Ice Choir’s Afar is out July 31st on Vinyl and CD.

Pitchfork: “Ice Choir is Kurt Feldman’s (the Pains of Being Pure at Heart) new project, and the band’s debut LP, Afar, is out July 31 via Underwater Peoples. ‘Teletrips’ is a slinky jam that invokes 1980s R&B, somewhere between Spandau Ballet and Michael Jackson’s ‘Human Nature.’”
 
 
80s production married to 19th Century poetic influences, simultaneously disengaged and deeply personal, the immediacy of its melodies obscuring ornate arrangements, Ice Choir’s debut album “Afar” revels in the multiple contradictions it presents to listeners. This is a record that sounds like it was tracked thirty years ago in a $5,000-a-day studio: all sheen, synths, compressed guitars and digitally revived vocals yet is as bedroom-and-laptop as any; written and produced on the road and out of suitcases over the past 12 months by Kurt Feldman (and later brought to life via MIDI and an extensive collection of outmoded vintage synthesizers).
 

 
Indeed, part of its genius is this unyielding commitment to subverting expectations. Rather than engaging in crude revivalism, “Afar” challenges conventional perceptions of 80s technopop, highlighting its musically progressive and literate roots and re-imagining them to create a startlingly original sound.

This makes for an unconventionally diverse album that dips into the palettes of Italo-disco, avant-garde pop, classical music and even smooth R&B while somehow remaining completely, utterly, coherent. Feldman jokes that he originally tried to make something that sounded “equal parts Flyte Tyme, flight school (via SNES Pilotwings) and luck dragon in flight.”

Notwithstanding the meticulous detail to composition and arrangement throughout “Afar”, perhaps it is the substance and quality of lyrics, and their centrality to its appreciation, which will distinguish it most from its contemporaries. This is writ large in Feldman’s nod to John Keats’ Fancy on the album closer “Everything Is Spoilt By Use” (a glittering, tinsel-clad ballad that features a sublime cameo from Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek).

“Afar” is 35 minutes of the most considered pop music out there; a
compelling ode to lust, distance and alienation …

Preorder in the UP Store.

We are stoked to be working with a slew of incredible labels on this, including: New Images, Big Love, Insula Music, Release the Bats, Denim Hologram, Silver Ghosts, KRAAK, Music City, and 4:2:2v2.

“Apart from one or two lonesome 4-track explorers popmusic didn’t really break bones in the off-stream musical spectrum for the last ten years or so. Just when we started worrying about a scene that would become overruled by eternal drones and loops, Danish pop freaks Girlseeker came to the rescue…
 

 
With an oeuvre that sounds like a more dance friendly and mentally disabled version of Ariel Pink, the trio (live often extended by the guitarist of Iceage) is ready to herald a new musical era. Fusion jazz, Alan Vega and eighties AOR are the main ingredients of the Girlseeker cult and despite the sometimes happy sounding keyboard patterns, the lyrics embrace the same existentialist crisis of that period.

With the whole electronic eighties revival movement Girlseeker share a fascination for MTV- and VHS culture, but leaves out all the irony and false nostalgia. This is pop music in its purest moment: psychotic outsider art for the romantic listener.” – Free Music Archive

BUY NOW IN THE UP STORE

We are happy to announce the release of Eric Copeland’s latest full length, Limbo, on July 24th.

The LP is now available for preorder in the UP Store.

Eric Copeland is an experimental musician based in New York City. He is a core member of Black Dice and forms half of the duo Terrestrial Tones with Animal Collective’s Avey Tare. His extensive and exemplary solo work has long been hailed for its ingenious torrent of sounds and schemes.

Tie up your laces and listen loud. Feeling like a funked up alien comic book, Copeland’s newest full length, Limbo (out on June 5th via Underwater Peoples), extends his ouvre of layered, pitched, and all-out fucked sounds toward an easier place, a more familiar musical terrain. More fleshed out than his earlier work, Limbo’s six parts give it a capacious feel of action. Well organized and having an undeniable rhythm, the album is an excellent progression from the concepts explored throughout his body of work.

Check out a stream of “Louie, Louie. Louie” courtesy of AdHoc.fm:

“Black Dice’s Eric Copeland is dropping Limbo, a new LP on Underwater Peoples to follow up last year’s excellent Waco Taco Combo. Available for stream from the album is “Louie, Louie. Louie,” a warped mixture of waw’ing guitars and decaying voices that plays out like an R. Crumb cartoon rave– it fits into Copeland’s legacy in the best way.”

 

$16