Avalon Emerson - Sandrail Silhouette

Instantly hooked on this track within the first 5 seconds. All of my favorite sounds.

Life´s too short for weird music - Tagesempfehlung 28.02.2023

Avalon Emerson / Sandrail Silhouette

Das Intro von Sandrail Silhouette deutet zunächst massiv in Richtung Madchester Rave Reloaded. Die aktuelle Veröffentlichung von Avalon Emerson schafft dann allerdings sehr elegant den Brückenschlag in die musikalische Gegenwart. Sandrail Silhouette ist nicht ganz so technoid wie etwas Rotting Hills aus 2020 und Eternal September vom letzte Jahr. Dafür bleibt Sandrail Silhouette auf sehr subtile Weise im Ohr und belegt derzeit schon eifrig meine unterschiedlichen Playlisten. Wer Avalon Emerson als Techno-Stangenware eingestuft hat lag irgendwie ein bisschen daneben.

Avalon Emerson - Sandrail Silhouette

"Sandrail Silhouette" by Avalon Emerson & The Charm

Puntine #96 - Canzoni da ricordare questa settimana

https://www.dlso.it/site/2023/02/01/puntine-96-canzoni-da-ricordare/

URL Song Tag

Rules of the game: link a song for each letter of your username

Thank you to @deardiaryts4 for the tag always enjoy a music tag 😊

Condescending You by Julie Doiron Afterglow (Of Your Love) by The Small Faces Not HXC Enough by Rotten Blossom Tha Fonn Gun Bhi Trom by Brìghde Chaimbeul ft Colin Stetson* Sandrail Silhouette by Avalon Emerson Easy ft Ally McMahon by Cody Currie Ethel by The Murder Capital Million Ways by Sally Shapiro They Don't Know by The Impressions OK With Me by Nora O'Connor Handle with Care by abriction I Don't Want You Anyway by Look Blue Go Purple Desdemona by Hollie Cook Everything's Gone by Lydia Loveless

*While making this post I discovered the Brìghde Chaimbeul song has a brilliant video worth a look 👍

I will tag @changingplumbob @thefandangos @lilacacia @zosa95 @berrycactus @ethicaltreatmentofcowplants @corrienteallita @oasissarah @introvertedfox @thewalkingplumbob @plumloup @zmemily

As always feel free to ignore if you already did this/prefer not to 😊

i did a lot of "boy things" as a kid and I've always felt less "girl" because of it, i never played with stuff that was considered feminine, partly because i was afraid of judgment, but also i found "boy stuff" more appealing. it's tough not relating to one's peers in a binary way. i would love to play cars

tags on this post for context

i was raised by a mechanic and carpenter so a lot of my early free time was spent in a barn full of tools, machines, welding masks, piles of cut-up BMX bikes we'd find in the garbage, stripped-bare sandrails and their engines, couple rifles or compound bows here or there, probably listening to whatever crusty old rock music my dad put on. hell, i was rowing through the gears of my mom's old square body S10 while she drove us to the store before i was barely tall enough to see over the dash. "hanging out with friends" was playing Guitar Hero or Racing & Skateboarding Video Games, or riding our bikes and skinning our knees. "hanging out with dad" was often target shooting in the backyard or building something; I rarely ever held the flashlight, i had the tools in my hands and grease under my fingernails.

that's a lot of exposition but i'm trying to paint the most specific picture i can! TL;DR, a lot of arguably "boy things" in my upbringing, and i fit right into it, lot of fondness in my heart for it still!

around the time i had my big Gender Awakening at the tail-end of high school i had already been Online for a bit - hell i learned what it meant to feel non-binary from this very website circa 2013 - but it wouldn't be until maybe 2019 or so when i moved out that i really started making other queer and trans friends, and it was pretty immediately obvious that i was extremely different from the rest of my community, both online and offline. of course, nobody was rude about it, everybody was VERY respectful of my name and my pronouns and my identity, but it was still really easy for me to feel "othered" because our shared experiences didn't line up at all; At most maybe i got made fun of for having long hair. it made it really easy to feel like i wasn't doing enough work to justify my queerness.

