BarryGruff’s June 2015 Playlist

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A regular monthly feature to the blog; a nice, neat and handy playlist of tracks featured during the month.

June was another pretty fine month for new music. We had new tunes from Girls Names, Sextile, Hibou, Velvet Morning & Hooton Tennis Club ahead of their respective, forthcoming new albums. There were excellent new singles from Hyde & Beast, Freedom Fry, Dan Amor, Slow Riot, Tomorrows, Alaska Wilson & PANKHABILLI.

Also featured on this month’s playlist are great tracks from Seazoo, The Statics, CZARFACE, Peaness, Energy Slime & Pale Honey. Yeah, so, June was good. And that’s all before mentioning the interview with Ric Rawlins about his new book, ‘Rise of the Super Furry Animals’ – read it here.

Listen to BarryGruff’s June 2015 playlist below.

 

Introducing: Hibou

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Hibou is the Seattle-based solo project of 21-year-old Peter Michel, former drummer for Craft Spells.

Hibou’s raison d’etre is warm and friendly dreamy jangle-pop, fuelled by twisting reverbed-out guitar melodies, lush arrangements, ’80s synth and all manner of feel-good, surfy, summertime vibes. Having recently announced his self-titled debut LP will be released September 18th, we’ve been presented with a first taster in ‘Dissolve’, and oh my, doesn’t it suggest it’s going to be a good one. ‘Dissolve’ is a dusky, warm fusion of steady pulse fuzzy drums, sleek luminescent guitar, and mystical, dreamy whispers drowning in reverb that wash over you like, well like dream! There’s just enough time for it to veer off into the unusual, exploding into a wonderful prog-rock climax. ‘Dissolve’ is no flash in the pan either, as the similarly excellent ‘Above Us’ and ‘Sunder’ both testify to, and Hibou played Vancouver recently and it was an electric, energetic and illuminating performance (one of the most memorable since arriving here). Watch this space.

An 11-track self-titled debut LP will be released September 18th through Barsuk Records and Hibou will back in Vancouver on August 20th, playing The Electric Owl w/ Cayucas – full list of dates here. For now? There are some choice cuts below.