint of the elegiac melancholy of Sufjan Stephens’ early music about this song and the way it drifts gently upon melodic waves of spectral voices over sparse acoustic instrumentation.

“Airplane #1” by Womb

Day 26 of PopLib’s May Month of Madness Music Marathon for NZ Music Month is “Airplane #1” from Wellington’s Womb.

Womb is the work of Charlotte Forrester and friends and it’s a Sonorous Circle release, mixed & mastered by Sean Kelly. His alter-ego is Seth Frightening and Womb bears some sonic similarities through the sparse mostly acoustic instrumentation and spectral vocals. “Dream-folk” is what Sonorous Circles call it, with concise accuracy.

“Airplane #1” is a wonderful introduction to this world. As well as the Seth Frightening reference point the song brings to mind NZ’s Tokey Tones and also at times The Raincoats ‘Odyshape’ album too. The occasional rhythmic hesitancy on “Airplane #1” just adds to the subtle other-worldly intrigue.