The Underground of Happiness

Beautiful album, released a couple of months back on Asthmatic Kitty , featuring a collaboration between two of its roster, Julianna Barwick and Helado Negro . She the one with the banks of celestial vocals (you'll find some more links in these pages), he with the sonic sculpts, or as the PR puts it, "rustic-Latin-psyche-folk meets big-city-blockparty" (nice). Anyway, I'm saying no more about this. This one's not for reading about, it's for listening. Believe You me by OMBRE

Beautiful new release from Julianna Barwick , who is one of our favourite singers/artists around here. Her fantastic album The magic place came out earlier in the year, also on Asthmatic Kitty - this was the UOH verdict at the time. Julianna Barwick - The magic place (Asthmatic Kitty) From the opening strains of Envelop , with multiple wordless, heavily treated vocal parts creating texture as well as melody, you know you're in the presence of something special here. By the end of that track, as a distressed piano line gradually swamps the vocals, a haunting, heartrending mood has taken over from the initial bliss. The title track is a choral symphony which slowly disintegrates into a lone soprano. Cloak sounds for all the world like a line from a church hymn sampled and looped, until its layers gather a power not witnessed in any church I've ever been in. White flag creates the effect of standing at the mid-point of three competing choirs, which somehow manage to complemen...