at the other end of that spectrum, i recently tried on she/her pronouns at the front of my bio, just to see if i was missing something, and i was quickly met with an IMMEDIATE outpour of support from friends and community alike. SO many people were loud about being So Proud of me, Knew i Had It In Me, i had multiple friends message me privately to offer information and easy routes to HRT "just in case ;)" i was thinking about it! and, yeah, it's nice to have that kinda support, i'll admit! but it was hard not to feel a little invalidated in not wanting to change. it really felt like a lot of people, close friends even, just kinda saw me as a trans woman waiting to have a bigger realization, as though being non-binary was just a meaningless stepping-stone to something greater. and i mean, i can't blame them, they just wanted to help!!

today i'm pretty firmly Queer/non-binary (with a little bit of Girl on the side when it's either Appropriate or Funny), and my body and voice are very much unaltered from the ones i was born with. virtually indistinguishable from a cishet version of myself, just with the he/him lopped off and they/she sloppily appended in its place; simply because i don't have the energy or don't care to put much effort into change, and that's very much fine for me. I know damn well i don't owe it to anybody but myself anyway, granted none of it tends to matter much when you present as a rabbit girl on the internet LOL. I'm thankful to have built myself a little space where i can engage with others like me, or where other queers feel welcome to express interest in the things that I'M all about! even if it's a little few and far between. still struggle with feeling like i fit in with The Girls tho LMAO.

IDK! this post is my half-baked love letter to my fellow AMAB NB folks who get treated like Cis Men, Trans Women who don't "put the effort in," or Anyone who can Otherwise Relate in the same, or even an opposite sort of way. we are playing cars together

Hey Tolkien fandom, anyone want to do some world-building? I’m thinking we should come up with some Modern AU Middle-earth Car Makes/Models and toss them out into the world for folks to use freely in their stories.

For instance, a rugged but light-weight off-road vehicle (a jeep, maybe, or something like a jeep?) called the Ranger.

Then there should be some kind of Hobbitish ATV/four-wheeler for trundling around the Shire, especially Tookland...maybe called something like a Smial Wheeler? Or a Tookland Rumbler? idk

Rohan should have something like that too. Maybe call it a Mark-wheeler? A UTV/SSV design might be better for Rohan actually, even more rugged. Heck, maybe even give them the occasional Unimog if you want.

And there definitely ought to be some kind of Haradrim Sandrail...

What about the Baggins Adventurevan, a Hobbit-sized campervan in which one can go on an adventure in proper comfort?

The Tunneler, a Landrover-type car made by (and sized for) Dwarves?

I’m sure folks who know more about cars than I do can come up with more and better ideas, so please don’t be shy!

Avalon Emerson - Sandrail Silhouette (Official Video)

I've been getting really into pulse jet stuff. There are some old home-built sandrails in the shed attached to our barn. I was an aircraft structural repairer for 7 years and I miss working with metal.

I don't think my cause of death will be a surprise.

4 / 50

"Entombed in Ice" by Avalon Emerson

DV:

If there's one thing I love about pop music above all else, more than singalong choruses and emotionally-wrenching details in the second verse and even synths themselves, it's nonsense words. Put "Da Doo Ron Ron" on my grave. So while MG and I both loved Avalon Emerson & the Charm's album, and we nearly put "Sandrail Silhouette," (which has a second verse where Emerson calls her friends' daughters "a reason for an optimistic view," an incredible line) on this list, that song was fundamentally outmatched when up against "Entombed in Ice" and its "Ba da da-da-da-duh." This song addresses someone, a former friend, maybe an ex-lover, fondly but without remorse for what once was. And it gives them direction, if not directions. This is a post-breakup song, maybe the year's great anomaly, full of love but not in love. It's a harsh message delivered in the gentlest way possible. "There are some things you can do for yourself now," repeats Emerson, leaving the things up to our imaginations. But only a little: "rotten hearts will decay" is where the first verse starts, and the blanks are easy to fill in. This song's subject has some shit to work through. But maybe they can! The bridge's "Ba da da-da-da-duh" echoes like freedom. It's possibility, not condemnation. Avalon Emerson stretches to the top of her range, echoing and melting into a short guitar solo, unencumbered by words and saying so much without them. We all have something we can do for ourselves; those syllables sound like they believe.

