“Heretic” by Peach Milk

Day 31 of PopLib’s 31 Days of May marathon for New Zealand Music Month ends the month with the dark minimal techno of Auckland producer Peach Milk and “Heretic”

Peach Milk’s “Finally” EP has been a favourite round here for a while now.  Electronic musician/ producer Madison Eve  has created something as Peach Milk that is part Euro-dance/ post-dance music, part ambient soundtrack/ soundscape.

“Heretic” is superbly tasteful in the sounds and the moods created, the dark sheen and shimmer of the synth washes, the understated beats, and the icy ambient minimalism. When vocals appear they are injected into the ether, dancing through atmosphere of the music like ghostly spirits as a disembodied presence. It’s what Peach Milk leaves out that gives “Heretic” and the music on all of the wonderful “Finally” EP the space to set the mind free to wander and imagine.

Thanks for following these posts throughout May. While it’s easy to be cynical about the tokenism of one 12th of the year being a time to recognise NZ Music – Every month is New Zealand Music Month – it is an excuse to do something like PopLib’s 31 Days of May, and hopefully turn people on to new music they may not have heard before. As always, if you’ve found something you love here share it, and let others know.

 

“Another Day’s Sun” by Tiny Vipers

One of the first PopLib posts, over 2 years ago, was about Seattle musician Jesy Fortino, who releases music and performs under the name Tiny Vipers.

“Another Day’s Sun” is a one-off track from the Tiny Vipers Bandcamp, released December 2013, which I only discovered today. It’s a wonderful piece of near-ambient droning song-craft.

Now there’s a brand new Tiny Vipers release out called “Ambience3”. My copy arrived today in physical format from UK label Box Bedroom Rebel. I wanted to feature that but it doesn’t appear in Box Bedroom Rebels Bandcamp. So “Another Day’s Sun” is the Trojan Horse song to introduce this more recent release.

“Another Day’s Sun” above, with it’s minimal guitar, evocative voices and wash of electronic noises, hints at the direction to be taken two years later by Tiny Vipers on “Ambience3”.

“Ambience3” is, as the title might suggest, is ambient drone. There’s no vocals, other than the ghostly backwards smudge of voice on “TAPE III” on the 7″ (which plays at 33 rpm), but there’s a lot of wondrous ambient soundscape to get lost in on the 70-minute CD which comes with the 7″ single in a nicely packaged release from UK label Box Bedroom Rebels.

“Ambience3” ranges from beautiful echoey spaces, reminiscent of Eno’s ambient series of recordings, through to some more industrial sounds (in a very musical, extra-terrestrial industrial way). There’s also some remixes. The most intriguing of these is “Tape II remixed by Xela”, which takes a tape delay drone loop and works it up into 9 minutes of brilliant techno-trance industrial dance music.

The well-presented 7″ single and CD package is very affordable, so why not take a chance?