Review: You Stopped Dying - Pale Blue

Pale Blue's You Stopped Dying has been bouncing around the inside of my head for the past month and a bit.

I first heard the EP's title track whilst travelling, in San Francisco, experiencing an early spring in the midst of an emotional autumn. I guess that's a fall for San Francisco.

Pale Blue are duo Elizabeth Wight and Mike Simonetti. Having released their debut album in 2015 last month saw them release You Stopped Dying. Drawing inspiration from shoegaze artists like Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine, Pale Blue have created something new - a style now being dubbed technogaze.

The sound of Pale Blue is based heavily on Wight's strong vocal performances. On the title track minimal electronic production work - pads, high hats and some acid - provide the foundations for an ethereal performance from Wight. Looped vocals create additional layers of melody and Wight's main vocal hook, the repeated refrain “You Stopped Dying”, feels like a religious experience. It's both beautiful and heartbreaking at once - the sound of rebirth.

Daughter of Babylon is deeper, a full on acid house workout with liberal 808s and once again Wight's transcendent vocals. It's disorientating and disturbing, let somehow pleasantly otherworldly, like being caught in the grasp of something beautiful yet aliens.

Side B of this release is made up of two versions of the track Love - both the original and a dub. It's a slice of minimal techno, the kind unafraid to bask in analogue sounding hiss and emotional fear. Wight's vocal punctures your head and heart as she monotones the vocal: “Love... where did it come from?”

Love sounds like one half of a conversation. Wight's laughter acting as a denial of her past feelings and the dilution and eventual death of the strongest emotion we are capable of as humans. “It's all gone” she deadpans, “yeah, I don’t believe in it any more. Nothing is forever.”

Techno doesn’t often feel like this. It’s a genre known for being clinical. And here it is, analogue and alien, and yet unmistakeable in its humanity.

Stream: Cherry - New Shack

Cherry is the new butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling pop gem from New Shack.

Cat Leavey’s vocals are the standout on this track for me... Working together with Eric Robertson, Leavey and Robertson are Utah dark pop duo New Shack. The pair initially started working together whilst Leavey was living in Germany, and much of their music was created remotely.

Packed with woozy bass and lush snappy percussion, Cherry is a wonderfully dizzy pop record and the vocals skip across that wonderful production like a stone skimming across water. Check it out below:

Stream: Diamonds - Vera

Diamonds is the latest track from Copenhagen’s Vera, real name William Asingh.

Having worked with the likes of Off Bloom, Liss and MØ, Asingh’s solo work shows off his sophisticated production capabilities and eclectic tastes. Following on from his debut EP Good Job No Conversation, Vera is back with this new track - a sax driven piece of soul that somehow feels both raw and polished.

The track itself is about the difficulty of coming to terms with a disconnection from someone you care about - weighing up the depth of feeling you really have with the need to protect yourself. Describing the track, Asingh says:

“The song is a about being pushed away by people that you really trust and love. About trying to demean them in your own head to make things easier, but still knowing deep inside how much you care… Musically its all about smooth saxophones and lounge vibes combined with a classical pop dynamic. Its definitely the most pop track I've made as Vera. And probably my favorite Vera song so far.”

Sometimes things don’t work out, regardless of how much you care about someone and it can be hard to move on from someone you never really stop caring about. Diamonds is a survival mechanism - throwing shade where none really exists.

Stream: Dirty Love - Mt. Joy

Ahead of their debut eponymously titled debut LP , Mt. Joy have recently put out Dirty Love, the last track aimed at offering a preview ahead of their album release. It’s a bluesy take on Americana - an emotional gut punch full of feeling and atmosphere.

With gently strummed instruments and some threatening bass the track is a lesson in restraint - the real work put into giving space for the vocals to plead for a little empathy. A record of cursed love and desperation - the sort of thing that happens when you fall into a relationship that means you can’t help but hurt yourself.

Look out for Mt. Joy’s debut album, due for release on 2 March 2018.

Stream: Final Form - Benin City

Joshua Idehen has been making waves on these pages since the release of the debut album of his group Benin City back in 2013. Since then he has regularly blown me away, whether it is on guest spots or with his second band Hugh.

We are now back where we began, as for the past few months Josh has been focused once more on Benin City with band mates Shanaz Dorsett and Tom Leaper.

Final Form is the latest track to come from the forthcoming album Last Night, which was developed in tribute to London’s nightlife. Benin City’s last album felt uniquely of London, and so it makes sense their next would too.

This new track continues Benin City’s move in a more electronic direction - a thick, chunky slice of indie house. Last Night isn’t just inspired by London’s night life - it is the band’s attempt to process the change and decay that is being inflicted on the city’s nightclub scene. Final Form takes one of the moments that could only have come out of that scene an encapsulates it in an aural tale of emotions, chemistry and dancing. Describing the origins of the track Idehen says:

”I once went to Zoo Bar in the west end with a poet I really fancied. It was a Saturday night and neither of us drank but we felt like dancing. They were playing soulful house (this was way back in the noughties). Spurring and daring each other on, we started with the running man and ended up at last orders, dripping in the worst sweat, making new dance moves up, downing large glasses of tap water. She, a Dragonball Z fan, kept saying, “nah, you haven’t seen my Final Form. Next song I will be over 9000”. Obviously, that stuck with me.”

The band recently sold out London’s The Waiting Room but you can still catch-up them on tour at any of the following dates: 15th March: USA, Austin, Texas: SXSW, Esther's Follies
17th March: USA, Austin, Texas: SXSW, BBC Radio 1 stage at The British Music Embassy - 1.40pm
31st March: UK, London: Lock Tavern
8th June: UK, London: Poetry and Lyrics Festival with Cerys Matthews
9th August: UK, Winchester: Boomtown Festival

Last Night will be released through Moshi Moshi later this year. Check out Final Form below.