Sin Fang Bous – Clangour
Well apart from a truly sumptuous album cover, what have we here? Well, it’s a solo project by Sindri Mar Sigfusso, from Icelandic band Seabear, apparently. I have to plead ignorance on most of this unfortunately because, for all I’ve listened to the Seabear album briefly, I’ve never spent enough quality time with it to really know if I like it or not.
This was a little more immediately arresting, fortunately for me, and I liked it from the beginning. It’s layered with a bit of everything, really. Samples and bits of synth on one hand, drums and guitar riffs on the other, plenty of other stuff too, like pianos and assorted ‘proper instruments’. The vocals are slightly distorted and distant, and they too are quite layered in their sound.
Funnily enough, despite all this, the album still plays like a straightforward indie record. Perhaps it’s the drums – they’re like a less frantic version of the Dodos, still very insistent and purposeful, but not quite so clatterous. They they serve to anchor most of the music on the album, leaving it free to wander about on its own with little danger of coming adrift and losing focus.
I wouldn’t say that I love this album, but I do like it a lot. And I might just go back and have a proper listen to Seabear as well.
Sin Fang Bous – Catch the Light
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Sin Fang Bous – Clangour & Flutes
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Christ, these are really good, to be fair this is the first I’ve heard of him and I know you can’t gauge everything from a couple of tracks but I really enjoyed these, I don’t think they’ll change my life but they are really bloody good!
I love the cover too, seems to go with the whole package.
The cover really does suit the music actually.
I’m enjoying this album a lot. I also really liked the The Ghost That Carried Us Away, which has been on pretty high rotation the last few months. Sure, neither are exactly challenging listening, and they rarely jump out and shout brilliance in your face, but the music is warm and engaging and perfect background for bumbling around the house pretending it’s summer outside.
Seabear were quite charming live too, in that ingenuous “hi, we’re a band and we have some music and we really hope you like it” sort of a way.
The Ghost That Carried Us Away (it should be ‘…Which Carried Us Away’ of course, but I’ll get over it)? Is that by the same band?
Those wacky Icelanders with their bleeps and bloops. This is pretty good. It reminds me of Pinback for some reason.
Hmmm, I think “…that carried us away” is fine, assuming their intention is to limit the denotation of “the ghost” to the particular incorporeal being by which they were abducted.
It’s Seabear’s album.
It could be Phil Collins’ album, it’s still pretty decent don’t you think?
Huh? Indeed. Yes it is…
This is great. Reminds me of a less busy Tunng.