Mice Parade - Focus on the Rollercoaster
Obrigado Saudade / Fatcat Records
The title of Mice Parade’s third album on FatCat is a Portuguese phrase, which roughly translates as ‘thank you nostalgia’. That said, ‘saudade’ is an untranslatable term rooted in the Lusophone world, where the history of slavery, continental migrations and maritime exploration lend a whole new depth to longing and loss. It’s a concept that demonstrates Mice Parade’s interest in that which lies between language and feeling, those half forms of communication that exist in the nuanced and subtle spaces of unsaid emotion.

Despite being their most accessible and complete album to date, Obrigado Saudade is still an esoteric and explorative work, where founder and multi-instrumentalist star Adam Pierce draws on a host of avant-garde pals and collaborators, including Doug Scharin of Him and the celestial voiced Kristin Valtýsdóttir of Múm to create a warm, multi-layered and emotive set of songs.
Artist Site

Minotaur Shock - Vigo Bay
Maritime / 4ad
Keen to shake off the folktronica tag that attached itself following the release of his 2001 debut, Chiff Chaffs and Willow Warblers, David Edwards has approached this second outing from several very different angles. He has spent much of the hiatus behind the drums of indie band Bronze Age Fox and has returned to the music that influenced his formative years, eschewing electronica for Hall & Oates, Steely Dan and 1980s electropop. He has also immersed himself in the romance of the sea through stories of smugglers’ coves, treasure hunts and lonely voyages.

With this surfeit of influences the result is rich in unusual unions. So you can expect a hornpipe or sea shanty mixed in with the blue-eyed soul, lush orchestration and sporadically cheesy synths. On Vigo Bay, Edwards delights in marrying a Giorgio Moroder-style disco bassline, accordian flourishes and guitar thrashing modelled on the Wedding Present. As the chiming whimsy of Mistaken Tourist gives way to 1980s synth-power chords, you may conjure images of confused pirates arriving on the shores of Miami, rolling their sleeves up and switching their eye patches for Ray-Bans. The Guardian
Artist Site

Nortec Collective - Don Loope
Tijuana Sessions Vol. 3 / Mil Records
The future music for the rest of Mexico — a hectic mix of Norteno music, Tex-Mex sounds, Ranchera guitars, Banda Sinaloense horns and beats mixed with electronic sounds. A sound like this could only have been dreamed up in a place like Tijuana.
Artist Site