MG:

Avalon Emerson’s Soundcloud DJ sets are a staple of my household – like toilet paper, iced coffee, or a bed, she is both a necessity and a presence. But also! We only even made acquaintance with her work at the beginning of this very year via both Four Tet and Gorilla Vs. Bear putting “Sandrail Silhouette” on their playlists. I had no idea who she was but it felt like when I first got Napster and I’d search for something and only one, single user had uploaded it – you just know this thing that you haven’t even heard yet is cool. And yes, Avalon Emerson is very cool, so if that’s your criterion, please, stop here and make friends with the whole of & The Charm immediately. I wish I could be like “but if you must know why she’s cool, read on” but some of it eludes me to this day! Not in the emperor’s new clothes way where there’s no cool but I want to project cool on to her so badly that I’m making shit up, but in the way where you start scratching at the surface of a piece of art and it just starts yielding all these layers, some dense and some flaky and some immediately understood and some fleeting wisps of recognition. I continue to be stuck on this interview she gave to Pitchfork where she says (and I will quote the whole thing, not just the part relevant to me):

Since I’ve been involved in dance music, there’s been this arms race toward harder and faster, and it’s not really something that I identify with. This cathartic release that people seek when they go out clubbing, I get it and I respect it, and I participate in it as a DJ. But when I’m listening to music, my idea of a perfect record is a Cocteau Twins record, things that are soft and beautiful. I wanted to make this a soft, pretty record, but lyrically, the things on my mind are dark and sad, and very black-pilled at times. That juxtaposition is important, because something beautiful can also be coming from a place of pain. I think that’s where most good art lies, to be honest.

If anything, I find the way she describes her own ideas here reductive. But the part about it being a contrast to the “harder and faster” of club music is what’s relevant to me. I think “Entombed In Ice,” composed as it is of fragmented thoughts and ideas and sounds and bits that wander in and do their thing and dissolve into vapor or fade into the wallpaper, is a contrast to that club sound but it also does the thing that club music does, it provides a “cathartic release.” To talk back to Avalon Emerson, I’d say that as a culture we’re very hung up on this idea of catharsis as a WHOOSH or a BANG and then silence, nothingness, ending. But I think since we all keep going afterwards, since catharsis is an ending but not the ending, we must also listen quietly for those fragments and appreciate their soft approach and disappearance because that very gentle, loping cycle is also cathartic and we need little catharsis as much as big catharsis. Now back to you, reader. You have to keep listening to “Entombed In Ice,” you won’t get all it has to offer once through. That’s part of what’s cool about it, but just a part.

@avalon_emerson #shoegaze

Avalon Emerson - & the Charm

(Indietronica, Dream Pop, Downtempo)

Trading techno for lush indietronica, Avalon Emerson’s debut album embraces pop song structures, explosive shoegaze, misty balearic beat, and atmospheric alt-dance with existential lyricism and an eye for ‘80s and ‘90s retro charm. Gentle, inventive, and full of personality, & the Charm is exactly what its title promises.

☆☆☆☆☆

By the time Avalon Emerson and her wife, guitarist Hunter Lombard, moved out to San Francisco in February 2020, they already had to change all their plans. Initially heading there to branch out as a producer and spend a few months around L.A., where she could escape the constant touring and international DJ gigs that had subsumed her life after becoming one of the most in-demand performers with her energetic but sensitive take on techno, the 15-month lockdown that went into place took away both her inspiration to DJ and her ability to collaborate in the city. So, Emerson and Lombard took a lengthy 2,700 mile drive across the U.S. to New York City (where Lombard had family) and set up camp there, holed up in a small Brooklyn studio and inspired by the ethereal ‘90s pop of The Magnetic Fields and Cocteau Twins, the resulting album a collection of misty indie pop with an eye for ‘80s and ‘90s retro charm. Techno breakbeats and her signature synth work are still present, but they’re wrapped around pop song structures with warm chord progressions and lush chamber instrumentation; Emerson still knows her way around a hypnotic beat, but it’s no longer the sole focus of her songs. & the Charm constructs itself around the warm, crisp sound of old downtempo and dream pop bands, but Emerson makes it her own with writing focused on her anxieties as an artist and an individual, the breeziness of these nine songs helping to cushion those fears with some of the prettiest production this year. It’s a softspoken album where much of the magic comes from how subtly Emerson and her team let these songs bloom into gorgeous, heartfelt indie pop.

