It’s been quiet here on Meadowmusic this week, since I’ve been away on a trip a few days. I hope I can restore your interest by presenting Mono Stereo’s new single “Me and My Machine”, to be released on Monday. But you can of course listen to it here already today, and download it.

I wrote about Mono Stereo the first time almost exactly a year ago, and since then a lot of things have happened around the band; tours, recordings and other events. They seem to have a continuous positive flow around them, which feels very nice to see.

I think that the single more clearly than before points out a direction towards classic psychadelia, refined in their own way. Really great song this.

Tonight they start a two-week intense tour in England, with a first gig at Ducie Bridge in Manchester.

Read more on Mono Stereo’s site.

Me and My Machine

Me and My Machine:

Mono Stereo – Me and My Machine from Adam Bruneau on Vimeo.

That I would enjoy listening to dubstep and drum’n’bass, I wouldn’t have believed a while ago. Not that I dislike these genres in any way, it’s just that my music radar has led me in other directions and that I’ve never really entered this type of music in an interesting way.

But I think that the duo Modual has dragged me into this area somehow now, by blending beautiful pop melodies and a nice jazz-harmonic feeling with the beats. The result is a wonderful, laidback music, soothing and slightly melancholic, with interesting productions.

In September they released the EP “Infinity” and you can listen to this EP, and a former one, on Bandcamp and on Modual’s Soundcloud page. You can also connect with them on Facebook.

Here are two tracks, one from each EP:

Infinity
Deeper Than This

It’s been a while since I heard from Gocart System, ever since they released their first EP here on Meadowmusic. Thankfully they are back with a new one, called “Across the Nation”.

And yes, it’s the same crazy playfulness, jump between genres and with contagious songs. Here’s one that could be a modern lo-fi version of early Velvet Underground, another a disco flirt, and, well, you tell me. I recognize the music, but at the same time I don’t.

On Spotify you can listen to both EP:s as one release, or you can head over to Myspace and listen there. Here’s “Heavy Rotation”, and also the video to “Always Been the Same” from the first EP:

Heavy Rotation

Always Been the Same:

Le Bataillon des Fous (“The Fools’ Batallion”) takes me back to the eighties to the echoing rooms and the later new wave scene. I hear Echo & the Bunnymen, Waterboys, but with an elegance that could have come from Roxy Music.

The band was formed in 2005 and has since then passed through some transformations both when it comes to the members and to the music. The debut album “In The Name of The Unknown God” was released this year and is a praise to Dionysos, god of wine, music, theatre, ecstasy and excess.

You can find Le Bataillon de Fous on their site and on Facebook. You can listen to the album on Spotify.

I Am Ready to Love You

I Am Ready to Love You:

It’s not too often I receive non-electronica instrumental music. It’s nice then to listen to Folkvang’s colourful tones.

The band name comes from nordic mythology and gives us a hint of the music’s ambience. I find their roots in the seventies’ progressive rock, within the softer, ambient and melodic parts of that genre. It’s often enshrouded in a northern Swedish melancholy, which testifies about large unpeopled landscapes, lakes, solitude and the stillness of nature. There is a nordic calmness in the music, which feels pleasant to enter and be inside.

Folkvang released their first album this year, and you can listen to it on Spotify or listen to parts of it on Myspace. You can also meet the band on Facebook. Here is a song from the album:

Ensamhetens Famn