The album’s debut single, Sandrail Silhouette, makes it immediately clear the album is a dive into new waters for Emerson, jangly guitar chords from Lombard accentuated with a rich string section and soft synth swells, imagery of deserts and travel and technology letting Emerson drift into the sunset even as her worries follow her (“Any conversation will do, really / Or we don’t have to talk at all / …Hot dunes, an oasis / More ancient than the rocks between us”). The following eight tracks keep in lockstep by way of swirling ambient pop (Entombed in Ice, The Stone), bubbly dance pop (A Vision, Hot Evening), and surprise stylistic detours (Dreamliner, A Dam Will Always Divide), Emerson using her time working as a detail-oriented DJ with unusual sample sources and from Coil to Alicia Keys to stay in touch with her influences and imparting bits of herself onto them along the way. She makes it easy to fall into & the Charm’s ebb and flow, keeping a steady stream of groovy pop tunes going in between the quieter, experimental sections: The Stone makes use of Keivon Hobeheidar’s gorgeous cello tone to split the album in two, placed between the synthpop jam Astrology Poisoning and moody house highlight Dreamliner, and the penultimate Karaoke Song makes for a final moment of reminiscence between Hot Evening’s romantic 2-step and the nine minute shoegaze closer A Dam Will Always Divide. Making these songs provided her with a sense of balance and drive throughout her hectic time in lockdown, and the renewed spirit in her music is evident in every track and how they connect back to the same core ideals.

Club artists going pop isn’t an especially new thing in recent years - Everything But the Girl returned after an over 20 year stint with the dark alt-R&B of Fuse and Alison Goldfrapp’s May release The Love Invention went full on electropop - but unlike those older artists making a return to the music scene, Avalon’s only been around since the mid-2010s, her creative stream uninterrupted and only changing its course here. Entombed in Ice, for how minimal it is up until the drums pick up in its second half with a smooth electric guitar solo, is bursting with exciting musical ideas, the soft digital hand drums reminiscent of old balearic beat, and even the straightforward pop structure of Karaoke Song is outfitted with light vocal filters and crunchy synth patches, Emerson still toying with texture and atmosphere even with her eye turned towards more conventional music styles. In this effort to keep the music light and easy to listen to, the little things are all the more meaningful: the prominent bassline in A Vision lends the song a playfulness found nowhere else on the album, letting the phaser-covered drums guide A Dam Will Always Divide into its vast expanse of fuzzy synths and chugging guitars (it bears some resemblance to her remix of Slowdive’s Sugar for the Pill, but trades breakbeats and synth pads for a hypnotic rock beat and intricate arrangement work). & the Charm comes right after the many years Emerson’s spent touring and playing live sets, and you can hear her excitement at getting to sit down and really dig into the meaty bits of song composition, the album’s gorgeous textures and incredible ear for detail a direct result of Emerson slowing down and letting her music truly breathe for the first time.

There couldn’t have been a better time for Emerson to make an album like & the Charm. Had she not been stuck in lockdown, she might have kept up with her plans in Los Angeles, working behind the scenes for other musicians and learning how to work around the ideas of others and bending her production skills for them. Instead, she was given the opportunity to define her music as an individual outside of her idiosyncratic DJ sets, keeping her love of different genres and soft, ethereal music and making it for herself. It’s as creative, ambitious and full of life as any of her best techno work - it’s easy to find similarities between tracks like Dreamliner and One More Fluorescent Rush - and works to all her strengths while stretching out into new territory she’s never gone before. She always allows her music to speak for itself, & the Charm accepting of the future she never got to explore, but it’s also creating her a new future, one of moody pop choruses and strummed guitars and earthy synth tones. & the Charm is exactly what its title promises, and revels in bringing Emerson’s music to a whole new dimension.

So fireheart sandrail… any thoughts of kittens and what your going to name them now that your official?

"It's a bit soon for kits," Sandtail said instantly, laughing a little nervously. "I uh, I don't think I'm comfortable with having kits while Tigerstar's out and about. He killed my dad, he tried to kill Fireheart - what would he do to a defenseless little kit?"

Fireheart shuddered and she pressed into his side comfortingly.

"...that's not to say I don't want any," she murmured to him. "I just want Tigerstar's blood on my tongue and his body in the ground before we do."

"I understand," Fireheart agrees softly. "...have you considered any names for if we do?"

"I'm already named for my dad," Sandtail hummed. "I don't know... I want to give them good names but I don't have any ideas. Do you?"

Fireheart ducks his head shyly, "....I want to name one after makira."

"After Consort Iyera?"

"No, Bluestar."

Sandtail paused, considering the idea before touching her nose to his cheek.

"I think that sounds lovely."